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  • Pure Men: A Novel
    $16.99

    A young professor grapples with homophobia in Muslim Senegal in this searching, heart-wrenching novel from the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Most Secret Memory of Men.

    A viral video makes the rounds in Dakar, showing an incensed crowd that gathers to dig up a grave and drag the corpse from holy ground. When Ndéné, a French literature teacher, watches it, he’s surprisingly affected. Who was this man, and what could he have done to deserve such a fate? The answer soon becomes clear: he was a “góor-jigéen,” one of the so-called “men-women,” the shameful label given to homosexuals, cross-dressers, or any man who lives outside the accepted norm.

    Haunted by the video, Ndéné sets out to learn more. With the help of a friend who works in night life, he explores a hidden side of Dakar, away from the rigid Islam of his family and university. Although he feels a certain disgust for homosexuality, he’s moved by the suffering and resilience of the people he meets. But the further he goes, the more he doubts his own identity, threatening to become an object of suspicion and scorn himself.

    A powerful, nuanced portrait of queerness in a conservative society, Pure Men asks the fundamental question of how to find the courage to be true to yourself, whatever the cost.

  • Purple Hibiscus (A Novel)

    by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    $16.95

    Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating.

    As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.

    Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

  • Purse Contents and Bamboo Earrings Card
    $6.00
    Blank Inside. A7 size (5" x 7"). Printed on 110lb Pure White recycled, archival and acid-free paper. Comes with Kraft envelope and protective sleeve.
  • Pushout

    by Monique Morris

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    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    The “powerful” (Michelle Alexander) exploration of the harsh and harmful experiences confronting Black girls in schools, and how we can instead orient schools toward their flourishing.

    On the day fifteen-year-old Diamond from the Bay Area stopped going to school, she was expelled for lashing out at peers who constantly harassed and teased her for something everyone on the staff had missed: she was being trafficked for sex. After months on the run, she was arrested and sent to a detention center for violating a court order to attend school.

    In a work that Lisa Delpit calls “imperative reading,” Monique W. Morris chronicles the experiences of Black girls across the country whose complex lives are misunderstood, highly judged—by teachers, administrators, and the justice system—and degraded by the very institutions charged with helping them flourish. Painting “a chilling picture of the plight of black girls and women today” (The Atlantic), Morris exposes a world of confined potential and supports the rising movement to challenge the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

    At a moment when Black girls are the fastest growing population in the juvenile justice system, Pushout is truly a book “for everyone who cares about children” (Washington Post).

    Book cover photograph by Brittsense/brittsense.com.

  • Pussy Prayers: Sacred and Sensual Rituals for Wild Women of Color
    $19.99
    A NEW KIND OF SEX ED. Pussy Prayers is about rekindling the connection to your pleasure center - the space through which you manifest worlds - regardless of the body parts you do or don't have. These pages speak to the unique sexual experiences of Black women and femmes in order to help them heal from trauma and miseducation while learning how to powerfully conjure up a life that is dripping with sweetness - all by getting in touch with the one part of yourself that was divinely designed for pleasure. Here, you'll find stories, sister-girl-talk, and practical, easy-to-do rituals to begin your personal journey of understanding the importance of pleasure, its connection to manifestation, and ways to increase your personal power so you can enjoy #EverydayDeliciousness. BLACK GIRL BLISS is an educational platform dedicated to cultivating the spiritual, sexual, and self-care practices of Black women and femmes.
  • Put Y'all Back in Chains: How Joe Biden's Policies Hurt Black Americans

    by Horace Cooper

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    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    Put Y’all Back in Chains outlines how the policies of President Joe Biden harm Black communities and limit opportunities for their success.

    “Whether you agree or disagree, Horace Cooper’s latest book tackles the question of how Joe Biden’s policies affect Americans, especially those in minority and underserved communities. His research shows that the injuries are calamitous. Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats, the Biden policies are having a reverse effect, one that devastates bank accounts, crushes entrepreneurship, and steals the promise of the American Dream.

    Horace painstakingly combs through the harsh results of these efforts, especially on lower income and working class people, who are hit hardest by the woke-policies of Joe Biden. If you want to see the real story the media isn’t telling, this book is a must read!”

    –Sean Hannity, Fox News Host

    A thorough examination of the ways that the policies of President Joe Biden are antithetical to the aspirations and dreams of Blacks, Put Y’all Back in Chains uncovers the reasons that the policies of the Biden Administration hurt Black communities in particular. And this is no accident.

    Progressive policymakers relished Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, his experiments with higher unemployment benefits and related regulatory programs, and especially his push for the green agenda. Consequently, working-class people, especially Black men, were hardest hit when it comes to finding employment as well as maintaining their financial lifestyle. Tragically, the Biden Agenda hurt the entire Black community, affecting educational attainment, wealth creation, and homeownership.

    These dramatic downward changes were particularly hard to absorb for Black households, especially those that made tremendous gains during the Trump Administration.

    It is increasingly clear that President Joe Biden’s priorities place Blacks at the back of the political bus. 

    In this thoroughly researched book, Horace Cooper outlines how the minority group most likely to support Biden—Blacks—are systematically impaired by this White House and why the Black community needs to turn away from the Biden Administration and toward a brighter future.

  • Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974–

    Jamaica Kincaid

    from $20.00


    *Paperback Release Date - 8/4/26*

    My ignorance was on my side. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write.

    This collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself.

    From “Jamaica Kincaid’s New York,” which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic “Biography of a Dress,” her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path.

    Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.

  • Queen Charlotte

    by Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes

    $30.00

    From #1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn and television pioneer Shonda Rhimes comes a powerful and romantic novel of Bridgerton's Queen Charlotte and King George III's great love story and how it sparked a societal shift, inspired by the original series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, created by Shondaland for Netflix.

    “We are one crown. His weight is mine, and mine is his…”

    In 1761, on a sunny day in September, a King and Queen met for the very first time. They were married within hours.

    Born a German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was beautiful, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent… not precisely the attributes the British Court had been seeking in a spouse for the young King George III. But her fire and independence were exactly what she needed, because George had secrets… secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the monarchy.

    Thrust into her new role as a royal, Charlotte must learn to navigate the intricate politics of the court… all the while guarding her heart, because she is falling in love with the King, even as he pushes her away. Above all she must learn to rule, and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society. She must fight—for herself, for her husband, and for all her new subjects who look to her for guidance and grace. For she will never be just Charlotte again. She must instead fulfill her destiny… as Queen.

  • Queen Mother Greeting Card
    Sold out
    Queen Mother — Greeting Card She comes from something ancient. She carries it forward every day. This card features an illustration inspired by the iconic Iyoba — the Queen Mother of Benin — one of the most powerful and enduring images in African art history. The figure wears the distinctive tall coral-bead headdress and choker of the Benin Queen Mother, rendered in deep bronze and gold tones. Bold lettering reads “QUEEN” above and “MOTHER” below, grounding the image in exactly the title she has always held. The background is a deep olive with an intricate geometric repeat pattern. For the mom whose strength feels ancient. Whose presence commands a room without a word. Who has always been, in every sense, royalty. 5 x 7 inches • Blank inside for your personal message • Comes with a white envelope Add a personalized message + direct delivery for +$3
  • Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore

    Ashley D. Farmer

    $35.00

    From an award-winning historian of Black radical politics comes the definitive biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore—mother of modern Black Nationalism and trailblazer in the fight for reparations

    “Queen Mother is a monumental achievement, a rendering worthy of the great Audley Moore herself.”—Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism

    In the world of Black radical politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and, from her Philadelphia and Harlem homes, a mentor to some of America's most influential Black activists.

    And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother, celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore's faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.

    Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It's a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement.

  • Queen Move

    by Kennedy Ryan

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     The boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can't have...

    Dig a little and you'll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern.

    Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old.

    Pry and one of us might confess we saved our first kiss for each other. The most clumsy, wet, sloppy . . . spectacular thirty seconds of my adolescence.

    Get into our business and you'll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant.

    Twenty years later, my "awkward duckling" best friend from childhood, the boy no one noticed, is a man no one can ignore.

    Finer. Fiercer. Smarter.

    Taken.

    Tell me it's wrong.

    Tell me the boy who always felt like mine is now the man I can't have.

    When we find each other again, everything stands in our way--secrets, lies, promises.

    But we didn't come this far to give up now.

    And I know just the move to make if I want to make him mine.

  • Queen Nanny & The White Witch of Rosehall

    Bobby Spears Jr.

    $14.95

    Part historical fiction, part horror mystery, this thrilling novel is perfect for fans ofBlack Leopard, Red Wolf and Black Sun.

    A leader of the Jamaican Maroons crosses paths with an enigmatic sorceress in thisspine-tingling tale of ancient enemies, based on real Jamaican history and legend

    Deep in the heart of Jamaica, the stories of insatiable bloodthirsty creatures and dark rituals brought over from the old country have been the stuff of legends for centuries. Queen Nanny, the leader of a community of Maroons, is well versed in military leadership
    and spiritual wisdom. But how do you beat an enemy that possesses the power over life and death?

    One such figure is the enigmatic White Witch, shrouded in mystery and
    superstition—some say she was once a wealthy woman who murdered her husbands while others believe she was a powerful sorceress who used dark magic. As the White Witch threatens the safety of Queen Nanny’s home, she must use every weapon at her disposal to protect her people.

    With action and mystery that brings to life a legendary urban myth, this thrilling novel provides a fresh perspective on Jamaica's rich cultural history and is a must-read for horror and thriller enthusiasts.

  • Queen of Exiles

    by Vanessa Riley

    $32.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    The Queen of Exiles is Marie-Louise Christophe, wife and then widow of Henry I, who ruled over the newly liberated Kingdom of Hayti in the wake of the brutal Haitian Revolution.

    In 1810 Louise is crowned queen as her husband begins his reign over the first and only free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. But despite their newfound freedom, Haitians still struggle under mountains of debt to France and indifference from former allies in Britain and the new United States. Louise desperately tries to steer the country’s political course as King Henry descends into a mire of mental illness.

    In 1820, King Henry is overthrown and dies by his own hand. Louise and her daughters manage to flee to Europe with their smuggled jewels. In exile, the resilient Louise redefines her role, recovering the fortune that Henry had lost and establishing herself as an equal to the kings of European nations. With newspapers and gossip tracking their every movement, Louise and her daughters tour Europe like other royals, complete with glittering balls and princes with marriage proposals. As they find their footing—and acceptance—they discover more about themselves, their Blackness, and the opportunities they can grasp in a European and male-dominated world.  

    Queen of Exiles is the tale of a remarkable Black woman of history—a canny and bold survivor who chooses the fire and ideals of political struggle, and then is forced to rebuild her life on her own terms, forever a queen.

  • Queen of Exiles: A Novel of a True Black Regency Queen
    $18.99

    “You may not know Marie-Louise Christophe but once you have met her, you won’t forget her. Vanessa Riley’s historical novel feels timely and relevant, commemorating a time when Black women were queens.” —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author

    Acclaimed historical novelist Vanessa Riley is back with another novel based on the life of an extraordinary Black woman from history: Haiti’s Queen Marie-Louise Christophe, who escaped a coup in Haiti to set up her own royal court in Italy during the Regency era, where she became a popular member of royal European society. 

    The Queen of Exiles is Marie-Louise Christophe, wife and then widow of Henry I, who ruled over the newly liberated Kingdom of Hayti in the wake of the brutal Haitian Revolution.

    In 1810 Louise is crowned queen as her husband begins his reign over the first and only free Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. But despite their newfound freedom, Haitians still struggle under mountains of debt to France and indifference from former allies in Britain and the new United States. Louise desperately tries to steer the country’s political course as King Henry descends into a mire of mental illness.

    In 1820, King Henry is overthrown and dies by his own hand. Louise and her daughters manage to flee to Europe with their smuggled jewels. In exile, the resilient Louise redefines her role, recovering the fortune that Henry had lost and establishing herself as an equal to the kings of European nations. With newspapers and gossip tracking their every movement, Louise and her daughters tour Europe like other royals, complete with glittering balls and princes with marriage proposals. As they find their footing—and acceptance—they discover more about themselves, their Blackness, and the opportunities they can grasp in a European and male-dominated world.  

    Queen of Exiles is the tale of a remarkable Black woman of history—a canny and bold survivor who chooses the fire and ideals of political struggle, and then is forced to rebuild her life on her own terms, forever a queen.

    "A sweeping look at the political, social, and romantic intrigue surrounding Haiti’s first and only queen. Riley’s depiction is richly imagined and wholly original." — Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Magnolia Palace

    "Queen of Exiles is the riveting account of Marie-Louise Christophe, Haiti's first and only Queen. Bold, ambitious, historically sound and beautifully told."--Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of The House of Eve

  • Queen of the Conquered

    by Kacen Callender

    $16.99

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    An ambitious and unflinching tale of colonialism, conquest, and revenge, Queen of the Conquered begins a powerful fantasy series set in a Caribbean-inspired world. 

    *Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time
    * World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, winner


    On the islands of Hans Lollik, Sigourney Rose was the only survivor when her family was massacred by the colonizers. When the childless king of the islands declares he will choose his successor from amongst eligible noble families, Sigourney is ready to exact her revenge.

    But someone is killing off the ruling families to clear a path to the throne. And as the bodies pile up and all eyes regard her with suspicion, Sigourney must find allies among her prey and the murderer among her peers... lest she become the next victim. 

  • Queen of the Sea (Cruise Life #1) (Queen of the Sea, 1)

    Reese Eschmann

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    With all the aspirational elements of Eloise and the heart and emotional intelligence of Ways to Make Sunshine, Cruise Life by Reese Eschmann is sure to set sail for success!

    All aboard!

    Caitlin and her big brother, Dylan, are still getting used to shuttling between Mom’s new little house and Dad’s fancy new condo after their divorce. But summer means a solid six weeks with her dad. Finally, one toothbrush in one place and all her outfits together! So when her dad announces that he’s gotten a new job on the fanciest, most fun, family-friendly cruise line -- and he’s bringing his kids along -- Caitlin has mixed feelings. For about a minute!

    Then off she goes on the adventure of a lifetime on the biggest ship she’s ever seen, the Wandering Princess, which is tricked out to perfection. But soon the pressures of being a crew kid get to Caitlin. She's already had to adjust to two new homes . . . will she be able to make the Wandering Princess her third?

  • Queenie

    by Candice Carty-Williams

    $18.99
    NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT!

    “[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” —Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

    For fans of Luster and I May Destroy You, a disarmingly honest, unapologetically black, and undeniably witty debut novel that will speak to those who have gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

    Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

    As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

    With “fresh and honest” (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.
  • Queer Book Club Hat
    $29.00
  • Queer Book Club Tote
    $22.00
  • Queer Histories

    Adriano Pedrosa

    $75.00

    A chromatic celebration of LGBTQIA+ artists, queer and trans activisms and the "queering" of history, with works by Andrea Geyer, Claude Cahun, Félix González-Torres, Martin Wong, Peter Hujar, Roberto Burle Marx and many more

    Since 2016, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) has centered its exhibition program on exploring different histories, with each year featuring a large-scale, international and transhistorical group exhibition, paired with an exquisitely produced catalog. Following the bestselling titles Afro-Atlantic Histories and Indigenous Histories, Queer Histories is the next chapter in this cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary survey series exploring underrepresented or marginalized narratives.
    Gathering more than 200 artworks from public and private collections in Brazil and abroad, Queer Histories is organized into seven sections: "Love, family and communities," "The sacred and the profane," "Signs and spaces," "Activism and archives," "Survival," "Queer Abstraction" and "Visibility." While many of the artists featured in Queer Histories are working in the wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its profound impact on queer and trans communities, the exhibition goes beyond artists who identify as LGBTQIA+, approaching queerness as a lens through which to reinterpret the world, to queer history and to reclaim erased narratives. This compendium is a critical resource for understanding how art and history continue to function as sites of resistance and transformation in LGBTQIA+ lives.
    Artists include: Andrea Geyer, Andy Warhol, Beverly Buchanan, Catherine Opie, Claude Cahun, David Wojnarowicz, Etel Adnan, Félix González-Torres, Glenn Ligon, Kia LaBeija, Leonilson, Martin Wong, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Peter Hujar, Roberto Burle Marx, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Salman Toor, Tseng Kwong Chi, Tuesday Smillie, Yuki Kihara, Zanele Muholi.

  • Queer Times, Black Futures

    by Kara Keeling

    $30.00

    *ships in 5-7 business days

    A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time

    Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and black freedom.

    Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra’s 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar “speculations” of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.

  • Queering Post-Black Art: Artists Transforming African-American Identity After Civil Rights (International Library of Modern and Contemporary Art) by Derek Conrad Murray
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    What impact do sexual politics and queer identities have on the understanding of 'blackness' as a set of visual, cultural and intellectual concerns? In Queering Post-Black Art, Derek Conrad Murray argues that the rise of female, gay and lesbian artists as legitimate African-American creative voices is essential to the development of black art. He considers iconic works by artists including Glenn Ligon, Kehinde Wiley, Mickalene Thomas and Kalup Linzy, which question whether it is possible for blackness to evade its ideologically over-determined cultural legibility. In their own unique, often satirical way, a new generation of contemporary African American artists represent the ever-evolving sexual and gender politics that have come to define the highly controversial notion of 'post-black' art. First coined in 2001, the term 'post-black' resonated because it articulated the frustrations of young African-American artists around notions of identity and belonging that they perceived to be stifling, reductive and exclusionary. Since then, these artists have begun to conceive an idea of blackness that is beyond marginalization and sexual discrimination.
  • Queerleaders
    $19.99

    Two cheerleaders find themselves inconveniently tumbling head over heels for each other in this satirical, sapphic teen rom-com that’s Bring It On meets She Drives Me Crazy.

    Oak Haven High doesn’t have cheerleaders—it has queerleaders.

    It’s a fun coincidence that every new varsity cheerleader since Davie Cathee took the squad by storm three years ago is—or soon comes out as—queer.

    But when a rumor sparks that this season, newly minted captain Davie has been specifically recruiting queer members only, Davie is accused of “discrimination” against straight students. She’s given an ultimatum: recruit a straight athlete for the team or the funding for their competitive cheer season will take a major tumble.

    Enter Kendall Hayes, the edgy, mysterious new girl. When Davie sees that Kendall has a boyfriend, she quickly convinces her to join the squad. Problem solved.

    Until she finds out that Kendall’s actually bisexual…and newly single.

    Now Kendall and Davie are faced with having to keep those details under wraps until nationals, which only gets more complicated when they start falling hard and fast for each other. Can Kendall go back in the closet long enough to save the squad? Or will Davie find the courage to love her new crush out loud, even if it might mean the end of the queerleaders?

  • Quicksand (Modern Library Torchbearers)

    by Nella Larsen

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    A classic novel of identity, sexuality, religion, and race by the author of Passing, hailed as “an original and hugely insightful writer” by The New York Times—with an introduction by Asali Solomon, author of The Days of Afrekete “Quicksand . . . open[s] up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read [it] years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable.”—Alice Walker Born to a white Danish mother and a Black American father, Helga Crane has long struggled to carve a path for herself amid the racial segregation of the early twentieth century. As a teacher at an all-Black boarding school in the South, Helga quickly becomes unsettled by the way the school measures excellence based on proximity to whiteness. Journeying to Chicago, Harlem, and Copenhagen, she attempts to thrive free from the constraints of category—mother or wife, promiscuous or chaste, white or Black, American or Danish. But these categories, though slippery and unstable, are constantly reinforced. Helga finally settles into a life that feels secure yet completely at odds with her previous ambitions—married to a preacher in the Deep South, hoping to find peace under the wings of the Church. Landing back where she started, in social and existential oblivion, Helga forces us to consider: In a society marred by injustice, is it even possible to find a true, authentic self? With intriguing parallels to Larsen’s own life, Quicksand is an engrossing page-turner that is as relevant now as ever before. The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.

  • Quicksand (Signature Editions)
    $8.99

    The orphan of a Danish mother and a West Indian father, Helga Crane is a young woman caught between cultures and in search of a home. Though her beauty and education open many doors, as a biracial woman in 1920s America, Helga is accepted by neither the Black nor the white communities—instead remaining an object of curiosity and an outsider wherever she goes. Her furious quest for belonging will take her from Chicago to New York to Denmark: a journey rife with autobiographical parallels to Larsen’s own life. With its astonishingly contemporary take on identity and an angry, rebellious heroine, Quicksand is a classic novel ripe for rediscovery.

  • Quiet: Poems

    by Victoria Adukwei Bulley

    $28.00

    A black British poet making her thrilling American debut explores the importance of “quiet” in producing forms of community, resistance, and love.

    How does one encounter meaning amid so many kinds of noise? What is quiet when it isn’t silence? Where does quiet exist—and what liberating potential might it hold? These poems dwell on ideas of black interiority, intimacy, and selfhood, and they celebrate as fiercely as they mourn. With a metaphysical edge and a formal restlessness attuned to both the sonics and the inadequacies of language, Quiet navigates the tension between the impulse to guard one’s inner life and the knowledge that, as Audre Lorde writes, "your silence will not protect you."

  • Quilt of Souls: A Memoir

    by Phyllis Biffle Elmore

    $24.99
    The Yellow House meets Hidden in Plain View in this multigenerational memoir that celebrates African American quilting, family, and honoring the past.

    At age four, Phyllis Biffle Elmore was plucked off her front porch in Detroit and dropped on her grandmother Lula Horn’s doorstep in rural Alabama. Phyllis felt utterly abandoned until Grandma Lula showed her both all-encompassing love and her intricate “Quilts of Souls.” Phyllis listened intently as Lula told epic stories of folks who had passed on as she turned their clothing into breathtaking quilts for their families.

    Grandma Lula’s generosity of spirit, strong will, and creative soul animate every page and through the quilts, she paints portraits of extraordinary Black women born before and after the Civil War. They are enslaved people, laundresses, storytellers, healers, and quilters whose stories have gone untold until now.

    Beautifully written and brilliantly told, Phyllis weaves back and forth through time, piecing together true tales of racism, sexism, and colorism, but also strength and pride, creating a multigenerational patchwork honoring her family and ancestors. From the lush visuals to the powerful history, Quilt of Souls is oral tradition written and preserved for posterity.
  • Race Against Time: The Politics of a Darkening America
    $28.00

    A Cold Civil War has engulfed the nation.

    After a deadly pandemic, shocking incidents of police brutality, a racial justice crisis, and the fall of a dangerous demagogue, America remains more divided than at any time in decades. At the heart of this national crisis is the fear of a darkening America—a country in which there is no longer a predominant white majority.

    As the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, its leaders have incited white Americans in a last-ditch race against time to stop the advance of a new, multiracial emerging majority. Keith Boykin, long time political commentator, has watched this white resentment consume the GOP over the course of a life in politics, activism, and journalism. He has also observed the divisions among Democrats, as white progressives have postponed demands for full racial equity, while Black voters have often been too forgiving of party leaders who have failed to deliver. America can no longer avoid its long overdue reckoning with the past, Boykin argues. With the familiarity of personal experience and the acuity of historical insight, Boykin urges us to fight racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, and save the union, not just by making Black lives matter, but by making Black lives equal.

  • Race and the Houston Police Department, 1930–1990: A Change Did Come (Volume 102) (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University)

    Dwight D. Watson

    Sold out

    In Houston, as in the rest of the American South up until the 1950s, the police force reflected and enforced the segregation of the larger society. When the nation began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, this guardian of the status quo had to change, too. It was not designed to do so easily.

    Dwight Watson traces how the Houston Police Department reacted to social, political, and institutional change over a fifty-year period—and specifically, how it responded to and in turn influenced racial change.

    Using police records as well as contemporary accounts, Watson astutely analyzes the escalating strains between the police and segments of the city’s black population in the 1967 police riot at Texas Southern University and the 1971 violence that became known as the Dowling Street Shoot-Out. The police reacted to these events and to daily challenges by hardening its resolve to impose its will on the minority community.

    By 1977, the events surrounding the beating and drowning of Jose Campos Torres while in police custody prompted one writer to label the HPD the “meanest police in America.” This event encouraged Houston’s growing Mexican American community to unite with blacks in seeking to curb police autonomy and brutality.

    Watson’s study demonstrates vividly how race complicated the internal impulses for change and gave way through time to external pressures—including the Civil Rights Movement, modernization, annexations, and court-ordered redistricting—for institutional changes within the department. His work illuminates not only the role of a southern police department in racial change but also the internal dynamics of change in an organization designed to protect the status quo.

  • Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    $20.00
    By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion.

    Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind.

    Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.
  • Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet

    Tochi Onyebuchi

    $27.00

    From the author of Hugo and NAACP Image Award finalist Riot Baby, an original memoir in essays that interrogates how identities are shaped and informed in online spaces and how the relationship between race and the Internet has changed in his three decades online

    When Tochi Onyebuchi realized that his acclaimed science fiction and fantasy storytelling career had been centrally preoccupied with race, it prompted him to consider his responsibilities as a Black writer in the Internet age. Excavating the Internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Racebook explores how the writer and public intellectual Onyebuchi is today, was formed in that crucible.

    Beginning with the current moment when everything, including personal identity, is a matter of dispute, and tracing his online persona in reverse chronological order back to Web 1.0’s promises of greater equality and a bright digital future, Onyebuchi deftly examines the evolution of internet culture and the ways that culture has shifted in the ensuing decades. From the ever-changing nature of personal writing and free expression, to gaming, manga, fandom, and virtual reality—Onyebuchi examines the internet alongside works of literature both classic and new, and asks if our vision for what is possible has really broadened. And given the inequities Black people are still subject to, on and off the page, does the Internet only amplify our failures of imagination?

    A new, compelling investigation of race through the lens of the modern Internet age, and a profound intellectual journey in pursuit of community online, Onyebuchi argues for a liberation of the individual behind the code, ultimately asking “Is this a race book or is it not? Is it either-or? Can it be both-and? Can I?”

  • Rachel Ama's Vegan Eats: Tasty plant-based recipes for every day

    by Rachel Ama

    $39.95

    *ships or ready for pick up in 7 - 10 business days*

    Find brilliant plant-based dishes that make cooking and enjoying delicious vegan food every day genuinely easy – and fun - in Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats.

    No bland or boring dishes, and forget all-day cooking. Rachel takes inspiration from naturally vegan dishes and cuisines as well as her Caribbean and West African roots to create great full-flavour recipes that are easy to make and will inspire you to make vegan food part of your daily life.

    Rachel’s recipes are quick and often one-pot; ingredients lists are short and supermarket-friendly; dishes can be prepped-ahead and, most importantly, she has included a song with each recipe so that you have a banging playlist to go alongside every plate of delicious food.

    Cinnamon French toast with strawberries
    Chickpea sweet potato falafel
    Peanut rice and veg stir-fry
    Caribbean fritters
    Plantain burger

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