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A powerful and proven guidebook that shows organizations how to recognize racism in designed artifacts, systems, and experiences—and how to replace them with anti-racist design solutions.

Anti-racist design interventions can be difficult. Well-intentioned conversations can fuel tensions, activate racialized trauma, and lead to misunderstandings, especially in spaces not typically focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even when progress is made, white supremacy culture can resurface. We need anti-racist guidelines and approaches that lay bare racialized systems of oppression and fundamentally disrupt their replication. In Racism Untaught, Lisa E. Mercer and Terresa Moses, two veteran anti-racist educators, deliver this exact approach.

Mercer and Moses provide a step-by-step guide to anti-racist interventions in academic, business, and community settings that benefits all participants. Adapted from their successful workshop series and filled with concrete examples and ample case studies, their book teaches participants how to analyze design—and reimagine racialized artifacts, systems, and experiences guided by anti-oppressive principles. They demonstrate how to examine positionality within the context of racism and oppression; help us understand how design can reinforce and perpetuate oppression; and reveal the unique relationship among equity, ethics, and responsibility that constitutes the core value of an anti-racist design discipline. In Racism Untaught, Mercer and Moses provide the framework we need to unlearn racialized design practices and move more generatively toward collective liberation.

With a foreword by renowned designer Cheryl D. Miller, Racism Untaught is a valuable tool for anyone who wants to help themselves and their organization create an actionable and inclusive plan to dismantle racial oppression and instead realize equitable, anti-racist, and liberatory design.

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Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award
Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. But before that, he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games and in the words that we speak, and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Now, award-winning illustrator Javaka Steptoe's vivid text and bold artwork echoing Basquiat's own introduce young readers to the powerful message that art doesn't always have to be neat or clean--and definitely not inside the lines--to be beautiful.

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Develop a powerful practice of deep relaxation and transformative self-inquiry with this essential guide to yoga nidra, accompanied by downloadable audio meditations.

Yoga nidra is a practice devoted to allowing your body and mind to rest while your consciousness remains awake and aware, creating the opportunity for you to tap into a deeper understanding of yourself and your true nature. At its heart, yoga nidra is about waking up to the fullness of your life. In Radiant Rest, Tracee Stanley draws on over twenty years of experience as a yoga nidra teacher and practitioner to introduce the history of yoga nidra, mind and body relaxation, and the surprising power of rest in our daily lives.

This accessible guide shares six essential practices arranged around the koshas, the five subtle layers of the body: the physical, energetic, mental, intuitive, and bliss bodies. It also offers shorter, accessible practices for people pressed for time. Each practice is explained through step-by-step instructions and ends with self-inquiry prompts. A set of guided audio meditations provide further instruction. Feel a greater sense of stability, peace, and clarity in all aspects of your life as you deepen your yoga nidra practice and discover its true power.

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An inspiring young leader’s moving call to action for anyone who seeks to make the world a better place—and the first title from Melinda French Gates’s Moment of Lift Books.

As the newly appointed minister of education in Sierra Leone, David Moinina Sengeh assumed that the administration he served—not to mention his family and friends—shared his conviction that all girls belong in the classroom. He was shocked to learn that many of those closest to him, including a member of his own family, were against lifting a long-standing policy banning pregnant girls from school.

Radical Inclusion is the dramatic narrative of Sengeh’s drive to guarantee pregnant girls’ right to an education. His story functions as a parable that can help us all advocate for change by reimagining the systems that perpetuate exclusion.

The specifics of his efforts in Sierra Leone are captivating, and the lessons Sengeh shares are universal. In addition to the candid account of his quest for reform, he offers stories and perspective from other parts of his life, drawing on his experiences encountering racial profiling as a Harvard student, developing cutting-edge prosthetic limbs at MIT, and working to combat algorithmic bias as a data scientist.

Sengeh offers readers a road map for pursuing radical inclusion in their own lives and work—from identifying exclusions, to building coalitions and adapting to a new normal. His book is essential reading for modern leaders or anyone who hopes to help unleash the power of a world that is truly, radically inclusive.

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Radical Justice brings together two bodies of socially-engaged photographic portraiture by Accra Shepp, who has documented New York City’s Occupy Wall Street movement starting in 2011 and its racial justice/BLM protests since 2020.  

Working in the style of August Sander with a large format camera and black and white film, Shepp pictures fellow New Yorkers on their city’s streets in acts of sit-ins and active protest, both unplanned and highly organized, both independent and unified, to address notions of the 99% and 1%, which have become part of the American political vernacular.  Bearing witness to defining events of the last decade that echo the United States’ longer historical arch, Shepp’s empathetic depictions of fellow citizens standing up for the fair protection of the Constitution provide a prophetic mirror of current events, which reflects back centuries to where the American experiment began, to suggest where we’ll find ourselves in the years to come.

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A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue.

For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American community far exceed what a plot of land or a check could repair.  

While reparations are being widely debated once again, current petitions to redress the lasting and collateral consequences of slavery have not moved past economic solutions, even though we know that monetary redress alone is not enough. Not only would many wounds be left unhealed, but relying solely on economics would continue a legacy of neglect for African Americans. In this thoughtful and sure-to-be controversial book, Marcus Anthony Hunter argues that a radical shift in our outlook is necessary; we need more comprehensive solutions such as those currently sought by today's educators, historians, activists, organizers, Afrofuturists, and socially conscious citizens. 

In Radical Reparations, this conversation shifter, social justice pioneer, change agent, and inventor of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which redefined the global conversation on racism and social justice, offers a unifying and unconventional framework for achieving holistic and comprehensive healing of African American communities. Hunter reimagines reparations through a profound new lens as he defines seven types of compensation: political, intellectual, legal, economic, spatial, social, and spiritual, using analysis of historical documents, comparative international cases, and speculative parables. 

Profound and revolutionary, trenchant and timely, Radical Reparations provides a compellingly and provocatively reframing of reparations' past, present, and future, offering a unifying way forward for us all.

Solutions for tackling the deeply-rooted causes of burnout.

Radical Self-Care for Helpers, Healers, and Changemakers addresses the constant exposure to heartbreak and injustice that can take a toll on the mental and physical health of those in the helping professions. After more than twenty years as a social worker, author Nicole Steward shares her own challenges with burnout and offers practical solutions to tackle the deeply-rooted causes of overwhelm that helpers face, which include compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and moral injury. Steward’s solutions go beyond mere stress-reduction techniques; rather, she offers a framework for engaging in radical self-care.

Here readers will discover a way of being that prioritizes helpers and healers, so they can better serve others without sacrificing their own health and wellness. This book offers foundational strategies that challenge the current systems that contribute to the high rates of burnout and turnover in the human and social service professions. By taking radical care of themselves, helpers can take a more effective and resilient approach to their work, ultimately leading to liberation for both themselves and those they serve.

Radical Tenderness is a sacred invitation to slow down, soften, and return to yourself.

Blending personal narrative, gentle guidance, and reflective practices, Dr. Lakeisha Gatling offers a deeply human exploration of what it means to heal after years of surviving, striving, and carrying more than your share. Through stories of childhood responsibility, anxiety, grief, faith, identity, and rediscovering her own voice, she illuminates the quiet ways we learn to shrink, over-function, or stay strong at the expense of our own well-being.

With honesty and compassion, she guides readers through the tender terrain of unlearning hyper-independence, honoring the younger self, reclaiming emotional safety, and choosing healing as a daily act of self-love. Each chapter offers invitations to pause, breathe, reflect, and reconnect with the parts of yourself that have long been silenced or overlooked.

This book is not a manual—it’s a mirror. A soft landing. A companion for anyone who has ever whispered their pain, hidden their needs, or believed they had to hold everything together alone.

Radical Tenderness reminds you that your healing matters, your story deserves space, and you are worthy of rest, softness, and radical self-compassion.

Pennsylvania State Senator Nikil Saval tells the story of an unlikely partnership between June Jordan and R. Buckminster Fuller, and their attempt to reimagine Harlem in the wake of the 1964 riots.

In the tense days leading up to the 2020 American elections, then-candidate for Pennsylvania State Senate Nikil Saval addressed a virtual audience at the Harvard GSD to tell a story about Black feminist writer June Jordan and a little-known project that resulted from the aftermath of the 1964 Harlem riot. The events of police brutality and community grieving made a lasting impression on Jordan, who, while known for her work as a poet, playwright, and activist, responded with a proposal for a multiple-tower housing design. Through an unlikely partnership with R. Buckminster Fuller, Jordan’s “Skyrise for Harlem” project offered a Futuristic vision for Harlem that argued for environmental redesign: “it is architecture, conceived of in its fullest meaning as the creation of environment, which may actually determine the pace, pattern, and quality of living experience.”
 
Jordan was not an architect in the conventional sense, Saval says. “But in the understanding of someone who sought to propose and build interventions in public space, she was.”

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This dazzling debut middle grade novel in verse is a riveting journey toward self-acceptance for fans of Genesis Begins Again. Thirteen-year-old Rain must overcome sadness after her all-star brother is badly beaten up at a white frat party. Eventually, Rain finds hope again and helps her family heal. 

I feel like Rain.

Rain rising through the unexpected.

Gentle and a force like Mom says.

I feel like me.

Rain is keeping a big secret from everyone around her: She's sad. All the time.

Xander, her older brother, is an all-star student athlete and a superhero to Rain since their dad is not around. But even he can’t help Rain with her dark thoughts. Rain hates the way she looks, and she feels inferior to her best friend, Nara, who’s skinny and got more money, lighter skin, and hair that curls.

When Xander is the victim of a hate crime, things take a turn for the worse. Xander stops speaking to everyone, including Rain, whose dark thoughts turn into action.

Rain’s secret battle puts her life on the line. But when her favorite teacher invites her to an after-school circle group, Rain finds friends and the courage to help herself and her family heal. Like the rain, she is both gentle and a force, and though she faces many storms in her life, she finds the strength to rise again. 

Learn about raising inclusive, antiracist children in an informed, actionable, and accountable way with this must-have guide from antiracist and anti-biased educator and advocate Britt Hawthorne.

Raising inclusive, antiracist children is a noble goal for any parent, caregiver, or educator, but it can be hard to know where to start. In Raising Antiracist Children, Britt Hawthorne—a nationally recognized teacher and advocate—and her coauthor Natasha Yglesias offer an interactive guide for strategically incorporating the tools of inclusivity into everyday life and parenting. Hawthorne and Yglesias break down antiracist parenting into four comprehensive sections to help adults and kids find common ground in becoming anti-biased and antiracist (ABAR) human beings:

-Healthy bodies—Establishing a safe and body-positive home environment to combat stereotypes and create boundaries that will keep kids of all ages safe.
-Radical minds—Encouraging children to be brave agents of change, accompanied by scripts for teaching advocacy, giving and taking productive feedback, and becoming a coconspirator for change.
-Conscious shopping—Raising awareness of how local shopping (from food deserts to independently-owned businesses) can empower or hinder a community’s ability to thrive, and teaching readers of all ages how to create shopping habits that support their community.
-Thriving communities—Acknowledging the personal power we have to shape our schools, towns, and worlds, accompanied by exercises for instigating change.

Full of questionnaires, stories, practical activities, helpful tips, and tools to foster an antiracist lens, Raising Antiracist Children empowers you and your kids to become conscious citizens and active participants in working towards justice. This must-have, practical guide is essential for parents and caregivers everywhere.

Now, there’s a guide to help you teach your kids how to thrive—even when it feels like the world is against them. From racial profiling and police encounters to the whitewashed lessons of history taught in schools, raising Black kids is no easy feat. In Raising Confident Black Kids, teacher M.J. Fievre passes on the tips and guidance that have helped her educate her Black students, including:

• How to encourage creativity and build self-confidence in your kids
• Ways to engage in activism and help build a safer community with and for your children—and ways to rest when you need to
• How to explain systemic racism, intersectionality, and micro-aggressions

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison’s strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. Starting with Ellison’s hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama, Rampersad documents his improbable, painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene. With scorching honesty but also fair and compassionate, Rampersad lays bare his subject’s troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people about him.This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar model of literary biography.

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

‘Johnson is a leading voice of his generation.’ – New York Times

The most comprehensive publication to date on widely celebrated artist Rashid Johnson

Working with a variety of media that includes painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance, Rashid Johnson has created a nuanced and iconographic body of work that connects literature, music, and art. Personal references and pervasive cultural narratives are interweaved with the legacy of modernist abstraction, producing what critics have labelled ‘conceptual post-black art’. A precocious talent (his work was included in the seminal ‘Freestyle’ exhibition in New York in 2001), Johnson received the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Prize, which honours contributions in the field of African-American art.

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Illuminates how the Rastafari movement managed to evolve in the face of severe biases

Misunderstood, misappropriated, belittled: though the Rastafari feature frequently in media and culture, they have most often been misrepresented, their political and religious significance minimized. But they have not been vanquished.

Charles Price’s Rastafari: The Evolution of a People and Their Identity reclaims the rich history of this relatively new world religion. Charting its humble and rebellious roots in Jamaica’s backcountry in the late nineteenth century to the present day, Price explains how Jamaicans’ obsession with the Rastafari wavered from campaigns of violence to appeasement and cooptation. Indeed, he argues that the Rastafari as a political, religious, and cultural movement survived the biases and violence they faced through their race consciousness and uncanny ability to ride the waves of anti-colonialism and Black Power.

This social movement traveled throughout the Caribbean, Africa, Central America, and the United States, capturing the heart and imagination of much of the African diaspora. Rastafari spans the movement’s struggle for autonomy, its multiple campaigns for repatriation to Africa, and its leading role in the Black consciousness movements of the twentieth century. Not satisfied with simply narrating the past, Rastafari also takes on the challenges of gender equality and the commodification of Rastafari culture in the twenty-first century without abandoning its message of equality and empowering the downpressed.

Rastafari shows how this cultural and political context helped to shape the development of a Black collective identity, demonstrating how Rastafarians confronted society-wide ridicule and oppression and emerged prouder and more united, steadfast in their conviction that they were a chosen people.

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A revolutionary new educational model that encourages educators to provide spaces for students to display their academic brilliance without sacrificing their identities

Building on the ideas introduced in his New York Times best-selling book, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, Christopher Emdin introduces an alternative educational model that will help students (and teachers) celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. Ratchetdemic advocates for a new kind of student identity—one that bridges the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the urban classroom.

Because modern schooling often centers whiteness, Emdin argues, it dismisses ratchet identity (the embodying of “negative” characteristics associated with lowbrow culture, often thought to be possessed by people of a particular ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic status) as anti-intellectual and punishes young people for straying from these alleged “academic norms,” leaving young people in classrooms frustrated and uninspired. These deviations, Emdin explains, include so-called “disruptive behavior” and a celebration of hip-hop music and culture.

Emdin argues that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science, for example), can empower students to embrace themselves, their backgrounds, and their education as parts of a whole, not disparate identities. This means celebrating protest, disrupting the status quo, and reclaiming the genius of youth in the classroom.

I am Rather Childers...

I am one of seven women...

I am one of eight siblings ...

I am the daughter of Richie & Rhea...

And, I am wanted by the federal government...

I traded my career and livelihood for a life of leisure in St. Catana that guarantees my freedom and eliminates the chances of extradition. Not only for me but for my family as well. Two years ago, our superior's freedom was on the line. To secure his rightful place amongst his siblings, a sacrifice had to be made.

I was the sacrifice.

And, in ninety days, I am set to marry a Valentine who hunts, kills, and deals for a living. His head is as hot as it is large. He's a troublemaker. He's a liability to his family and mine. My job? Turn him into an asset before the government turns him into bait.

While that job might be simple, due to my extensive background in mental and emotional health, getting down the aisle isn't. Because he's not the only man's mind I'm willing to infiltrate. Past affiliations lead me down a dark, sinister path that emphasizes my betrayal, dishonesty, and disobedience. In the end, I'm left scrambling to make good on the promises my family made. The only issue is that I could easily sacrifice my body. It was my heart that troubled me.

I am a therapist.

I am The Therapist.

And, I am, in fact, a traitor.

A brilliant and compelling debut, Ravishing shines a light on the dark enticements of the beauty industry and how it capitalizes on our desire to be someone we are not

A provocative, darkly surreal novel of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a beauty tech company, Ravishing is a searing portrait of the beauty industry’s dangerous ability to change people’s relationship to their bodies and the cult-like grip it has on youth.

For teenage Kashmira, it’s painful to look in the mirror; she has her father’s face, and every feature is a reminder of his abandonment. When a friend introduces her to Evolvoir, a beauty product that changes users’ features, Kashmira is quickly hooked on how it allows her to erase the triggers of her grief. Meanwhile, at Evolvoir’s corporate offices, Kashmira’s estranged brother Nikhil first sees the product as an opportunity to make a difference and a name for himself, but is quickly mired in corporate complicity as reports surface of the product causing severe pain and persistent symptoms in some users. As chaos ensues, Kashmira is hospitalized and must negotiate the constraints of her new reality, while Nikhil uncovers a vicious truth that will force him to decide where his loyalties lie.

Perfect for readers of Gold Diggers and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, Ravishing is a visceral, yet immensely tender, coming-of-age story of two Indian American siblings caught in the clutches of a predatory beauty tech company, providing an illuminating portrait of the complexities of growing up brown, chronic illness, and our relationship to ourselves.

A black father and a white father join forces on a crusade for revenge against the people who murdered their gay sons, by the award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland.

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband Derek. Isiah was a gay black man in the American South; Ike couldn’t bring himself to attend his son’s wedding. Isiah was a man Ike never understood. A boy he was never there for the way he should have been.

Derek’s father Buddy Lee is also suffering. He’d barely spoken to his son in five years; he was as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

“Read Between the Lies is a dark, delicious takedown of cancel culture and the publishing industry―I read it in two sittings because I had to stop midway and go google my own name. Highly recommend.” ―Mindy Kaling

In this claustrophobic psychological suspense from USA Today bestselling author Jesse Q. Sutanto, the line between victim and villain blurs with every chapter. Because in the end, everyone has their own version of the truth―but only one will make it onto the page.

Fern’s dream of becoming a published author is finally coming true. After years of rejection, her debut novel has sold, and she’s ready to join the supportive online community of fellow debuts. But when she discovers her high school bully, Haven, has landed a major book deal and will be debuting alongside her, old wounds reopen.

As the pandemic forces everyone online, tensions escalate in their writing community. While Haven seems to succeed effortlessly, Fern watches her own career crumble. Yet beneath their polished personas lies a darker truth about their shared past―one involving a lost friend, Dani, and secrets neither wants revealed.

Fern isn’t the same person Haven bullied all those years ago. She’s learned that the best revenge stories aren’t written―they’re lived. And she’s been plotting this one for years.

What begins as online rivalry escalates into dangerous obsession. Because neither woman is telling the whole truth about what really happened to Dani…or about who’s the real victim in this story.

Read Black Books Bookmark Vol. 2

Enhance your reading experience with this high-quality and vibrant bookmark. With its bright botanical theme you will never lose your place in what current read and will make the ancestors proud 🖤

An approachable guide to being an informed, compassionate, and socially conscious person today—from discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation to disability, class, and beyond—from critically acclaimed historian, educator, and author Blair Imani.

“Blair answers the questions that so many of us are asking.”—Layla F. Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy

We live in a time where it has never been more important to be knowledgeable about a host of social issues, and to be confident and appropriate in how to talk about them. What’s the best way to ask someone what their pronouns are? How do you talk about racism with someone who doesn’t seem to get it? What is intersectionality, and why do you need to understand it? While it can seem intimidating or overwhelming to learn and talk about such issues, it’s never been easier thanks to educator and historian Blair Imani, creator of the viral sensation Smarter in Seconds videos.

Accessible to learners of all levels—from those just getting started on the journey to those already versed in social justice—Read This to Get Smarter covers a range of topics, including race, gender, class, disability, relationships, family, power dynamics, oppression, and beyond. This essential guide is a radical but warm and non-judgmental call to arms, structured in such a way that you can read it cover to cover or start with any topic you want to learn more about.

With Blair Imani as your teacher, you’ll “get smarter” in no time, and be equipped to intelligently and empathetically process, discuss, and educate others on the crucial issues we must tackle to achieve a liberated, equitable world.

A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers.

Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life.

Griffin has spent years rooted in the culture of Black genius and the legacy of books that her father left her. A beloved professor, she has devoted herself to passing these works and their wisdom on to generations of students.

Here, she shares a lifetime of discoveries: the ideas that inspired the stunning oratory of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, the soulful music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, the daring literature of Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison, the inventive artistry of Romare Bearden, and many more. Exploring these works through such themes as justice, rage, self-determination, beauty, joy, and mercy allows her to move from her aunt’s love of yellow roses to Gil Scott-Heron’s "Winter in America."

Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation’s inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity.

From the New York Times bestselling team behind Parker Looks Up comes a paperback boxed set of six exciting Level 1 Ready-to-Reads about Parker’s adventures.

Come along for six amazing adventures with Parker Curry as she takes trips, has a sleepover party, plants a garden with her grandmothers, and much more in this boxed set with a carry-along handle. Young readers can take these books along on their adventures!

This paperback boxed set contains:
Parker Dresses Up
Your Friend, Parker
Parker Grows a Garden
Parker’s Big Feelings
Parker’s Slumber Party
Parker’s Big Trip