Bestsellers
- The Making of Yolanda la Bruja
The Making of Yolanda la Bruja
by Lorraine Avila
$12.99Yolanda Alvarez is having a good year. She’s starting to feel at home at Julia De Burgos High, her school in the Bronx. She has her best friend Victory, and maybe something with José, a senior boy she’s getting to know. She’s confident her initiation into her family’s bruja tradition will happen soon.
But then a white boy, the son of a politician, appears at Julia De Burgos High, and his vibes are off. And Yolanda’s initiation begins with a series of troubling visions of the violence this boy threatens. How can Yolanda protect her community, in a world that doesn’t listen? Only with the wisdom and love of her family, friends, and community — and the Bruja Diosas, her ancestors and guides.
The Making of Yolanda la Bruja is the book this country, struggling with the plague of gun violence, so desperately needs, but which few could write. Here Lorraine Avila brings a story born from the intersection of race, justice, education, and spirituality that will capture readers everywhere.
P R A I S E
Common Sense Media Selection for Teens
★ “Inspiring…full of heart and spirituality.”
—Shelf-Awareness (starred)★ "A sharply rendered portrait...Avila's striking debut is not to be missed."
—Booklist (starred)★ “Unabashedly political…A remarkable, beautifully rendered debut.”
—Kirkus (starred)★ “Suspenseful…A boldly characterized protagonist whose intersectional identities as a queer and Deaf person of color informs her sharp-witted narrative voice and conviction around combatting racism within her community.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)★ "A heartbreaking climax...thoughtful and gripping...[a] lyrical debut novel."
—School Library Journal (starred)“Impressive and urgent. [Avila] takes on racism, violence and injustice with a mix of magic, spirituality and care that few have attempted—and she’s captivatingly successful.”
—Ms. Magazine“Explores gun violence, race, justice, education, and spirituality, which holds this book like a canopy, enclosing and exposing layers of Blackness and the growth and sense of belonging community can provide.”
—Al Dia“A necessary story about gun violence, race, and education.”
—Refinery29“Gripping…skillfully depicts the reality of growing up as a Black Latinx teen in the midst of racial violence and social upheaval… Avila carefully demonstrates the tremendous strength in Yolanda’s community and the deep roots of her spiritual life, which keep her grounded as she steps into her full power.”
—Horn Book"Written in stunning prose, this sharp examination of education, race, violence, and spirituality is a must-read."
—The Mary Sue - The Poisons We Drink
The Poisons We Drink
by Bethany Baptiste
Sold outIn a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.'s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it's hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
The Poisons We Drink is a potent YA debut about a world where love potions are weaponized against hate and prejudice, sisterhood is unbreakable, and self-love is life and death.
- King of Pride (Kings of Sin, 2)
King of Pride (Kings of Sin, 2)
by Ana Huang
Sold outA diverse and steamy, forbidden billionaire romance from New York Times bestselling author and BookTok sensation Ana Huang!
She's his opposite in every way...and the greatest temptation he's ever known.
Reserved, controlled, and proper to a fault, Kai Young has neither the time nor inclination for chaos―and Isabella, with her purple hair and inappropriate jokes, is chaos personified.
With a crucial CEO vote looming and a media empire at stake, the billionaire heir can't afford the distraction she brings.
Isabella is everything he shouldn't want, but with every look and every touch, he's tempted to break all his rules…and claim her as his own.
***
Bold, impulsive, and full of life, Isabella Valencia has never met a party she doesn't like or a man she couldn't charm...except for Kai Young.
It shouldn't matter. He's not her type―the man translates classics into Latin for fun, and his membership at the exclusive club where she bartends means he's strictly off limits.
But she can't deny that, beneath his cool exterior, is a man who could make her melt with just a touch.
No matter how hard they try, they can't resist giving into their forbidden desires.
Even if it costs them everything.
- Twisted Love (Twisted, 1)
Twisted Love (Twisted, 1)
by Ana Huang
Sold outFrom New York Times bestselling author and BookTok sensation Ana Huang comes a billionaire brother's best friend romance!
He has a heart of ice…but for her, he'd burn the world
A diverse new adult steamy romance from Tiktok sensation and USA Today bestselling author Ana Huang.
Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can't escape.
Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.
But when he's forced to look after his best friend's sister, he starts to feel something in his chest:
A crack.
A melt.
A fire that could end his world as he knew it.
***
Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can't remember.
But despite her broken past, she's never stopped seeing the beauty in the world...including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn't want.
Her brother's best friend.
Her neighbor.
Her savior and her downfall.
Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen-but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both...and everything they hold dear.
Twisted Love is a contemporary brother's best friend/grumpy sunshine romance. It's book one in the Twisted series but can be read as a standalone.
- Wizard of the Crow
Wizard of the Crow
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
$19.00A landmark of postcolonial African literature, Wizard of the Crow is an ambitious, magisterial, comic novel from the acclaimed Kenyan novelist, playwright, poet, and critic.
Set in the fictional Free Republic of Aburiria, Wizard of the Crow dramatizes with corrosive humor and keenness of observation a battle for the souls of the Aburirian people, between a megalomaniac dictator and an unemployed young man who embraces the mantle of a magician. Fashioning the stories of the powerful and the ordinary into a dazzling mosaic, in this magnificent work of magical realism, Ngugi wa'Thiong'o—one of the most widely read African writers—reveals humanity in all its endlessly surprising complexity.
- We Were Once a Family
We Were Once a Family
by Roxanna Asgarian
Sold outWinner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A Washington Post best nonfiction book of 2023 | Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
“A riveting indictment of the child welfare system . . . [A] bracing gut punch of a book.” ―Robert Kolker, The Washington Post
“[A] moving and superbly reported book.” ―Jessica Winter, The New Yorker
“A harrowing account . . . [and] a powerful critique of [the] foster care system . . . We Were Once a Family is a wrenching book.” ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | One of Publishers Weekly's best nonfiction books of 2023
The shocking, deeply reported story of a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of six children―and a searing indictment of the American foster care system.
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family’s loving facade was an alleged pattern of abuse and neglect that had been ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved west. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew all too little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children.
Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story. We follow the lives of the Harts’ adopted children and their birth parents, and the machinations of the state agency that sent the children far away. Asgarian’s reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as young people of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America’s most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families.
- Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds
Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds
by Rich Paul, Jesse Washington, and Lebron James
$28.00There’s a story about Rich Paul that everyone knows: A twenty-one-year-old kid from Cleveland who sells sports jerseys out of his car meets a high school basketball phenom named LeBron James at an airport—the two become friends and forge a decades-long partnership that reinvents the business of sports. That random meeting might seem like the lucky break that changed Paul’s life. But a moment of good fortune means nothing without the struggle that gets you there. And the truth is, Paul had always been lucky.
Rich Paul became a gambler at an early age—his fast mind and gift for finding an edge made him a devastating dice roller who could hold his own with grown men, win big, and walk away alive. Shooting dice wasn’t just a pastime; it was a way to earn money for his family as his mother struggled under the weight of drug addiction. He learned the secret science of dice in the same place he found all the lessons of his young life: the corner store his father operated, the center of the neighborhood’s frantic action. Paul’s father had another family but kept his son close working at the store. Paul dreamed of becoming a star athlete, but the streets were where he thrived, building a lucrative enterprise on shaky ground. When he found himself at a dangerous crossroads, he summoned the teachings of his past to create a different future.
Readers will follow the riveting journey of a young Rich Paul narrated by the Paul of today, who looks back with wit and insight, drawing out the lessons he learned at every stage—about business, people, and the values that lead to success. It’s the inspiring story of the luck that’s all around us, if we know where to look.
- Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place
Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place
by Lowell Gudmundson and Justin Wolfe
$30.95Many of the earliest Africans to arrive in the Americas came to Central America with Spanish colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and people of African descent constituted the majority of nonindigenous populations in the region long thereafter. Yet in the development of national identities and historical consciousness, Central American nations have often countenanced widespread practices of social, political, and regional exclusion of blacks. The postcolonial development of mestizo or mixed-race ideologies of national identity have systematically downplayed African ancestry and social and political involvement in favor of Spanish and Indian heritage and contributions. In addition, a powerful sense of place and belonging has led many peoples of African descent in Central America to identify themselves as something other than African American, reinforcing the tendency of local and foreign scholars to see Central America as peripheral to the African diaspora in the Americas. The essays in this collection begin to recover the forgotten and downplayed histories of blacks in Central America, demonstrating the centrality of African Americans to the region’s history from the earliest colonial times to the present. They reveal how modern nationalist attempts to define mixed-race majorities as “Indo-Hispanic,” or as anything but African American, clash with the historical record of the first region of the Americas in which African Americans not only gained the right to vote but repeatedly held high office, including the presidency, following independence from Spain in 1821.
Contributors. Rina Cáceres Gómez, Lowell Gudmundson, Ronald Harpelle, Juliet Hooker, Catherine Komisaruk, Russell Lohse, Paul Lokken, Mauricio Meléndez Obando, Karl H. Offen, Lara Putnam, Justin Wolfe
- Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South
Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South
by Laura McTighe, Women With A Vision, and Deon Haywood
$29.95For thirty-five years, the New Orleans-based Black feminist collective Women With A Vision (WWAV) has fought for the liberation of their communities through reproductive justice, harm reduction, abolition feminism, racial justice, and sex workers' rights. In 2012, shortly after one of WWAV's biggest organizing victories, arsonists firebombed and destroyed their headquarters. Fire Dreams is an innovative collaboration between WWAV and Laura McTighe, who work in community to build a social movement ethnography of the organization’s post-arson rebirth. Rooting WWAV in the geography of the South and the living history of generations of Black feminist thinkers, McTighe and WWAV weave together stories from their founders’ pioneering work during the Black HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and their groundbreaking organizing to end criminalization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina---with other movements for liberation as accomplices. Together, the authors refuse the logics of racial capitalism and share WWAV’s own world-building knowledges, as well as their methods for living these Black feminist futures now. Fire Dreams is a vital toolkit for grassroots organizers, activist-scholars, and all those who dream to make the world otherwise.
- Incantations Embodied: Rituals for Empowerment, Reclamation, and Resistance
Incantations Embodied: Rituals for Empowerment, Reclamation, and Resistance
Kimberly Rodriguez
$16.99Kimberly Rodriguez, a first-generation Xicana Indigena artist, poet, and activist, invites readers on a transformative journey of self-discovery and empowerment through her book, Incantations Embodied: Rituals for empowerment, reclamation, and resistance, serving as a catalyst for reclaiming our stories, truth, and power.
In Incantations Embodied: Rituals for Empowerment, Reclamation, and Resistance, author Kimberly Rodriuguez takes readers on a profound and transformative journey towards self-discovery and empowerment. Within its pages lies a poignant exploration of the human experience, interwoven with elements of spirituality, healing, and personal growth.
At its core, Incantations Embodied serves as a triumphant homecoming—a return to the essence of one's being. It invites readers to embark on a sacred journey, emboldening them to embrace their true selves with unwavering honesty and compassion.
Through Rodriguez's captivating stories, enlightening prose, and enchanting rituals, this book becomes a powerful catalyst for reclaiming our stories, our bodies, our identities, our voices, and ultimately, our power.
In a world where societal norms and expectations often stifle individuality and self-expression, Incantations Embodied stands as a resounding call to break free from these chains. It seeks to dismantle the oppressive narrative that has been ingrained in our collective consciousness, urging us to question and challenge the colonized structures that have kept us disconnected from our own truth.
The book serves as a powerful guide for self-realization, urging individuals to transcend their limitations and embrace their innate potential. With each turn of the page, a profound shift occurs—a blossoming of self-awareness, strength, and resilience.
"Incantations are our liberation. With the power of words, we become conjurers, bringing our wildest dreams to life." - Kimberly Rodriguez
- Alvin Ailey: A Life In Dance
Alvin Ailey: A Life In Dance
by Jennifer Dunning
$25.99Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) was a choreographic giant in the modern dance world and a champion of African-American talent and culture. His interracial Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater provided opportunities to black dancers and choreographers when no one else would. His acclaimed "Revelations” remains one of the most performed modern dance pieces in the twentieth century. But he led a tortured life, filled with insecurity and self-loathing. Raised in poverty in rural Texas by his single mother, he managed to find success early in his career, but by the 1970s his creativity had waned. He turned to drugs, alcohol, and gay bars and suffered a nervous breakdown in 1980. He was secretive about his private life, including his homosexuality, and, unbeknownst to most at the time, died from AIDS-related complications at age 58.Now, for the first time, the complete story of Ailey's life and work is revealed in this biography. Based on his personal journals and hundreds of interviews with those who knew him, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Judith Jamison, Lena Horne, Katherine Dunham, Sidney Poitier, and Dustin Hoffman, Alvin Ailey is a moving story of a man who wove his life and culture into his dance.
- Selected Poems
Selected Poems
$24.00Dialect poems by one of the nineteenth century's most talented African American lyricists
Paul Laurence Dunbar was “the most promising young colored man” in nineteenth-century America, according to Frederick Douglass, and subsequently one of the most controversial. His plantation lyrics, written while he was an elevator boy in Ohio, established Dunbar as the premier writer of dialect poetry and garnered him international recognition. More than a vernacular lyricist, Dunbar was also a master of classical poetic forms, who helped demonstrate to post–Civil War America that literary genius did not reside solely in artists of European descent. William Dean Howells called Dunbar’s dialect poems “evidence of the essential unity of the human race, which does not think or feel black in one and white in another, but humanly in all.”
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems
Voyage of the Sable Venus: and Other Poems
$21.00This National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a "powerfully evocative" (The New York Review of Books) meditation on the black female figure through time.
Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems meditating on the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self.
In the center of the collection is the title poem, "Voyage of the Sable Venus," an amazing narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present—titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's own autobiographical poems, "Voyage" is a tender and shocking meditation on the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, juxtaposing our names for things with what we actually see and know.
A new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin—five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role did art play in this ancient, often heinous story? Here we meet a poet who adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire—how they define us all, including her own sometimes painful history.
Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race—a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.
- Muscadine
Muscadine
by A. H. Jerriod Avant
Sold outA. H. Jerriod Avant’s debut collection, Muscadine, cultivates the vine of familial memory, eulogizing our collective losses while exalting the succor of this human life, how the native grape’s “thick skin [that] teeth / pierce breaks to pour // sweetly across the tongue.” Throughout these pages, a deeply Southern sensibility balances an environmental awareness of deficit and bounty — appetite pains the stomach and delights the palette. In all seasons, the tongue’s subversive intelligence sculpts this masterwork of love, grace, conflict, and grief. This book tastes summer and the “ruins of / an afternoon” at once; it explores the language that testifies to loss while illuminating the abundance that loss obscures. Avant accentuates the sonic joys that Black Southern voices bring to bear on memorializing the present and commemorating the past. Don’t forget, he tells us. “Look how I hunger where // there is no hunger.” See how the weather changes swiftly and forever: “Look / how pops left before we // thought he was done.” But notice, too, how an echo sounds remembrance: “Listen, / how the voice of a dead man // can live.” He commands us to take the brief blooms with us, says, “Pack me a bag / I can fit in my heart.”
- Mad Seasons: The Story of the First Women's Professional Basketball League, 1978-1981
Mad Seasons: The Story of the First Women's Professional Basketball League, 1978-1981
Karra Porter
$24.95As the popularity of women’s basketball burgeons, Karra Porter reminds us in Mad Seasons that today’s Women’s National Basketball Association, or WNBA had its origins in a ragtag league twenty years earlier. Porter tells the story of the Women’s Professional Basketball League WBL, which pioneered a new era of women’s sports.
Formed in 1978, the league included the not-so-storied Dallas Diamonds, Chicago Hustle, and Minnesota Fillies. Porter’s book takes us into the heart of the WBL as teams struggled with nervous sponsors, an uncertain fan base, and indifferent sportswriters. Despite bouncing paychecks, having to sleep on floors, and being stranded on road games, the players endured and thrived.
Karra Porter brings to life the pioneers of the WBL: “Machine Gun” Molly Bolin, who set lasting scoring records—then faced an historic custody battle because of her basketball career; Connie Kunzmann, a popular player whose murder rocked the league; Liz Silcott, whose remarkable talents masked deeper problems off the court; Ann Meyers, who went from an NBA tryout to the league she had rebuffed; Nancy Lieberman, whose flashy play and marketing savvy were unlike anything the women's game had ever seen.
A story of hardship and sacrifice, but also of dedication and love for the game, Mad Seasons brings the WBL back to life and shows in colorful detail how this short-lived but pioneering league ignited the imagination of a new generation of female athletes and fans.
- Hoop Roots
Hoop Roots
John Edgar Wideman
Sold outA multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, love, and race, John Edgar Wideman’s Hoop Roots brings "a touch of Proust to the blacktop" (Time) as it tells of the author's love for a game he can no longer play. Beginning with the scruffy backlot playground he discovered in Pittsburgh some fifty years ago, Wideman works magical riffs that connect black music, language, culture, and sport. His voice modulates from nostalgic to outraged, from scholarly to streetwise, in describing the game that has sustained his passion throughout his life.
- Letter to Jimmy
Letter to Jimmy
Sold outWritten on the twentieth anniversary of James Baldwin’s death, Letter to Jimmy is African writer Alain Mabanckou’s ode to his literary hero and an effort to place Baldwin’s life in context within the greater African diaspora.
Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along a Santa Monica beacha man whose ragged clothes and unsteady gait remind the author of a character out of one of James Baldwin’s novels Mabanckou uses his own experiences as an African living in the US as a launching pad to take readers on a fascinating tour of James Baldwin’s life. As Mabanckou reads Baldwin’s work, looks at pictures of him through the years, and explores Baldwin’s checkered publishing history, he is always probing for answers about what it must have been like for the young Baldwin to live abroad as an African-American, to write obliquely about his own homosexuality, and to seek out mentors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison only to publicly reject them
later.As Mabanckou travels to Paris, reads about French history and engages with contemporary readers, his letters to Baldwin grow more intimate and personal. He speaks to Baldwin as a peera writer who paved the way for his own work, and Mabanckou seems to believe, someone who might understand his experiences as an African expatriate.
- Sophie Washington: Lemonade Day (Book #12)
Sophie Washington: Lemonade Day (Book #12)
by Tonya Duncan Ellis
Sold outSixth-grader Sophie Washington and friends learn lessons about entrepreneurship, team work, and friendship when they sign up for a city-wide, Lemonade Day event. Sophie wants to buy her mother something special for her birthday, but she's short on cash. Her bestie, Chloe, comes up with the perfect solution. Build their own lemonade stand to raise money at Lemonade Day. The girls add friends Carly and Nathan, and Sophie's little brother, Cole, to their team, and decide to donate some of their earnings to a local animal shelter to help save stray animals. Things are going great, until the family dog destroys their supplies. They get worse when Sophie tries to impress another boy in their class and upsets Nathan. Can they save their business in time for the event?
- Something Like Right
Something Like Right
by H. D. Hunter
$20.99A contemporary young adult novel about one life-altering year of a biracial Black and white teen boy, showing a raw glimpse into the systemic inequality in racialized communities.
Zay’s ma always said his mouth would get him in trouble. Sure enough, it got him into his first and only fight in his junior year of high school. Expelled from his district, Zay’s only hope for redemption is to transfer to Broadlawn Alternative School and complete the year.
Zay isn’t thrilled about the disgusting school lunch and classroom trailers at Broadlawn, and boarding with his aunt Mel and her live-in boyfriend isn’t the greatest. But he’d rather be there than in the city dealing with his estranged father, his overbearing mother, and the fallout from his fight. Besides, Broadlawn has Feven, the beautiful new student Zay is starting to get to know―and fall for.
Still, first love is rarely a fairy tale, and as Zay’s time in Broadlawn comes to an end, he learns that shaping yourself within a new place is a lot harder than letting it shape you.
A tender contemplation of first love, broken families, and healing generational trauma by an incredible voice in young adult fiction.
- The Case for Sanctions Against Israel
The Case for Sanctions Against Israel
by Audrea Lim
$29.95In July 2011, Israel passed legislation outlawing the public support of boycott activities against the state, corporations, and settlements, adding a crackdown on free speech to its continuing blockade of Gaza and the expansion of illegal settlements. Nonetheless, the campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) continues to grow in strength within Israel and Palestine, as well as in Europe and the US.
This essential intervention considers all sides of the movement—including detailed comparisons with the South African experience—and contains contributions from both sides of the separation wall, along with a stellar list of international commentators. - Duel
Duel
by Jessixa Bagley
$14.99A rivalry between sisters culminates in a fencing duel in this funny and emotional debut graphic novel sure to appeal to readers of Raina Telgemeier and Shannon Hale.
Sixth grader Lucy loves fantasy novels and is brand-new to middle school. GiGi is the undisputed queen bee of eighth grade (as well as everything else she does). They’ve only got one thing in common: fencing. Oh, and they’re sisters. They never got along super well, but ever since their dad died, it seems like they’re always at each other’s throats.
When GiGi humiliates Lucy in the cafeteria on the first day of school, Lucy snaps and challenges GiGi to a duel with high sisterly stakes. If GiGi wins, Lucy promises to stay out of GiGi’s way; if Lucy wins, GiGi will stop teasing Lucy for good. But after their scene in the cafeteria, both girls are on thin ice with the principal and their mom. Lucy stopped practicing fencing after their fencer dad died and will have to get back to fighting form in secret or she’ll be in big trouble. And GiGi must behave perfectly or risk getting kicked off the fencing team.
As the clock ticks down to the girls’ fencing bout, the anticipation grows. Their school is divided into GiGi and Lucy factions, complete with t-shirts declaring kids’ allegiances. Both sisters are determined to triumph. But will winning the duel mean fracturing their family even further? - Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s
Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices since the 1980s
by Kobena Mercer
Sold outIn this set of essays that cover the period from 1992 to 2012, Kobena Mercer uses a diasporic model of criticism to analyze the cross-cultural aesthetic practice of African American and black British artists and to show how their refiguring of visual representations of blackness transform perceptions of race.Over the years, Kobena Mercer has critically illuminated the visual innovations of African American and black British artists. In Travel & See he presents a diasporic model of criticism that gives close attention to aesthetic strategies while tracing the shifting political and cultural contexts in which black visual art circulates. In eighteen essays, which cover the period from 1992 to 2012 and discuss such leading artists as Isaac Julien, Renée Green, Kerry James Marshall, and Yinka Shonibare, Mercer provides nothing less than a counternarrative of global contemporary art that reveals how the “dialogical principle” of cross-cultural interaction not only has transformed commonplace perceptions of blackness today but challenges us to rethink the entangled history of modernism as well. - Aniana del Mar se avienta / Aniana del Mar Jumps In
Aniana del Mar se avienta / Aniana del Mar Jumps In
Jasminne Mendez
$14.95Una poderosa novela escrita en verso sobre una nadadora dominicano-estadounidense de 12 años a quien le diagnostican artritis juvenil.
Aniana del Mar pertenece al agua como un delfín al océano, pero mantiene en secreto sus clases de natación. Hace años, a su mamá se le ahogó un ser querido y no se ha recuperado de la pérdida.
Un día, la artritis juvenil obliga a Aniana a guardar reposo. Entonces confiesa lo importante que es para ella nadar y, aunque el doctor cree que la natación puede ayudarla a mejorar, su mamá lo prohíbe.
Esta es la historia de una niña que debe crecer como las mareas para encontrar su fuerza y defender lo que ama. - Unearthing Joy : A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Teaching and Learning by Gholdy Muhammad
Unearthing Joy : A Guide to Culturally and Historically Responsive Teaching and Learning by Gholdy Muhammad
$35.99In this follow-up to Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad adds a fifth pursuit—joy—to her groundbreaking instructional model. She defines joy as more than celebration and happiness, but also as wellness, beauty, healing, and justice for oneself and across humanity. She shows how teaching from cultural and historical realities can enhance our efforts to cultivate identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and-indeed-joy for all students, giving them a powerful purpose to learn and contribute to the world. Dr. Muhammad's wise implementation advice is paired with model lessons and assessment tools that span subjects and grade levels. - Glenn Ligon: A People on the Cover
Glenn Ligon: A People on the Cover
by Glenn Ligon
Sold outIn this artist project, Glenn Ligon traces the representation of black people in the United States on book covers, highlighting the deliberate use of typography, photography and graphics.
Best known for appropriating imagery and text from popular culture, Ligon has selected over 50 book covers – by both lesser-known and seminal authors such as James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison – to explore a rich and complex set of histories and representations.
Spanning the twentieth century and grouped thematically, the covers reveal correspondences between the past and the present, as well as links between the social and visual constructs of race, beauty and the body.
To introduce the book, an essay by Ligon identifies one of the foundation stones of his life and work: the act of reading. - The Age of Phillis
The Age of Phillis
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
$16.95Poems imagine the life and times of Phillis Wheatley Peters
NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work for Poetry
2020 National Book Award for Poetry, Longlist
2020 LA Times Book Award Finalist
In 1773, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley Peters published a book of poetry that challenged Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, and her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters. Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley's "age"—the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley's relationship to black people and their individual "mercies" is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.
mothering #1
Yaay, Someplace in the Gambia, c. 1753
after
the after-birth
is delivered
the mother stops
holding her breath
the mid-wife gives
what came before
her just-washed pain
her insanity pain
an undeserved pain
a God-given pain
oh oh oh pain
drum-talking pain
witnessing pain
Allah
a mother offers
You this gift
prays You find
it acceptable
her living pain
her creature pain
her pretty-little-baby
pain - The Dream Journal: Guided by the Words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Dream Journal: Guided by the Words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Based on the writings of MLK Jr.
Sold outIntroducing the Martin Luther King Jr Library
A keepsake daily writing practice journal inspired by the life and words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., drawn from Dr. King’s archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.
Few figures in world history have been as galvanizing as the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. More than fifty years after his death, his words continue to resonate, offering clarity and strength to influential thinkers, activists, and artists and to people of all ages, colors, and creeds yearning to create a better, more just, and equitable world.
Dream Journal honors Dr. King’s legacy by encouraging others to pursue their own aspirations. Featuring words of inspiration from this revered spiritual leader’s life and work, accompanied by thought-provoking images, the first annual edition of this collectible diary offers a year’s worth of prompts readers can use to think more deeply about Dr. King’s words, clarify their own intentions, define their dreams, and set future goals to transform their lives and the world around them.
- Washington Black
Washington Black
Esi Edugyan
$18.00MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A gripping historical narrative exploring both the bounds of slavery and what it means to be truly free.” —Vanity Fair
Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human.
But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again. - Unsung Voices of Black History (From the Archives)
Unsung Voices of Black History (From the Archives)
KaaVonia Hinton
Sold outA perfect book for young readers to discover lesser-known people who have shaped Black history in the United States.
The organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The first Black American head coach in the National Football League. The first Black female state senator from New York. Throughout history, Black people have broken barriers and protested to fight for equality. Celebrate little-known people like these and learn about the social impact of their work on American history in Unsung Voices of Black History.
ABOUT THIS SERIES:
This brand-new series is rooted in a profound commitment to shedding light on some of the important -- and often lesser-known -- aspects of Black history. From the Archives features landmarks, events, people, and artistic endeavors that have played a significant role in the Black experience in America and offers a chance to celebrate them. Written in a vivid, engaging style and featuring a colorful combination of photos and illustrations, each title serves as a powerful vehicle for education, inspiration, and empowerment for young readers.
- Miss Camper: A Graphic Novel
Miss Camper: A Graphic Novel
Kat Fajardo
$14.99A companion to Miss Quinces, Kat Fajardo's bestselling, award-winning middle-grade graphic novel!
Sue is heading to Camp Willow this summer! She’s looking forward to hiking, archery, and making comics in the fresh air. She’s especially excited about LARPing (live-action role-playing) and can’t wait for the freedom of being away from home. But she won’t be far from family because her big sister, Carmen, is a camp counselor and her little sister, Ester, is a fellow camper and won’t give her any space! All Sue wants is to make memories with her friends, but they’re assigned to only a few of the same activities. To make matters even worse, her best friend, Sam, has a best camp friend named Marisol? And Sue’s good friend Izzy has a crush on Sue?! This summer isn’t at all going as planned!
- I Am My Ancestors' Wildest Dreams
I Am My Ancestors' Wildest Dreams
Tanisia Moore
$19.99YOU are your ancestors' wildest dreams. How will you express YOUR greatness? Perfect for fans of I Am Every Good Thing, Little Legends, and All Because You Matter.
"Affirming. . . . A joyful tribute." -- Kirkus Reviews
“A vibrant, heartwarming celebration of Black excellence.” ― School Library Journal
I AM FLY.
From my crown
down to the kicks
on my feet...
I AM my ancestors' wildest dreams.
In this electrifying anthem to Black boy joy and pride, a young child discovers his place in a distinguished lineage. As he meets ten exceptional Black men--historical and contemporary figures who have paved the way for his own future success--he internalizes their greatness. Just like them, he can reach his dreams. And just like him, you have within you big potential.
- Hide and Seeker
Hide and Seeker
Daka Hermon
Sold outOne of our most iconic childhood games receives a creepy twist as it becomes the gateway to a nightmare world.
Justin knows that something is wrong with his best friend. Zee went missing for a year. And when he came back, he was... different. Nobody knows what happened to him. At Zee's welcome-home party, Justin and the neighborhood crew play Hide and Seek. But it goes wrong. Very wrong.
One by one, everyone who plays the game disappears, pulled into a world of nightmares come to life. Justin and his friends realize this horrible place is where Zee had been trapped. All they can do now is hide from the Seeker.
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