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  • Final 2023 Adult Book Club: Who Fears Death - December 4th @ 7 PM
    from $0.00

    NEW DATE: DECEMBER 4TH 2023 @ 7PM

    The bookclub meeting will take place on December 4th at 7 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Show up with the book read (or partially read)! All are welcome. 

    About the Book 

    In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in many ways; yet in one region genocide between tribes still bloodies the land. A woman who has survived the annihilation of her village and a terrible rape by an enemy general wanders into the desert, hoping to die. Instead, she gives birth to an angry baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand. Gripped by the certainty that her daughter is different—special—she names her Onyesonwu, which means "Who fears death?" in an ancient language.

    It doesn't take long for Onye to understand that she is physically and socially marked by the circumstances of her conception. She is Ewu—a child of rape who is expected to live a life of violence, a half-breed rejected by her community. But Onye is not the average Ewu. Even as a child, she manifests the beginnings of a remarkable and unique magic. As she grows, so do her abilities, and during an inadvertent visit to the spirit realm, she learns something terrifying: someone powerful is trying to kill her.

    Desperate to elude her would-be murderer and to understand her own nature, she embarks on a journey in which she grapples with nature, tradition, history, true love, and the spiritual mysteries of her culture, and ultimately learns why she was given the name she bears: Who Fears Death.

  • Houston Reads Zora Neale Hurston by Project Row Houses, Chanecka, & Kindred Stories
    $0.00

    Kindred Stories is proud to partner with Project Row Houses and Chanecka Williams to present Houston Reads Zora Neale Hurston.

    Zora Neale Hurston Meeting Schedule 

    November 19 - Jonah’s Gourd (1934)

    December 17 - Mules and Men (1935)

    January 14 - Their Eyes are Watching God (1937)

    February 18 - Tell My Horse (1938)

    March 17 - Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)

    April 21 - Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)

    May 17 -  Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)

    June 23 - I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…Then Again (1979)

    July 21 - The Complete Stories (1998)

    August 18 - Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001)

    September 15 - Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018)

    October 20 - Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020)

    November 19 - You Don’t Know Us Negros and Other Essays (2022)

  • October 2023: Adult Book Club - October 26 at 7:30 PM CST
    from $0.00

    The bookclub meeting will take place on October 26, 2023 at 7:30PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Pepper is a rambunctious big man, minor-league troublemaker, working-class hero (in his own mind), and, suddenly, the surprised inmate of a budget-strapped mental institution in Queens, New York. He's not mentally ill, but that doesn't seem to matter. He is accused of a crime he can't quite square with his memory. In the darkness of his room on his first night, he's visited by a terrifying creature with the body of an old man and the head of a bison who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion: The other patients confirm that a hungry devil roams the hallways when the sun goes down. Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back: Dorry, an octogenarian schizophrenic who's been on the ward for decades and knows all its secrets; Coffee, an African immigrant with severe OCD, who tries desperately to send alarms to the outside world; and Loochie, a bipolar teenage girl who acts as the group's enforcer. Battling the pill-pushing staff, one another, and their own minds, they try to kill the monster that's stalking them. But can the Devil die?

    The Devil in Silver brilliantly brings together the compelling themes that spark all of Victor LaValle's radiant fiction: faith, race, class, madness, and our relationship with the unseen and the uncanny. More than that, it's a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror about friendship, love, and the courage to slay our own demons. 

  • September 2023: Adult Book Club - September 27 at 7:30 PM
    from $0.00

    The bookclub meeting will take place on September 27, 2023 at 7:30PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing the book from our store. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.

    When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn’t know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family—by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student—and delivered to the Melancons to raise as one of their own. Hallow is special: she’s born with a caul, and their matriarch, Maman, predicts the girl will restore the family’s prosperity.

    Growing up, Hallow feels that something in her life is not right. Did Josephine, the woman she calls mother, really bring her into the world? Why does her cousin Helena get to go to school and roam the streets of New York freely while she’s confined to the family’s decrepit brownstone?

    As the Melancons’ thirst to maintain their status grows, Amara, now a successful lawyer running for district attorney, looks for a way to avenge her longstanding grudge against the family. When mother and daughter cross paths, Hallow will be forced to decide where she truly belongs.  

     Engrossing, unique, and page-turning, Caul Baby illuminates the search for familial connection, the enduring power of tradition, and the dark corners of the human heart.

  • Houston Reads Alice Walker! Presented by Project Row Houses, Kindred Stories, and Chanecka Williams
    $0.00

    A message from Chanecka Williams:

    "Alice Walker has been a force in the world for over forty years. As a writer, poet and activist, she is relentless in her pursuit of a free(er) world for all. In this social, political, time-space reality, Walker’s work feels essential to be explored with new eyes. Join us as we read her novels, short story collections, and a few of her nonfiction works. It would be remiss to not mention that this journey is as spiritual as literary being that Alice Walker has always given credit to the spirits that accompany her. "
    This gathering will be held on the online video conferencing platform Zoom. Please join us by registering for this month only or the entire meet-up series here.

    Kindred Stories is proud to partner with Project Row Houses and Chanecka to present Houston Reads Alice Walker.

    Alice Walker Meeting Schedule:

    September 18 - The Temple of My Familiar
    October 16 - Possessing the Secret of Joy
    November 20 - The Third Life of Grange Copeland
    December 18 - In Love & Trouble
    January 15 - Meridian
    February 19 - You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down
    March 19 - By the Light of My Father's Smile
    April 16 - The Way Forward With a Broken Heart: Stories
    May 21 - Now is the Time to Open Your Heart
    June 11 - In Search of Our Mother's Garden Pt. I & Pt. II
    July 16 - In Search of Our Mother's Garden Pt. III & Pt. IV
    August 20 - Alike Walker Poetry Reading
    September 17 - Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
    About Alice Walker

    Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry.  She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award.

    About Chanecka Williams

    In May 2020, after realizing books were talking over her personal Instagram account, Chanecka started a new account with the handle @headwrpreader centering literature. As a book influencer, she is extremely passionate about book discovery. She is always ahead of the curve on new and lesser known book releases. Currently, she works as a team member at Kindred Stories in addition to pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science. She hopes to work as a research librarian and archivist.

    About Project Row Houses

    Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. We engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities.

    Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as home base to a variety of community-enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. PRH programs touch the lives of under-resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others. Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The Project Row Houses model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world.

    ABOUT KINDRED STORIES

    Kindred Stories was born of a love for reading and a passion for community.

    Kindred Stories is here to give kids and adults alike a space to explore the wide open world of literary content and creative works fashioned by black and brown hands. We are a bookstore committed to amplifying Black voices and bringing diverse stories from throughout the African diaspora to our local community in Houston, TX. We will be located in the Third Ward neighborhood, where we'll provide a well curated offering to edify the swelling appetites for authentic stories as told by those who have lived them.

    We are beyond thrilled to serve Houston and the world at large through our website offerings. Stay tuned for what’s in store with the opening of our physical space later this year.  Thank you for being a part of our tribe!

  • AUGUST 2023 ADULT BOOK CLUB: Perish by LaToya Watkins- August 31 at 7:30 PM
    from $0.00

    The bookclub meeting will take place on August 31, 2023 at 7:30PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Bear it or Perish. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateful night in her cousin’s outhouse that changes the trajectory of her life.  
     
    Spanning decades, PERISH tracks the choices Helen Jean—the matriarch of the Turner family—makes and the way those choices have ripped across generations, from her children, to her grandchildren and beyond.
    Told in in alternate chapters that follows four members of the Turner clan: Julie B., a woman who regrets her wasted youth and the time spent under Helen Jean's thumb; Alex, a police officer grappling with a dark and twisted past; Jan, mother of two, who yearns to go to school and leave Jerusalem and all of its trauma behind for good; and Lydia, a woman whose marriage is falling apart because her body can't seem to stay pregnant; as they're called home to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother.
     
    This family's "reunion" unearths long-kept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame.
     
    With stirring, evocative prose and a sense of place that is wholly immersive, offering a nuanced look into Black communities in Texas, and tackling themes like family, trauma, legacy, home, class, race and more, this beautiful yet heart-wrenching debut novel, will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of family and the ways bonds can be made, maintained or irrevocably broken.
  • July 2023 Adult Bookclub: Where the Line Bleeds by Jesymn Ward - July 27 at 7PM
    from $0.00

    The bookclub meeting will take place on July 27, 2023 at 7 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward’s gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage—followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—comprising a loose trilogy about small town sourthern family life. Described as “starkly beautiful” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), “fearless” (Essence), and “emotionally honest” (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

    Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins.

    Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward’s own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.
  • June 2023 Adult Bookclub: Belly of the Beast by Da'Shaun L. Harrison
    from $0.00

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, June 22, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.

    To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.
     
    Da’Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated.
     
    Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of “health” and “healthiness” for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad,” and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.

  • May 2023 Adult Book Club: Zami by Audre Lorde
    Sold out

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, May 25, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.

  • IN PERSON: Houston Reads Alice Walker Meet & Greet-April 30 @1:30 PM CST
    Sold out
    We have been reading the works of Alice Walker for over six months. Gathering and building each other up online through literature. With Spring having just arrived, it feels good to meet each other in person. Come out, have some light bites and commune. 
    *Newbies are welcome*

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Sunday, April 30 at 1:30 PM

    Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)

    How: RSVP to let us know you're coming. 

    See you all there! 
  • April 2023 Book Club-Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves-April 27 @7PM CST
    Sold out

    Join us for our month bookclub meeting. April is Poetry Month and we're reading Best Barbarian by Roger Reeves, a National Book Award Winner. 

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, April 27, 2023 in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read). 

  • March 2023 Adult Book Club- Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie
    Sold out

    Join us for our monthly book club meeting. Our March book club read is Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie.

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by buying your book from Kindred Stories. 

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, March 23 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).

    About the Book

    One of The Guardian’s Top 10 Debuts of the Year
    One of Entertainment Weekly’s Most Anticipated Books of the Summer

    Sayon Hughes longs to escape the volatile Bris­tol neighborhood known as Ends, the tight-knit but sometimes lawless world in which he was raised, and forge a better life with Shona, the girl he’s loved since grade school. With few paths out, he is drawn into dealing drugs along­side his cousin, the unpredictable but fiercely loyal Cuba. Sayon is on the cusp of making a clean break when an altercation with a rival dealer turns deadly and an expected witness threatens blackmail, upending his plans.

    Sayon’s loyalties are torn. If Shona learns the secret of his crime, he will lose her forever. But if he doesn’t escape Ends now, he may never get another chance. Is it possible to break free of the bookies’ tickets, burnt spoons, and crook­ed solutions, and still keep the love of his life?

    Rippling with authenticity and power, Mo­ses McKenzie’s dazzling debut brings to life a vi­brant and teeming world we have read too little about. In its sheer lyrical power, An Olive Grove in Ends recalls the work of James Baldwin and marks the arrival of an exciting and formidable new voice. 

    Only books purchased from 

  • February 2023 Adult Book Club: Salvation by bell hooks
    Sold out
    Join us for our monthly book club meeting/discussion! 

    MEETING DEETS

    When: February 23, 2022 at 7:00 PM CST

    Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)

    How: RSVP to reserve your spot if you already own the book or RSVP with book to support our store and programming.  


    ABOUT THE BOOK
    “A manual for fixing our culture…In writing that is elegant and penetratingly simple, [hooks] gives voice to some things we may know in our hearts but need an interpreter like her to process.”—Black Issues Book Review

    Written from both historical and cultural perspectives, Salvation takes an incisive look at the transformative power of love in the lives of African Americans. Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou, the liberation movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, or hip hop and gangsta rap culture, hooks lets us know what love’s got to do with it.

    Combining the passionate politics of W.E.B. DuBois with fresh, contemporary insights, hooks brilliantly offers new visions that will heal our nation’s wounds from a culture of lovelessness. Her writings on love and its impact on race, class, family, history, and popular culture raise all the relevant issues. This is work that helps us heal. Salvation shows us how to create beloved American communities.


  • January 2023 Adult Book Club: Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
    Sold out
    Join us for our monthly book club meeting/discussion! 

    MEETING DEETS
    When: January 26, 2022 at 7:00 PM CST
    Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)
    How: RSVP to reserve your spot if you already own the book or RSVP with book to support our store and programming.  
    ABOUT THE BOOK
    Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.

     

  • November Adult Book Club: The Sun of Mr. Suleman by Eric Jerome Dickey
    Sold out
    Join us for our monthly book club meeting!
    This month, we will be reading Erick Jerome Dickey's last novel, The Son of Mr. Suleman. 
    MEETING Deets
    When: November 30 at 7:00 PM
    Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden 
    How: RSVP to reserve your spot or RSVP with book to reserve you spot and support our store. 
    About the Book
    It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure—not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win.
     
    When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis from London to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. Though Gemma and Pi hail from separate cultures, their differences fuel a fiery and passionate connection that just may consume them both.
     
    But Pi’s whirlwind romance is interrupted when his absentee father, a celebrated writer, passes away and Pi is called to Los Angeles to both collect his inheritance and learn about the man who never acknowledged him. With the complicated legacy of his famous father to make sense of, Gemma’s visa expiration date looming, and the threats of his colleague becoming increasingly intense, Pi must figure out who he is and what kind of man he will become in his father’s shadow.
     
    In The Son of Mr. Suleman, Eric Jerome Dickey takes readers on a powerful journey exploring racism, colorism, life as a mixed-race person, sexual assault, microaggressions, truth and lies, cultural differences, politics, family legacies, perceptions, the impact of enslavement and Jim Crow, code-switching, the power of death, and the weight of love. It is an extraordinary story, page-turning and intense, and a book only Dickey could write
  • October Young Adult Book Club- The Getaway by Lamar Giles
    Sold out

    Join us for our monthly book club meeting. The October book club read is The Getaway by Lamar Giles. 

    The meeting will be held Sunday, October 30 at 1:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. 

    About the Book

    ay is living his best life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. He’s got his family, his crew, and an incredible after-school job at the property’s main theme park. Life isn’t so great for the rest of the world, but when people come here to vacation, it’s to get away from all that.

    As things outside get worse, trouble starts seeping into Karloff. First, Jay’s friend Connie and her family disappear in the middle of the night and no one will talk about it. Then the richest and most powerful families start arriving, only... they aren’t leaving. Unknown to the employees, the resort has been selling shares in an end-of-the-world oasis. The best of the best at the end of days. And in order to deliver the top-notch customer service the wealthy clientele paid for, the employees will be at their total beck and call.

    Whether they like it or not.

    Yet Karloff Country didn’t count on Jay and his crew--and just how far they’ll go to find out the truth and save themselves. But what’s more dangerous: the monster you know in your home or the unknown nightmare outside the walls?

  • October Adult Book Club-Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
    from $0.00

    Join us for our monthly book club meetings. Our October book club read is Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler. 

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, October 27 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. 

    About the Book


    Octavia Butler's last standalone novel is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified fifty-three-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted--and still wants--to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.

  • Houston Reads Alice Walker Meet & Greet
    $0.00

    Join us to welcome in the new season of Houston Reads! with food, drinks, and mustic while meeting our incoming Houston Reads! Lead Facilitator, Chanecka Williams. 

    EVENT DEETS:

    When: Sunday, October 2 @ 430 PM 

    Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)

    How: RSVP to reserve you spot! 

    See ya'll there!

  • September Adult Book Club - Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
    Sold out

    Join us for our monthly book club. Our September pick is Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson 

    Book club will happen Thursday, September 22 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

    About the Book

    A stunning first novel about two young Black artists in London falling in and out of love by a new literary virtuoso, and finalist for the BBC Short Story Award, twenty-six-year old writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson

     

    In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control.

    Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body; to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty.

    This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent.


  • September YA Adult Book Club-Zyla and Kai by Kristina Forest
    Sold out

    Join us for our monthly book club. Our August pick is Zyla and Kia by Kristina Forest.

    Book club will happen Wednesday, September 25 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

    About the Book

    A fresh love story about the will they, won't they—and why can't they—of first love. 


    While on a school trip to the Poconos Mountains (in the middle of a storm) high school seniors, Zyla Matthews and Kai Johnson, run away together leaving their friends and family confused. As far as everyone knows, Zyla and Kai have been broken up for months. And honestly? Their break up hadn't surprised anyone. Zyla and Kai met while working together at an amusement park the previous summer, and they couldn't have been more different.
     
    Zyla was a cynic about love. She'd witnessed the dissolution of her parents' marriage early in life, and it left an indelible impression. Her only aim was graduating and going to fashion school abroad. Until she met Kai.
     
    Kai was a serial dater and a hopeless romantic. He'd put a temporary pause on his dating life before senior year to focus on school and getting into his dream HBCU. Until he met Zyla.
     
    Alternating between the past and present, we see the love story unfold from Zyla's and Kai's perspectives: how they first became the unlikeliest of friends over the summer, how they fell in love during the school year, and why they ultimately broke up... Or did they?
     
    Romantic, heart-stirring, and a little mysterious, Zyla & Kai will keep readers guessing until the last chapter. 

  • All About Love Pt.II Discussion
    Sold out

    Join us as we continue discussing bell hooks' All About Love. This was our book club pick in June but the group truly believed that they needed more time with this text. 

    This discussion will take place September 13, 2022 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories' Reading Garden. RSVP Required. See ya'll there!

    About the Book

    With the warmth and intimacy of M. Scott Peck and in the intellectual tradition of Eric Fromm, bell hooks’ most popular and accessible work ever in which she shows us how to cultivate a love ethic that will heal us as individuals and as a nation

    “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet...we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, the renowned scholar, cultural critic, and feminist skewers our view of love as romance. In its place she offers a proactive new ethic for a people and a society bereft with lovelessness.

    As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for emotional connection and society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for the individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how profoundly she can.

     

     

  • August Adult Book Club- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
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    Join us for our monthly book club. Our August pick The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Secret Lives.

    Book club will happen Wednesday, August 31 at 7:00 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

    About the Book

    The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions.

    There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s “same time next year” arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.

    With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.

  • August YA Book Club- Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle
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    Join us for our monthly young adult book club. Our August pick is the Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle. 

    The book club meeting will be August 28 at 2 PM in our Kindred Stories Reading Garden. RSVP required. See ya'll there!

    About The Book

    Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers—or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show, Love Radio, where he dishes out advice to the brokenhearted.

    Prince has always dreamed of becoming a DJ and falling in love. But being the main caretaker for his mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and his little brother means his dreams will stay just that and the only romances in his life are the ones he hears about from his listeners.

    Until he meets Dani Ford.

    Dani isn’t checking for anybody. She’s focused on her plan: ace senior year, score a scholarship, and move to New York City to become a famous author. But her college essay keeps tripping her up and acknowledging what’s blocking her means dealing with what happened at that party a few months ago.

    And that’s one thing Dani can’t do.

    When the romantic DJ meets the ambitious writer, sparks fly. Prince is smitten, but Dani’s not looking to get derailed. She gives Prince just three dates to convince her that he’s worth falling for.
  • Houston Reads Bonus Discussion! Presented by Project Row Houses, Kindred Stories & Chanecka C. Williams
    from $0.00

    A Note From Chanecka 

    In April 1983, Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple won National Book Awards, one of America's most prestigious literary prizes.  Naylor’s debut novel won the award for First Novel while Walker’s novel  won the prize for overall Fiction. This was a historical moment in Black literature history that has mostly gone unnoticed. As we finish reading the works of Gloria Naylor, it feels necessary to honor these two women’s achievements as well as examine their work in context.

    Meeting Details

    When: August 21, 2022 at 2PM-4PM

    Where: This meeting will be held online with the virtual conferencing platform, Zoom. 

    How:  Be sure to register for this month's bonus meeting.

    About Project Row Houses

    Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. We engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities. 

    Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as home base to a variety of community-enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. PRH programs touch the lives of under-resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others. Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The Project Row Houses model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world.

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