In the tradition of books by Albert Woodfox and Angela Davis comes the gripping memoir of a wrongful conviction and life on death row in Angola prison, showing how incarcerated people care for, protect, mentor, and teach each other.

In 1975, seventeen-year-old Gary Tyler was sent to Angola prison to die. A year earlier, he had been wrongfully charged with the killing of a white teenager and found guilty by an all-white jury, making Gary the youngest prisoner on death row in the country.

Following his conviction, Amnesty International and investigative reporters documented the brutal treatment, fabricated evidence, recanted testimony, and repeated injustices that led to his sentencing. Three times Gary was recommended for a pardon; three times Louisiana governors refused to accept the political risk. After more than four decades in prison, Tyler was released in 2016—but he was never exonerated.

This is not a story of mistaken identity or circumstantial evidence, but one of systemic injustice from an institution hard-wired into a legacy of slavery—in effect, this was a legal lynching. It is precisely this harsh reality that makes this memoir a remarkable celebration of life and justice, a story of pride, forgiveness, community, and triumph. With insight and heart, Gary shows how he learned to reject bitterness and survive with the help and mentorship from activists such Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace on the inside, and the relentless support from people on the outside. Stitching Freedom is the page-turning chance for Gary to reclaim his power and exonerate himself at last.

Explore the wonders of the universe in this mesmerizing, poetic ode to trailblazing astronaut Mae Jemison, from Coretta Scott King Honor author Charles R. Smith, Jr.

How far to the stars?

This is what a little girl named Mae Jemison wonders as she peers through her telescope and dreams of space. Someday she will make it there, but for now she wonders, learns, and is inspired by the vastness of the universe.

Astronaut, physician, and engineer Mae Jemison's passion would eventually lead to her becoming the first Black woman in space!

Through the Telescope focuses on what first inspired a young Mae Jemison to reach for the stars. Charles R. Smith, Jr. is the award-winning author of the Coretta Scott King Honor Book, Twelve Rounds of Glory, and many other popular and acclaimed titles. His gorgeous text places a spotlight on an American trailblazer who inspires kids everywhere to follow their dreams. Debut illustrator Evening Monteiro's captivating portrayal of a young Mae Jemison is sure to grab young readers' attention!

Perfect for kids who love space exploration and for readers of Hidden Figures and The Undefeated.

It is Paris, 1815. An extraordinarily shaped South African girl known as the Hottentot Venus, dressed only in feathers and beads, swings from a crystal chandelier in the duchess of Berry’s ballroom. Below her, the audience shouts insults and pornographic obscenities. Among these spectators is Napoleon’s physician and the most famous naturalist in Europe, the Baron George Cuvier, whose encounter with her will inspire a theory of race that will change European science forever.

Evoking the grand tradition of such “monster” tales as Frankensteinand The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Barbara Chase Riboud, prize-winning author of the classic Sally Hemings, again gives voice to an “invisible” of history. In this powerful saga, Sarah Baartman, for more than 200 years known only as the mysterious lady in the glass cage, comes vividly and unforgettably to life.

Rashid Johnson, Cauleen Smith and others pay tribute to a truly extraordinary figure in 20th-century American jazz

This volume unpacks the cultural legacy of musician, spiritual leader, wife and mother Alice Coltrane. Accompanying the eponymous exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, the book takes its title from Coltrane’s 1977 autobiography and devotional text, Monument Eternal, in which she reflected on her newfound spiritual beliefs and the path to healing and self-discovery. Coltrane was "ahead of her time," as her son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, says: she was "one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, Black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms."
Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal explores themes including spiritual transcendence, sonic innovation and architectural intimacy. The project juxtaposes works from 19 contemporary American artists with pieces of ephemera from Coltrane’s archive―including handwritten sheet music, unreleased audio recordings and rarely seen footage―to honor her cultural output and practice.
Alice Coltrane was born in Detroit in 1937 and took up music at an early age, beginning piano lessons at seven years old. In 1967 her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane, gifted her a harp, on which she went on to record seminal albums including Journey in Satchidananda and A Monastic Trio, making her one of the very few harpists in the history of jazz. Coltrane moved to Southern California in 1972 and founded the Sai Anantam ashram. She lived and worked in Los Angeles, where she died in 2007 at age 69.

This book was published in conjunction with Hammer Museum

With more than two million copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time—the definitive account of African-American youth in Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, and a seminal work of modern literature.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem—the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor.

The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown’s time, but also because of its inspiring message. Now with an introduction by Nathan McCall, here is the story about the one who “made it,” the boy who kept landing on his feet and grew up to become a man.

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In 1999, Eve Jihan Cooper made history with her solo debut album, Let There Be Eve…Ruff Ryders’ First Lady, reaching number one on the Billboard 200, marking her as the third female rapper to ever obtain that position. She later made history again as the first recipient ever of the Grammy Award® for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration for her platinum single “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” with Gwen Stefani. Following up with three chart-topping albums that made unrivaled waves in the world of hip-hop and music, as well as trailblazing moments in TV/film and fashion, Eve now looks back on her groundbreaking career.

West Philadelphia was not for the faint of heart—Eve knows that better than anyone. However, she navigated those Philly streets (and later the rest of the world) seamlessly, though it was not without strength and resilience. She incorporates that unbridled ambition into every bar that she writes and every stage/set that she stands on. With a gritty realness that speaks to her style, she shares her experiences going from the Mill Creek Projects to Hollywood.

In this memoir, Eve reveals:
* Her experience working both in hip-hop and Hollywood simultaneously
* Dealing with a male-constructed industry that directly affects female rappers
* The internal mental health struggles that come from fame
* Her journey through fertility issues and motherhood
* Working on an entertaining yet controversial talk show
* Finding her balance as a wife, mother, and international superstar

Eve also unveils the war stories she’s endured throughout her career, from her entrance as “Eve of Destruction” into a male-dominated hip-hop industry, to the deeper story behind Scorpion that was never told until now, to the internal battle with her music, her label, and herself after Lip Lock.

This fearless, empowering, and inspirational memoir from hip-hop sensation Eve explores her rise to stardom as a female MC, her lasting legacy on pop culture and music, and her incredible yet enduring struggle balancing her personal life with her professional one.

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American. •  "In losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself.” —NPR

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

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At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey investigates this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

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This extraordinary memoir of struggle and perseverance offers new ways of envisioning economic equality for everyone—from a leading activist and fashion pioneer.

Aurora James’s story is not a “success story.” Or at least, it shouldn’t be told that way. Having dropped out of high school, struggled with body image, and dabbled in street racing, her eventual arrest might have been her rock bottom. But as a visionary and optimist, that experience became one of many that reshaped her way of thinking about the world. After a brief modeling stint, James discovered the real power in creating for the runway and started her own business in a flea market, a sustainable fashion line showcasing traditional African design that would become an award-winning international brand. Then she founded one of the fastest-growing social justice nonprofits, the Fifteen Percent Pledge. But none of this came from a desire to “succeed.” It came from a desire to forge a new creative path—and to lift others up alongside her.

Already a rising star in fashion and the first Black American female designer to win a CFDA Award, James was inspired by the activism that swept the nation in the summer of 2020 to think bigger about how to empower Black business owners. With an idea and an Instagram post, she founded the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which challenges retailers to commit 15% of their shelf space and spending power to Black businesses. To date, more than two dozen of the world’s most recognized retailers have taken the pledge, redirecting $10 billion in revenue to Black brands.

Empowering and full of heart, Wildflower is the story of how Aurora James got to where she is now and a rallying cry for those eager to make change.

An acclaimed poet reclaims her origin story as the queer daughter of a Muslim Nigerian immigrant and a Black American visual artist in this groundbreaking memoir, combining lyrical prose, biting criticism, and haunting visuals.

“Hafizah Augustus Geter is a genuine artist, not bound by genre or form. Her only loyalty is the harrowing beauty of the truth.”—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

“I say, ‘the Black Period,’ and mean ‘home’ in all its shapeshifting ways.” In The Black Period, Hafizah creates a space for the beauty of Blackness, Islam, disability, and queerness to flourish, celebrating the many layers of her existence that America has time and again sought to erase.

At nineteen, she lost her mother to a sudden stroke. Weeks later, her father became so heartsick that he needed a triple bypass. By her thirties, she was constantly in pain, pinballing between physical therapy appointments, her grief, and the grind that is the American Dream. Hafizah realized she'd spent years internalizing the narratives that white supremacy had fed her about herself. Suddenly, she says, I was standing at the cliff of my own life, remembering.

Recalling her parents’ lessons on the art of Black revision, and mixing history, political analysis, and cultural criticism, alongside stunning original artworks created by her father, renowned artist Tyrone Geter, Hafizah maps out her own narrative, weaving between a childhood populated with Southern and Nigerian relatives; her days in a small Catholic school; a loving but tragically short relationship with her mother; and the feelings of joy and community that the Black Lives Matter protests engendered in her as an adult. All throughout, she forms a new personal and collective history, addressing the systems of inequity that make life difficult for non-able-bodied persons, queer people, and communities of color while capturing a world brimming with potential, art, music, hope, and love.

A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, in The Black Period, Hafizah manages to sidestep shame, confront disability, embrace forgiveness, and emerge from the erasures

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A Washington Post culture writer chronicles the challenges she faces as a Black mother in a mostly white mommy group in a time of gentrification, racial reckoning, and a global pandemic.

“Can white moms and Black moms ever truly be friends, not just mom friends, like really real friends?”
 
Helena Andrews-Dyer lives in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., a picturesque collection of rowhouses near the center of the city that has become increasingly gentrified in the last decade. After having her first child a few years ago, she joined the local motherhood support group—“the Mamas”—and was surprised to find she was one of the only Black mothers. The racial, cultural, and socio-economic differences were made clear almost immediately. Then George Floyd happened. A man was murdered. A man who called out for his mama. And suddenly, the Mamas felt even more different. Though they were alike in some ways—they want their kids to be safe, they think their husbands are lazy, they work too much and they feel guilty about it—Helena realized she had an entirely different set of problems her neighborhood mom friends could never truly understand.
 
In The Mamas, Helena chronicles the particular challenges she faces in a group where a reading list is the first step to solving systemic racism and where she, a Black, professional, Ivy League-educated mom, is overcompensating with every move. And Helena grapples with her own inner tensions like, “Why do I never leave the house with the baby and without my wedding ring?” and “Why did every name we considered for our kids have to pass the résumé test?” Throw in a pandemic and a nationwide movement for social justice and follow Helena as she ultimately tries to find out if moms from different backgrounds can truly understand one another.
 
With sharp wit and refreshing honesty, The Mamas explores the contradictions and community of motherhood—white and Black and everything—against the backdrop of the rapidly changing world.

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The award-winning author of The Good Negress shares invaluable insights on the precarious journey toward creativity that is the writer’s life, and tells the compelling story of her relationship with Toni Morrison, painting an illuminating portrait of this towering yet enigmatic cultural icon.

With the publication of her debut novel The Good Negress in 1995, A. J. Verdelle became an overnight sensation, winning critical acclaim and competing for prestigious literature prizes. But for Verdelle, the most unexpected consequence was the friendship she formed with the legendary Toni Morrison. Receiving an advance copy of the book, the Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author—notorious for never giving early praise—called The Good Negress, “Truly Extraordinary.” It was a writer’s dream come true—a dream that for Verdelle would become simultaneously exhilarating and challenging.

Now, twenty-five years later, Verdelle tells the story of that success and what came after. Miss Chloe begins with the story of young Verdelle’s persistent aim to become an author, spending countless pre-dawn hours writing the novel that became The Good Negress. Verdelle then turns to the heady period after publication, focusing on her relationship with Toni—a precious gift that was most of the time a grace and a blessing, and at other times, confusing and too separate from literature. While Morrison continued to rise as an icon, Verdelle’s writing career took a sharp turn. Verdelle’s next novel—a Western featuring Black characters—is quickly bought by a young editor who leaves for another job before the manuscript is finished. Searching for direction, Verdelle moves to another publisher. Yet this second book will languish for more than fifteen years. In chronicling her journey, Verdelle offers an honest assessment of what it means to be a writer, including the expectations and let downs that famous friendships do not defray.

Miss Chloe ends with the period after Morrison has passed away, when Verdelle is left to face the reality of her writing career, pondering what it means to have promise that is yet to materialize. She finds comfort in advice Morrison offered over the years, insight she shares in this wise book. “In order for Morrison to take you seriously, to have patience with you, to be interested, you had to be able to hear her,” Verdelle writes. “You had to be able to sit still and listen. You had to be able to pipe up in the pauses, and prove you understood. You needed demonstrate that language was a skill you had, that Black culture was known to you and respected by you.” 

From the bestselling and Booker Prize–winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism

Bernardine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize win was a historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers.

Evaristo’s astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers.

Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.

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Stunning for her daring originality, the author of Negroland gives us what she calls “a temperamental autobiography,” comprised of visceral, intimate fragments that fuse criticism and memoir.

Margo Jefferson constructs a nervous system with pieces of different lengths and tone, conjoining arts writing (poem, song, performance) with life writing (history, psychology). The book’s structure is determined by signal moments of her life, those that trouble her as well as those that thrill and restore. In this nervous system:
  •  The sounds of a black spinning disc of a 1950s jazz LP as intimate and instructive as a parent’s voice.
  •  The muscles and movements of a ballerina, spliced with those of an Olympic runner: template for what a female body could be.
  •  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Topsy finds her way into the art of Kara Walker and the songs of Cécile McLorin Salvant.
  •  Bing Crosby and Ike Turner become alter egos.
  •  W. E. B. DuBois and George Eliot meet illicitly, as he appropriates lines from her story The Lifted Veil to write his famous “behind the veil” passages in The Souls of Black Folk.
  •  The words of multiple others (writers, singers, film characters, friends, family) act as prompts and as dialogue.
 
The fragments of this brilliant book, while not neglecting family, race, and class, are informed by a kind of aesthetic drive: longing, ecstasy, or even acute ambivalence. Constructing a nervous system is Jefferson’s relentlessly galvanizing mise-en-scène for unconventional storytelling as well as a platform for unexpected dramatis personae.

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Better Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. Yusef writes his narrative: growing up Black in central Harlem in the '80s, being raised by a strong, fierce mother and grandmother, his years of incarceration, his reentry, and exoneration. Yusef connects these stories to lessons and principles he learned that gave him the power to survive through the worst of life's experiences.

Legendary baseball player and manager Dusty Baker reflects on his extraordinary career—filled with invaluable lessons on perseverance, leadership, and living life meaningfully on the field and off.

Dusty Baker walked with baseball legends and became one himself. After he signed with the Braves in 1968 at the age of nineteen against his father’s wishes, no less than the great Hank Aaron promised to take Baker under his wing. Mentored by Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie Mays, Baker became a premier hitter, helping take the Dodgers to a World Series victory in 1981. He would bookend this with another championship in 2022, this time as a manager helping guide and redeem a Houston Astros team humbled by a cheating scandal. Respected by generations across the game, Baker has come to embody the spirit of the sport—and yet, to discuss his baseball career is only to scratch the surface of a remarkable life.

Crossroads will bring readers into the mind of one of baseball’s mavericks: a curious, inquisitive thinker whose deep interest in the worlds of music, wine, and the simpler joys of life charts a journey of success, struggle, faith, and perseverance. Baker's memoir is filled with hard-earned wisdom and a love for life so plentiful, it seems to radiate from every sentence.

A true American original, counting among his friends presidents and dignitaries, bluesmen and artists, Baker weaves a spell of life at the crossroads, where fate turns on our decisions and the unexpected answers that sometimes seek us out when we least expect it.

Arsenio Hall, America’s beloved late-night TV host, reveals the ups and downs of his remarkable career as a trailblazing pioneer with this behind-the-scenes, star-studded, no-holds-barred memoir of celebrity, race, and show business.

Arsenio Hall holds a uniquely prominent place in American culture—celebrated late-night host and comedic actor, famed for starring roles in the cultural touchstones Coming to America and Harlem Nights.

Now, he pulls back the curtain and takes us to a different time in Hollywood. Iconic scenes include: starting out as a young magician in Cleveland; hosting his first talk show in the basement of his apartment building when he was in elementary school; cutting his teeth at the world-famous Comedy Store in Hollywood, learning about comedy and life from legendary comedian Richard Pryor; forming lifelong bonds with legendary icons Muhammad Ali, Luther Vandross, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Eddie Murphy; tasting superstar success with Coming to America, the film that preceded The Arsenio Hall Show; conducting unforgettable, groundbreaking interviews with Magic Johnson, Bill Clinton, Tupac Shakur, Maya Angelou, Madonna, and Minister Louis Farrakhan; rescuing a family from a home-fire with Jay Leno; sharing hot sauces and blackjack with Patti LaBelle; and chilling with Prince.

And then, he made the difficult decision to walk away.

This bracingly candid memoir offers a new appreciation for this raw talent and gifted storyteller, who nightly, for six years, hosted what felt like a televised “party” that changed the landscape of late-night television and brought Black culture into living rooms across America.

With this book, he does it one more time.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat comes a powerful and urgent call to center psychiatry and mental health care within mainstream medicine

As much as we all might wish that mental health problems--with their elusive causes and unsettling behaviors--simply did not exist, millions of people suffer from them, sometimes to an extreme extent. Many others face addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as overdose and suicide deaths abound. Yet the vast majority of doctors receive minimal instruction during their lengthy medical training in treating these conditions. This mismatch ignores the clear overlap between physical and mental distress, and too-often puts psychiatrists on the outside looking in as the medical system continues to fail many patients.

In Facing The Unseen, bestselling author, professor of psychiatry, and practicing physician Damon Tweedy guides us through his days working in outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals as he meets people from all walks of life who are grappling with physical and psychological illnesses. In powerful, compassionate, and eloquent prose, Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach, one in which people with mental illness have access to a health care system that places their full well-being front and center.

A path-breaking work of biography of two American giants, Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson, whose lives would forever be altered by the Cold War, and would explosively intersect before its most notorious weapon, the House Un-American Activities Committee — from one of the best sports and culture writers working today. 

Kings and Pawns is the untold story of sports and fame, Black America and the promise of integration through the Cold War lens of two transformative events. The first occurred July 18, 1949 in Washington, D.C., when a reluctant Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball star who integrated the game and at the time was the most famous Black man in America, appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to discredit Paul Robeson, the legendary athlete, baritone, and actor — himself once the most famous Black man in America. The testimony would be a defining moment in Robinson’s life and contribute heavily to the destruction of Robeson’s iconic reputation in the eyes of America.

The second occurred June 12, 1956, in the midst of the last, demagogic roar of McCarthyism, when a battered, defiant Robeson – prohibited from leaving the United States – faced off in a final showdown with HUAC in the same setting Robinson appeared in seven years earlier. These two moments would epitomize the ongoing Black American conflict between patriotism and protest. On the cusp of a nascent civil rights movement, Robinson and Robeson would represent two poles of a people pitted against itself by forces that demanded loyalty without equality in return – one man testifying in conflicted service to and the other in ferocious critique of a country that would ultimately and decisively wound both.

In a time of great division, with America in the midst of a new era of retrenchment and Black athletes again chilled into silence advocating for civil rights, the story of these two titans reverberates today within and beyond Black America. From the revival of government overreach to curb civil liberties to the Cold War-era rhetoric of “the enemy within” levied against fellow citizens, Kings and Pawns is a story of a moment that remains hauntingly present.

*Pareback Release Date - 10/27/26*

In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1988), Jazmina Barrera’s deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life.

Sifting through the writer’s archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject. Traditional means of research—the correspondence, photos, and books—serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work.Who was Elena Garro, really?

She was a writer, a founder of “magical realism”, a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and theI Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel-laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination.

The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a woman that also serves as an alternative history of Mexico City; a cry-out for justice; and an homage to the unknowable. It transcends mere biography, supplanting something tidy and authoritative for a sprawling experiment in understanding.

Former boxing legend Muhammad Ali, one of the best-known and best-loved celebrities and an international goodwill ambassador, offers inspiration and hope as he describes the spiritual philosophy that sustains him.

“During my boxing career, you did not see the real Muhammad Ali. You just saw a little boxing. You saw only a part of me. After I retired from boxing my true work began. I have embarked on a journey of love.”

So Muhammad Ali begins this spiritual memoir, his description of the values that have shaped and sustained him and that continue to guide his life. In The Soul of a Butterfly the great champion takes readers on a spiritual journey through the seasons of life, from childhood to the present, and shares the beliefs that have served him well.

Ali reflects on his faith in God and the strength it gave him during his greatest challenges. He describes how his study of true Islam has helped him accept the changes in his life and has brought him to a greater awareness of life’s true purpose. As a United Nations Messenger of Peace, he has traveled widely, and he describes his 2002 mission to Afghanistan to heighten public awareness of that country’s desperate situation, as well as his more recent meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Ali’s reflections on topics ranging from moral courage to belief in God to respect for those who differ from us will inspire and enlighten all who read them. Written with the assistance of his daughter Hana, The Soul of a Butterfly is a compassionate and heartfelt book that will provide comfort for our troubled times.

A poignant and inspiring memoir from the former mayor of Atlanta about her modest, hardscrabble upbringing, and fully appreciating the selfless, loving, fierce, and altogether Southern-twinged lessons her family taught her.

Long before Keisha Lance Bottoms rose to prominence in politics, she was a daddy’s girl from the Westside of Atlanta—the baby of her family who did well in school, though she talked too much in class; an outgoing kid who dreamt of growing up to be elegant and charismatic like her parents, cool like her older siblings and big cousins, and the pride of her very large, Southern family.

After law school, Bottoms worked as an attorney, served as a judge, and was elected to City Council and the mayorship, where she garnered national attention for her leadership during the pandemic and George Floyd protests. Later, she was appointed senior advisor in President Joe Biden’s administration.

Yet Bottoms felt disquieted internally. She was in her early fifties and approaching the age her beloved father was when he died. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something in her life was missing, like she’d forgotten to bring an essential element of herself along for her ascension. Stepping away from the daily political grind, Bottoms realized how much she’d sanded down parts of herself in her path to professional success. She’d tucked away the fuller details about her dad’s drug abuse and prison stint for dealing; the sexual abuse she endured; the eating disorder she developed; the close-knit, utterly unpolished family who doted on her and gave her an incredible foundation of love and confidence but whose influence she’d pruned to a sleek, charming, campaign-ready sheen. She thought that was the price of upward mobility. Then she realized she was wrong.

The Rough Side of the Mountain is about this excavation. It’s Bottoms’s deeply affecting journey to rescue a version of herself that she thought she had to leave behind to succeed. An honor to the lessons from kinfolk plainly told, hers is a timely and heartfelt memoir about unmasking oneself, the joys of authenticity, embracing what you see, and spreading that powerful message.

Walter Rodney was a scholar, working class militant, and revolutionary from Guyana. Strongly influenced by Marxist ideas, he remains central to radical Pan-Africanist thought for large numbers of activists’ today. Rodney lived through the failed –though immensely hopeful -socialist experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, in Tanzania and elsewhere.

The book critically considers Rodney's contribution to Marxist theory and history, his relationship to dependency theory and the contemporary significance of his work in the context of movements and politics today. The first full-length study of Rodney’s life, this book is an essential introduction to Rodney's work.

Published to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the first major study of Malcolm X’s influence in the sixty years since his assassination, exploring his enduring impact on culture, politics, and civil rights.

Malcolm X has become as much of an American icon as Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King. But when he was murdered in 1965, he was still seen as a dangerous outsider. White America found him alienating, mainstream African Americans found him divisive, and even his admirers found him bravely radical. Although Ossie Davis famously eulogized Malcolm X as “our own Black shining prince,” he never received the mainstream acceptance toward which he seemed to be striving in his final year. It is more in death than his life that Malcolm’s influence has blossomed and come to leave a deep imprint on the cultural landscape of America.

With impeccable research and original reporting, Mark Whitaker tells the story of Malcolm X’s far-reaching posthumous legacy. It stretches from founders of the Black Power Movement such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton to hip-hop pioneers such as Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur. Leaders of the Black Arts and Free Jazz movements from Amiri Baraka to Maya Angelou, August Wilson, and John Coltrane credited their political awakening to Malcolm, as did some of the most influential athletes of our time, from Muhammad Ali to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and beyond. Spike’s movie biopic and the Black Lives Matter movement reintroduced Malcolm to subsequent generations. Across the political spectrum, he has been cited as a formative influence by both Barack Obama—who venerated Malcolm’s “unadorned insistence on respect”—and Clarence Thomas, who was drawn to Malcolm’s messages of self-improvement and economic self-help.

In compelling new detail, Whitaker also retraces the long road to exoneration for two men wrongfully convicted of Malcolm’s murder, making The Afterlife of Malcolm X essential reading for anyone interested in true crime, American politics, culture, and history.

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials

A Penguin Vitae Edition

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass’s classic autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, which was written, in part, as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Penguin Classics presents Penguin Vitae, loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life,” a deluxe hardcover series featuring a dynamic landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction that has shaped the course of our readers' lives. Penguin Vitae invites readers to find themselves in a diverse world of storytellers, with beautifully designed classic editions of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, this astounding autobiography brings to life a remarkable man changed the world —and still inspires the desires, hopes, and dreams of us all.

Martin Luther King: the child and student who rebelled against segregation. The dedicated minister who questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom. The loving husband and father who sought to balance his family’s needs with those of a growing, nationwide movement. And to most of us today, the world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere.

Relevant and insightful, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. offers King’s seldom disclosed views on some of the world’s greatest and most controversial figures: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Richard Nixon. It paints a moving portrait of a people, a time, and a nation in the face of powerful change. And it shows how Americans from all walks of life can make a difference if they have the courage to hope for a better future.

African American women have played significant roles in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality, but relatively little is known about many of these leaders and activists.

Most accounts of the civil rights movement focus on male leaders and the organizations they led, leaving a dearth of information about the countless black women who were the backbone of the struggle in local communities across the country. At the local level women helped mold and shape the direction the movement would take. Lulu B. White was one of those women in the civil rights movement in Texas.

Executive secretary of the Houston branch of the NAACP and state director of branches, White was a significant force in the struggle against Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s. She was at the helm of the Houston chapter when the Supreme Court struck down the white primary in Smith v. Allbright, and she led the fight to get more blacks elected to public office, to gain economic parity for African Americans, and to integrate the University of Texas.

Author Merline Pitre places White in her proper perspective in Texas, Southern, African American, women's, and general American history; points to White's successes and achievements, as well as the problems and conflicts she faced in efforts to eradicate segregation; and looks at the strategies and techniques White used in her leadership roles.

Pitre effectively places White within the context of twentieth-century Houston and the civil rights movement that was gripping the state. In Struggle Against Jim Crow is pertinent to the understanding of race, gender, interest group politics, and social reform during this turbulent era.

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From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance. A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. “I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life—as RuPaul Andre Charles,” says RuPaul.

If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

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Celebrate James Baldwin’s one-hundredth birthday anniversary with the first-ever illustrated biography of this legendary writer, orator, activist, and intellectual.

Before he became a writer, James “Jimmy” Baldwin was a young boy from Harlem, New York, who loved stories. He found joy in the rhythm of music, family, and books.

But Jimmy also found the blues, as a Black man living in America.

When he discovered the written word, he discovered true power. Writing gave him a voice. And that voice opened the world to Jimmy. From the publication of the groundbreaking collection of essays The Fire Next Time to his passionate demonstrations during the civil rights movement, Jimmy used his voice fearlessly.

Michelle Meadows, author of Brave Ballerina and Flying High, introduces young readers to the great American novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, orator, and artist James Baldwin, who, with the fire of his pen, dared a nation to dream of a more equitable world filled with love. Brought to life with warm illustrations by Jamiel Law, Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues chronicles the life of an incredible visionary who left an indelible mark on American literature and history.