PRE-ORDER.  WILL SHIP ON January 27, 2026.

An illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black, female writer—and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form.

This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance, archival discoveries, and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time, but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.

"We Are Not Numbers is not just a book—it's my life, their life, and our shared story ... This is Gaza as it truly is, written by those who live it every day" —MOTAZ AZIZA

"This book is a jailbreak and a miracle" —NAOMI KLEIN

"Essential ... A project that insists on liberation" —TA-NEHISI COATES

"Impossible to put down or forget" —RIZ AHMED

A teenage girl stares at her roof, hoping it won’t collapse over her head. A young student searches the Internet for photos of libraries around the world, hoping he’ll be able to visit them one day. Another walks around the city, taking notes of all the buildings she dreams of repairing.

These are the stories of young people from Gaza, born under Israeli occupation and blockade. They are people who have endured unspeakable struggles and losses, who keep fighting to be recognized not as numbers, but as human beings with hopes, dreams, and lives worth living.

We Are Not Numbers was founded in 2014 to give voice to the youth of Gaza. In this collection—vital, urgent and full of heart, spanning over ten years to the present moment—we gain an unparalleled insight into the past, as well as the current and next generation of Palestinian leaders, artists, scientists and scholars and imagine where we might go from here.

Wish I Was a Baller is part New Kid, part The Tryout, and part Dragon Hoops!

Amar Shah has some story to tell! In 1995, he was a fourteen-year-old aspiring sports journalist (and basketball superfan) angling to get into an Orlando Magic team practice. He did, and it took him on the ride of his life!

Wish I Was a Baller is a graphic memoir chronicling Amar's real-life experiences as a fourteen-year-old sports journalist covering the golden era of the NBA, when he befriended Shaq and hung out with Michael Jordan and the Bulls―all while surviving the high school, dealing with crushes, and friendships being tainted by jealousy.

"An inspiring story of friendship, family, and the swishes and misses of being a kid. Baller soars and scores!" ― Jerry Craft, author of the Newbery Award-winning New Kid

From critically acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd comes an eloquent profile of one of the most intriguing cultural figures of the twentieth century—Zora Neale Hurston.

A woman of enormous talent and remarkable drive, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books, many short stories, and several articles and plays over a career that spanned more than thirty years. Today, nearly every black woman writer of significance—including Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker—acknowledges Hurston as a literary foremother, and her 1937 masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God has become a crucial part of the modern literary canon.

Wrapped in Rainbows, the first biography of Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, illuminates the adventures, complexities, and sorrows of an extraordinary life. Acclaimed journalist Valerie Boyd delves into Hurston’s history—her youth in the country’s first incorporated all-black town, her friendships with luminaries such as Langston Hughes, her sexuality and short-lived marriages, and her mysterious relationship with vodou. With the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and World War II as historical backdrops, Wrapped in Rainbows not only positions Hurston’s work in her time but also offers riveting implications for our own.

“A defining chronicle of strength and spirit” (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world—without a road map to guide her. This memoir “should be required reading for your 20s” (Cosmopolitan).

A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body after her teenage transition, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their relationship serve as a backdrop for Janet’s progression through all the universal growing pains—falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life.

Fueled by her dreams and an inimitable drive, Janet makes her way through New York City intent on building a career in the highly competitive world of magazine publishing—within the unique context of being trans, a woman, and a person of color. Hers is a timely glimpse about the barriers many face—and a much-needed guide on how to make a way out of no way.

Long before she became one of the world’s most respected media figures and lauded leaders for equality and justice, Janet learned how to advocate for herself before becoming an advocate for others. In this “honest and timely appraisal of what it means to be true to yourself” (Booklist), Surpassing Certainty offers an “exquisitely packaged gift of her experiences...that signals something greater” (Bitch Magazine).

New York Times Bestseller • Winner of the 2015 WOMEN'S WAY Book Prize • Goodreads Best of 2014 Semi-Finalist • Books for a Better Life Award Finalist • Lambda Literary Award Finalist • Time Magazine “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” • American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book

In her profound and courageous New York Times bestseller, Janet Mock establishes herself as a resounding and inspirational voice for the transgender community—and anyone fighting to define themselves on their own terms.

With unflinching honesty and moving prose, Janet Mock relays her experiences of growing up young, multiracial, poor, and trans in America, offering readers accessible language while imparting vital insight about the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of a marginalized and misunderstood population. Though undoubtedly an account of one woman’s quest for self at all costs, Redefining Realness is a powerful vision of possibility and self-realization, pushing us all toward greater acceptance of one another—and of ourselves—showing as never before how to be unapologetic and real.

First published in 1956, Proud Shoes is the remarkable true story of slavery, survival, and miscegenation in the South from the pre-Civil War era through the Reconstruction. Written by Pauli Murray the legendary civil rights activist and one of the founders of NOW, Proud Shoes chronicles the lives of Murray's maternal grandparents. From the birth of her grandmother, Cornelia Smith, daughter of a slave whose beauty incited the master's sons to near murder to the story of her grandfather Robert Fitzgerald, whose free black father married a white woman in 1840, Proud Shoes offers a revealing glimpse of our nation's history.

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.

From the mind of brilliant historian Robin Kelley comes the first full biography of legendary jazz musician Thelonious Monk, including full access to the family's archives, dozens of interviews, and an afterword for Monk’s 2017 centennial.

Thelonious Monk is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century.

To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest com­posers.

Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.

The Prisoner's Wife is a beautiful story about love that overcomes every obstacle and thrives against all odds.

As a favor for a friend, a bright and talented young woman volunteered to read her poetry to a group of prisoners during a Black History Month program. It was an encounter that would alter her life forever, because it was there, in the prison, that she would meet Rashid, the man who was to become her friend, her confidant, her husband, her lover, her soul mate. At the time, Rashid was serving a sentence of twenty years to life for his part in a murder. The Prisoner's Wife is a testimony, for wives and mothers, friends and families. It's a tribute to anyone who has ever chosen, against the odds, to love.

The Mamba Mentality: How I Play is Kobe Bryant’s personal perspective of his life and career on the basketball court and his exceptional, insightful style of playing the game―a fitting legacy from the late Los Angeles Laker superstar.

In the wake of his retirement from professional basketball, Kobe “The Black Mamba” Bryant decided to share his vast knowledge and understanding of the game to take readers on an unprecedented journey to the core of the legendary “Mamba mentality.” Citing an obligation and an opportunity to teach young players, hardcore fans, and devoted students of the game how to play it “the right way,” The Mamba Mentality takes us inside the mind of one of the most intelligent, analytical, and creative basketball players ever.

In his own words, Bryant reveals his famously detailed approach and the steps he took to prepare mentally and physically to not just succeed at the game, but to excel. Readers will learn how Bryant studied an opponent, how he channeled his passion for the game, how he played through injuries. They’ll also get fascinating granular detail as he breaks down specific plays and match-ups from throughout his career.

Bryant’s detailed accounts are paired with stunning photographs by the Hall of Fame photographer Andrew D. Bernstein. Bernstein, long the Lakers and NBA official photographer, captured Bryant’s very first NBA photo in 1996 and his last in 2016―and hundreds of thousands in between, the record of a unique, twenty-year relationship between one athlete and one photographer.

The combination of Bryant’s narrative and Bernstein’s photos make The Mamba Mentality an unprecedented look behind the curtain at the career of one of the world’s most celebrated and fascinating athletes.

A collection of essential writings from the iconic foremother of Black women's intellectual history, feminism, and activism, who helped pave the way for modern social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name

Winner of the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Materials 

A Penguin Classic

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual, and community activist whose prescient insights and eloquent prose underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American social and political activism.

Recognized as the iconic foremother of Black women's intellectual history and activism, Cooper (1858-1964) penned one of the most forceful and enduring statements of Black feminist thought to come of out of the nineteenth century. Attention to her work has grown exponentially over the years--her words have been memorialized in the US passport and, in 2009, she was commemorated with a US postal stamp. Cooper's writings on the centrality of Black girls and women to our larger national discourse has proved especially prescient in this moment of Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the recent protests that have shaken the nation.

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography • A Washington Post Notable Book • Finalist for the PEN America Literary Award •One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best History Books of the Year • One of AAIHS's Best Black History Books of 2024

“Though broad strokes of Tubman’s story are widely known, Miles probes deeper, examining her inner life, faith and relationships with other enslaved Black women to paint a deeper, more vibrant portrait of a historical figure whose mythic status can sometimes overshadow her humanity.” –The New York Times

From the National Book Award–winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero. Despite being barely five feet tall, unable to read, and suffering from a brain injury, she managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some seven hundred people. You could almost say she’s America’s Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood.

Tiya Miles’s extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman’s life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman’s surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes more palpable the more we understand it—a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

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.

'ONE OF THE MOST MOVING ACCOUNTS OF NON-FICTION EVER WRITTEN' GUARDIAN 

'If you like Shuggie Bain, then Slum Boy is for you' LEMN SISSAY
'Beautifully told. I hope it finds a million readers' ANDREW O'HAGAN

John MacDonald is a four-year-old boy growing up in the slums of Glasgow.

John's mother is an addict, who leaves him starving in their flat for days at a time.

When a neighbour reports her, John is wrenched away from his family and placed into the care system. There, he has experiences he's too young to understand which his eventual adoptive parents silence as he grows into a gay man within a strict Romani community.

But John dreams of being reunited with his mother and will stop at nothing to find her.

'Compulsively readable' PATRICK GALE
'Remarkable and moving tale' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Juano Diaz was awarded the Pride Awards 2024 for LGBTQ+ Heroes Changing the World.

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES AND A USA TODAY BESTSELLER

WINNER, 2024 GODDARD RIVERSIDE STEPHAN RUSSO BOOK PRIZE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

FINALIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE

“I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’ in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.”
―Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist

In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives

In Punished for Dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love argues that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white-savior egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. This book examines how decades of racist education policies have paved the way for the current structural overhaul of American schools. In this prequel to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Then with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.

Beyond They/Them is a captivating, gorgeously illustrated book celebrating 20 trailblazing nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit individuals who have left an indelible mark on music, sports, film and television, politics, and more.

Explore 20 biographies of game-changing and noteworthy nonbinary people of diverse backgrounds and in a wide variety of industries. Beyond They/Them: 20 Influential Nonbinary People You Should Know is a fully illustrated guide to celebrities, activists, musicians, and other influential people of various identities across the nonbinary spectrum. Complete with beautiful illustrations by the talented artist Cameron Mukwa and written by Em Dickson, this book is a celebration of nonbinary joy and proves that there has been, and always will be, a place for people of all genders.

Featured individuals include:
* ND Stevenson
* JanelleMonáe
* Rebecca Sugar
* Maia Kobabe
* Sarah Gailey
* Joshua Whitehead
* Quinn
* Layshia Clarendon
* Jaiyah Saelua
* Vico Ortiz
* Sam Smith
* Demi Lovato
* Cris Derksen
* Amita Kuttner
* Uzomo Asagwara
* Maebe A. Girl
* Audrey Tang
* Dr. James Makokis
* Dr. Jonathan P. Higgins
* Judith Butler

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.

From Charlamagne Tha God, host of the morning radio phenomenon The Breakfast Club, and founder and CEO of iHeartRadio’s Black Effect Podcast Network, a rundown on how small talk from small minds have taken over our world, and the BIG conversations needed to climb our way back.

For over a decade, Charlamagne Tha God has cohosted iHeartRadio’snationally syndicated morning radio show The Breakfast Cluband has proven his power as a culture mover and thought leader, by being his completely authentic self on-air. From his famous “You ain't black” moment with President Biden, to heartfelt chats with cultural icons like Sean “Jay-Z” Carter and Judy Blume, to viral classics with Kamala Harris and Soulja Boy, his incredible reach and impact on American culture continues to grow.

In Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks, Charlamagne takes full command of his new perch, broadening his scope and embracing his life roles as a cultural curator, social commentator, job-creator, mental health advocate, and Girl Dad in ways we’ve never seen before. In his signature irreverent style, he looks at the world through his own lens, concluding that many of our divisions, our unhappiness, and our dissatisfactions stem from our failure to have meaningful conversations with each other. With lessons pulled from his past, and an eye on the future, Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks makes us laugh, cry, and think as Charlamagne shares his thoughts on growth, empowerment, and evolution in our fast-changing world. In short—it’s time to stop lying to each other, and ourselves.

Fame, money, social media, politics, hip-hop culture, and fatherhood, he takes it all on here. This master of seeing through the BS even calls it on himself, as he delivers his most insightful and heartfelt work yet—his call to stop the insanity while we still can.

You can sparkle, shimmer, shine – just like Marsha did.

This vibrant and joyful picture book celebrates the legacy of Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman and activist who played an instrumental role during the Stonewall Riots that lead to PRIDE month, written by award-winning filmmaker and artist Tourmaline.

You wouldn’t even believe the things Saint Marsha used to get up to—she had more of a zest for life than anyone I’ve ever known, and the biggest heart, too.

It’s a hot summer day and New York City is buzzing like a hive of eager honeybees. From Riis Beach to the Flower District, into the West Village and over to the Brooklyn Museum, folks young and old embrace the resolute and love-filled spirit of icon activist Marsha P. Johnson in all that they do.

Told through the eyes of an old friend and with bright, buoyant artwork, this jubilant story celebrates the indelible stamp that Marsha P. Johnson left on New York City and beyond, culminating in a powerful convergence one day in June 2020, when activists from across all five boroughs rallied loudly for Black trans lives.

The spirit of Marsha has never been more alive and present in what we do.

Stunning poetry and illustrations introduce a new generation to the beloved literary icon Toni Morrison, by New York Times bestselling author Andrea Davis Pinkney and Caldecott Honor winner Daniel Minter.

From imaginative child to visionary storyteller, Toni Morrison was a fiercely inspiring writer that helped change the world. This poetic picture book is part love letter and part biography, praising the power of this Nobel Prize winner. With its tender refrain, readers will know how much Morrison's stories -- and their own -- mean to the world. She was loved -- and so are they!

There’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.

Alvin 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.

A 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.

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The story of the celebrated rapper and the iconic Wu-Tang Clan, told by one of its founding members

Dennis Coles―aka Ghostface Killah―is a co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, a legendary hip hop group who established themselves by breaking all the rules, taking their music to the streets during hip hop’s golden era on a decade-long wave of releasing anthem after classic anthem, and serving as the foundation of modern hip hop. An all-star cast who formed like Voltron to establish the pillars that serve as the foundation of modern hip hop and released seminal albums that have stood the test of time.

Rise of a Killah is Ghost’s autobiography, focusing on the people, places and events that mean the most to him as he enters his fourth decade writing and performing. It’s a beautiful and intense book, going back to the creative ferment that led to Ghost’s first handwritten rhymes. Dive into Ghost’s defining personal moments, his battles with his personal demons, his journey to Africa, his religious viewpoints, his childhood in Staten Island, and his commitment to his family (including his two brothers with muscular dystrophy), from the Clan’s early successes to the pinnacle of Ghost’s career touring and spreading his wings as a solo artist, fashion icon, and trendsetter.

Exclusive photos and memorabilia, as well as graphic art commissioned for this book, make Rise of a Killah both a memoir and a unique visual record, a “real feel” narrative of Ghost’s life as he sees it, a one of a kind holy grail for Wu-Tang and Ghost fans alike.

From award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford comes a captivating picture book biography about the incredible life of esteemed author, editor, and activist Toni Morrison, featuring gorgeous illustrations by debut artist Khalif Tahir Thompson.

How do you tell a story?

Before Toni Morrison was a Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Prize–winning author, she was Chloe Ardelia Wofford, a little girl in Ohio who was both the only Black child in her first-grade classroom and the only student who was able to read.

This is the true story of how that young girl learned from her upbringing, surrounded herself with stories, and made a tremendous impact on the world. Toni Morrison’s pen was her sword, and she grew to be a titan of the arts. Her legacy is one that still touches readers to this day.

Expertly and evocatively told by award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford, with beautiful painted illustrations by Khalif Tahir Thompson, this is a must-have picture book biography for any collection. It celebrates Toni Morrison’s legacy while inspiring readers to create art, believe in themselves, and strive for greatness.

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The Phoenix Mercury star—the world’s most famous female basketball player—shares her coming-of-age story, revealing how she found the strength to overcome bullies and to embrace her authentic self

“[A] searing and ultimately liberating memoir” —New York Times Book Review

At six foot eight with an eighty-eight-inch wingspan and a size 17 men’s shoe, the Phoenix Mercury star and three-time All-American Brittney Griner has been shattering stereotypes and breaking boundaries ever since she burst onto the national scene as a dunking high school phenom. But the sport’s “most transformative figure” (Sports Illustrated) is equally famous for making headlines off the court, for speaking out on issues of gender, sexuality, body image, and self-esteem.

In this heartfelt memoir, Brittney reflects on painful episodes in her life, as well as the highs. She describes how she came to celebrate what makes her unique—inspiring lessons she now shares with readers. Filled with all the humor and personality that Brittney Griner has become known for, In My Skin is more than a glimpse into one of the most original people in sports; it’s a powerful call to readers to be true to themselves, to love who they are on the inside and out.

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A ruthless and razor-sharp essay collection that tackles the pervasive, creeping oppression and toxicity that has wormed its way into society—in our books, schools, and homes, as well as the systems that perpetuate them—from the acclaimed author of Mean, and one of our fiercest, foremost explorers of intersectional Latinx identity.

A creep can be a singular figure, a villain who makes things go bump in the night. Yet creep is also what the fog does—it lurks into place to do its dirty work, muffling screams, obscuring the truth, and providing cover for those prowling within it.

Creep is Myriam Gurba’s informal sociology of creeps, a deep dive into the dark recesses of the toxic traditions that plague the United States and create the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes. Through cultural criticism disguised as personal essay, Gurba studies the ways in which oppression is collectively enacted, sustaining ecosystems that unfairly distribute suffering and premature death to our most vulnerable. Yet identifying individual creeps, creepy social groups, and creepy cultures is only half of this book’s project—the other half is examining how we as individuals, communities, and institutions can challenge creeps and rid ourselves of the fog that seeks to blind us.

With her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.

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A call to action and a narrative that runs counter to every racist stereotype that thwarts the lives of men of color today.

Will Jawando tells a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color at a time when Black men are routinely stigmatized. As a boy growing up outside DC, Will, who went by his Nigerian name, Yemi, was shunted from school to school, never quite fitting in. He was a Black kid with a divorced white mother, a frayed relationship with his biological father, and teachers who scolded him for being disruptive in class and on the playground. Eventually, he became close to Kalfani, a kid he looked up to on the basketball court. Years after he got the call telling him that Kalfani was dead, another sickening casualty of gun violence, Will looks back on the relationships with an extraordinary series of mentors that enabled him to thrive.

Among them were Mr. Williams, the rare Black male grade school teacher, who found a way to bolster Will’s self-esteem when he discovered he was being bullied; Jay Fletcher, the openly gay colleague of his mother who got him off junk food and took him to his first play; Mr. Holmes, the high school coach and chorus director who saw him through a crushing disappointment; Deen Sanwoola, the businessman who helped him bridge the gap between his American upbringing and his Nigerian heritage, eventually leading to a dramatic reconciliation with his biological father; and President Barack Obama, who made Will his associate director of public engagement at the White House—and who invited him to play basketball on more than one occasion. Without the influence of these men, Will knows he would not be who he is today: a civil rights and education policy attorney, a civic leader, a husband, and a father.

Drawing on Will’s inspiring personal story and involvement in My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s national initiative to address persistent opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color, My Seven Black Fathers offers a transformative way for Black men to shape the next generation.

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Black Indian, searing and raw, is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Alice Walker's The Color Purple meets Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony--only, this isn't fiction. Beautifully rendered and rippling with family dysfunction, secrets, deaths, drunks, and old resentments, Shonda Buchanan's memoir is an inspiring story that explores her family's legacy of being African Americans with American Indian roots and how they dealt with not just society's ostracization but the consequences of this dual inheritance. Buchanan was raised as a Black woman, who grew up hearing cherished stories of her multi-racial heritage, while simultaneously suffering from everything she (and the rest of her family) didn't know. Tracing the arduous migration of Mixed Bloods, or Free People of Color, from the Southeast to the Midwest, Buchanan tells the story of her Michigan tribe -- a comedic yet manically depressed family of fierce women, who were everything from caretakers and cornbread makers to poets and witches, and men who were either ignored, protected, imprisoned, or maimed -- and how their lives collided over love, failure, fights, and prayer despite a stacked deck of challenges, including addiction and abuse. Ultimately, Buchanan's nomadic people endured a collective identity crisis after years of constantly straddling two, then three, races. The physical, spiritual, and emotional displacement of American Indians who met and married Mixed or Black slaves and indentured servants at America's early crossroads is where this powerful journey begins.  Black Indian doesn't have answers, nor does it aim to represent every American's multi-ethnic experience. Instead, it digs as far down into this one family's history as it can go sometimes, with a bit of discomfort. But every family has its own truth, and Buchanan's search for hers will resonate in anyone who has wondered "maybe there's more than what I'm being told."