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  • PRE-ORDER: Starting Over

    La Toya Jackson

    $20.00

    PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 5, 2025

    Michael Jackson’s closest sister pulls back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of the Jackson family, Michael’s tortured soul, and her own love for her brother in this intimate portrait of a beloved, yet troubled, pop legend.

    In this shocking New York Times bestselling memoir, La Toya Jackson pays heartfelt tribute to her legendary brother Michael’s tortured soul and offers unprecedented insight into the troubled entertainer’s tragic destruction.

    La Toya Jackson was always closer to Michael than anyone knew. Now, she sheds light on the intimate moments she shared with the beloved pop legend and unveils the disturbing behind-the-scenes dealings that she believes foretold his death. Like Michael, La Toya experienced an upbringing that made her vulnerable to exploitation, and her own journey led to hell and back at the hands of her former manager and husband. Here, in vivid and candid detail, she reveals the most painful episodes of her deeply personal story and explores how anyone—regardless of fame, fortune, or status—can be trapped in a cycle of abuse. La Toya ultimately found the courage to break free, rebuild her life and career, and reconcile with her close-knit family. Her unforgettable story will touch the hearts of millions of fans and inspire anyone who feels as if there’s nowhere to go that it is possible to truly start over...

  • Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History)

    Andrew J. Torget

    Sold out

    By the late 1810s, a global revolution in cotton had remade the U.S.-Mexico border, bringing wealth and waves of Americans to the Gulf Coast while also devastating the lives and villages of Mexicans in Texas. In response, Mexico threw open its northern territories to American farmers in hopes that cotton could bring prosperity to the region. Thousands of Anglo-Americans poured into Texas, but their insistence that slavery accompany them sparked pitched battles across Mexico. An extraordinary alliance of Anglos and Mexicans in Texas came together to defend slavery against abolitionists in the Mexican government, beginning a series of fights that culminated in the Texas Revolution. In the aftermath, Anglo-Americans rebuilt the Texas borderlands into the most unlikely the first fully committed slaveholders' republic in North America.

    Seeds of Empire tells the remarkable story of how the cotton revolution of the early nineteenth century transformed northeastern Mexico into the western edge of the United States, and how the rise and spectacular collapse of the Republic of Texas as a nation built on cotton and slavery proved to be a blueprint for the Confederacy of the 1860s.

  • Take Your Seat at the Table: Live an Authentic Life of Abundance, Wellness, and Freedom

    Anthony O'Neal

    Sold out

    Find the key to taking ownership of your life and becoming the person God created you to be.

    Are fears and uncertainties keeping you from reaching for your dreams? In Take Your Seat at the Table, bestselling author Anthony O'Neal reveals the indispensable tools and strategies to take ownership of your decisions and step into the life God wants you to live.

    The table has always been the spiritual, emotional, and relational center of a well-lived. The table is a central metaphor of throughout Scripture and it's where the real substance of life--from the mundane to the magnificent--is dreamed up, planned out, prayed over, accomplished, and celebrated. Yet most people aren't intentional about taking a seat at the table of their own lives--let alone prioritizing the important things that happen around the tables in their homes, at work, and beyond.

    In Take Your Seat at the Table, Anthony O'Neal utilizes his trademark humor, compelling stories, and lessons from his life to help you:

    * Become empowered to make the best financial, career, health, emotional, and relational decisions
    * Identify the keys to fostering strong relationships with friends and family, build a "work tribe" that will help you achieve your goals
    * Develop a vision for thriving in every phase of life
    * Discover an eternal quality of life filled with meaning, true abundance (including financial freedom), and joy

    Take Your Seat at the Table equips you to take charge and step into the life God wants you to live. Just about every significant decision, conversation, prayer, celebration, or affirmation takes place around the table--are you ready to take a seat at the head of your own table?

  • In Struggle : SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s

    Clayborne Carson

    $35.00

    With its radical ideology and effective tactics, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the cutting edge of the civil rights movement during the 1960s. This sympathetic yet even-handed book records for the first time the complete story of SNCC's evolution, of its successes and its difficulties in the ongoing struggle to end white repression. At its birth, SNCC was composed of black college students who shared an ideology of moral radicalism. This ideology, with its emphasis on nonviolence, challenged Southern segregation. SNCC students were the earliest civil rights fighters of the Second Reconstruction. They conducted sit-ins at lunch counters, spearheaded the freedom rides, and organized voter registration, which shook white complacency and awakened black political consciousness. In the process, Carson shows, SNCC changed from a group that endorsed white middle-class values to one that questioned the basic assumptions of liberal ideology and raised the fist for black power. Indeed, SNCC's radical and penetrating analysis of the American power structure reached beyond the black community to help spark wider social protests of the 1960s, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement. Carson's history of SNCC goes behind the scene to determine why the group's ideological evolution was accompanied by bitter power struggles within the organization. Using interviews, transcripts of meetings, unpublished position papers, and recently released FBI documents, he reveals how a radical group is subject to enormous, often divisive pressures as it fights the difficult battle for social change.

  • Black Power: Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen!

    Richard Wright

    $18.95

    Three extraordinary and impassioned nonfiction works by Richard Wright, one of America's premier literary giants of the twentieth century, together in one volume, with an introduction by Cornel West.

    “The time is ripe to return to [Wright’s] vision and voice in the face of our contemporary catastrophes and hearken to his relentless commitment to freedom and justice for all.” — Cornel West (from the Introduction)

    Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos is Richard Wright’s chronicle of his trip to Africa’s Gold Coast before it became the free nation of Ghana. It speaks eloquently of empowerment and possibility, freedom and hope, and resonates loudly to this day.

    The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference is a vital piece arguing for the removal of the color barrier and remains one of the key commentaries on the question of race in the modern era. “Truth-telling will perhaps always be unpopular and suspect, but in The Color Curtain . . . Wright did not hesitate to tell the truth as he saw it” (Amritjit Singh, Ohio University).

    White Man, Listen! is a stirring assortment of Wright’s essays on race, politics, and other social concerns close to his heart. It remains a work that “deserves to be read with utmost seriousness, for the attitude it expresses has an intrinsic importance in our times” (New York Times).

  • The Portable Frederick Douglass (Penguin Classics)

    Frederick Douglass

    $25.00

    A new collection of the seminal writings and speeches of a legendary writer, orator, and civil rights leader
     
    This compact volume offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding voice is needed now as urgently as ever. Edited by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Pulitzer Prize–nominated historian John Stauffer, The Portable Frederick Douglass includes the full range of Douglass’s works: the complete Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as well as extracts from My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; The Heroic Slave, one of the first works of African American fiction; the brilliant speeches that launched his political career and that constitute the greatest oratory of the Civil War era; and his journalism, which ranges from cultural and political critique (including his early support for women’s equality) to law, history, philosophy, literature, art, and international affairs, including a never-before-published essay on Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.
     
    The Portable Frederick Douglass is the latest addition in a series of African American classics curated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. First published in 2008, the series reflects a selection of great works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by African and African American authors introduced and annotated by leading scholars and acclaimed writers in new or updated editions for Penguin Classics. In his series essay, “What Is an African American Classic?” Gates provides a broader view of the canon of classics of African American literature available from Penguin Classics and beyond. Gates writes, “These texts reveal the human universal through the African American particular: all true art, all classics do this; this is what ‘art’ is, a revelation of that which makes each of us sublimely human, rendered in the minute details of the actions and thoughts and feelings of a compelling character embedded in a time and place.”
     
    For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

  • Black Woman Grief: A Guide to Hope and Wholeness

    Natasha Smith

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    Dear Black woman, you are not alone.

    God has not disregarded your pain and suffering. God sees you. God knows you. God understands.

    In Black Woman Grief, Natasha Smith unearths a painful reality that is tangled within our nation’s roots and DNA: trauma, loss, and grief are embedded in the lived experience of the Black woman in the United States. Smith talks about grief that is specifically applicable to Black women, providing them with affirmation and a safe place to exhale. Yet, amid a broken world and broken systems that have weighed down Black women for generations, Smith reminds us that there is hope because the kingdom of God is at hand. In Black Woman Grief, Natasha Smith

    * takes us readers through narrative and biblical truths
    * provides a space made by and for Black women to be seen and understood by God
    * encourages Black women to live a God-filled life in a grief-filled world

  • My Bondage and My Freedom: The Givens Collection

    Frederick Douglass

    $26.95

    My Bondage and My Freedom is the second of three published autobiographies from one of the most brilliant and eloquent abolitionists and human rights activists in American history. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published ten years before in 1845, while The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was published twenty-five years later.

  • Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World

    john a. powell

    $30.00

    The root of all inequality is the process of othering – and its solution is the practice of belonging

    We all yearn for connection and community, but we live in a time when calls for further division along the well-wrought lines of religion, race, ethnicity, caste, and sexuality are pervasive. This ubiquitous yet elusive problem feeds on fears – created, inherited – of the "other." While the much-touted diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are undeniably failing, and activists narrowly focus on specific and sometimes conflicting communities, Belonging without Othering prescribes a new approach that encourages us to turn toward one another in unprecedented and radical ways.

    The pressures that separate us have a common root: our tendency to cast people and groups in irreconcilable terms – or the process of "othering." This book gives vital language to this universal problem, unveiling its machinery at work across time and around the world. To subvert it, john a. powell and Stephen Menendian make a powerful and sweeping case for adopting a paradigm of belonging that does not require the creation of an "other." This new paradigm hinges on transitioning from narrow to expansive identities – even if that means challenging seemingly benevolent forms of community-building based on othering.

    As the threat of authoritarianism grows across the globe, this book makes the case that belonging without othering is the necessary, but not the inevitable, next step in our long journey toward creating truly equitable and thriving societies. The authors argue that we must build institutions, cultivate practices, and orient ourselves toward a shared future, not only to heal ourselves, but perhaps to save our planet as well. Brimming with clear guidance, sparkling insights, and specific examples and practices, Belonging without Othering is a future-oriented exploration that ushers us in a more hopeful direction.

  • Brother, I'm Dying

    Edwidge Danticat

    $18.00

    Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
    A National Book Award Finalist
    A New York Times Notable Book

    From the age of four, award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for America. And so she was both elated and saddened when, at twelve, she joined her parents and youngest brothers in New York City. As Edwidge made a life in a new country, adjusting to being far away from so many who she loved, she and her family continued to fear for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorated.

    In 2004, they entered into a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Brother I'm Dying is an astonishing true-life epic, told on an intimate scale by one of our finest writers.

  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States: A Graphic Interpretation (ReVisioning History)

    by Paul Peart-Smith

    $22.95

    *Ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days*

    In stunning full color and accessible text, a graphic adaptation of the American Book Award winning history of the United States as told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples—perfect for readers of all ages

    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s influential New York Times bestseller exposed the brutality of this nation’s founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and genocide. Through evocative full color artwork, renowned cartoonist Paul Peart-Smith brings this watershed book to life, centering the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants to trace Indigenous perseverance over four centuries against policies intended to obliterate them.

    Recognized for his adaptation of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk and his extensive expertise in the comics industry, Peart-Smith collaborates with experienced graphic novel editor Paul Buhle to provide an accessible introduction to a complex history that will attract new generations of readers of all ages. This striking graphic adaptation will rekindle crucial conversations about the centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regime that has largely been omitted from history.

  • Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America

    by Shefali Luthra

    $19.00

    "An absolute must-read; tell your friends; buy it for your family; sit with it on your own. This is storytelling we need." —Rebecca Traister

    An urgent investigation into the experience of seeking an abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and the life-threatening consequences of being denied reproductive freedom.

    On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives.

    Outside of Houston, there’s a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant well before she intends to. A 21-year-old mother barely making ends meet has to travel hundreds of miles in secret for medical treatment in another state. A 42-year-old woman with a life-threatening condition wants nothing more than to safely carry her pregnancy to term, but her home state’s abortion ban fails to provide her with the options she needs to make an informed decision. And a 19-year-old trans man struggles to access care in Florida as abortion bans radiate across the American South.

    Before Dobbs, it was a common misconception that abortion restrictions affected only people in certain states but left one's own life untouched. Since the fall of Roe, a domino effect has cascaded across the entire country. As the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, the experiences of these patients—who crossed state lines to seek life-saving care, who risked everything in pursuit of their own bodily autonomy, and who were unable to plan their reproductive future in the way they deserved—illustrate how fragile the system is, and how devastating the consequences can be.

    A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures.

  • The Women

    Hilton Als

    $17.00

    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    A New York Times Notable Book

    Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other blacks or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.

    Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

  • Beyond the Shores: A History of African Americans Abroad

    Tamara J. Walker

    $28.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • An award-winning author charts the poignant global journeys of African Americans as she explores her own transatlantic family odyssey in Beyond the Shores, a powerful history of living abroad while Black.
     
    “By exploring the life of Black expats, creatives, and activists, Beyond the Shores enhances the stories of migration to reveal how race is lived in the United States and abroad.”—Marcia Chatelain, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of South Side Girls

    Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. Together, the interwoven stories highlight African Americans’ complicated relationship to the United States and the world at large.
     
    Beyond the Shores is not just about where African Americans stayed or where they ate when they traveled but also about why they left in the first place and how they were treated once they reached their destinations. Drawing on years of research, Dr. Tamara J. Walker chronicles their experiences in atmospheric detail, taking readers from well-known capital cities to more unusual destinations like Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, and Kabondo, Kenya. She follows Florence Mills, the would-be Josephine Baker of her day, in Paris, and Richard Wright, the author turned actor and filmmaker, in Buenos Aires. Throughout Beyond the Shores, she relays tender stories of adventurous travelers, including a group of gifted Black crop scientists in the 1930s, a housewife searching for purpose in the 1950s, a Peace Corps volunteer discovering his identity in the 1970s, and her own grandfather, who, after losing his eye fighting in World War II and returning to a country that showed no signs of honoring his sacrifice, set out with his wife and children on a circuitous journey that sent them back and forth across the Atlantic. Tying these tales together is Walker’s personal account of her family’s, and her own, experiences abroad—in France, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, and beyond.
     
    By sharing the accounts of those who escaped the racism of the United States to try their hands at life abroad, Beyond the Shores shines a light on the meaning of home and the search for a better life.

  • The Tears of the Black Man (Global African Voices)
    $16.00

    *ship in 7-10 business days

    In TheTears of the Black Man, award-winning author Alain Mabanckou explores what it means to be black in the world today. Mabanckou confronts the long and entangled history of Africa, France, and the United States as it has been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and their legacy today. Without ignoring the injustices and prejudice still facing blacks, he distances himself from resentment and victimhood, arguing that focusing too intenselyon the crimes of the past is limiting. Instead, it is time to ask: Now what? Embracing the challenges faced by ethnic minority communities today, The Tears of the Black Man looks to the future, choosing to believe that the history of Africa has yet to be written and seeking a path toward affirmation and reconciliation.

  • Our God Is Marching On

    by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

    $22.99

    *ships in 7- 10 business days*

    A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Our God Is Marching On,” part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.

    At the end of the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of a crowd and celebrated the demanding work and effort that had been done by all in the fight against racial injustice for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In this speech, Dr. King testified that this march, for justice had been long and difficult and would continue to be so as those with him resisted the call of normalcy in the name of Jim Crow.

    “Our God Is Marching On” showcases a message of determination, faith, and the unyielding pursuit of equality while remaining committed to nonviolence.

    This beautifully designed hardcover edition presents Dr. King’s speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

  • You Get What You Pay For: Essays

    by Morgan Parker

    $28.00

    *Ships/ready for pick up in 5-8 business days*

    The award-winning author of Magical Negro traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery. In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious. With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.

  • A Child's Introduction to Asian American and Pacific Islander History: The Heroes, the Stories, and the Cultures that Helped to Build America

    by Naomi Hirahara

    $21.99

    The perfect primer for kids ages 8-12, A Child's Introduction to Asian American and Pacific Islander History is packed with remarkable stories, groundbreaking events, and inspirational people, that have made a lasting impact on the history and culture of the United States.

    The latest entry in the award-winning Child’s Introduction series is an inspirational and essential look at the impact and influence that AAPI peoples have made to the culture of the United States. The book is packed with profiles of dozens of AAPI trailblazers from from all walks of life, including political activist Grace Lee Boggs, Vice President Kamala Harris, actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and dozens of others who have made contributions to music, food, sciences, technology, and more. Kids will learn key terms like "Asian American" and "Pacific Islander," how to pronounce common Asian names,  and the discrimination members of the community have faced (and continue to face). They will be introduced to a wide variety of traditions, from Diwali to Lunar New Year and signature dishes, like poi and pho, all giving greater visibility to Asian Americans for young learners. 
     
    Featuring charming illustrations and a lively design, as well as a pull-out poster, A Child's Introduction to Asian American and Pacific Islander History is much-needed addition every home library and classroom.

  • I Have a Dream - 60th Anniversary Edition

    by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    $19.99

     

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    With new forewords and an afterword by Martin Luther King III, Dr. Bernice A. King, and Dexter Scott King

    A beautiful collectible edition celebrating the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s legendary speech at the March on Washington, part of Dr. King’s archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.

    On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before thousands of Americans who had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in the name of civil rights. Including the immortal words, “I have a dream,” Dr. King’s keynote speech would energize a movement and change the course of history.

    With references to the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, Shakespeare, and the Bible, Dr. King’s March on Washington address has long been hailed as one of the greatest pieces of writing and oration in history. Profound and deeply moving, it is as relevant today as it was sixty years earlier.

    This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King’s speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality. 

  • Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era

    by Nell Irvin Painter

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    *ships in 7-10 business days

    An “enthralling” (Michael Kazin, Washington Post) account of America’s shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.

    In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological innovation made possible dramatic increases in industrial and agricultural productivity; by 1919, per-capita gross national product had soared. But this new wealth and new power were not distributed evenly. In this landmark work—with continued resonance for our times—acclaimed historian Nell Irvin Painter illuminates the class, economic, and political conflicts that defined the Progressive era. Demonstrating the ways in which racial and social hierarchies were interwoven with reform movements, she offers a lively and comprehensive view of Americans, rich and working-class, at the precipice of change.

  • Urban Apologetics: Restoring Black Dignity with the Gospel

    by Eric Mason

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    This book will be a first-of-its-kind resource in the market, engaging cults and alternative religious groups specific to the African American community.

    Urban Apologetics examines the legitimate issues that Black communities have with Western Christianity and shows how the gospel of Jesus Christ—rather than popular, socioreligious alternatives—restores our identity.

    African Americans have long confronted the challenge of dignity destruction caused by white supremacy. While many have found meaning and restoration of dignity in the black church, others have found it in ethnocentric socioreligious groups and philosophies.

    These ideologies have grown and developed deep traction in the black community and beyond. Revisionist history, conspiracy theories, and misinformation about Jesus and Christianity are the order of the day. Many young African Americans are disinterested in Christianity and others are leaving the church in search of what these false religious ideas appear to offer, a spirituality more indigenous to their history and ethnicity.

    Edited by Dr. Eric Mason and featuring a top-notch lineup of contributors, Urban Apologetics is the first book focused entirely on cults, religious groups, and ethnocentric ideologies prevalent in the black community. The book is divided into three main parts:

    • Discussions on the unique context for urban apologetics so that you can better understand the cultural arguments against Christianity among the Black community.
    • Detailed information on cults, religious groups, and ethnic identity groups that many urban evangelists encounter—such as the Nation of Islam, Kemetic spirituality, African mysticism, Hebrew Israelites, Black nationalism, and atheism.
    • Specific tools for urban apologetics and community outreach.

    Ultimately, Urban Apologetics applies the gospel to black identity to show that Jesus is the only one who can restore it. This is an essential resource to equip those doing the work of ministry and apology in urban communities with the best available information.

  • Care Activism: Migrant Domestic Workers, Movement-Building, and Communities of Care

    by Ethel Tungohan

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    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Care activism challenges the stereotype of downtrodden migrant caregivers by showing that care workers have distinct ways of caring for themselves, for each other, and for the larger transnational community of care workers and their families. Ethel Tungohan illuminates how the goals and desires of migrant care worker activists goes beyond political considerations like policy changes and overturning power structures. Through practices of subversive friendships and being there for each other, care activism acts as an extension of the daily work that caregivers do, oftentimes also instilling practices of resistance and critical hope among care workers. At the same time, the communities created by care activism help migrant caregivers survive and even thrive in the face of arduous working and living conditions and the pains surrounding family separation. As Tungohan shows, care activism also unifies caregivers to resist society’s legal and economic devaluations of care and domestic work by reaffirming a belief that they, and what they do, are important and necessary.

  • Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women

    by Shanita Hubbard

    $18.99

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    Cultural criticism and pop culture history intertwine in this important book, which dissects how hip hop has sidelined Black women's identity and emotional well-being.

    A “ride-or-die chick” is a woman who holds down her family and community. She’s your girl that you can call up in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail, and you know she’ll show up and won’t ask any questions. Her ride-or-die trope becomes a problem when she does it indiscriminately. She does anything for her family, friends, and significant other, even at the cost of her own well-being. “No” is not in her vocabulary. Her self-worth is connected to how much labor she can provide for others. She goes above and beyond for everyone in every aspect of her life—work, family, church, even if it’s not reciprocated, and doesn’t require it to be because she’s a “strong Black woman” and everyone’s favorite ride-or-die chick. To her, love should be earned, and there’s no limit to what she’ll do for it.
     
    In this book, author, adjunct professor of sociology, and former therapist Shanita Hubbard disrupts the ride-or-die complex and argues that this way of life has left Black women exhausted, overworked, overlooked, and feeling depleted. She suggests that Black women are susceptible to this mentality because it’s normalized in our culture. It rings loud in your favorite hip-hop songs, and it even shows up in the most important relationship you will ever have—the one with yourself.
     
    Compassionate, candid, hard-hitting, and  100 percent unapologetic, Ride or Die melds Hubbard’s entertaining conversations with her Black girlfriends and her personal experiences as a redeemed ride-or-die chick and a former “captain of the build-a-brother team” to fervently dismantle cultural norms that require Black women to take care of everyone but themselves.
     
    Ride or Die urges you to expel the myth that your self-worth is connected to how much labor you provide others and guides you toward healing. Using hip hop as a backdrop to explore norms that are harmful to Black women, Hubbard shows the ways you may be unknowingly perpetuating this harm within your relationships. This book is an urgent call for you to pull the plug on the ride-or-die chick.

  • Racism Untaught: Revealing and Unlearning Racialized Design

    edited by Lisa E. Mercer & Terresa Moses

    $26.95

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

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

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

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

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

  • Brothers in the Beloved Community: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr.

    by Marc Andrus

    $17.95
    The never-before-told story of the friendship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Thich Nhat Hanh—icons who changed each other and the world

    The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a heartbroken letter to their mutual friend Raphael Gould. He said: "I did not sleep last night. . . . They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us. I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind and manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say. . . . He made so great an impression in me. This morning I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss." 
     
    Only a few years earlier, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote an open letter to Martin Luther King Jr. as part of his effort to raise awareness and bring peace in Vietnam. There was an unexpected outcome of Nhat Hanh's letter to King: The two men met in 1966 and 1967 and became not only allies in the peace movement, but friends. This friendship between two prophetic figures from different religions and cultures, from countries at war with one another, reached a great depth in a short period of time. Dr. King nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He wrote: "Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity."

    The two men bonded over a vision of the Beloved Community: a vision described recently by Congressman John Lewis as "a nation and world society at peace with itself." It was a concept each knew of because of their membership within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international peace organization, and that Martin Luther King Jr. had been popularizing through his work for some time. Thich Nhat Hanh, Andrus shows, took the lineage of the Beloved Community from King and carried it on after his death. 

    In Brothers in the Beloved Community, Marc Andrus tells the little-known story of a friendship between two giants of our time.
  • Put Y'all Back in Chains: How Joe Biden's Policies Hurt Black Americans

    by Horace Cooper

    Sold out

    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    Put Y’all Back in Chains outlines how the policies of President Joe Biden harm Black communities and limit opportunities for their success.

    “Whether you agree or disagree, Horace Cooper’s latest book tackles the question of how Joe Biden’s policies affect Americans, especially those in minority and underserved communities. His research shows that the injuries are calamitous. Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats, the Biden policies are having a reverse effect, one that devastates bank accounts, crushes entrepreneurship, and steals the promise of the American Dream.

    Horace painstakingly combs through the harsh results of these efforts, especially on lower income and working class people, who are hit hardest by the woke-policies of Joe Biden. If you want to see the real story the media isn’t telling, this book is a must read!”

    –Sean Hannity, Fox News Host

    A thorough examination of the ways that the policies of President Joe Biden are antithetical to the aspirations and dreams of Blacks, Put Y’all Back in Chains uncovers the reasons that the policies of the Biden Administration hurt Black communities in particular. And this is no accident.

    Progressive policymakers relished Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, his experiments with higher unemployment benefits and related regulatory programs, and especially his push for the green agenda. Consequently, working-class people, especially Black men, were hardest hit when it comes to finding employment as well as maintaining their financial lifestyle. Tragically, the Biden Agenda hurt the entire Black community, affecting educational attainment, wealth creation, and homeownership.

    These dramatic downward changes were particularly hard to absorb for Black households, especially those that made tremendous gains during the Trump Administration.

    It is increasingly clear that President Joe Biden’s priorities place Blacks at the back of the political bus. 

    In this thoroughly researched book, Horace Cooper outlines how the minority group most likely to support Biden—Blacks—are systematically impaired by this White House and why the Black community needs to turn away from the Biden Administration and toward a brighter future.

  • Toward Liberation: Educational Practices Rooted in Activism, Healing and Love

    by Jamilah Pitts

    $21.95

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    An essential guide for frontline educators to address systemic racial oppression, repair harm, and foster safe, inclusive learning spaces for their students

    For educators and readers of Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive, with a foreword by Leigh Patel, author of No Study Without Struggle


    Toward Liberation is the timely and practical guide that pioneers new pathways for educators to repair harm and foster transformative learning spaces. This road map for liberatory pedagogy is replete with resources, tools, and strategies drawn from Jamilah Pitts's experiences as a young Black girl, a Black student, a teacher, a former school leader, and a consultant with schools across the country.

    Educators will want to mark up and keep their copy of Toward Liberation at their desks for easy reference. In its pages, they will find

    • Real-life examples and student writing from Pitts’s classroom
    • Explorative questions for teachers to consider in their equity work
    • Constructive charts that map out manifestations of harm
    • Activities to engage students in liberatory learning
    • Healing and self-care strategies for teachers—particularly Black women educators


    Pitts infuses her writing with an extensive knowledge base of the education system, honed over years as a teacher, a coach, a dean, an assistant principal, and a national education consultant. The tenets of this book—rooted in truthtelling, activism, healing, wellness, self-care, and, ultimately, love— both inform and are inspired by the healing work Pitts does with educators to this day. In doing this work, she helps to reimagine the role of the critical teacher.

    Toward Liberation equips teachers with the tools they need to carve a path toward liberatory educational practices, ensuring that students are afforded the full range of their humanity and their experience, in and out of the classroom.

  • Dear Cis(gender) People: A Guide to Allyship and Empathy

    by Kenny Ethan Jones

    $24.99

    *ships in 7 - 10 days*

    A powerful call to arms to empower cisgender people to be better allies, blending memoir, detailed research, and interviews.

    The trans experience is all too often the subject of fierce debate in the media and online. While we’re having more and more conversations about the trans experience, the stark reality is that hate crimes against the trans community have quadrupled over the past five years and that two in five trans young people have attempted suicide.  

    But behind the shock headlines and the distressing statistics, what does it really mean to be trans?

    In this powerful, extensively researched, and deeply personal book, Kenny Ethan Jones, a trans activist and writer, offers an authentic and in-depth insight into the trans experience. From gender dysphoria to surgery, from being outed to finding love and considering parenthood, Kenny Ethan Jones draws on his own life and the stories of others from the trans and nonbinary communities to create discussion around the complexities and reality of the trans experiences in today’s society.

    Dear Cis(Gender) People is a powerful call to arms, equipping people of every gender with the tools to step forward as allies in order to bring about meaningful change. Through acting and speaking out, we can create a safer, fairer world for trans people—a world in which all of us can exist as our most authentic selves and celebrate who we are without fear.

  • The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future

    by Robert P. Jones

    $29.99

     

     

    Taking the story of white supremacy in America back to 1493, and examining contemporary communities in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma for models of racial repair, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy helps chart a new course toward a genuinely pluralistic democracy.

    Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. Along the way, he shows us the connections between Emmett Till and the Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto in the Mississippi Delta, between the lynching of three Black circus workers in Duluth and the mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota men in Mankato, and between the murder of 300 African Americans during the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa and the Trail of Tears.

    From this vantage point, Jones shows how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans. These deeds were justified by people who embraced the 15th century Doctrine of Discovery: the belief that God had designated all territory not inhabited or controlled by Christians as their new promised land.

    This reframing of American origins explains how the founders of the United States could build the philosophical framework for a democratic society on a foundation of mass racial violence—and why this paradox survives today in the form of white Christian nationalism. Through stories of people navigating these contradictions in three communities, Jones illuminates the possibility of a new American future in which we finally fulfill the promise of a pluralistic democracy.

     

  • The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience since the 1960s

    by Emily J. Lordi

    $26.95
    Examining the work of Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Solange Knowles, Flying Lotus, and others, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of soul, showing how it came to signify a belief in black resilience enacted through musical practices.

    In The Meaning of Soul, Emily J. Lordi proposes a new understanding of this famously elusive concept. In the 1960s, Lordi argues, soul came to signify a cultural belief in black resilience, which was enacted through musical practices—inventive cover versions, falsetto vocals, ad-libs, and false endings. Through these soul techniques, artists such as Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, and Minnie Riperton performed virtuosic survivorship and thus helped to galvanize black communities in an era of peril and promise. Their soul legacies were later reanimated by such stars as Prince, Solange Knowles, and Flying Lotus. Breaking with prior understandings of soul as a vague masculinist political formation tethered to the Black Power movement, Lordi offers a vision of soul that foregrounds the intricacies of musical craft, the complex personal and social meanings of the music, the dynamic movement of soul across time, and the leading role played by black women in this musical-intellectual tradition.
  • Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance

    by Francesca Royster

    $26.00

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago’s North and South Sides

    As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts.

    Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a “queer” attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy—about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you.

  • Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (1ST ed.)

    Mary Frances Berry & John W. Blassingame

    $109.99
    A survey of Afro-American history is organized around the themes of the family and church, sex and racism, politics, education, criminal justice, and Black nationalism

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