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  • High on the Hog : A Culinary Journey from Africa to America

    by Jessica B. Harris

    $20.00

    Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris weaves an utterly engaging history of African American cuisine, taking the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, and tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form an important part of African American culture, history, and identity. Although the story of African cuisine in America begins with slavery, High on the Hog ultimately chronicles a thrilling history of triumph and survival. The work of a masterful storyteller and an acclaimed scholar, Jessica B. Harris's High on the Hog fills an important gap in our culinary history.

  • Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

    by Angela Y. Davis

    $15.95
    Activist, teacher, author and icon of the Black Power movement Angela Davis talks Ferguson, Palestine, and prison abolition.

    In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.

    Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.

    Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."
  • Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

    by Saidiya Hartman

    $17.95

    Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Here, for the first time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments recovers these women’s radical aspirations and insurgent desires.

  • African History of Africa, An: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence

    Zeinab Badawi

    $32.50

    Already a major international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi’s sweeping and much-needed survey of African history traces the continent’s extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective.

    “Equal parts gripping and galvanizing. . . . Researched across more than 30 countries, it brings the dazzling civilizations of pre-colonial Africa vividly to life. A book that feels both long-overdue—and wholly worth the wait.” —British Vogue

    Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone.

    For too long, Africa’s history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight.

    In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa’s spectacular history—from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story.

    The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

  • Not Everyone is Going to Like You: Thoughts From a Former People Pleaser

    by Rinny Perkins

    $17.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    A debut illustrated manifesto by Rinny Perkins (@RinnyRiot) about what she's learned as a queer Black woman through the art of self-validation.

    In this graphic collection of mini essays, comedian Rinny Perkins illustrates her experiences as the owner of a popular online shop while she figures out antidepressant prescriptions and the seemingly never-ending dating-app cycle.
     
    Rinny shares what she's learned across topics like mental health, work, sex and dating, and family and friends. Featuring funny, real reflections from experiences in her hometown of (Third Ward!) Houston, Texas to Los Angeles — the author traces her journey to understanding that whether through a friendship break-up or saving up for a Telfar bag, the only person who can truly validate us is ourselves.
     
    With 1970s-inspired graphics like a "When To Quit Your Job" checklist and Microaggressions Bingo, Not Everyone's Going to Like You is a long DM of affirmations from Rinny to herself on how to get through life. Her advice? Stop ignoring your intuition, ignore perfection, and leave them on read.

  • The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism: Transform, Heal, and Remember with the Power of Plants and Ancestral Medicine

    by Karen M. Rose

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    The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism, written by leading Black herbalist Karen Rose, addresses herbalism and medicine making from the perspective of diasporic ancestral traditions.

     

    Guided by leading Black herbalistKaren Rose, discover how to harness the magic of plants and diasporic ancestral practices in remedies and ritual.

    Master Herbalist Karen Rose is a first-generation immigrant from Guyana with ancestors from Ghana, the Congo, China, and India who continues her grandmother’s legacy as a healer and herbalist. In The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism, she shares her wisdom on how to partner plants and rituals to guide the process of self-healing. As you alleviate physical symptoms and heal emotional and spiritual imbalances, you will see how plants can help you stand in your power, strengthen your intuition, and provide protection.

    This guide to harnessing the power of plants is a practical tool for working through the symptoms of body disease and the underlying emotional and spiritual issues. Organized by major body systems—circulatory, respiratory, digestive, liver, sexual, skin, nervous systems, and immune health—The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism gives a brief overview of the physical mechanisms of the system, the spiritual correspondences associated with that system, and the plants, remedies, and rituals that can be used to bring oneself back to healing and balance.

    Accompanied by beautiful color illustrations of the plants, the organs they affect, and their related spirits, or orishas, each plant profile includes:

    • Botanical and pharmacological information
    • Planetary correspondences
    • Ethnobotanical and historical use
    • Healing properties and indications
    • Methods of preparation and dosage


    Applying this herbal wisdom, the recipes include:

    • 4th Chakra Heart Oil for healing a broken heart, also helpful for healing generational trauma
    • Inspired Sleep and Dreams Tea to inspire dreams
    • Breathe Easy Steam to improve respiratory health
    • Immunity Chai Tea to fight off cold and flu viruses
    • Laying Hands Stomach and Womb Oil for indigestion and menstrual discomfort
    • A Castor Oil Pack for Liver Health to remove pain and swelling from sprains and bruises


    Filled with stories, ancestral recipes, and accessible practices that anyone can use, The Art & Practice of Spiritual Herbalism shows you how to use the power of plants for spiritual and physical healing.

  • Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole, Authentic Self

    by Thema Bryant, Ph.D.

    Sold out
    A road map for dismantling the fear and shame that keep you from living a free and authentic life.

    In the aftermath of stress, disappointment, and trauma, people often fall into survival mode, even while a part of them longs for more. Juggling multiple demands and responsibilities keeps them busy, but not healed. As a survivor of sexual assault, racism, and evacuation from a civil war in Liberia, Dr. Thema Bryant knows intimately the work involved in healing. Having made the journey herself, in addition to guiding others as a clinical psychologist and ordained minister, Dr. Thema shows you how to reconnect with your authentic self and reclaim your time, your voice, your life.

    Signs of disconnection from self can take many forms, including people-pleasing, depression, anxiety, and resentment. Healing starts with recognizing and expressing emotions in an honest way and reconnecting with the neglected parts of yourself, but it can’t be done in a vacuum. Dr. Thema gives you the tools to meaningfully connect with your larger community, even if you face racism and sexism, heartbreak, grief, and trauma. Rather than shrinking in the face of life’s difficulties, you will discover in Homecoming the therapeutic approaches and spiritual practices to live a more expansive life characterized by empowerment, healthier relationships, gratitude, and a deeper sense of purpose.
  • Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

    by W. E. B. Du Bois

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    The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.

    This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 has justly been called a classic.
  • They Came Before Columbus

    by Ivan Van Sertima

    $20.00
    “A landmark…brilliantly [demonstrates] has that there is far more to black history than the slave trade.”—John A. Williams

    They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America. Examining navigation and shipbuilding; cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans; the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents; and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus.

    Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. In They Came Before Columbus, we see clearly the unmistakable face and handprint of black Africans in pre-Columbian America, and their overwhelming impact on the civilizations they encountered.
  • Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

    by Ibram Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

    $20.00
    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*
    “choral history” of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 90 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and award-winning historian Keisha N. Blain.

    2019 marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first captive Africans in Virginia—and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and Keisha N. Blain, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. They’ve gathered together ninety Black writers from all disciplines to tell one of history’s great epics: the journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present. With lyrical interludes from ten poets, eighty writers take on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span, exploring their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemic. This comprehensive, dynamic, single-volume work is an essential historical keepsake.

  • Spirits Come from Water: An Introduction to Ancestral Veneration and Reclaiming African Spiritual Practices

    by Ehime Ora

    Sold out

    A thoughtful guide to ancestral veneration, with a focus on the importance of reclaiming African Spiritual practices as an act of liberation.

    Your ancestors remember you. Do you remember them? They have been waiting for this very moment in time.

    In this book, Ifa and Orisa priestess Ehime Ora shares the importance of connection to the ancestors, and to one’s spiritual roots. There’s a certain type of radical healing that takes place when we recommend to our ancestral veneration and follow through with their wisdom.

    Providing healing through the written word, Ehime walks you though the reclamation of African Spiritual practices, discussing the spiritual renaissance occurring in the African community, and includes interviews with elders of the rich traditions. She also provides tangible spiritual tools so that you can incorporate ancestral veneration in your life: how to properly set up and work with an ancestral altar, the importance of spiritual hygiene, and bringing forth the concept of the ori, or the higher self.

  • Good Sex: Stories, Science, and Strategies for Sexual Liberation

    Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD.

    Sold out

    We all deserve sex that's great for everyone involved. Let sexual liberation be your guide to a truly satisfying sex life.

    How we define good sex and the conditions that facilitate it will require a liberatory approach, because intersecting oppressions impose impossible sexual standards on most of us. Instead of intimate justice, we experience blocks to accessing the ingredients for erotic equity.

    Good Sex presents the ingredients to revolutionize your sexual menu in a way that works well for you, including intimacy, fun, pleasure, nastiness, and connection. Each chapter offers more than just theory and science. Good Sex outlines action steps to understand, define, and practice sexual liberation in your personalized way, replacing the unseasoned sexual menu most of us were socialized into.

  • This Year You Write Your Novel

    Walter Mosley

    Sold out

    "Let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls," bestselling novelist Walter Mosley advises. In this invaluable book of tips, practical advice, and wisdom, Mosley promises that the writer-in-waiting can finish their novel in one year.

    Intended as both inspiration and instruction, this book provides the tools to turn out a first draft painlessly and then revise it into something finer. Mosley teaches you how to:

    • Create a daily writing regimen to fit any writer's needs -- and how to stick to it.
    • Determine the narrative voice that's right for every writer's style.
    • Hook readers with dynamic characters.
    • Get past those first challenging sentences and into the heart of a story.
    • And much more.
  • The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

    edited by Roxane Gay

    Sold out
    A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

    Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

    Among the essays included here are:

    • "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
    • "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"
    • "I Am Your Sister"
    • Excerpts from the American Book Award–winning A Burst of Light

    The poems are drawn from Lorde’s nine volumes, including The Black Unicorn and National Book Award finalist From a Land Where Other People Live. Among them are:

    • "Martha"
    • "A Litany for Survival"
    • "Sister Outsider"
    • "Making Love to Concrete"
  • How Am I Doing?: 40 Conversations to Have with Yourself

    by Corey Yeager

    $14.99

     

    Life is hard. But it gets a whole lot easier when you start to talk it out. In How Am I Doing?, you're invited into a series of conversations with yourself to discover your purpose, honor your story, and explore who you want to be.

    Dr. Corey Yeager, psychotherapist for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons and most recently featured on Oprah and Prince Harry's The Me You Can't See on Apple TV+, offers you 40 questions to help you raise awareness of your thoughts and emotions and reconnect with who you want to be.

    Over the course of these 40 conversations with yourself, you're invited to:

    • Build trust with yourself
    • Consider how past traumas affect your life today
    • Grow a practice of positive self-talk
    • Let go of guilt and regret from your past
    • Develop mental health strategies for what to for moments when you're depressed or anxious
    • Increase your confidence and embrace your emotions

     Each of the 40 questions is paired with a short, thoughtful reflection from Dr. Yeager, along with prompts and self-care strategies to help you look at yourself in the mirror and come into alignment with who you want to be.

    So join the conversation; nothing is off-limits here. Come check in with yourself and take these small, simple steps to journey toward a more honest and harmonious way of living.

  • Torn Apart

    by Dorothy Roberts

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    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change 

    Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families and placed in foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment.

    The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing, Torn Apart argues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities. 

  • Bad Fat Black Girl

    by Sesali Bowen

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    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love. Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism and hip-hop intersect.

  • They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

    by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

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    Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave‑owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave‑owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

  • Abolition. Feminism. Now.

    by Angela Y. Davis

    $16.95
    Abolition. Feminism. Now. is a celebration of freedom work, a movement genealogy, a call to action, and a challenge to those who think of abolition and feminism as separate—even incompatible—political projects.

    In this remarkable collaborative work, leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie surface the often unrecognized genealogies of queer, anti-capitalist, internationalist, grassroots, and women-of-color-led feminist movements, struggles, and organizations that have helped to define abolition and feminism in the twenty-first century.

    This pathbreaking book also features illustrations documenting the work of grassroots organizers embodying abolitionist feminist practice.

    Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated out of vibrant community based organizing, 
    Abolition. Feminism. Now. highlights necessary historical linkages, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to imagine a future where we can all thrive.
  • Mouths of Rain

    by Briona Simone Jones

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    A Ms. magazine, Refinery29, and Lambda Literary Most Anticipated Read of 2021

    A groundbreaking collection tracing the history of intellectual thought by Black Lesbian writers, in the tradition of The New Press's perennial seller Words of Fire

    African American lesbian writers and theorists have made extraordinary contributions to feminist theory, activism, and writing. Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's classic Words of Fire, traces the long history of intellectual thought produced by Black Lesbian writers, spanning the nineteenth century through the twenty-first century.

    Using “Black Lesbian” as a capacious signifier, Mouths of Rain includes writing by Black women who have shared intimate and loving relationships with other women, as well as Black women who see bonding as mutual, Black women who have self-identified as lesbian, Black women who have written about Black Lesbians, and Black women who theorize about and see the word lesbian as a political descriptor that disrupts and critiques capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy. Taking its title from a poem by Audre Lorde, Mouths of Rain addresses pervasive issues such as misogynoir and anti-blackness while also attending to love, romance, “coming out,” and the erotic.

  • The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred

    by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

    $17.99

    In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter -- all with a new spin informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek.

  • Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators

    by The Education for Liberation Network & Critical Resistance Editorial Collective

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    A political vision for a future ripe with alternatives to imprisonment and punishment.

    Born from sustained organizing, and rooted in Black and women of color feminisms, disability justice, and other movements, abolition calls for an end to our reliance on imprisonment, policing and surveillance, and to imagine a safer future for our communities.

    Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators offers entry points to build critical and intentional bridges between educational practice and the growing movement for abolition. Designed for educators, parents, and young people, this toolkit shines a light on innovative abolitionist projects, particularly in pre-K–12 learning contexts.

    Sections are dedicated to entry points into Prison Industrial Complex abolition and education; the application of the lessons and principles of abolition; and stories about growing abolition outside of school settings. Topics addressed throughout include student organizing, immigrant justice in the face of ICE, approaches to sex education, arts-based curriculum, and building abolitionist skills and thinking in lesson plans.

    The result of patient and urgent work, and more than five years in the making, Lessons in Liberation invites educators into the work of abolition.

    Contributors include Black Organizing Project, Chicago Women’s Health Center, Mariame Kaba and Project NIA, Bettina L. Love, the MILPA Collective, and artists from the Justseeds Collective, among others.

  • From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

    by Tembi Locke

    $18.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    It was love at first sight when actress Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of his marrying a black American woman. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forged on. They built a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships, and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopted at birth. Eventually, they reconciled with Saro’s family just as he faced a formidable cancer that would consume all their dreams.

    From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family, now she finds solace and nourishment—literally and spiritually—at her mother-in-law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s romance—an incredible love story that leaps off the pages.

    In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death—in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. “Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones” (Publishers Weekly), but her story is also about love, finding a home, and chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is...delicious.

  • remembered rapture

    by bell hooks

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    In Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, award-winning author and renowned academic “bell hooks reveals the heart of her writing life and the process through which she has come to be known as a ‘visionary feminist’” (Essence).

    Born and raised in the rural South, bell hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays.

    Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. With grace and insight, these essays reveal bell hooks’s wide-ranging intellectual scope, untangling the complex personae of women writers, especially those whose work goes against the grain.

    “For anyone who writes, or seeks to understand the writing process, or wants to know more about the erudite and passionate mind of bell hooks, this is the book to read.”―The Philadelphia Inquirer

  • Farming While Black

    by Leah Penniman

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    Farming While Black is the first comprehensive “how to” guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described—from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement.

  • How to Focus (Mindfulness Essentials)

    Thich Nhat Hanh

    $10.95

    The simple, refreshing meditations of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh give us the tools to cultivate concentration. Practicing mindfulness brings concentration, and concentration brings insight and understanding.

    With our world experiencing the deep effects of loneliness, digital overload, and a proliferation of potential distractions, this pocket-sized How To book reminds us of the value of developing our concentration, so we can let go of misperceptions and cultivate the clarity of mind that is the basis for understanding ourselves, each other, and the world.
     
    Written with characteristic simplicity and kindness, these wise meditations teach us that by practicing mindfulness in daily life, we are cultivating the power of concentration and fostering the conditions that bring insight, liberating us from misperceptions and misunderstanding.

    The Mindfulness Essentials series is a back-to-basics collection from world-renowned Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh that introduces readers to the essentials of mindfulness practice. All Mindfulness Essentials books are illustrated with playful sumi-ink drawings by California artist Jason DeAntonis.

  • The New Red Book: A Guide to 50 of Houston's Black Historical and Cultural Sites

    by Lindsay Gary

    $18.95
    The New Red Book by Lindsay Gary highlights the history of Houston through the perspective of place - 50 cultural organizations and sites created and sustained by African Americans. It documents little-known histories of the Almeda Post Office, the site of the first non-violent civil rights demonstration in the city, as well as pop culture destinations such as Frenchy's Creole Kitchen and Screwed Up Records and Tapes. The title pays tribute to the original 1915 publication The Red Book of Houston: A Compendium of Social, Professional, Religious, Education and Industrial Interests of Houston's Colored Population, recognized by researchers as one of a kind for its detailed description of African American success in the South during a time of social and political upheaval. Gary's devotion to her hometown and commitment to community shines through her accessible writing. She takes readers on a rich and compelling journey through the histories of Houston, the region, and African American culture.
  • I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive

    by Zora Neale Hurston

    $19.95

    A collection of essays, fiction, journalism, folklore, and autobiography, preserving the legacy of one of the Harlem Renaissance’s greatest writers.

    The foundational, classic anthology that revived interest in the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God—"one of the greatest writers of our time"—and made her work widely available for a new generation of readers (Toni Morrison).

    During her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston was praised for her writing but condemned for her independence and audacity. Her work fell into obscurity until the 1970s, when Alice Walker rediscovered Hurston's unmarked grave and anthologized her writing in this groundbreaking collection for the Feminist Press. 

    I Love Myself When I Am Laughing... And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive established Hurston as an intellectual leader for future generations of black writers. A testament to the power and breadth of Hurston's oeuvre, this edition—newly reissued for the Feminist Press's fiftieth anniversary—features a new preface by Walker.

    "Through Hurston, the soul of the black South gained one of its most articulate interpreters." —The New York Times

  • The Mis-education of the Negro

    by Carter G. Woodson

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    The most influential work by “the father of Black history”, reflecting the long-standing tradition of antiracist teaching pioneered by Black educators

    A Penguin Classic


       The Mis-education of the Negro (1933) is Woodson’s most popular classic work of Black social criticism, drawing on history, theory, and memoir. As both student and teacher, Woodson witnessed the distortions of Black life in the history and literature taught in schools and universities. He argued that there was a relationship between these distortions and the violence that circumscribed Black life in the material world, declaring, “There would be no lynching it if did not start in the schoolroom.” Woodson’s primary focus was the impact dominant modes of schooling had on Black youth. From Emancipation through the 1930s, white Americans continued to control the institutional and ideological development of Black schools, based on a system of knowledge that reinforced ideas of Black inferiority.
        Across the country, Black teachers organized to make their curricula more relevant for students, and they critiqued the studious omission of Black life in formal curricula, anticipating many of the ideas appearing in Mis-education two decades later. Woodson wrote that the overrepresentation of white people and narratives of white achievement in curricula presented an outsize image of whites and their importance in the history of human progress. These distortions had the power to motivate white students to achieve and aspire and demotivate students of races that suffered under the hand of white supremacy. They cultivated an aspiration to whiteness among Black people and/or led them to despise their own race for its supposed lack of achievement. This was a systematic process of mis-education, articulating an aspect of Black America’s experience that scholars before and after Woodson recognized and worked to challenge.
        Woodson argued that students, teachers, and leaders needed to be educated in a manner that was accountable to Black experiences and lived realities, both past and present. With current debates over teaching race in U.S. classrooms, the ideas associated with Mis-education continue to resonate today.

  • How to Be a (Young) Antiracist

    by Ibram X. Kendi & Nic Stone

    from $14.99

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    The #1 New York Times bestseller that sparked international dialogue is now a book for young adults! Based on the adult bestseller by Ibram X. Kendi, and co-authored by bestselling author Nic Stone, How to be a (Young) Antiracist will serve as a guide for teens seeking a way forward in acknowledging, identifying, and dismantling racism and injustice.

    The New York Times bestseller How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is shaping the way a generation thinks about race and racism. How to be a (Young) Antiracist is a dynamic reframing of the concepts shared in the adult book, with young adulthood front and center. Aimed at readers 12 and up, and co-authored by award-winning children's book author Nic Stone, How to be a (Young) Antiracist empowers teen readers to help create a more just society. Antiracism is a journey--and now young adults will have a map to carve their own path. Kendi and Stone have revised this work to provide anecdotes and data that speaks directly to the experiences and concerns of younger readers, encouraging them to think critically and build a more equitable world in doing so.

  • killing rage: Ending Racism

    by bell hooks

    $19.00

    One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race.

    Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"--the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism--finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change.

    bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College of New York. She is the author of the memoir Bone Black as well as eleven other books. She lives in New York City.

  • Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair by Tameka Ellington
    $39.95
    Textures synthesizes research in history, fashion, art, and visual culture to reassess the “hair story” of peoples of African descent. Long a fraught topic for African Americans and others in the diaspora, Black hair is here addressed by artists, barbers, and activists in both its historical perceptions and its ramifications for self and society today. Combs, products, and implements from the collection of hair pioneer Willie Morrow are paired here with masterworks from artists like Sonya Clark, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Alison Saar. Exploring topics such as the preferential treatment of straight hair, the social hierarchies of skin, and the power and politics of display, Textures is a landmark exploration of Black hair and its important, complicated place in the history of African American life and culture.

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