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  • The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

    by Toni Morrison

    $19.00
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR).

    These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (
    The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved,Paradise) and that of others.

    An essential collection from an essential writer, 
    The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.
  • Just Us: An American Conversation

    by Claudia Rankine

    $20.00

    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? “I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room,” she writes.


    This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness deflect true engagement in our shared problems. Rankine makes unprecedented art out of the actual voices and rebuttals of others: White men responding to, and with, their White male privilege; a friend clarifying her unexpected behavior at a play; and women on the street expressing the political currency of dyeing their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complement Rankine’s own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Funny, vulnerable, and prescient, Just Us is Rankine’s most intimate and urgent book, a crucial call to challenge our vexed reality.

  • Feminist AF: A Guide to Crushing Girlhood

    by Brittney Cooper

    $16.95

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    Hip-hop and feminism combine in this empowering guide with attitude, from best-selling author Brittney Cooper and founding members of the Crunk Feminist Collective.

    Loud and rowdy girls, quiet and nerdy girls, girls who rock naturals, girls who wear weave, outspoken and opinionated girls, girls still finding their voice, queer girls, trans girls, and gender nonbinary young people who want to make the world better: Feminist AF uses the insights of feminism to address issues relevant to today’s young womxn.

    What do you do when you feel like your natural hair is ugly, or when classmates keep touching it? How do you handle your self-confidence if your family or culture prizes fair-skinned womxn over darker-skinned ones? How do you balance your identities if you’re an immigrant or the child of immigrants? How do you dress and present yourself in ways that feel good when society condemns anything outside of the norm? Covering colorism and politics, romance and pleasure, code switching, and sexual violence, Feminist AF is the empowering guide to living your feminism out loud.

  • With Pleasure: Managing Trauma Triggers For More Vibrant Sex And Relationships

    by August McLaughling & Jamila Dawson

    Sold out

    A companion for anyone experiencing the effects of trauma, featuring true stories of survivors from a broad, inclusive range of backgrounds

    With Pleasure: Managing Trauma Triggers for More Vibrant Sex and Relationships is a companion for anyone experiencing the effects of trauma. Through true survivor stories, expert insight, writing prompts, and grounding exercises, it explores pleasure, relationships, and community as worthy and essential antidotes in trying times.
     
    Written by trauma-informed sex therapist Jamila Dawson, LMFT, and sexuality journalist and podcaster August McLaughlin, With Pleasure provides a much-needed alternative to harmful “self-help” ideologies that instruct people to “change their thoughts” or “choose to be happy.”

    Instead, Dawson and McLaughlin encourage readers to respect their feelings, understand the complexities of a society and systems that fuel trauma, foster self-compassion, and embrace pleasure.

  • Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology

    by Deirdre Cooper Owens

    $28.95
    How pioneering gynecologists promoted and exploited scientific myths about inferior races and nationalities. The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental caesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as “medical superbodies” highly suited for medical experimentation.


    In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white “ladies.” Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities.

    Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups and thus restores for us a picture of their lives.

  • The Fire This Time

    edited by Jesmyn Ward

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

    The New York Times bestseller, these groundbreaking essays and poems about race—collected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her generation—are “thoughtful, searing, and at times, hopeful. The Fire This Time is vivid proof that words are important, because of their power to both cleanse and to clarify” (USA TODAY).

    In this bestselling, widely lauded collection, Jesmyn Ward gathers our most original thinkers and writers to speak on contemporary racism and race, including Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Young, Claudia Rankine, and Honoree Jeffers. “An absolutely indispensable anthology” (Booklist, starred review), The Fire This Time shines a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestles with our current predicament, and imagines a better future.

    Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin’s groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, these contemporary writers reflect on the past, present, and future of race in America. We’ve made significant progress in the fifty-odd years since Baldwin’s essays were published, but America is a long and painful distance away from a “post-racial society”—a truth we must confront if we are to continue to work towards change. Baldwin’s “fire next time” is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about; The Fire This Time “seeks to place the shock of our own times into historical context

  • Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

    by Rebecca Hall

    Sold out

    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history.

    Wake tells the story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain’s logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere.

  • Racial Justice at Work: Practical Solutions for Systemic Change by Mary Frances Winters & The Winters Group Team
    Sold out
    Creating justice-centered organizations is the next frontier in DEI. This book shows how to go beyond compliance to address harm, share power, and create equity.

    Traditional DEI work has not succeeded at dismantling systems that perpetuate harm and exclude BIPOC groups. Proponents of DEI have put too much focus on HR solutions, such as increasing representation, and not enough emphasis on changing the deeper organizational systems that perpetuate inequities—in other words, on justice. DEIJ work diverges from traditional metrics-driven DEI work and requires a new approach to effectively dismantle power structures.

    This thought-provoking, solutions-oriented book offers strategic advice on how to adopt a justice mindset, anticipate and address resistance, shift power dynamics, and create a psychologically safe organizational culture. Individual chapters provide pragmatic how-to guides to implementing justice-centered practices in recruitment and hiring, data collection and analysis, learning and development, marketing and advertising, procurement, philanthropy, and more.

    DEIJ pioneer Mary-Frances Winters and her coauthors address some of the most significant aspects of adding a justice focus to diversity work, showing how to create a workplace culture where equity is not a checklist of performative actions but a lived reality.
  • Puerto Rico: A National History

    Jorell Melndez-Badillo

    $29.95

    A panoramic history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today

    Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Melndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today.

    In this masterful work of scholarship, Melndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico's turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511-led by the powerful chieftain Ageyban II-to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States.

    Puerto Rico is an engaging, sometimes personal, and consistently surprising history of colonialism, revolt, and the creation of a national identity, offering new perspectives not only on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean but on the United States and the Atlantic world more broadly.

    Available in Spanish from our partners at Grupo Planeta

  • What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

    by Prentis Hemphill

    $19.00

    From one of the most prominent voices in the trauma conversation comes a groundbreaking new way to heal on a personal and a collective level.

    “I love this book.”—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score

    “In a time when so many of us are being trained in cynicism, this book stands in necessary defiance.”—Cole Arthur Riley, author of Black Liturgies and This Here Flesh

    As we emerge from the past few years of collective upheaval, are we ready to face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Now more than ever, we must learn to heal ourselves, connect with one another, and embody our values. In this revolutionary book, Prentis Hemphill shows us how.

    What It Takes to Heal asserts that the principles of embodiment—the recognition of our body’s sensations and habits, and the beliefs that inform them—are critical to lasting healing and change. Hemphill, an expert embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist who has partnered with Brené Brown, Tarana Burke, and Esther Perel, among others, shows us that we don't have to carry our emotional burdens alone. Hemphill demonstrates a future in which healing is done in community, weaving together stories from their own experience as a trauma survivor with clinical accounts and lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. They ask, “What would it do to movements, to our society and culture, to have the principles of healing at the very center? And what does it do to have healing at the center of every structure and everything we create?”

    In this life-affirming framework for the way forward, Hemphill shows us how to heal our bodies, minds, and souls—to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world toward justice.

  • Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine

    by Uché Blackstock, MD

    $28.00

    Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

    The rousing, captivating story of a Black physician, her career in medicine, and the deep inequities that still exist in the U.S. healthcare system


    Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

    What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

    Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacy is Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

  • Black Writers of the Founding Era: A Library of America Anthology

    edited by James G. Basker

    $40.00

    A radical new vision of the nation's founding era and a major act of historical recovery 

    Featuring more than 120 writers, this groundbreaking anthology reveals the astonishing richness and diversity of Black experience in the turbulent decades of the American Revolution


    Black Writers of the Founding Era is the most comprehensive anthology ever published of Black writing from the turbulent decades surrounding the birth of the United States. An unprecedented archive of historical sources––including more than 200 poems, letters, sermons, newspaper advertisements, slave narratives, testimonies of faith and religious conversion, criminal confessions, court transcripts, travel accounts, private journals, wills, petitions for freedom, even dreams, by over 100 authors––it is a collection that reveals the surprising richness and diversity of Black experience in the new nation.

    Here are writers both enslaved and free, loyalist and patriot, female and male, northern and southern; soldiers, seamen, and veterans; painters, poets, accountants, orators, scientists, community organizers, preachers, restaurateurs and cooks, hairdressers, criminals, carpenters, and many more. Along with long-famous works like Phillis Wheatley’s poems and Benjamin Banneker’s astonishing mathematical and scientific puzzles are dozens of first-person narratives offering little-known Black perspectives on the events of the times, like the Boston Massacre and the death of George Washington.

    From their bold and eloquent contributions to public debates about the meanings of the revolution and the values of the new nation–– writings that dramatize the many ways in which protest, activism, and community organizing have been integral to the Black American experience from the beginning––to their intimate thoughts preserved in private diaries and letters, some unseen to the present day, the words of the many writers gathered here will indelibly alter our understandings of American history. 

    A foreword by Annette Gordon-Reed and an introduction by James G. Basker, along with introductory headnotes and explanatory notes drawing on cutting edge scholarship, illuminate these writers’ works and to situate them in their historical contexts.

    A 16-page color photo insert presents portraits of some of the writers included and images of the original manuscripts, broadside, and books in which their words have been preserved.

  • Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White America

    by Julia Lee

    $18.99

    In the vein of Eloquent Rage and Minor Feelings—a passionate, no-holds-barred memoir about the Asian American experience in a nation defined by racial stratification

    When Julia Lee was fifteen, her hometown went up in smoke during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The daughter of Korean immigrant store owners in a predominantly Black neighborhood, Julia was taught to be grateful for the privilege afforded to her. However, the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, following the the murder of Latasha Harlins by a Korean shopkeeper, forced Julia to question her racial identity and complicity. She was neither Black nor white. So who was she?

    This question would follow Julia for years to come, resurfacing as she traded in her tumultuous childhood for the white upper echelon of elite academia. It was only when she began a PhD in English that she found answers—not in the Brontës or Austen, as Julia had planned, but rather in the brilliant prose of writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. Their works gave Julia the vocabulary and, more important, the permission to critically examine her own tortured position as an Asian American, setting off a powerful journey of racial reckoning, atonement, and self-discovery that has shaped her adult life.

    With prose by turns scathing and heart-wrenching, Julia Lee lays bare the complex disorientation and shame that stems from this country’s imposed racial hierarchy to argue that Asian Americans must leverage their liminality for lasting social change alongside Black and brown communities.

  • Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

    by Héctor Tobar

    $19.00

    A new book by the Pulitzer Prizewinning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

    "Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people. Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and seeks to give voice to the angst and anger of young Latino people who have seen latinidad transformed into hateful tropes about "illegals" and have faced insults, harassment, and division based on white insecurities and economic exploitation.

    Investigating topics that include the US-Mexico border "wall," Frida Kahlo, urban segregation, gangs, queer Latino utopias, and the emergence of the cartel genre in TV and film, Tobar journeys across the country to expose something truer about the meaning of "Latino" in the twenty-first century.

  • A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars

    by Erin Sharkey

    $20.00

    A vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory.

    What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

    Erin Sharkey considers Benjamin Banneker’s 1795 almanac, as she follows the passing of seasons in an urban garden in Buffalo. Naima Penniman reflects on a statue of Haitian revolutionary François Makandal, within her own pursuit of environmental justice. Ama Codjoe meditates on rain, hair, protest, and freedom via a photo of a young woman during a civil rights demonstration in Alabama. And so on—with wide-ranging contributions from Carolyn Finney, Ronald Greer II, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Sean Hill, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Glynn Pogue, Katie Robinson, and Lauret Savoy—unearthing evidence of the ways Black people’s relationship to the natural world has persevered through colonialism, slavery, state-sponsored violence, and structurally racist policies like Jim Crow and redlining.

    A scrapbook, a family chest, a quilt—and an astounding work of historical engagement and literary accomplishment—A Darker Wilderness is a collection brimming with abundan

  • Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety

    by Cara Page & Erica Woodland

    $17.95

    A profound offering and call to action—collective stories, testimonials, and incantations for renewing political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages

    We reclaim the power, resilience, and innovation of our ancestors through this book. To embody their wisdom across centuries and generations is to continue their legacy of liberation and healing.

    In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide readers through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next.

    Anti-capitalist, Black feminist, and abolitionist, Healing Justice Lineages is a profound and urgent call to embrace community and survivor-led care strategies as models that push beyond commodified self-care, the policing of the medical industrial complex, and the surveillance of the public health system. Centering disability, reproductive, environmental, and transformative justice and harm reduction, this collection elevates and archives an ongoing tradition of liberation and survival—one that has been largely left out of our history books, but continues to this day.

    In the first section, “Past: Reckoning with Roots and Lineage,” Page and Woodland remember and reclaim generations-long healing justice and community care work, asking critical questions like: How did our ancestors transform trauma and violence in their liberation work? What were our ancestors reckoning with—and what did they imagine?

    The next sections, “Origins of Healing Justice” and “Alchemy: Theory + Praxis,” explore regional stories of healing justice in response to the current political and cultural landscape. The last section, “Political + Spiritual Imperatives for the Future,” imagines a future rooted in lessons of the past; addresses the ways healing justice is being co-opted and commodified; and uplifts emergent work that’s building infrastructure for care, safety, healing, and political liberation.

  • Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

    edited by Ibi Zoboi

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    *ships in 7-10 business days

    A tour-de-force collection of stories about the Black experience, by award-winning, bestselling, and emerging African American YA authors.

    Black is... two sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon as written by Renée Watson.

    Black is… Jason Reynolds writing about three guys walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything.

    Black is… Nic Stone’s bougie debutante dating a boy her momma would never approve of.

    Black is …two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland.

    Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more—because there are countless ways to be Black enough.

    Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, this is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and Black in America.

    Contributors:

    Justina Ireland

    Varian Johnson

    Rita Williams-Garcia

    Dhonielle Clayton

    Kekla Magoon

    Leah Henderson

    Tochi Onyebuchi

    Jason Reynolds

    Nic Stone

    Liara Tamani

    Renée Watson

    Tracey Baptiste

    Coe Booth

    Brandy Colbert

    Jay Coles

    Ibi Zoboi

    Lamar Giles

  • The Sugar Jar: Create Boundaries, Embrace Self-Healing, and Enjoy the Sweet Things in Life by Yasmine Cheyenne
    $24.99

    A radical approach to setting boundaries and protecting your energy, rich with tools for self-healing.

    “With calm and compassionate power, Yasmine is helping us to find our way back home—back to our own selves.” —Layla Saad, New York Times bestselling author of Me & White Supremacy

    “Yasmine’s work is monumental, and I am in much better holistic alignment because of her dedicated and helpful offerings to the world.”—Alex Elle, author of After the Rain

    Imagine a glass jar filled with sugar on a kitchen counter. You are the jar, and the sugar is your energy. If the jar has no lid, people can come in and take as much sugar as they want. Sometimes, they spill that sugar all over. You may try to refill your jar—replenish your energy—through self-care, but because there is no a lid—no protective boundary—you cannot control how much of your vital life force is being drained.

    The Sugar Jar metaphor is a powerful teaching tool that wellness advocate and coach Yasmine Cheyenne has successfully used with her clients. Now, in her debut book, she makes it available to everyone. Combining stories, exercises, and prompts, The Sugar Jar lets you see just how much energy you have and how much is being used by others. It helps you identify what depletes you, what restores you, and how to recognize destructive patterns. It empowers you to free yourself from performing for and serving others, teaching you to set boundaries to help you heal and recharge. The Sugar Jar frees you from the excess stress and exhaustion that wears you down. It allows you to unleash your authentic self, choose joy, and find lasting balance.

    A compassionate teacher, Cheyenne offers a unique and much needed perspective. A former member of the Air Force working with victims of domestic violence, she has specifically designed her approach and questions about boundaries, self-care, and self-healing for readers of all backgrounds, and especially readers of color, whose stressors and life challenges have too often been excluded and overlooked. Cheyenne herself has felt unwelcome as a Black woman in predominantly white wellness groups and retreats. Her inclusive message speaks to the needs of BIPOC readers, and accepts them where they are.

    Warm and honest, featuring a beautiful and inviting two-color design, The Sugar Jar shows you how to make small adjustments that can lead to big changes in your life.

  • The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities

    by Lawrence C. Ross Jr.

    $21.95
    This comprehensive history of African American fraternities and sororities celebrates the spirit of Black Excellence in higher education that has produced American leaders in politics, sports, arts, and culture such as Kamala Harris, Colin Kaepernick, Michael Jordan, Thurgood Marshall, and Toni Morrison, and is sure to be a treasured resource for generations to come.

    America’s Black fraternities and sororities are a unique and vital part of 20th century African American history, providing young black achievers with opportunities to support each other while they serve their communities and the nation. 
     
    From pioneering work in the suffragette movement to extraordinary strides during the Civil Rights era to life-changing inner-city mentoring programs, members of these organizations share a proud tradition of brotherhood, sisterhood, and service.
     
    Today, America’s nine black fraternities and sororities are millions of members strong with chapters at HBCUs, Ivy League Schools, and colleges across the nation including Stanford University, Howard University, and the University of Chicago.
  • Read This to Get Smarter: about Race, Class, Gender, Disability & More

    by Blair Imani

    $16.99

    An approachable guide to being an informed, compassionate, and socially conscious person today—from discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation to disability, class, and beyond—from critically acclaimed historian, educator, and author Blair Imani.

    “Blair answers the questions that so many of us are asking.”—Layla F. Saad, author of Me and White Supremacy


    We live in a time where it has never been more important to be knowledgeable about a host of social issues, and to be confident and appropriate in how to talk about them. What’s the best way to ask someone what their pronouns are? How do you talk about racism with someone who doesn’t seem to get it? What is intersectionality, and why do you need to understand it? While it can seem intimidating or overwhelming to learn and talk about such issues, it’s never been easier thanks to educator and historian Blair Imani, creator of the viral sensation Smarter in Seconds videos.

    Accessible to learners of all levels—from those just getting started on the journey to those already versed in social justice—Read This to Get Smarter covers a range of topics, including race, gender, class, disability, relationships, family, power dynamics, oppression, and beyond. This essential guide is a radical but warm and non-judgmental call to arms, structured in such a way that you can read it cover to cover or start with any topic you want to learn more about.

    With Blair Imani as your teacher, you’ll “get smarter” in no time, and be equipped to intelligently and empathetically process, discuss, and educate others on the crucial issues we must tackle to achieve a liberated, equitable world.

  • Knitting For Radical Self Care

    by Brandi Cheyenne Harper

    $24.99

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    From knitting expert Brandi Harper, a must-have pattern book for modern knitters, with essays on self-care and sourcing creativity

    There is no such thing as being kind-of a knitter—the wobbly scarves and that oversized sweater you tried to shrink all count too. Each contribution that you make to the world through knitting is meaningful, but maybe you’ve slowed your commitment to this craft, or you can’t seem to find the time to be creative. There’s a lot to be distracted by, and the path forward isn’t always clear. Brandi Harper aims to bring those challenges to the forefront and help you unearth the immense benefits that knitting has to offer. In her debut book, Knitting for Radical Self-Care, Harper offers tips and suggestions for carving out time for creativity, alongside beautiful patterns to try yourself. The book includes ten original patterns inspired by revolutionary women of color, and Harper will speak to these women and their immense impact on her life and our world. The patterns include detailed instructions, alongside her original prose, all designed to inspire.

  • This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed

    by Charles E. Cobb Jr

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    Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self-defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend’s Montgomery, Alabama, home as "an arsenal." Like King, many ostensibly "nonviolent" civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection—yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, Charles E. Cobb Jr. recovers this history, describing the vital role that armed self-defense has played in the survival and liberation of black communities.  Drawing on his experiences in the civil rights movement and giving voice to its participants, Cobb lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the long history and importance of African Americans taking up arms to defend themselves against white supremacist violence.   

    About the Author:

    Charles E. Cobb Jr. is a former field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and has taught at Brown University. An award-winning journalist, he is an inductee of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Cobb lives in Jacksonville, Florida.  

  • White Feminism

    by Koa Beck

    $17.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Addressing today’s conversation about race, empowerment, and inclusion in America, Koa Beck, writer and former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, boldly examines the history of feminism, from the true mission of the suffragists to the rise of corporate feminism with clear-eyed scrutiny and meticulous detail. She also examines overlooked communities—including Native American, Muslim, transgender, and more—and their ongoing struggles for social change.

  • Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies

    by Elizabeth McHenry

    $31.95
    Over the past decade the popularity of black writers including E. Lynn Harris and Terry McMillan has been hailed as an indication that an active African American reading public has come into being. Yet this is not a new trend; there is a vibrant history of African American literacy, literary associations, and book clubs. Forgotten Readers reveals that neglected past, looking at the reading practices of free blacks in the antebellum north and among African Americans following the Civil War. It places the black upper and middle classes within American literary history, illustrating how they used reading and literary conversation as a means to assert their civic identities and intervene in the political and literary cultures of the United States from which they were otherwise excluded.

     

    Forgotten Readers expands our definition of literacy and urges us to think of literature as broadly as it was conceived of in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth McHenry delves into archival sources, including the records of past literary societies and the unpublished writings of their members. She examines particular literary associations, including the Saturday Nighters of Washington, D.C., whose members included Jean Toomer and Georgia Douglas Johnson. She shows how black literary societies developed, their relationship to the black press, and the ways that African American women's clubs--which flourished during the 1890s--encouraged literary activity. In an epilogue, McHenry connects this rich tradition of African American interest in books, reading, and literary conversation to contemporary literary phenomena such as Oprah Winfrey's book club.

  • The Best Cookbook Ever: with recipes so deliciously awesome, your life will change forever
    Sold out

    Recipes so deliciously awesome, parties so incredibly mind-blowing, pictures so breathtakingly beautiful, menus so expertly crafted, and stories so heartbreakingly poignant that you will cry as you cook from it, and it will change your life forever.

    After conquering the world with our last cookbook, we’re back again with more flavorful recipes and tales. Featuring dishes for authentic scenarios, like being totally hungover, prepping for the upcoming apocalypse, or heading out to the countryside with friends for a night at the cabin, this book will help you through real-life situations, such as . . . having no friends! And being vegetarian! And the changing seasons! And eating light before a heavy night!

    We have and always will be down to party extremely hard. And in these pages, we share the best recipes of all time. Looking for snacks for an upscale house party on the last night of school? Your parents are out of town and you want to throw a raging pool party sure to bring the cops? We’ve got you covered with a slew of tasty bites that span the snack spectrum from trashy to classy, along with the best party menus the world has ever known.

    You are on your way to personal and professional greatness. We know you will become a truly amazing cook. We can’t wait to have you own this cookbook, as it’s the best one ever written in the history of the world. Better yet, buy two copies because one is definitely going in your backyard time capsule and you don’t want to have to dig it up four times a week when you get hungry.

    “This is the best cookbook ever.” max + eli sussman

  • The Lula Cafe Cookbook: Collected Recipes and Stories
    $49.95

    ‘A colorful, conversational, idea-pricking cookbook is always a welcome host gift, and this on – hits all the right notes.’ – Vanity Fair

    The debut cookbook from Jason Hammel, showcasing the all-day seasonal food and arty vibe of his iconic Chicago restaurant

    This book is the story of 20 years of cooking, love, friendship, and community told through food, with each recipe taking a particular moment in time as its inspiration. Chapters include: Brunch, Soups, Snacks, Salads, Vegetables, Pasta, Meat/Fish, and Desserts, along with dozens of ‘building block’ recipes and ‘classic’ signature dishes.

    With 90 all-day recipes, each marked with the date of their creation, and all-new photography, this first book about Jason Hammel's bustling hotspot, Lula Cafe, gives a vibrant insight into the food and story of this iconic Chicago restaurant, written by its admired chef-author owner. 

    Beloved by its loyal clientele, Lula is a meeting place for locals, gourmands, artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians, and the intensely personal recipes and stories in this book are infused with their creative spirit – the perfect book for creative home cooks, and for readers who love stories about the ingredients, techniques, and people behind the food they eat.

  • Successful Failure : Lessons Learned Flat on My Face

    Kevin Fredericks

    $28.00
    Kevin Fredericks (aka KevOnStage) is a viral stand-up star, an NAACP Image Award–winning comedian, the founder of KevOnStage Studios, a New York Times bestselling author, and a superstar on social media. But his path to success wasn’t always smooth. As a kid, Kevin noticed something useful: If he made people laugh, the grown-ups would let him stay up late. In church plays, his commitment to the role of Goliath led to a busted lip, and the audience couldn’t get enough. He dreamed of becoming a performer, of finding that big break that would launch him into the bright lights of pop culture fame. But as he soon found, the road to the life we want is longer, weirder, more embarrassing, and more entertaining than we think it will be.

    In Successful Failure, the comedian recounts hilarious stories and sincere insight from his adventures (and misadventures) trying to make it in life. From performing under an alias to avoid getting fired from his suit-and-tie day job to breaking a chair onstage and quitting stand-up for six months, from pooping his pants on a bus next to his future wife to starting a clothing line called Dreams Don’t Die (they sure do if the merch doesn’t sell), Kevin reminds readers that while we might not be The Rock, Warren Buffett, or Kevin Hart, we’re all out here trying, and that’s okay.

    Laugh-out-loud in one moment and perceptive in the next, Successful Failure is a wild ride from one of America’s funniest comics and a sendup of our ideals around hustle culture and success.
  • A History of Nigeria

    Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton

    $24.99

    Nigeria is Africa's most populous country and the world's eighth largest oil producer, but its success has been undermined in recent decades by ethnic and religious conflict, political instability, rampant official corruption and an ailing economy. Toyin Falola, a leading historian intimately acquainted with the region, and Matthew Heaton, who has worked extensively on African science and culture, combine their expertise to explain the context to Nigeria's recent troubles through an exploration of its pre-colonial and colonial past, and its journey from independence to statehood. By examining key themes such as colonialism, religion, slavery, nationalism and the economy, the authors show how Nigeria's history has been swayed by the vicissitudes of the world around it, and how Nigerians have adapted to meet these challenges. This book offers a unique portrayal of a resilient people living in a country with immense, but unrealized, potential.

  • Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

    by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

    from $22.00

    A bold, innovative biography that offers a new understanding of the life, work, and enduring impact of Audre Lorde.

    We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde’s teachings on “the creative power of difference” may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today.

    Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde’s quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive―to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.

    In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth.

  • Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' with Mother Nature

    by Dick Gregory & James R. McGraw

    $17.99

    First published in 1974 and even more relevant today, a natural and whole foods guide the voice of black consciousness, cultural icon Dick Gregory, the incomparable satirist, human rights and environmental activist, health advocate, social justice champion, and author of the NAACP Image Award–winning Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies and the classic bestseller Nigger: An Autobiography.

    Written with Dick Gregory’s irreverent wit and informed by his deep intelligence, Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat is for real people who are concerned about their health and wellness. Gregory offers an enlightening introduction to natural foods, and offers a wickedly amusing and informative assessment of how our modern diet damages the human digestive tract, and raises our consciousness about the political power of food.

    Gregory argues that how you treat yourself and your body reflects how you treat others. He discusses various fasts and the ones he’s done for both political and health reasons, hunger in America, navy beans, and how Americans are changing the way they eat—the beginning of a movement in the 1970s that is still felt today. He offers suggestions on diets to help you gain or lose pounds and offers advice on natural substitutes for favorite alcoholic drinks. You are what you eat—with Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat you can laugh your way to better health. 

  • In Search of Our Mothers' Garden

    by Alice Walker

    $19.99

    A new edition of the groundbreaking classic essay collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple in which she coins the term “womanist” as she speaks out as a Black woman, a writer, a mother, and a feminist on topics ranging from the personal to the political

    “When I graduated from college as an undergraduate, my father gave me Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. It was a beaten-up paperback in 1999, and it’s even more battered now.” —Jesmyn Ward, in the New York Times Book Review

    “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”

    Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker’s first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury. Throughout, Walker explores the theories and practices of feminists and feminism, incorporating what she calls the “womanist” tradition of black women—insights that are vital to understanding our lives and society today.

  • Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women

    by Brittney C. Cooper

    Sold out
    Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s. Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent in contemporary discourse, Brittney C. Cooper looks at the far-reaching intellectual achievements of female thinkers and activists like Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Pauli Murray, and Toni Cade Bambara. Cooper delves into the processes that transformed these women and others into racial leadership figures, including long-overdue discussions of their theoretical output and personal experiences. As Cooper shows, their body of work critically reshaped our understandings of race and gender discourse. It also confronted entrenched ideas of how--and who--produced racial knowledge.

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