Essays
- PRE-ORDER: Unity and Struggle
PRE-ORDER: Unity and Struggle
Amílcar Cabral, Michael Wolfers, and Basil Davidson
$20.99PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: February 11, 2025
One of the world's greatest revolutionary leaders, Amílcar Cabral's long and arduous campaign for the liberation of Portuguese-dominated Africa is explored in this vivid compilation of his most influential speeches and writings.
Unity and Struggle is the compelling account of Amílcar Cabral's fight against imperialism, discrimination and injustice, as well as his progressive advocacy for religious toleration and gender equality – all of which combined to make him one of Africa's foremost political leaders.
Introduction by Basil Davidson.
'One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa' Fidel Castro
'Figures like Amílcar Cabral... helped us to imagine the horizons of freedom in far broader terms than were available to us through what we now call "civil rights discourse".' Angela Davis - Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays
Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays
James Baldwin
$20.00“I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin’s prose. It liberated me as a writer.”—Toni Morrison
This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, probing the shortcomings of the American protest novel and the harmful representations of Black identity in film and fiction
Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays “Autobiographical Notes,” “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” “Many Thousands Gone,” and “Carmen Jones: The Dark is Light Enough,” showcase Baldwin’s incisive voice as a social and literary critic.
“Autobiographical Notes” outlines Baldwin’s journey as a Black writer and his hesitant transition from fiction to nonfiction. In the following essays, Baldwin explores the Black experience through the lens of popular media, critiquing the ways in which Black characters—in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, and the 1950s film Carmen Jones—are reduced to digestible caricatures.
Everybody’s Protest Novel: Essays is the first of 3 special editions in the James Baldwin centennial anniversary series. Through this collection, Baldwin examines the façade of progress present in the novels of Black oppression. These essays showcase Baldwin’s profound ability to reveal the truth of the Black experience, exposing the failure of the protest novel, and the state of racial reckoning at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement.
- The Harlem Ghetto: Essays
The Harlem Ghetto: Essays
James Baldwin
$20.00This collectible edition celebrates James Baldwin’s 100th-year anniversary, revealing and critiquing the realities of Black life in mid-century US
Originally published in Notes of a Native Son, the essays "The Harlem Ghetto," "Journey to Atlanta," and "Notes of a Native Son" will appeal to those interested in the personal and political turmoil of Baldwin's life.
“The Harlem Ghetto” introduces readers to the extremities of life in Baldwin’s native city. “Journey to Atlanta” depicts the faulty relationship between the Black community and the politician, following a quartet called The Melodeers on a trip to Atlanta under the auspices of the Progressive Party. Baldwin concludes this collection with “Notes of A Native Son,” a powerful autobiographical essay about his fractured relationship with his father.
The Harlem Ghetto: Essays explores the American condition through a mix of analytic and autobiographical essays. This second collection in the Baldwin centennial anniversary series is Baldwin’s most personal as he grapples with his childhood and his own affinity with Blackness.
- PRE-ORDER: Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico
PRE-ORDER: Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico
by Heather Cleary, Gabriela Jauregui, Julia Sanches, Diana J. Torres, Sara Uribe, and Zapatista Army for National Liberation
$25.95PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: February 11, 2025
Merging waves of feminist thought from established and emerging Mexican women writers, Tsunami arrives with seismic, groundbreaking force.
Featuring personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures. Tackling gender violence, community building, #MeToo, Indigenous rights, and more, these writings rock the core of what we know feminism to be, dismantling its Eurocentric roots and directing its critical thrust towards current affairs in Mexico today. Asserting plurality as a political priority, Tsunami includes trans voices, Indigenous voices, Afro-Latinx voices, voices from within and outside academic institutions, and voices spanning generations. Tsunami is the combined force and critique of the three feminist waves, the marea verde (“green wave”) of protests that have swept through Latin America in recent years, and the tides turned by insurgent feminisms at the margins of public discourse.
Contributors include Marina Azahua, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Dahlia de la Cerda, Lia García, Margo Glantz, Jimena González, Fernanda Latani M. Bravo, Valeria Luiselli, Ytzel Maya, Brenda Navarro, Jumko Ogata, Daniela Rea, Cristina Rivera Garza, Diana J. Torres, Sara Uribe, and the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.
- Magically Black and Other Essays
Magically Black and Other Essays
by Jerald Walker
$24.99In this engaging follow up to How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, the recipient of PEN New England Award for nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award sharply examines and explains Black life and culture with equal parts candor and humor.
In Magically Black and Other Essays Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of Black American life. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. The collection’s overarching theme is captured in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression, giving proof to Albert Murray’s observation that the “fire in the forging process . . . for all its violence, does not destroy the metal that becomes the sword.”
- We're Alone: Essays
We're Alone: Essays
by Edwidge Danticat
$26.00A collection of exceptional new essays by one of the most significant contemporary writers on the world stage
Tracing a loose arc from Edwidge Danticat’s childhood to the COVID-19 pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered in We’re Alone include personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and James Baldwin that explore several abiding themes: environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.
From hurricanes to political violence, from her days as a new student at a Brooklyn elementary school knowing little English to her account of a shooting hoax at a Miami mall, Danticat has an extraordinary ability to move from the personal to the global and back again. Throughout, literature and art prove to be her reliable companions and guides in both tragedies and triumphs.
Danticat is an irresistible presence on the page: full of heart, outrage, humor, clear thinking, and moral questioning, while reminding us of the possibilities of community. And so “we’re alone” is both a fearsome admission and an intimate invitation―we’re alone now, we can talk. We’re Alone is a book that asks us to think through some of the world’s intractable problems while deepening our understanding of one of the most significant novelists at work today.
- Homecoming
Homecoming
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ime Ikiddeh
$18.99In this collection of essays on African and Caribbean literature, culture, and politics, Ngugi wa Thiong'o delivers a groundbreaking critique of colonialism and capitalism in postcolonial Africa.
In these essays, Ngugi wa Thiong'o eloquently interweaves a range of issues including religious oppression, consumerism, and independence with the powerful intellect and passion that has come to characterise his writing. These pieces are essential for readers wishing to uncover a critical perspective on African society and culture.
Homecoming is a groundbreaking collection intended to provoke and encourage thoughtful debate on how best to 'restore the creative glory of Africa and of all Africans' in the wake of postcolonialism.
'One of the greatest writers of our time.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
'A tremendous writer... It's hard to doubt the power of the written word when you hear the story of Ngugi wa Thiong'o.' Guardian
'One of Africa's greatest writers.' New York Times - The Message
The Message
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
$30.00The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,”but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
- You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation
by Julissa Arce
$18.99Bestselling author Julissa Arce calls for a celebration of our uniqueness, our origins, our heritage, and the beauty of the differences that make us Americans in this powerful polemic against the myth that assimilation leads to happiness and belonging for immigrants.
"You sound like a white girl." These were the words spoken to Julissa by a high school crush as she struggled to find her place in America. As a brown immigrant from Mexico, assimilation had been demanded of her since the moment she set foot in San Antonio, Texas, in 1994. She'd spent so much time getting rid of her accent so no one could tell English was her second language that in that moment she felt those words--you sound like a white girl?--were a compliment. As a child, she didn't yet understand that assimilating to "American" culture really meant imitating "white" America--that sounding like a white girl was a racist idea meant to tame her, change her, and make her small. She ran the race, completing each stage, but never quite fit in, until she stopped running altogether.
In this dual polemic and manifesto, Julissa dives into and tears apart the lie that assimilation leads to belonging. She combs through history and her own story to break down this myth, arguing that assimilation is a moving finish line designed to keep Black and brown Americans and immigrants chasing racist American ideals. She talks about the Lie of Success, the Lie of Legality, the Lie of Whiteness, and the Lie of English--each promising that if you obtain these things, you will reach acceptance and won't be an outsider anymore. Julissa deftly argues that these demands leave her and those like her in a purgatory--neither able to secure the power and belonging within whiteness nor find it in the community and cultures whiteness demands immigrants and people of color leave behind.
In You Sound Like a White Girl, Julissa offers a bold new promise: Belonging only comes through celebrating yourself, your history, your culture, and everything that makes you uniquely you. Only in turning away from the white gaze can we truly make America beautiful. An America where difference is celebrated, heritage is shared and embraced, and belonging is for everyone. Through unearthing veiled history and reclaiming her own identity, Julissa shows us how to do this.
- My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education
My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education
by Jennine Capó Crucet
Sold outFrom the author of Make Your Home Among Strangers, essays on being an “accidental” American―an incisive look at the edges of identity for a woman of color in a society centered on whiteness
In this sharp and candid collection of essays, critically acclaimed writer and first-generation American Jennine Capó Crucet explores the condition of finding herself a stranger in the country where she was born. Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family’s attempts to fit in with white American culture―beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant.
In prose that is both fearless and slyly humorous, My Time Among the Whites examines the sometimes hopeful, sometimes deeply flawed ways in which many Americans have learned to adapt, exist, and―in the face of all signals saying otherwise―perhaps even thrive in a country that never imagined them here.
- White Girls
White Girls
Hilton Als
$17.00"This book will change you." --Chicago Tribune
White Girls is about, among other things, blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Eminem, Louise Brooks, and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is one of the most daring and provocative books of recent years, an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.
- Bad Feminist [Tenth Anniversary Edition]: Essays
Bad Feminist [Tenth Anniversary Edition]: Essays
by Roxane Gay
$18.99New York Times Bestseller
From Roxane Gay comes this collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation—now available in a limited Olive Edition.
“Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.”
In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.
Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.
“Roxane Gay is the brilliant girl-next-door: your best friend and your sharpest critic. . . . She is by turns provocative, chilling, hilarious; she is also required reading.”—People
- An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children
An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children
$27.00A unique collaboration from two of America’s leading artists that explores the fascinating and hidden history of the plant world.
In this witty, deeply original book, the renowned novelist Jamaica Kincaid offers an ABC of the plants that define our world and reveals the often brutal history behind them.
Kara Walker, one of America’s greatest visual artists, illustrates each entry with provocative, brilliant, enthralling, many-layered watercolors.
There has never been a book like An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children―so inventive, surprising, and telling about what our gardens reveal.
- I've Been to the Mountaintop
I've Been to the Mountaintop
by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
$22.99A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's last speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.
On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit of Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and delivered what would be his final speech. Voiced in support of the Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike, Dr. King's words continue to be powerful and relevant as workers continue to organize, unionize, and strike across various industries today. Withstanding the test of time, this speech serves as a galvanizing call to create and maintain unity among all people.
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.
- Our God Is Marching On
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.
- The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (Modern Library Classics)
The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (Modern Library Classics)
by Ralph Ellison
$30.00From the renowned author of Invisible Man,a classic, “elegant” (The New York Times) collection of essays that captures the breadth and complexity of his insights into racial identity, jazz and folklore, and citizenship across six decades. Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this definitive volume includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that Black Americans lead. With newly discovered essays and speeches, The Collected Essays reveals a more vulnerable, intimate side of Ellison than what we've previously seen. “Raph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.”
- Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks
by Crystal Wilkinson
$30.00*ships in 7 - 10 days*
A lyrical culinary journey that explores the hidden legacy of Black Appalachians, through powerful storytelling alongside nearly forty comforting recipes, from the former poet laureate of Kentucky. “With Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, Crystal Wilkinson cements herself as one of the most dynamic book makers in our generation and a literary giant. Utter genius tastes like this.”—Kiese Laymon, author of the Carnegie Medal-winning Heavy People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed. Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine. An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia. As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.
- You Get What You Pay For: Essays
You Get What You Pay For: Essays
by Morgan Parker
$28.00*ships in 7 - 10 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.
- My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love
My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love
edited by Jamaica Kincaid
Sold outKincaid gathers a sparkling selection of new and beloved poetry and prose about each author’s favorite flora. The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays and poems on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and gardeners who write. Among the contributors are Daniel Hinkley on hellebores; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, with the poems “Bearded Irises” and “Peonies.” Ian Frazier pulls weeds in “Memories of a Press-Gang Gardener,” and Michael Pollan defends a gothic cousin of the sunflower in “Consider the Castor Bean”; Ken Druse stalks the sexy jack-in-the-pulpit, and Elaine Scarry contemplates steep slopes of columbine. Most of the pieces are new, but Colette, Katharine S. White, William Carlos Williams, and several other old favorites also make appearances. Jamaica Kincaid, the much admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, has assembled this diverse crew and provides a spirited introduction. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends.
- Black Friend : Essays
Black Friend : Essays
by Ziwe
Sold outZiwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her incisive perspective on both herself and the culture at large. Throughout the book, Ziwe combines pop-culture commentary and personal stories, which grapple with her own (mis)understanding of identity. From a hilarious case of mistaken identity via a jumbotron to a terrifying fight-or-flight encounter in the woods, Ziwe raises difficult questions for comedic relief.
From Black Friend’s Introduction:
“Today, I learned that my book is ranked as the #1 new release in ‘Discrimination and Racism’ on Amazon. Wow. This is a huge honor, especially considering my stiff competition in the self-published manifestos space. Unfortunately, this victory is bittersweet. I worry that people may get the wrong idea and think that I am pro-racism when in actuality, I am indifferent. Still, I’d love to thank everyone who made this possible. I solemnly swear to write the most discriminatory book in American history. I hope I can make you proud.
“Just kidding . . . I will not marginalize you . . . unless that’s your kink. This book of essays offers moments of extreme discomfort (and the subsequent growth) in my life around the role of ‘black friend.’ Black friends come in all shapes and sizes. Yet the archetype is often a two-dimensional character meant to support the non-black protagonists’ more complex humanity. Some black friends exist as the comic relief, like Donkey in any of the Shrek movies. Some are the sassy friend, like Louise from St. Louis in Sex and the City. Still others are the inexplicably sagacious companion, like Morpheus in The Matrix. It’s impossible for these individual portraits to reflect my complicated reality. To start, they are fictional. One of them is a talking ass. I do not exist just to move plot. While I am a supportive friend, I am not a supporting character. I am the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story.” - Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business
by Roxane Gay
$30.00From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, “a strikingly fresh cultural critic” (Washington Post) comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between.
Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individually personalized matters: can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting? In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, she reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights.
Opinions is a collection of Roxane Gay’s best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years. Covering a wide range of topics—politics, feminism, the culture wars, civil rights, and much more—with an all-new introduction in which she reflects on the past decade in America, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Roxane Gay’s devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.
- Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange
Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange
by Imani Perry
$30.00Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, curated by National Book Award winner Imani Perry with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Tarana Burke.
In the late ’60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school’s literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018, Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know them, each verse, dance, and song a love letter to Black women and girls, and the community at large.
Sing a Black Girl’s Song is a new posthumous collection of Shange’s unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf…, travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on “The Couch” opposite Shange’s therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girls’ international success. Sing a Black Girl’s Song houses, in their original form, the literary rebel’s politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life. Sing a Black Girl’s Song is the continuation of a literary tradition that has bolstered generations of writers and a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time. - Leslie F*cking Jones
Leslie F*cking Jones
by Leslie Jones
$21.99Hey you guys, it’s Leslie. I’m excited to share my story with you.
Now, I’m gonna be honest: Some of the details might be vague because a b*tch is fifty-five and she’s smoked a ton of weed. But while bits might be a touch hazy, I can promise you the underlying truth is REAL. Whether I’m talking about my childhood growing up in the South, my early stand-up days driving from gig to gig through the darkest parts of our country and praying I wouldn’t get murdered, what Chris Rock told Lorne Michaels, that time I wanted to shoot Whoopi Goldberg on SNL, and yeah, I’ll tell you all about Ghostbusters and the nudes and Supermarket Sweep and The Daily Show . . . I’m sharing it all in these pages. It’s not easy being a woman in comedy, especially when you’re a tall-*ss Black woman with a trumpet voice. I have to fight so that no one takes me for granted, and no one takes advantage. These are the stories that explain why. (Cue the Law & Order theme.) - The Book of (More) Delights: Essays
The Book of (More) Delights: Essays
by Ross Gay
from $19.99In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.
For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.
The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.
- Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
Watch Your Language: Visual and Literary Reflections on a Century of American Poetry
by Terrance Hayes
$20.00*ships in 7-10 business days*
From the National Book Award–winning author of Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry—to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak
Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry. Illustrated micro-essays, graphic book reviews, biographical prose poems, and nonfiction sketches make reading an imaginative and critical act of watching your language. Hayes has made a kind of poetic guidebook with more questions than answers. "If you don't see suffering's potential as art, will it remain suffering?" he asks in one of the lively mock poetry exam questions of this musing, mercurial collection. Hayes's astonishing drawings and essays literally and figuratively map the acclaimed poet's routes, roots, and wanderings through the landscape of contemporary poetry. - Dark Days: Fugitive Essays
Dark Days: Fugitive Essays
by Roger Reeves
$18.00A crucial book that calls for community, solidarity, and joy, even in—especially in—these dark days
In his debut work of nonfiction, award-winning poet Roger Reeves finds new meaning in silence, protest, fugitivity, freedom, and ecstasy. Braiding memoir, theory, and criticism, Reeves juxtaposes the images of an opera singer breaking the state-mandated silence curfew by singing out into the streets of Santiago, Chile, and a father teaching his daughter to laugh out loud at the planes dropping bombs on them in Aleppo, Syria. He describes the history of the hush harbor—places where enslaved people could steal away to find silence and court ecstasy, to the side of their impossible conditions. In other essays, Reeves highlights a chapter in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to locate common purpose between Black and Indigenous peoples; he visits the realities of enslaved people on McLeod Plantation, where some of the descendants of those formerly enslaved lived into the 1990s; and he explores his own family history, his learning to read closely through the Pentecostal church tradition, and his passing on of reading as a pleasure, freedom, and solace to his daughter, who is frightened the police will gun them down.
Together, these groundbreaking essays build a profound vision for how to see and experience the world in our present moment, and how to strive toward an alternative existence in intentional community underground. “The peace we fight and search for,” Reeves writes, “begins and ends with being still.” - This Bridge Called My Back, Fortieth Anniversary Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color
This Bridge Called My Back, Fortieth Anniversary Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color
edited by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
$34.95Fortieth anniversary edition of the foundational text of women of color feminism.
Originally released in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, and sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation."
Reissued here, forty years after its inception, this anniversary edition contains a new preface by Moraga reflecting on Bridge's "living legacy" and the broader community of women of color activists, writers, and artists whose enduring contributions dovetail with its radical vision. Further features help set the volume's historical context, including an extended introduction by Moraga from the 2015 edition, a statement written by Gloria Anzaldúa in 1983, and visual art produced during the same period by Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, Yolanda López, and others, curated by their contemporary, artist Celia Herrera Rodríguez. Bridge continues to reflect an evolving definition of feminism, one that can effectively adapt to and help inform an understanding of the changing economic and social conditions of women of color in the United States and throughout the world. - Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology
Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology
edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker & Madeleine Reddon
$19.95Ships in 7-10 business days
To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.
Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards honour the sovereignty of Indigenous creative voices and nurture the work of emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada.
Through generous support from hundreds of Canadians and organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, Pamela Dillon and Family Gift Fund, the awards have ushered in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVAs recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also promote the works of unpublished writers, helping to launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.
This anthology gathers together a selection of the finalists over the past five years, highlighting some of the most pathbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and Indigenous languages. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Jordan Abel (Nisga’a) and Carleigh Baker (Métis), and scholar Madeleine Reddon (Métis), this anthology is a celebration of Indigenous storytelling that both introduces readers to emerging luminaries and returns them to treasured favourites. - For The Culture: Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food: Interviews, Inspiration, and Recipes
For The Culture: Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food: Interviews, Inspiration, and Recipes
by Klancy Miller
$40.00A must-have anthology of the leading Black women and femmes shaping today’s food and hospitality landscape—from farm to table and beyond—chronicling their passions and motivations, lessons learned and hard-won wisdom, personal recipes, and more.
Chef and writer Klancy Miller found her own way by trial and error—as a pastry chef, recipe developer, author, and founder of For the Culture magazine—but what if she had known then what she knows now? What if she had known the extraordinary women profiled within these pages—entrepreneurs, chefs, food stylists, mixologists, historians, influencers, hoteliers, and more—and learned from their stories?
Like Leah Penniman, a farmer using Afro-Indigenous methods to restore the land and feed her community; Ashtin Berry, an activist, sommelier, and mixologist creating radical change in the hospitality industry and beyond; or Sophia Roe, a TV host and producer showcasing the inside stories behind today’s food systems. Toni Tipton-Martin, Mashama Bailey, Carla Hall, Nicole Taylor, Dr. Jessica B. Harris . . . In this gorgeous volume these luminaries and more share the vision that drives them, the mistakes they made along the way, advice for the next generation, and treasured recipes—all accompanied by stunning original illustrated portraits and vibrant food photography.
In addition, Miller shines a light on the matriarchs who paved the way for today’s tastemakers—Edna Lewis, B. Smith, Leah Chase, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, and Lena Richard.
These collective profiles are a one-of-a-kind oral history of a movement, captured in real time, and indispensable for anyone passionate about food.
- Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing
Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing
by Latine Women by Sandra Guzman
$32.99Spanning time, styles, and traditions, a dazzling collection of essential works from 140 Latine writers, scholars, and activists from across the world—from warrior poet Audre Lorde to novelist Edwidge Danticat and performer and author Elizabeth Acevedo and artist/poet Cecilia Vicuña—gathered in one magnificent volume.
Daughters of Latin America collects the intergenerational voices of Latine women across time and space, capturing the power, strength, and creativity of these visionary writers, leaders, scholars, and activists—including 24 Indigenous voices. Several authors featured are translated into English for the first time. Grammy, National Book Award, Cervantes, and Pulitzer Prize winners as well as a Nobel Laureate and the next generation of literary voices are among the stars of this essential collection, women whose work inspires and transforms us.
An eclectic and inclusive time capsule spanning centuries, genres, and geographical and linguistic diversity, Daughters of Latin America is divided into 13 parts representing the 13 Mayan Moons, each cycle honoring a different theme. Within its pages are poems from U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón and celebrated Cervantes Prize–winner Dulce María Loynaz; lyric essays from New York Times bestselling author Naima Coster, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes, and Guggenheim Fellow Maryse Condé; rousing speeches from U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Lencan Indigenous land and water protector Berta Caceres; and a transcendent Mazatec chant from shaman and poet María Sabina testifying to the power of language as a cure, which opens the book.
More than a collection of writings, Daughters of Latin America is a resurrection of ancestral literary inheritance as well as a celebration of the rising voices encouraged and nurtured by those who came before them.
In addition to those mentioned above, contributors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Julia Alvarez, Albalucia Angel, Marie Arana, Ruth Behar, Gioconda Belli, Miluska Benavides, Carmen Bouollosa, Norma Cantú, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Angie Cruz, Edwidge Danticat, Julia de Burgos, Lila Downs, Laura Esquivel, Conceição Evaristo, Mayra Santos Febres, Sara Gallardo, Cristina Rivera Garza, Reyna Grande, Sonia Guiñasaca, Georgina Herrera, María Hinojosa, Claudia Salazar Jimenez, Jamaica Kincaid, María Clara Sharupi Jua, Amada Libertad, Josefina López, Gabriela Mistral, Celeste Mohammed, Cherrié Moraga, Angela Morales, Nancy Morejón, Anaïs Nin, Achy Obejas, Alejandra Pizarnik, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro, Elena Poniatowska, Laura Restrepo, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Mikeas Sánchez, Esmeralda Santiago, Rita Laura Segato, Ana María Shua, Natalia Toledo, Julia Wong, Elisabet Velasquez, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Helena María Viramontes, and many more.
- To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight
To Float in the Space Between: A Life and Work in Conversation with the Life and Work of Etheridge Knight
$25.00A rare glimpse inside the mind of a National Book Award–winning, Guggenheim, and MacArthur fellow poet as he considers his influences and larger surrounding poetic history. “Hayes leaves resonance cleaving the air.” —NPR
In these works based on his Bagley Wright lectures on the poet Etheridge Knight, Terrance Hayes offers not quite a biography but a compilation “as speculative, motley, and adrift as Knight himself.” Personal yet investigative, poetic yet scholarly, this multi-genre collection of writings and drawings enacts one poet’s search for another and in doing so constellates a powerful vision of black literature and art in America.
The future Etheridge Knight biographer will simultaneously write an autobiography. Fathers who go missing and fathers who are distant will become the bones of the stories.
There will be a fable about a giant who grew too tall to be kissed by his father. My father must have kissed me when I was boy. I can’t really say. . . . By the time I was eleven or even ten years old I was as tall as him. I was six inches taller than him by the time I was fifteen. My biography about Knight would be about intimacy, heartache.Terrance Hayes is the author of How to Be Drawn, which received a 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry; Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; and three other award-winning poetry collections. He is the poetry editor at the New York Times Magazine and also teaches at the University y of Pittsburgh. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin will also be forthcoming in 2018.
- I Don't Want to Die Poor: Essays
I Don't Want to Die Poor: Essays
by Michael Arceneaux
$17.99From the New York Times bestselling author of I Can’t Date Jesus, which Vogue called “a piece of personal and cultural storytelling that is as fun as it is illuminating,” comes a wry and insightful essay collection that explores the financial and emotional cost of chasing your dreams.
Ever since Oprah Winfrey told the 2007 graduating class of Howard University, “Don’t be afraid,” Michael Arceneaux has been scared to death. You should never do the opposite of what Oprah instructs you to do, but when you don’t have her pocket change, how can you not be terrified of the consequences of pursuing your dreams?
Michael has never shied away from discussing his struggles with debt, but in I Don’t Want to Die Poor, he reveals the extent to which it has an impact on every facet of his life—how he dates; how he seeks medical care (or in some cases, is unable to); how he wrestles with the question of whether or not he should have chosen a more financially secure path; and finally, how he has dealt with his “dream” turning into an ongoing nightmare as he realizes one bad decision could unravel all that he’s earned. You know, actual “economic anxiety.”
I Don’t Want to Die Poor is an unforgettable and relatable examination about what it’s like leading a life that often feels out of your control. But in Michael’s voice that’s “as joyful as he is shrewd” (BuzzFeed), these razor-sharp essays will still manage to make you laugh and remind you that you’re not alone in this often intimidating journey.
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