My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter is poet Aja Monet’s ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters—the tiny gods who fight to change the world.

Textured with the sights and sounds of growing up in East New York in the nineties, to school on the South Side of Chicago, all the way to the olive groves of Palestine, these stunning poems tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, heartbreak, and grief, but also love, motherhood, spirituality, and Black joy.

*ships in 7-10 business days

The first monograph on the sinuous, exhilaratingly colorful and pattern-filled portraiture of Amoako Boafo

Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo has built a practice synthesizing the ways that art both reflects and perpetuates the power of representation. Amoako Boafo is the first monograph to comprehensively examine the artist's career to date. Heavily illustrated and featuring original contributions by Osei Bonsu, Rachel Cargle, Mutombo Da Poet and Aja Monet, the book also presents an insightful and expansive conversation with the artist by Paul Schimmel.
Exclusively portraying individuals from the diaspora and beyond, Boafo invites a reflection on Black subjectivity, diversity and complexity. His portraits, notable for their bold colors and patterns, celebrate his subjects as a means to challenge portrayals that objectify and dehumanize Blackness. As Boafo has stated, “the primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach Blackness.”
Amoako Boafo (born 1984) studied at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, Ghana, in 2007, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, for his MFA. His first solo exhibition in the US, entitled I See Me, opened at Roberts Projects in 2019. That same year, Boafo was the first artist-in-residence at the new Rubell Museum in Miami, Florida. In 2020, he collaborated with Kim Jones, Dior Men’s creative director, for Dior’s Spring/Summer 2021 Men’s Collection. In 2021, Boafo was selected by the Uplift Art Program to create the inaugural “Suborbital Triptych” on the exterior panels of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, launched August 2021.

*ships in 7 - 10 business days*

The 20th-anniversary edition of Kelley’s influential history of 20th-century Black radicalism, with new reflections on current movements and their impact on the author, and a foreword by poet Aja Monet

First published in 2002, Freedom Dreams is a staple in the study of the Black radical tradition. Unearthing the thrilling history of grassroots movements and renegade intellectuals and artists, Kelley recovers the dreams of the future worlds Black radicals struggled to achieve.

Focusing on the insights of activists, from the Revolutionary Action Movement to the insurgent poetics of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Kelley chronicles the quest for a homeland, the hope that communism offered, the politics of surrealism, the transformative potential of Black feminism, and the long dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.

In this edition, Kelley includes a new introduction reflecting on how movements of the past 20 years have expanded his own vision of freedom to include mutual care, disability justice, abolition, and decolonization, and a new epilogue exploring the visionary organizing of today’s freedom dreamers.

This classic history of the power of the Black radical imagination is as timely as when it was first published.

Commemorative and contemporary style posters in honor of the original Black ABC's, issued in the 1970's in Chicago. Large format print poster on weighted paper. Posters measure 11" wide x 17" tall; no framing included. Matte, offset printing. Will ship flat in cardstock envelope. Please select preferred prints from the menu.

About the Black ABC's: The Black ABC’s was created by two Black women educators, June Sark Heinrich, and consultant Bernadette H. Triplett in Chicago, Illinois. Heinrich received her MA in English at the University of Chicago and was an author and editor of programs for early childhood education. Heinrich and Triplett teamed up to produce the Black ABCs in 1970 for the Society of Visual Education. The organization was started in Chicago in 1919 and by the early 1970s became a leading supplier of classroom learning materials. The original sets of twenty six poster-sized study prints feature a color photograph corresponding to the letter of the alphabet and educational keywords, biographies, and suggested activities on the reverse side - learning aides that centered the achievements, histories and popular sociopolitical affirmations of Black Americans during the Black Power era.

Now you can support your favorite independent bookstore everywhere you go!

Wear our little bookshop with Love and Pride.

 EVENT DEETS:

When: Sunday, April 10 at 1 PM CST

Where: Virtual via Crowdcast

How: Register on this page or head over to register on Crowdcast directly using this link. If you register using our website (with or without purchasing the book) and not Crowdcast, you will receive a Crowdcast watch link at least 24 hours before the start of the event.

We hope you can join us!

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In these confessional pages, women control their own bodies and desires, work toward healing their painful pasts, and learn to assert their sexual power. Weaving a rich tapestry of experiences with a sex positive outlook, The Sex Lives of African Women is an empowering, subversive book that celebrates the liberation, individuality, and joy of African women’s multifaceted sexuality. 
 
From a queer community in Egypt, to polyamorous life in Senegal, and a reflection on the intersection of religion and pleasure in Cameroon, feminist author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah explores the many layers of love and desire, its expression, and how it defines who we are.

Sekyiamah has spent decades talking openly and intimately to African women around the world about sex for her blog, “Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women.” For this book she spoke to over 30 African women across the globe while chronicling her own journey toward sexual freedom.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a feminist activist, writer and blogger. She is the co-founder of Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, an award-winning blog that focuses on African women, sex and sexualities, and she writes frequently for The Guardian, Open Democracy, and elsewhere. She works with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) as director of communications and tactics. She lives in Accra, Ghana.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Aja Monet is a Caribbean-American poet, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry and the Nuyorican Poet's Café Grand Slam title, as well as the New York City YWCA's "One to Watch Award." She is the author of The Black Unicorn Sings and the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape. She lives in Little Haiti, Miami, where she is a co-founder of Smoke Signals Studio and dedicates her time merging arts and culture in community organizing with the Dream Defenders and the Community Justice Project.

Join us for the official launch event of Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood & Myth with author, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton and artist, Delita Martin. 

Event DEETS

When: March 7, 2023 at 7PM CST

Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX 77004)

How: Please RSVP reserve your spot. Checkout for RSVP with Book to support our store and the author/artists. 

About Black Chameleon

In the literary tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, this debut memoir confronts both the challenges and joys of growing up Black and making your own truth.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

Mouton writes, “The phrases of my mother and grandmother began to seem less colloquial and more tied to stories that had been lost along the way. . . . Mythmaking isn’t a lie. It is our moment to take the privilege of our own creativity to fill in the gaps that colonization has stolen from us. It is us choosing to write the tales that our children pull strength from. It is hijacking history for the ignorance in its closets. This, a truth that must start with the women.”

Mouton’s memoir is a song of praise and an elegy for Black womanhood. With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America. Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form.

About Deborah DEEP Mouton

Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally known writer, educator, activist, and performer and the first Black poet laureate of Houston, Texas. She was formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (PSI). Her recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination, was named a finalist for the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and received an honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. Its German translation, under the title Berichtenswert, was released in Summer 2021 by Elif Verlag. The opera Marian’s Song, for which she wrote the libretto, debuted in 2020. 

About Delita Martin

Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and an MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at UA Little Rock in Arkansas, Martin currently works as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. Martin’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently Martin’s work was included in the State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now, an exhibition that included 101 artists from around the United States. Her work is in numerous portfolios and collections.

Celebrate your bookish era in style with our exclusive “In My Book Era” enamel pin. Thoughtfully designed for readers who take pride in their stories, this pin perfectly captures the joy, calm, and confidence of getting lost in a good read.

This vibrant pin adds a joyful pop to totes, jean jackets, lanyards, or your favorite book bag. Its sturdy backing ensures it stays secure through every bookstore visit, author event, and cozy reading session.

Whether you’re gifting it to a fellow reader or treating yourself, this pin is a charming reminder to stay unapologetically in your book era—today and always.

A must-have accessory for book lovers, Kindred fam, and nyone who believes in the magic of representation on the page and beyond.

Size: 1.5 " 

Let's celebrate a few of the new-ish Black women mystery writers! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Monday, August 11, 2025 @ 6:30 PM CT

Where: Virtual! Sign up and we'll send you the link to the Zoom. 

How: RSVP ONLY to get the link to the Zoom! RSVP WITH BUNDLE to get a copy of each of the authors' book and support the bookstore!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Zoe B. Wallbrook is a recently tenured professor whose academic research has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times and The New Yorker. She was selected for mentorship by LA Times bestseller Elizabeth Little, and History Lessons, her first novel, was a runner-up for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award. Zoe’s hobbies include beginning all emails with, “My sincerest apologies for my slow reply,” pretending to understand how astrological signs work, and crying at the end of every Call the Midwife episode. She and her husband live with their stalker, a black lab/pittie mix named Sophie.

SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU is the author of Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him and the award-winning novel The River Where Blood is Born. She also coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works have been published and produced in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, storySouth, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others.

Elise Bryant is the NAACP Image Award-nominated author of Happily Ever Afters, One True Loves, Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling, and It’s Elementary. For many years, Elise had the joy of working as a special education teacher, and now she spends her days reading, writing, and eating dessert. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Long Beach, California. You can visit her online at www.elisebryant.com.

2 inch round button with pin back