A powerful poetry collection in the vein of BLACK GIRL CALL HOME and IF THEY COME FOR US, about identity, culture, home and belonging.

PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is an imaginative, blistering, beautifully written poetry collection about identity and history on the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black Diasporic experience.

Through the exploration of the themes of self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational traumas, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots Black stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood, one that is deeply grounded in the heirlooms and teachings of Black celebration as well as preservation.

The collection is structured in the following sections: Part I: Daughter of Diaspora, exploring immigration and identity within the U.S. Part II: A History of Plantains, exploring the aftermath of colonialism, displacement and gentrification for Afro-descendants.

A New York Times Notable Book

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic investigates the roles of race and sex in his own life and in literary history.

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

Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. Written in 1996, long before the rise of the genre-defying memoir, The Women was a prescient work of criticism and self-investigation whose clear-eyed insight still feels fresh and urgent to this day. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that created a form all its own.

An award-winning young scholar explores how Black women have remade―and continue to remake―our understanding of the past.

Across centuries, Black women have invented means to preserve what official history could not: friendship albums, kitchen-table philosophy, blogs, playlists, oral histories, and archives held in the mind. In The Light Keepers, Jessica Marie Johnson traces this radical tradition through the centuries-long prism of American empire, from the holds of slave ships to contemporary digital worlds, showing that there is nothing finished or settled about how Black women understand time, trauma, and survival.

Blending personal narrative, archival fragments, and ancestral wisdom, Johnson reframes Black women not as subjects of history but as archivists and historians. Against erasure, against shame, against death itself, Black women have transformed the bitterest waters of history into tools for living, loving, and imagining freedom. The Light Keepers offers readers a daring new way to think about the past―and a powerful lesson in how knowledge is made when survival demands it.

88 illustrations

Evelyn Del Rey is Moving Away meets The Last Stop on Market Street in this touching story about what makes a place home.

Elysia's family is moving. It's the last day in her apartment. The last day in her neighborhood. The last day in her city. Elysia is going to miss it all so much, but her sister Penelope shows her that home comes in many forms.

As they walk down their block one last time, Elysia feels home in the sound of her neighbor's bachata music, in the taste of her favorite bodega hot chocolate, and in the smell of coconut oil from the hair salon. She finds home in her favorite books, playing with friends, and time spent with her sister.

Even though she may not always live in the same place, Elysia knows she will always carry these pieces of home in her heart.

In this radiant and incisive debut novel in the tradition of works by ZZ Packer and Toni Cade Bambara, a Black woman fights to reclaim—and reinvent—her world after a little understood illness and a public health crisis threatens to upend everything she has.

Forty-seven-year-old Harmony Johnston is not suited for New York City life in 2019. From shampoos to synthetics to cell phones—the ubiquitous staples of modern daily life cause her physical pain, for reasons no one, including Harmony, understand. Doctors deny her illness is real, after seven years of enduring this private war, Harmony has her doubts too. Betrayed by her body and mind, as well as those closest to her—her obstinate physician sister, her sneaky best friend, and a spectral aunt who appears and disappears at whim—Harmony clings to the one doctor who offers hope.

In war, there are sacrifices: hair, boyfriend, sleep. Conditioned to place the comfort of others above her own needs, Harmony strives to be accommodating in an increasingly inhospitable world. But when the prestigious non-profit she works for relocates to an office with new wiring, painting, and carpeting (and the same old racial tensions) that exacerbate her pain, she quits her job and begins to set firm boundaries that upend her life, make her universe a little smaller, and magnify her loneliness.

As Harmony grows increasingly ill threatening her relationship with her one sympathetic doctor, she cuts herself off completely from the outside world and plunges into depression and literal darkness. When she eventually resurfaces, the world is irreversibly altered. With everyone now nearly as isolated as she is, Harmony resolves to re-connect with all she has lost. But can things ever really go back to normal?

At turns devastating, funny, and affirming, I Can Feel It All Over is an unforgettable debut novel about bodily autonomy, art, connection, and the pursuit of an authentic life amid the world's confines.

From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a stunning multigenerational epic, spanning from 1920s Haiti to 1990s New York, centered on the disappearance of a little girl from Brooklyn's J'ouvert celebrations

Brooklyn, 1996. Serenity Marcelin and her six-year-old daughter, Jouvay, have spent the summer reeling from an unexpected, devastating loss. Just when the two of them are beginning to find solace within their new family dynamic, Jouvay disappears into a crowd over Labor Day weekend and Serenity’s entire world changes in an instant.

In order to understand the events leading to Jouvay’s sudden disappearance, Serenity must unearth the long-buried secrets―and ghosts―of her family’s shocking past.

Told through the eyes of the unforgettable Marcelin women and the people closest to them, Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili's Backstitch embroiders a profound tale of hope and resistance, transporting readers to the city of Jérémie during the years of the US occupation of Haiti and to the vibrant streets of New York. A sweeping story of motherhood, sisterhood, resistance, generational trauma, and liberation, this novel charts the lives of the ghosts, secrets, and languages we can’t escape from―even when we try to bury them.

From the PEN-nominated author of The Blueprint comes a moving novel about two women connected by music, memory—and murder.

Texas, 1983. Lola Jones is in prison for the death of her mother’s former lover, a man whose presence tangled itself through both their lives. After years of silence, Lola writes a letter to the dead man’s daughter—the “secret sister” from the better part of town in whose shadow Lola has lived most of her life.

As Lola reaches across time and memory, her story unfolds in two mirrored movements: the first, a chronicle of her mother, Camille, a blues singer shaped by love, ambition, and loss; the second, a recounting of Lola’s own coming of age in the echo of Camille’s legacy.

Braided with music, memory, and the weight of being misunderstood, Sweet Water explores inheritance, identity, and the ways women learn to survive what they cannot control. It is a story about Black women connected and separated by their experiences with each other, and with the men in their lives. Written as a letter, structured like a blues song—call and response, verse and refrain—the novel asks what it means to reclaim your voice when someone else’s pain has defined your existence.

Capone promised he’d keep his family safe, but Erin’s afraid he’ll die trying, in the third book of #BookTok favorite Jahquel J.’s Delgato Family saga.

Everything’s looking up for Erin. She married her best friend in a picturesque sunset ceremony on the beaches of Barbados, they’re expecting a baby girl, and the pair are surrounded by their loved ones. Erin’s even made nice with Capone’s ex.

But danger’s never far away, and that scares Erin. Every day, Capone risks his life handling business in the streets. Then, a serious health scare forces him to slow down, and Erin and her brother, Jaiden―now entrenched in Capone’s world himself―purchase firearms to protect themselves.

Having dealt with arrests, shoot-outs, high-speed chases, and Molotov cocktails, Erin just wants to live with her husband and daughter in peace. Now that Capone has decided to take a step back from the grind, will she finally get the happily-ever-after she longs for?

The third book in the Delgato Family universe, Capone took BookTok by storm.

Capone III is an urban romance featuring depictions of murder, domestic violence, and substance abuse as well as explicit scenes. It is intended for mature readers.

In a brilliant departure from the novels that made Jesse Q. Sutanto a USA Today bestselling author—including Dial A for Aunties—comes the first book in a debut dark fantasy duology, following an assassin, a scholar, a con man, and a guard in a race to rediscover powerful lost magic and save their world...

Mara has no memory of life before her assassin training behind the fortress-like walls of Tchu-Morrokhai, which has been her world since she was five. Practicing discipline and strategy, sacrifice and solitude, she has dedicated herself to resisting the Divine Empress’s plans of eradicating the all-but-forgotten magic. She longs for a world once again filled with magic—and freedom and love. And she’ll do whatever it takes to find those things.

In the faraway city of Velingard, Livya is the privileged daughter of the revered scientist whose invention of an indestructible new metal was the catalyst for a great revolution. Yet Livya’s bored of suitors and balls, more interested in philosophical debates. But when an invite to a secret salon leads to a kidnapping attempt, Livya is suddenly on the run—with the unlikely aid of charming con man Kaian, a once dear childhood friend inexplicably turned frosty stranger.

Captain Fonde has served Velingard faithfully in the twenty years since the revolution, and all has been peaceful... until now, when he’s informed that their “indestructible” metal is inexplicably starting to crumble. Ships, bridges, buildings, statues—their entire post-revolution world is literally about to come apart. Could it be that the metal—and therefore the revolution—was flawed all along? Or is there something darker—evil, ancient, inhuman—at play?

With stunning world-building, Jesse Q. Sutanto weaves an epic tale of characters whose lives irrevocably intertwine—and unravel—as paths collide across continents, racing toward an explosive twist that will forever change all of their fates...

In a piercing blend of biography, criticism, and memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Salamishah Tillet explores Nina Simone’s life and the impact of her legacy.

In Nina Simone and the World She Made, Salamishah Tillet traces Nina Simone’s transformation from child prodigy to musical icon and fearless civil rights activist. When racism thwarted her dreams of becoming a classical pianist, Simone reinvented herself and created a sound wholly her own—one that would catapult her into stardom and the heart of the Black Power movement.

Decades later, Simone’s music inspired the hip-hop generation and Tillet’s own profound political awakening. From buying her first Nina Simone album to becoming a creative and activist, Tillet’s private encounters with Simone’s work grew into a broader exploration of her legacy. Exploring Simone’s unique impact on the American cultural landscape through the women who shaped her and those whom she shaped, Tillet reveals how art can be a powerful driver of social activism, and the struggles and sacrifices it involves.

With honest, lyrical prose, Tillet’s intimate portrait brings us close to Simone, while showing us how the singer’s voice captured the pain and promise of America and resonates in the fight for equality today. Nina Simone and the World She Made urges us to listen to Simone’s music—not just as a reflection of the past, but as a guide for the future.

We Made the World: Five Centuries of Queens, Warriors, and Other Foremothers traces five centuries of history through twelve extraordinary women of African descent—from queens and warriors to artists and activists—weaving together collective memory, oral tradition, and personal grief into a landmark work that places Black women at the center of world history.

In 1949, a seamstress from a small coastal town in the Gold Coast colony stood up in a room full of men and voted to split from the most powerful political party in the country. Her name was Hannah Kudjoe. She spent the next decade organizing the women who would win Ghana's first democratic election and help make it the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence from European colonial rule. When Nkrumah published his autobiography, she wasn't in it.

We Made the World does for twelve women what it does for Hannah Kudjoe. It finds the woman who was in the room, who was essential to the room, and whose name was removed from the record the moment her usefulness to powerful men was exhausted.

We're talking about Queen Njinga of Angola, who fought the Portuguese to a standstill for forty years and died at eighty still a sovereign. Wangarĩ Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who saved a Nairobi forest by walking upstream through a river at dawn to plant trees while the police watched. Brenda Fassie, the queer Black pop icon who sang South Africa through the end of apartheid and whose music still stops a room on any continent.

The author traveled to eleven countries to write this book. She gathered oral histories from descendants and community keepers across four continents. And she wrote it while experiencing great loss and grief which means this book knows in its bones what it costs to carry someone's memory, and what it costs not to.

We Made the World is five hundred years of history rewritten from the inside. It is the book that asks what we have lost by not knowing these women's names, and begins the important work of giving that back to us all.

Now available in trade paper!

Love isn't about finding the right person—it's about becoming the right person.

No matter your relationships status—single, dating, engaged, married, or divorced—Student of Love invites you back into the classroom to learn what it truly takes to build healthy, loving and long-lasting relationships. From Laterras R. Whitfield, the host of the Dear Future Wifey Podcast and widely regarded as "The Relationship Whisperer," comes an essential guide—offering a God-centered perspective on healthy relationships—packed with refreshing wisdom and heartfelt lessons designed to equip you to make the right decisions in all your relationships.

In a world fixated on finding love, Student of Love shifts the focus to becoming love—offering raw, relatable lessons and hopeful perspectives that resonate with healing, growth, and self-discovery.

What makes this book a must-read?

Laterras steps into the classroom not as a professor, but as a fellow student—creating a space where vulnerability meets wisdom. Here's what's in the curriculum:

* A fresh approach to relationships: Learn from your mistakes and use them as steppingstones to build a more intentional and fulfilling love life.
* Recognize and define the types of Love: Gain the clarity, knowledge, and courage to seek the right connections.
* Guidance for every stage of love: Whether you're navigating the early days of dating, strengthening a marriage, or healing from heartbreak, or focusing on yourself, this book meets you where you are.
* Courageous conversations: Laterras tackles the tough topics with compassion and candor, offering profound insights that challenge and heal.
* Find the roadmap to self-awareness: Discover how to show up in your relationships with confidence, clarity, and authenticity.
* Hope after heartbreak: Heartache isn't the end of your story—it's a chance to rewrite it. Learn how to reassess, rediscover, and rebuild from a place of strength and self-love.

With brutal honesty and heartfelt authenticity, Student of Love explores the complexities of love in all its forms. It's not just a book—it's a guide to uncovering the love you deserve, starting with the love you give yourself.

Your love story isn't over. It's just beginning. So, grab your backpack, open your heart, and let Student of Love help you write the next chapter—one lesson at a time.