Search results: 17 results for “by ajuan mance”
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17 results
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Living While Black: Portraits of Everyday Resistance
Living While Black: Portraits of Everyday Resistance
by Ajuan Mance
$22.95In homage to the radical power of art, Living While Black celebrates the small acts of resistance that comprise the daily lives of Black folks by presenting them in a series of vivid illustrations.
Laughing. Grieving. Being a kid. Even the purest expression of pleasure, the most human display of sorrow, or the simplest delight of childhood is an act of resistance if you happen to be Black. This immersive hardcover book features forty defiantly joyful illustrations by artist and educator Ajuan Mance, each artwork depicting a person of African descent going about their everyday business. Begun as Mance's personal response to the groundswell of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Living While Black denounces the excessive surveillance, harassment, and violence aimed at Black folks engaged in the activities of everyday life—and celebrates the courage and resilience of the Black community. Fittingly, the book also features a foreword from Alicia Garza, BLM founder and principal at the Black Futures Lab. Mance's thoughtful meditation on what it's like to be Black in America makes a wonderful tool for teachers, students, activists, and parents navigating conversations about racism and resistance.
POWERFUL MESSAGE: In the contrast between the colorful illustrations and the weighty subject matter, a powerful message emerges: No matter how strong the forces of oppression, Black people will persist in striving for justice, equality, and joy. The book itself is also a reminder that there are many ways to be an activist—from marching for what you believe in, to spreading a message with your art.
VIBRANT ARTWORK: Bright colors, bold shapes, vivid patterns—Ajuan Mance's artwork speaks to the enduring power and importance of joy.
EXCEPTIONAL TEACHING TOOL: To provide context for the artwork, Mance has compiled a timeline of recent events that lend urgency to the fight for Black lives—she highlights the ways that the conversation has shifted since cell phones allowed bystanders to document instances of racial injustice and violence and offers an entry point for anyone who wants to learn about the roots of contemporary racial justice movements.
Perfect for:- Activists and agitators
- Art book lovers
- Students of Black history
- Teachers and parents looking for colorful ways to talk to young people about activism and resistance
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What Do Brothas Do All Day?
What Do Brothas Do All Day?
by Ajuan Mance
$17.99Inspired by Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?, these joyous portraits of Black men engaged in everyday life celebrate the deep roots and rich cultures of African American communities.
Have you ever wondered . . .
What do brothas do all day?
Brothas drive. Brothas dance. Brothas work. Brothas listen. And brothas love.
Scarry’s now-classic book, first published in 1968, is a richly illustrated guide to the places, jobs, and activities that defined the daily lives of grown-ups. Author-illustrator Ajuan Mance created What Do Brothas Do All Day?, like Scarry, in response to children’s innate curiosity about the activities and experiences of others, but also to meet the longing many kids have for characters and communities that look and feel like the people and places they know.
This joyous reflection of real Black men and boys engaged in everyday life is a gift for Black kids who rarely see themselves reflected in the pages of a book and an affirmation of their world and the people who populate it. From grocery shopping and waiting for a trim at the barbershop to singing, dancing, and laughing with friends, Mance captures the beauty in the ordinary, affirming the enduring strength of the Black community.
DIVERSE BOOKS FOR KIDS: This picture book features real Black men the author has observed in the world—everyday people, not models or stereotypes. One fan describes it as "just a rainbow of Black men, a beautiful rainbow of Black men."
LIBRARIAN LOVE: What Do Brothas Do All Day? began as an all-ages zine, but the author began to conceive of it as a children's book after being approached by two children's librarians.
INSPIRED BY A CLASSIC: As the author notes in the book, "I first encountered Richard Scarry’s work in the early 1970s when I was about six years old. The world of adults, with its grocery lists, PTA meetings, shopping trips, and dinner parties, seemed both tantalizingly exotic and impossibly complex. Today, those same descriptors can be applied to the ways that many people of all ages perceive Black men."
AN INVITATION: The book ends with an invitation, perhaps even a call to action: What will you do today?
Perfect for:- Parents and grandparents seeking engaging read-aloud and read-along picture books
- Teachers and librarians looking for books featuring Black communities
- Gift for readers of Jacqueline Woodson, Kwame Alexander, Cedella Marley, and Derrick Barnes books
- Fans of Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?
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When We Were Birds
When We Were Birds
by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
$18.00A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s radiant debut introduces two unforgettable outsiders brought together by their connection with the dead.
“Heartwarming and heartbreaking, fantastical and familiar, with characters that burrow their way into your heart and mind… [When We Were Birds] is glorious.”—ROBERT JONES JR., New York Times bestselling author of THE PROPHETS
In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.
Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past, and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.
Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both. A masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling, When We Were Birds is a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love’s seismic power to heal. -
The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel
The Autobiography of My Mother: A Novel
by Jamaica Kincaid
$18.00*ships in 7 - 10 business days*
From the recipient of the 2010 Clifton Fadiman Medal, an unforgettable novel of one woman's courageous coming-of-age
Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother is a story of love, fear, loss, and the forging of character, an account of one woman's inexorable evolution, evoked in startling and magical poetry.
Powerful, disturbing, stirring, Jamaica Kincaid's novel is the deeply charged story of a woman's life on the island of Dominica. Xuela Claudette Richardson, the daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half-African father, loses her mother to death the moment she is born and must find her way on her own.
Kincaid takes us from Xuela's childhood in a home where she can hear the song of the sea to the tin-roofed room where she lives as a schoolgirl in the house of Jack LaBatte, who becomes her first lover. Xuela develops a passion for the stevedore Roland, who steals bolts of Irish linen for her from the ships he unloads, but she eventually marries an English doctor, Philip Bailey. Xuela's is an intensely physical world, redolent of overripe fruit, gentian violet, sulfur, and rain on the road, and it seethes with her sorrow, her deep sympathy for those who share her history, her fear of her father, her desperate loneliness. But underlying all is "the black room of the world" that is Xuela's barrenness and motherlessness.
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The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Morocco! (Hardcover)
The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Morocco! (Hardcover)
$18.00Come along with Aya and Pete on a regal adventure to the Kingdom of Morocco! Learn about the foods, sights, music, and landmarks of this enchanting African country as we follow the adventures of Aya and Pete. From a visit to the souks of Marrakech to the mountain town of Chefchaouen, known as the Blue Pearl of Morocco, kids will enjoy the playful story and vibrant illustrations. Every Aya and Pete story takes children on learning adventures to different cities and countries around the world to spark their curiosity, imagination, and broaden their cultural perspectives from an early age. "The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Morocco" is the fifth book in the Aya and Pete travel collection. Recommended for ages 3-7. Ships in a sturdy corrugated flat-pack book box. -
The Echo of Forever
The Echo of Forever
Asia Monique
$33.00The King of Rejectors
The Collective took from me…
Demetrius Cannon had everything to lose and nothing to gain if he allowed the society to walk all over him. He was determined to eliminate every threat to his family’s bloodline, even if it meant going up against a group more powerful than he could ever be.
…and it was time I took it all back.
The Broker of Assassins
I bled for the Collective…
Forever James had the world at her fingertips, but couldn’t fathom what real freedom looked like. She was determined to break away from the society her family had been loyal to for generations, even if it meant she died trying.
…and it was time I made them bleed for me.
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Aya & Pete 3-Book Gift Box Set
Aya & Pete 3-Book Gift Box Set
by Serena Minott & Asha Gore
$59.00Give the gift of adventure with the Aya & Pete gift box set! This limited edition three-book gift box set features our favorite books from the Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete travel story collection. Join Aya & Pete on adventures in Paris, London and New York, all packaged in a colorful gift box with top cord handle and velcro closures. Includes 3 hardcover books. Recommended for ages 3+ -
The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Mexico!
The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Mexico!
by Serena Minott & Asha Gore
$18.00Aya and Pete are going to visit Mexico! Aya travels with her best friend Esme to meet her family and explore all of the magic and wonder that Mexico has to offer. From the excitement of Mexico City to the historic center of Oaxaca, Aya and Pete explore the foods, languages, arts, landmarks, and historical architecture of one of the most mythical countries in the world. The newest book in the Aya and Pete collection, The Amazing Adventures of Aya & Pete in Mexico is a must-have book for little explorers, and the first book in our next 3-book box set! Ships in a sturdy corrugated flat-pack book box. -
City Without Altar
City Without Altar
by Jasminne Mendez
$18.00CITY WITHOUT ALTAR is a poetry collection and play in verse that explores what it means to live, love, heal and experience violence as a Black person in the world. The titular play in verse that sits at the center of the book seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. Between the scenes of the play are interludes that explore a different kind of cutting and what it means to feel othered because of illness, disability and blackness. Ultimately, Machete is a meditation on being/feeling blacked out by the archive, on the world stage and in one's daily life. -
Via Ápia: A Novel
Via Ápia: A Novel
Geovani Martins
$20.00From one of Brazil’s most acclaimed new literary stars, a twenty-first-century epic set in Rio’s largest favela.
Life on the morro, the hill, is good. Five young people―the brothers Washington and Wesley and their friends Douglas, Murilo, and Biel―live close to Rocinha’s main avenue, Via Ápia, just a quick bus ride from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro.
But the rhythms of their lives stutter and scratch when Brazil’s militarized police storm Rocinha as part of “pacification” efforts ahead of the upcoming World Cup and an influx of international tourists. Via Ápia charts the expectant anxiousness before the police’s invasion, the chaos born from their occupation of the hill, and the aftermath of their silent withdrawal from the favela after one year.
Told in heated bursts and marked by the charged chronology of the protagonists’ lives, Geovani Martins’s prodigious debut novel knits together the dramas and dreams of the favela during a peak of turbulent unrest. Like the boom boom kat of Brazilian funk, the unbridled ambitions and resolute friendships of these characters blare throughout Via Ápia, delivering a resonant counternarrative to the notion that violent interventions are the state’s only remedy to the afflictions of crime and poverty. The favela retorts: life, life is the answer.
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Muñeca
Muñeca
$30.00A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.
It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.
Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?
As feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghosts— ones she hoped would stay gone forever.
Riveting and richly layered, Muñeca explores how far one will go to save the person they love—even if that means damning themselves. Cynthia Gómez fills her debut novel with moments that chill your bones and warm your heart, a razor-sharp examination of deep-rooted issues that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
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The Miseducation of Obi Ifeanyi by Chinua Achebe
The Miseducation of Obi Ifeanyi by Chinua Achebe
$16.00*ships/ready for pick up in 5-8 business days
Obi Ifeanyi's life is moving at a fast pace. He is now a husband and father. So while President Obama is contending with a tough reelection campaign, Obi Ifeanyi is dealing with the day to day pressures of married life and raising a son. When his former love interest, Sade Olufemi, comes back into his life and decides to run her political campaign with the help of his wife, Nkechi, Obi's problems are compounded because Sade is a secret Nkechi is better not knowing about. While he struggles with the torment of Sade's return, the upcoming wedding of his best friend from law school, will lead to the unveiling of a secret that will change the dynamics of the Ifeanyi family forever.
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