A political vision for a future ripe with alternatives to imprisonment and punishment.

Born from sustained organizing, and rooted in Black and women of color feminisms, disability justice, and other movements, abolition calls for an end to our reliance on imprisonment, policing and surveillance, and to imagine a safer future for our communities.

Lessons in Liberation: An Abolitionist Toolkit for Educators offers entry points to build critical and intentional bridges between educational practice and the growing movement for abolition. Designed for educators, parents, and young people, this toolkit shines a light on innovative abolitionist projects, particularly in pre-K–12 learning contexts.

Sections are dedicated to entry points into Prison Industrial Complex abolition and education; the application of the lessons and principles of abolition; and stories about growing abolition outside of school settings. Topics addressed throughout include student organizing, immigrant justice in the face of ICE, approaches to sex education, arts-based curriculum, and building abolitionist skills and thinking in lesson plans.

The result of patient and urgent work, and more than five years in the making, Lessons in Liberation invites educators into the work of abolition.

Contributors include Black Organizing Project, Chicago Women’s Health Center, Mariame Kaba and Project NIA, Bettina L. Love, the MILPA Collective, and artists from the Justseeds Collective, among others.

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An essential guide for frontline educators to address systemic racial oppression, repair harm, and foster safe, inclusive learning spaces for their students

For educators and readers of Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive, with a foreword by Leigh Patel, author of No Study Without Struggle

Toward Liberation is the timely and practical guide that pioneers new pathways for educators to repair harm and foster transformative learning spaces. This road map for liberatory pedagogy is replete with resources, tools, and strategies drawn from Jamilah Pitts's experiences as a young Black girl, a Black student, a teacher, a former school leader, and a consultant with schools across the country.

Educators will want to mark up and keep their copy of Toward Liberation at their desks for easy reference. In its pages, they will find

• Real-life examples and student writing from Pitts’s classroom
• Explorative questions for teachers to consider in their equity work
• Constructive charts that map out manifestations of harm
• Activities to engage students in liberatory learning
• Healing and self-care strategies for teachers—particularly Black women educators

Pitts infuses her writing with an extensive knowledge base of the education system, honed over years as a teacher, a coach, a dean, an assistant principal, and a national education consultant. The tenets of this book—rooted in truthtelling, activism, healing, wellness, self-care, and, ultimately, love— both inform and are inspired by the healing work Pitts does with educators to this day. In doing this work, she helps to reimagine the role of the critical teacher.

Toward Liberation equips teachers with the tools they need to carve a path toward liberatory educational practices, ensuring that students are afforded the full range of their humanity and their experience, in and out of the classroom.

Powerful interviews with scholars, organizers, and activists who are leading the movement to end policing and prison.

Award-winning journalist Kolhatkar presents a visionary outlook for a future rooted in liberation, freedom, and justice.

Abolitionist thinkers have been envisioning police-free communities for decades, but only in the aftershock of the racial justice uprisings of 2020 have their radical ideas entered into mainstream discourse. In Talking About Abolition, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar presents an inspiring collection of her conversations with scholars, movement figures, and activists who are leading the movement to end policing and prisons. From articulating the best counter-arguments to pervasive “copaganda,” to exposing the moral bankruptcy of reformism, each conversation connects the dots between past and present while imagining a collective future rooted in liberation, freedom, and justice.

Featuring interviews with Alicia Garza, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Leah Penniman, Gina Dent, Cat Brooks, Andrea Ritchie, Eunisses Hernandez, Noelle Hanrahan, Ivette Alé-Ferlito, Melina Abdullah, Reina Sultan, and Dylan Rodriguez, and with an introduction by Robin D. G. Kelley.

From one of our most distinguished historians comes a groundbreaking new examination of the myths and realities of the period after the Civil War.

Drawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, Eric Foner places a new emphasis on black experiences and roles during the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in shaping Reconstruction, and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood. He compellingly refutes long-standing misconceptions of Reconstruction, and shows how the failures of the time sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Richly illustrated and movingly written, this is an illuminating and essential addition to our understanding of this momentous era.

This lyrical celebration of Juneteenth, deeply rooted in Black American history, spans centuries and reverberates loudly and proudly today.

After 300 years of forced bondage;
hands bound, descendants of Africa
picked up their souls—all that they owned—
leaving shackles where they fell on the ground,
headed for the nearest resting place to be found.

Deeply emotional, evocative free verse by poet and activist Sojourner Kincaid Rolle traces the solemnity and celebration of Juneteenth from its 1865 origins in Galveston, Texas to contemporary observances all over the United States. This is an ode to the strength of Black Americans and a call to remember and honor a holiday whose importance reverberates far beyond the borders of Texas.

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?

In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.

Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.

This inspiring photographic board book celebrating Juneteenth is from the ALA Stonewall Award–winning team Little Feminist team

Freedom feels like hugs and kisses, unity, strength and pride.
Freedom feels like a million steps forward―together with every stride.

From award-winning indie publisher Little Feminist Press comes an engaging board book celebrating Juneteenth and its powerful history. Bursting with beautiful, community-sourced photographs, this board book features powerful images of Black joy, allyship from all demographics, and the many ways people can celebrate this important American holiday.

Showcasing real families and communities, young readers will see festivities and merriment in action as kids, their adoring adult caretakers, and their neighbors share stories, prepare meals, listen, hug, dance, show kindness, demonstrate bravery, and step in to help their families and communities.

The book also includes family discussion questions and a note for grown-ups on how to use this book with young children.

A dramatic and thought-provoking novel of one family's triumph in the face of the hardships and challenges of the post-Civil War South, from the award-winning author of Family

"Rendered with compassion and beautiful simplicity."--The Washington Post Book World

"[A] provocative and at times painful family portrait . . . It should be required reading."--Detroit Free Press

Opening in Texas during the waning years of the Civil War, The Wake of the Wind tells the epic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When news of Emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and their family set out in search of hope and a piece of land they can work and call their own. Miraculously, they manage not only to survive but to succeed--their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. But the South during Reconstruction is not a place that takes kindly to the achievements of former slaves, and as lynchings and injustices become a plague across the region, time and time again they must make the anguished decision to leave their land in search of a safer place.

Land, however, is the least of their worldly possessions. Lifee and Mor are the descendants of a long and vital line. Having used their intelligence, strength, and ingenuity to make their place in the new post-Civil War world, they in turn pass those talents along to their children--the next generation to surge forward, accomplishing more than their parents could ever dream.

At once tragic and triumphant, The Wake of the Wind is a penetrating look at the challenges that generations of African Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home and a future for themselves and their families.

Two homicide detectives track a brazen killer who's dropping bodies at historical Philadelphia landmarks in this action-packed crime thriller.

Two homicide detectives track a brazen killer who's dropping bodies at historical Philadelphia landmarks in this action-packed crime thriller.

"Marc did a great job setting the table. Looking forward to the next course." -K'WAN, national bestselling author of Animal

"Avery delivers a heart-stopping thriller. Giuseppe "Discipline" Cain is a one-man crime wave." -Dennis Tafoya, author of Dope Thief, an Apple+ TV series

"Discipline is everything you want in a buddy cop story. Gritty, action-packed, clever, and funny." -Delaware Today Magazine

"Has Netflix series written all over it." -Philadelphia Magazine

Giuseppe "Discipline" Cain is a cold-hearted, calculated, and resentful murderer who turns Philadelphia into his own personal killing ground. As the death toll rises, city officials and the police department clamor to calm the fears of the citizens about this brazen serial killer. When an elected official's family member is found dead, no one in the city is safe.

Detective Aaden Bravo is a highly decorated officer with a legendary clearance rate. Detective Christian Bennett is flashy, reckless, and a serial womanizer. After Christian's transfer to the Philadelphia Police Department's homicide division, these two starkly contrasting officers are forced to work together. Despite their disdain for each other, Aaden and Christian's skill sets complement each other. While Aaden is all about the job and Christian is all about the women, their next case is all about survival.

Will they succumb to the pressure of maintaining their partnership, or can they cast aside their differences and stay alive long enough to bring Discipline to justice?

The beloved novel about a New York City girlhood that heralded a renaissance in Black women’s literature, with a new foreword by Nicole Dennis-Benn, the bestselling author of Patsy and Here Comes the Sun

One of The New York Times Magazine’s 25 Most Significant New York City Novels from the Last 100 Years

A Penguin Classic

Selina Boyce comes of age in 1940s New York as the daughter of two immigrants from Barbados: a free-spirited father she adores and who dreams of returning to his Caribbean island home, and a disciplined, hardworking mother she admires and who is determined to purchase their Brooklyn brownstone. When her father comes into an unexpected inheritance, Selina is torn between his nostalgia for the past and her mother’s ambition for the future, all while negotiating racism, sexuality, Depression-era poverty, and the competing values of African Americans and her West Indian immigrant community.

First published in 1959, Brown Girl, Brownstones opened a window into the rich inner life of Black women and today ranks with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as one of the great New York City novels. With her autobiographical debut, Paule Marshall paved the way for Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Maya Angelou—and took her place in the American literary canon.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.