266 results for “by Complex Media”

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  • All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson

    by Charles Johnson

    $34.95

    *ships/available for pickup in 7-10 business days

    Years before he wrote his National Book Award–winning novel Middle Passage, Charles Johnson created these sidesplitting and subversive gag comics about Black life in America, now collected for the first time in nearly half a century.

    Before Charles Johnson found fame as a novelist and won the National Book Award for Middle Passage in 1991, he was a cartoonist, and a very good one.

    Taught via mail correspondence course by the comics editor Lawrence Lariar, mentored by the New Yorker cartoonist Charles Barsotti, and inspired by the call of poet Amiri Baraka to celebrate and depict Black life in America, Johnson crafted some of the fiercest and funniest cartoons of the twentieth century. 

    Reimagining the gag comic as a powerful and incendiary tool, Johnson tackled America’s mid-century afflictions—segregation, inner-city poverty, police brutality, and white supremacy—by craftily subverting stale gag tropes. He populated them with bullet-dodging Black Panthers, doubt-filled Klansmen, militant babies, self-serving politicians, and complacent suburban liberals.

    This collection, Johnson’s first in nearly fifty years, brings together work from across his career: college newspaper gags, selections from his books Black Humor and Half-Past Nation Time, his unpublished manuscript Lumps in the Melting Pot, and uncollected pieces. Taken together, this volume reveals Johnson as long overdue for appreciation as a cartoonist of the first order. 

  • The Beautiful Ones by Prince
    $30.00
    Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of “Uptown” to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of “Paisley Park.” But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era.

    The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince—a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince’s early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince’s evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book’s fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain—the final stage in Prince’s self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey.
  • Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe

    by Aomawa Shields, PhD

    $28.00

    A stunning and inspiring memoir charting a life as an astronomer, classically-trained actor, mother, and Black woman in STEM, searching for life in the universe while building a meaningful life here on Earth

    As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars. She was the oldest and the only Black student in her PhD cohort. This time, no professor, and no voice in her own head, would stop her. Now an astronomer and astrobiologist at the top of her field, Dr. Shields studies the universe outside our Solar System, researching and uncovering the planets circling distant stars with just the right conditions that could support life—while also using her theater education to communicate the wonder and magic of the universe with those of us here on Earth. But it’s been a journey as winding and complex as the physics she has mastered.

    Life on Other Planets is a journey of discovery on this world and on others, a story of creating a life that makes space for joy, love, and wonder while being driven by one of our biggest questions: Is anybody else out there? It is about the possibility of living between multiple worlds and not choosing—but instead charting a new path entirely.

  • Women in Yoruba Religions

    by Oyèrónké Oládém

    $27.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Uncovers the influence of Yoruba culture on women’s religious lives and leadership in religions practiced by Yoruba people

    Women in Yoruba Religions examines the profound influence of Yoruba culture in Yoruba religion, Christianity, Islam, and Afro-Diasporic religions such as Santeria and Candomblé, placing gender relations in historical and social contexts. While the coming of Christianity and Islam to Yorubaland has posed significant challenges to Yoruba gender relations by propagating patriarchal gender roles, the resources within Yoruba culture have enabled women to contest the full acceptance of those new norms.

    Oyeronke Olademo asserts that Yoruba women attain and wield agency in family and society through their economic and religious roles, and Yoruba operate within a system of gender balance, so that neither of the sexes can be subsumed in the other. Olademo utilizes historical and phenomenological methods, incorporating impressive data from interviews and participant-observation, showing how religion is at the core of Yoruba lived experiences and is intricately bound up in all sectors of daily life in Yorubaland and abroad in the diaspora.

  • The God of Good Looks: A Novel

    by Breanne Mc Ivor

    $30.00

    Combining the raw honesty of Queenie and the warmth of a modern-day Bridget Jones’s Diary, this entertaining, transportive, and luminous debut novel from award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and reclaiming her name.

    Bianca Bridge is at her wit’s end. Fired from her editorial job after scandalizing Trinidad’s tight, conservative society by having an affair with a married government official, she’s resorting to modeling for even the sleaziest of photographers to make ends meet. Her mother, were she still alive, would be stunned by whom her daughter has become. Her father—and his ample checkbook—is off somewhere with his second family. And the government official? It was his wife who got her fired.

    With nothing left to lose, Bianca takes a job assisting the brilliant but aloof makeup artist Obadiah Cortland, a rising star in the Trinidadian beauty community. Yet Obadiah is not the elite tyrant he seems. Born in the poorest part of Trinidad, he’s clawed partway up society’s ladder and built his company around his meticulously crafted persona. And he’s not about to let anyone see past his façade.

    As Bianca’s ex-lover continues to wield power over her and the colleagues she’s come to love, she, with Obadiah’s help, finally decides she’s ready to fight back like her mother taught her—and to reconsider, at last, the nature of what, and whom, might deserve to be called beautiful.

    Alternating between Bianca’s irreverent yet poignant diary entries and Obadiah’s clear-eyed first-person narrative, The God of Good Looks portrays the everyday realities of modern Trinidad’s rigid class barriers and the fraught impact of beauty commodification in a patriarchal society. Amusing and entertaining, yet sharp-witted and full of meaty, universally relatable questions, Mc Ivor’s sparkling debut is an open-hearted, awakening tale about finding one’s voice. 

  • Where to Begin: A Small Book About Your Power to Create Big Change

    by Cleo Wade

    $17.99
    “Author and poet Cleo Wade will make your day with her inspiring and uplifting outlook on life” (People) and she returns with another moving collection of poems, mantras, and illustrations encouraging you to remain hopeful and harness your inner power and create change through self-care and social justice.

    If you are ready to be a part of building a society rooted in love, acceptance, justice, and equality, Where to Begin is the ultimate inspirational guide. Building on the wisdom of Cleo Wade’s national bestseller Heart Talk, this heartfelt collection will help you stay connected to hope during difficult moments and remind you that no matter what, you still have the power to show up and effect positive change.

    Remember, your big life is made up of a collection of all of your small moments. Our big world is a made up of a collection of all of our small actions. This book is about where to begin.
  • American Street

    Mireille Miller-Young

    $11.99

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own.

    Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola must learn that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?

  • Mobilizing Black Germany

    by Tiffany N. Florvil

    $26.95

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Tiffany N. Florvil examines the role of queer and straight women in shaping the contours of the modern Black German movement as part of the Black internationalist opposition to racial and gender oppression. Florvil shows the multifaceted contributions of women to movement making, including Audre Lorde’s role in influencing their activism; the activists who inspired Afro-German women to curate their own identities and histories; and the evolution of the activist groups Initiative of Black Germans and Afro-German Women. These practices and strategies became a rallying point for isolated and marginalized women (and men) and shaped the roots of contemporary Black German activism.Richly researched and multidimensional in scope, Mobilizing Black Germany offers a rare in-depth look at the emergence of the modern Black German movement and Black feminists’ politics, intellectualism, and internationalism.

  • Simple Goodness: No-fuss, Plant-based Meals Straight from Your Pantry cover image

    Makini Howell

    $32.00

    From a beloved plant-based chef and restauranter, a cookbook full of easy to follow vegan recipes–every bite is bursting with flavor!

    With over 140 delicious recipes, Howell provides everything from practical tips (“Stocking Your Kitchen for a Plant-Based Life,”) to recipes for dips that double as sauces and can be used from breakfast to dinner, easy and healthy breakfasts (Plant Beef and Cheese Taquitos), sustaining lunches (Portobello Gyros), hearty suppers (Eggplant Parmesan with Alfredo Rigatoni and Lemon Olive Oil Arugula), and delicious desserts (Vanilla Caramel Apple Sprinkle Ice-Cream Sammie).

    Additionally, SIMPLE GOODNESS features a whole chapter dedicated to kid-friendly recipes-- healthy, tasty, and enjoyable dishes for quick, energizing breakfasts, packable lunches, and adults-will-love-them-too dinners, even for the pickiest of eaters.

    SIMPLE GOODNESS offers life-changing meals that fit seamlessly into your lifestyle, whether you’re feeding a family or just yourself, a college student, or anyone in between. More than just a cookbook, it’s a tribute to the warmth and care found in sharing homemade food and embracing a plant-based life one simply good meal at a time.

  • Black Opera

    by Naomi Andre

    $27.95

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Throughout Africa, artists use hip-hop both to describe their lives and to create shared spaces for uncensored social commentary, feminist challenges to patriarchy, and resistance against state institutions, while at the same time engaging with the global hip-hop community. In Hip-Hop in Africa, Msia Kibona Clark examines some of Africa’s biggest hip-hop scenes and shows how hip-hop helps us understand specifically African narratives of social, political, and economic realities. Clark looks at the use of hip-hop in protest, both as a means of articulating social problems and as a tool for mobilizing listeners around those problems. She also details the spread of hip-hop culture in Africa following its emergence in the United States, assessing the impact of urbanization and demographics on the spread of hip-hop culture.Hip-Hop in Africa is a tribute to a genre and its artists as well as a timely examination that pushes the study of music and diaspora in critical new directions. Accessibly written by one of the foremost experts on African hip-hop, this book will easily find its place in the classroom.

  • Wildflower: A Memoir

    by Aurora James

    $27.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    This extraordinary memoir of struggle and perseverance offers new ways of envisioning economic equality for everyone—from a leading activist and fashion pioneer.

    Aurora James’s story is not a “success story.” Or at least, it shouldn’t be told that way. Having dropped out of high school, struggled with body image, and dabbled in street racing, her eventual arrest might have been her rock bottom. But as a visionary and optimist, that experience became one of many that reshaped her way of thinking about the world. After a brief modeling stint, James discovered the real power in creating for the runway and started her own business in a flea market, a sustainable fashion line showcasing traditional African design that would become an award-winning international brand. Then she founded one of the fastest-growing social justice nonprofits, the Fifteen Percent Pledge. But none of this came from a desire to “succeed.” It came from a desire to forge a new creative path—and to lift others up alongside her.

    Already a rising star in fashion and the first Black American female designer to win a CFDA Award, James was inspired by the activism that swept the nation in the summer of 2020 to think bigger about how to empower Black business owners. With an idea and an Instagram post, she founded the Fifteen Percent Pledge, which challenges retailers to commit 15% of their shelf space and spending power to Black businesses. To date, more than two dozen of the world’s most recognized retailers have taken the pledge, redirecting $10 billion in revenue to Black brands.

    Empowering and full of heart, Wildflower is the story of how Aurora James got to where she is now and a rallying cry for those eager to make change.

  • The Black Period: On Personhood, Race, and Origin by Hafizah Augustus Geter
    $28.99

    An acclaimed poet reclaims her origin story as the queer daughter of a Muslim Nigerian immigrant and a Black American visual artist in this groundbreaking memoir, combining lyrical prose, biting criticism, and haunting visuals.

    “Hafizah Augustus Geter is a genuine artist, not bound by genre or form. Her only loyalty is the harrowing beauty of the truth.”—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

    “I say, ‘the Black Period,’ and mean ‘home’ in all its shapeshifting ways.” In The Black Period, Hafizah creates a space for the beauty of Blackness, Islam, disability, and queerness to flourish, celebrating the many layers of her existence that America has time and again sought to erase.

    At nineteen, she lost her mother to a sudden stroke. Weeks later, her father became so heartsick that he needed a triple bypass. By her thirties, she was constantly in pain, pinballing between physical therapy appointments, her grief, and the grind that is the American Dream. Hafizah realized she'd spent years internalizing the narratives that white supremacy had fed her about herself. Suddenly, she says, I was standing at the cliff of my own life, remembering.

    Recalling her parents’ lessons on the art of Black revision, and mixing history, political analysis, and cultural criticism, alongside stunning original artworks created by her father, renowned artist Tyrone Geter, Hafizah maps out her own narrative, weaving between a childhood populated with Southern and Nigerian relatives; her days in a small Catholic school; a loving but tragically short relationship with her mother; and the feelings of joy and community that the Black Lives Matter protests engendered in her as an adult. All throughout, she forms a new personal and collective history, addressing the systems of inequity that make life difficult for non-able-bodied persons, queer people, and communities of color while capturing a world brimming with potential, art, music, hope, and love.

    A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, in The Black Period, Hafizah manages to sidestep shame, confront disability, embrace forgiveness, and emerge from the erasures

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