263 results for “by Complex Media”

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  • JULY 2026: NO NAME BOOK CLUB - JuLY 26 @ 3 PM CST
    $0.00
    No Name is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, No Name uplifts two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. No Name believes building community through political education is crucial for our liberation and should be accessible to everyone—which is why all programming is free. 

    MEETING DEETS
    When: Sunday, July 26 @ 3 PM
    Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)
    How: RSVP to let us know you're coming! Support No Name Bookclub by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

    ABOUT RAZORBLADE TEARS

    A black father and a white father join forces on a crusade for revenge against the people who murdered their gay sons, by the award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland.

    Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

    The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband Derek. Isiah was a gay black man in the American South; Ike couldn’t bring himself to attend his son’s wedding. Isiah was a man Ike never understood. A boy he was never there for the way he should have been.

    Derek’s father Buddy Lee is also suffering. He’d barely spoken to his son in five years; he was as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

  • JULY 2026: Mystery & Thriller Book Club - July 28 @ 7PM
    $0.00

    We're meeting to discuss Judge Stone by Viola Davis!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, July 28 @ 7PM CST

    Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Mystery/Thriller Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

    ABOUT JUDGE STONE

    The most respected citizen in Union Springs, Alabama (population 3,314), is Judge Mary Stone. She holds two responsibilities sacred: running her family farm and presiding over her courtroom. It's there she draws the most controversial case in the history of the South.

    Criminally, it’s open-and-shut.

    Ethically, there is no middle ground. Essentially, it’s a choice between life and death.
     
    No judge can satisfy everyone. It would be dangerous to try. But Judge Stone is willing to fight to bring justice to the people and place she loves.

  • Complex Presents: Sneaker of the Year: The Best Since '85

    by Complex Media

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    In 1985, Nike released Michael Jordan’s first sneaker, the Air Jordan 1, and sneaker culture was born. Now thousands of people wait in line at Supreme, and companies throw millions of dollars at LeBron James to keep him in their marketing plans. The trend that saw steady growth for decades with the emergence of sports, hip-hop, and sportswear advertising has exploded into a phenomenon. And no one has watched that phenomenon more closely than Complex.
     
    Sneaker of the Year explores the past 35 years of sneaker culture with the expertise, authority, and passion that only Complex can offer. With vibrant photographs and illustrations throughout, as well as input from some of the sneaker world’s most important voices, this compilation is a must-have for hypebeasts and sneakerheads everywhere.
  • Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

    by Héctor Tobar

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    A new book by the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.

    "Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people. Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of "Latino" as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and seeks to give voice to the angst and anger of young Latino people who have seen latinidad transformed into hateful tropes about "illegals" and have faced insults, harassment, and division based on white insecurities and economic exploitation.

    Investigating topics that include the US-Mexico border "wall," Frida Kahlo, urban segregation, gangs, queer Latino utopias, and the emergence of the cartel genre in TV and film, Tobar journeys across the country to expose something truer about the meaning of "Latino" in the twenty-first century.

  • VIRTUAL AUTHOR TALK: Homebodies with Tembe Denton-Hurst-May 15 at 6 PM CST
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    Celebrate Tembe Denton-Hurst's debut novel, Homebodies:A Novel with the Black Bookstore Collective!
    EVENT DEETS
    When: May 15 at 6 PM CST
    Where: Virtual 
    How: RSVP ONLY to get your free ticket or RSVP WITH BOOK to support our programming! We'll send the link to view the talk 24 hours before the event. 
    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Urgent, propulsive, and deeply insightful, Homebodies is a thrilling debut novel about a young Black writer whose world is turned upside down when she loses her job in media and her searing manifesto about racism in the industry goes viral.

    Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter. She has a flashy media job that makes her feel successful and a devoted girlfriend who takes care of her when she comes home exhausted and demoralized. It’s not all A-list media parties and steamy romance, but Mickey’s on her way, and it’s far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Despite being overlooked and mistreated at work, everything finally seems to be falling into place—until she finds out she’s being replaced.

    Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she’s endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is—including the uncertainty of her relationship—she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run to, her hometown, desperate for a break from her troubles.

    Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her old life—and the flirtation of a former flame—but the life she left behind in New York refuses to be forgotten. When a media scandal catapults Mickey’s forgotten letter into the public zeitgeist, suddenly everyone wants to hear what Mickey has to say. It’s what she’s always wanted—isn’t it?

    Insightful, funny, and deeply sexy, Homebodies is a testament to those trying to be heard and loved in a world that refuses to make space, and introduces a standout new writer.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Tembe Denton-Hurst is a staff writer at New York magazine’s The Strategist and has written for Nylon magazine, them, and Elle. When she’s not writing, Tembe can be found on her couch in Queens, New York, where she lives with her partner and their two cats, Stella and Dakota.
  • The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 cover image
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    From the introduction of animated film in the early 1900s to the 1950s, ethnic humor was a staple of American-made cartoons. Yet as Christopher Lehman shows in this revealing study, the depiction of African Americans in particular became so inextricably linked to the cartoon medium as to influence its evolution through those five decades. He argues that what is in many ways most distinctive about American animation reflects white animators' visual interpretations of African American cultural expression. 

    The first American animators drew on popular black representations, many of which were caricatures rooted in the culture of southern slavery. During the 1920s, the advent of the sound-synchronized cartoon inspired animators to blend antebellum-era black stereotypes with the modern black cultural expressions of jazz musicians and Hollywood actors. When the film industry set out to desexualize movies through the imposition of the Hays Code in the early 1930s, it regulated the portrayal of African Americans largely by segregating black characters from others, especially white females. At the same time, animators found new ways to exploit the popularity of African American culture by creating animal characters like Bugs Bunny who exhibited characteristics associated with African Americans without being identifiably black. 

    By the 1950s, protests from civil rights activists and the growing popularity of white cartoon characters led animators away from much of the black representation on which they had built the medium. Even so, animated films today continue to portray African American characters and culture, and not necessarily in a favorable light. 

    Drawing on a wide range of sources, including interviews with former animators, archived scripts for cartoons, and the films themselves, Lehman illustrates the intimate and unmistakable connection between African Americans and animation.

  • Book cover image

    by Tracy Brown

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    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    Tracy Brown crafts a tale about a master manipulator and serial survivor, who will scorch earth to get what she wants. The question isn’t who murdered her; the question is who wouldn’t? Brooklyn Melody James has finally gotten the punishment she deserves after leaving a web of lies, heartache, and betrayal behind her. As her life slips away, Brooklyn remembers the events that shaped her into the cold, calculating creature she became. Brooklyn learned the art of hustling from her parents who used the church to get money. Idolizing her father and despising her mother, Brooklyn’s determined to be the type of woman who makes her own rules. When her back’s up against the wall, she sacrifices her family, takes the burnt offering that remains, and runs away. In NYC, young Brooklyn charms her way into the inner circle of hustlers and stick-up kids, learning tricks along the way. She catches the eye of a major player in the drug game, Hassan, and they have a breathless love affair. Brooklyn becomes integrated into his operation, earning the trust of Hassan and his associates. But when she gets the keys to the kingdom, driven by unfettered ambition and a ruthless desire to survive, Brooklyn snatches the pot of gold, leaving bitter retribution promises behind her. From DC to Maryland, Brooklyn burns bridges and breaks hearts. What she doesn't realize is that someone is prepared to end her reign of terror. As she faces her killer and her fate, Brooklyn’s stunned that justice comes from the least likely place.

  • The Kindest Lie: A Novel

    by Nancy Johnson

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    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    A promise could betray you.

    It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past.

    Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.

    Powerful and revealing, The Kindest Lie captures the heartbreaking divide between Black and white communities and offers both an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream.

  • Token Black Girl: A Memoir

    by Danielle Prescod

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    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Racial identity, pop culture, and delusions of perfection collide in an eye-opening and refreshingly frank memoir by fashion and beauty insider Danielle Prescod.

    Danielle Prescod grew up Black in an elite and overwhelmingly white community, her identity made more invisible by the whitewashed movies, television, magazines, and books she and her classmates voraciously consumed. Danielle took her cue from the world around her and aspired to shrink her identity into that box, setting increasingly poisonous goals. She started painful and damaging chemical hair treatments in elementary school, began depriving herself of food when puberty hit, and tried to control her image through the most unimpeachable, impeccable fashion choices.

    Those obsessions led her to relentlessly pursue a career in beauty and fashion—the eye of the racist and sexist beauty standard storm. Assimilating was hard, but she was practiced. And she was an asset. Their “Token Black Girl.” Toxic, sure. But Danielle was striving to achieve social cache and working her way up the ladder of coveted media jobs, and she looked great, right? So what if she had to endure executives’ questions like “What was it like to drive to school from the ghetto?” Or coworkers’ eager curiosity to know if her parents were on welfare. But after decades of burying her emotions, resentment, and true self, Danielle turned a critical eye inward and confronted the factors that motivated her self-destructive behaviors.

    Sharp witted and bracingly candid, Token Black Girl unpacks the adverse effects of insidious white supremacy in the media—both unconscious and strategic—to tell a personal story about recovery from damaging concepts of perfection, celebrating identity, and demolishing social conditioning.

  • How We Named the Stars

    by Andrés N. Ordorica

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    *ships in 7-10 business days

    Set between the United States and México, Andrés N. Ordorica’s debut novel is a tender and lyrical exploration of belonging, grief, and first love—a love story for those so often written off the page.

    When Daniel de La Luna arrives as a scholarship student at an elite East Coast university, he bears the weight of his family’s hopes and dreams, and the burden of sharing his late uncle’s name. Daniel flounders at first—but then Sam, his roommate, changes everything. As their relationship evolves from brotherly banter to something more intimate, Daniel soon finds himself in love with a man who helps him see himself in a new light. But just as their relationship takes flight, Daniel is pulled away, first by Sam’s hesitation and then by a brutal turn of events that changes Daniel’s life forever.

    As he grapples with profound loss, Daniel finds himself in his family’s ancestral homeland in México for the summer, finding joy in this setting even as he struggles to come to terms with what’s happened and faces a host of new questions: How does the person he is connect with this place his family comes from? How is his own story connected to his late uncle’s? And how might he reconcile the many parts of himself as he learns to move forward?

    Equal parts tender and triumphant, Andrés N. Ordorica’s How We Named the Stars is a debut novel of love, heartache, redemption, and learning to honor the dead; a story of finding the strength to figure out who you are—and who you could be—if only the world would let you.

  • Aftermath cover image
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    The acclaimed actor’s shockingly prescient novel of speculative fiction “presents a near-future United States torn apart by civil war and deep racial strife” (Tampa Bay Times).
     
    America today is teetering on the edge of the alarming vision presented in LeVar Burton’s debut novel, written more than two decades ago . . .
     
    In 2012, the first African American president is assassinated by a white extremist—just four days after he is elected. The horrific tragedy leads to riots, financial collapse, and ultimately, a full-on civil war. In its aftermath, millions are left homeless as famine and disease spread throughout the country.
     
    But from Chicago, a mysterious voice cries out . . .
     
    To Leon Crane, a former NASA scientist now struggling to survive on the streets, the pleas he hears remind him of the wife he could not save—and offer him a chance at redemption.
    To Jacob Fire Cloud, a revered Lakota medicine man, the voice is a sign that the White Buffalo Woman has returned to unite all the races in peace and prosperity.
    And to little Amy Ladue, the cries are those of her mother, who disappeared during the devastating St. Louis earthquake—and who must still be alive.

    These three strangers will be drawn together to rescue someone they have never met, a woman who holds the key to a new future for humanity—one remarkably brimming with hope.
     
    “LeVar Burton brings a strong new voice to science fiction with this powerful, even disturbing, novel.” —Ben Bova, New York Times–bestselling author
     
    “An amazingly good first novel.” —Rocky Mountain News
     
    “I highly recommend this book!” —Whoopi Goldberg

  • Blk + Vegan: Full-Flavor, Protein-Packed Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours

    by Emani Corcran

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    Vegan blogger Emani Corcran honors the roots of her culture by remembering and reworking the important foods of her childhood into healthier, vegan versions.

    Delicious Vegan Dishes to Feed Your Body + Soul

    Pursue a plant-based diet without sacrificing the dishes you love with these healthy, vegan comfort food recipes that are as delicious as they are nutrient dense. A passion project for long-time vegan and popular food blogger Emani Corcran, this recipe book pays homage to her favorite family dishes and her experiences growing up immersed in Black food culture. Try her vegan twist on Classic Jambalaya, share Caribbean Rice and Beans with friends or savor her aunt’s recipe for mouthwatering spiced waffles.

    For vegan newcomers and plant-based lovers alike, these hearty meals are all about honoring your body and celebrating the tasty ingredients that fuel it. No matter what you're craving, Emani has a nutritious, homestyle recipe to satisfy your appetite.

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