An intimate look into the studios of twenty prominent Black artists working today, enlivening their art practice and creative lives through stunning photographs and exclusive interviews

‘Both a vital record of the present and a powerful testament to the legacies still being created.’ – Angela Bassett, actress, director, and producer

Another View: The Vibrant World of Contemporary Black Artists is a groundbreaking, intimate exploration of the studios, living spaces, and creative processes of twenty of today’s most notable Black artists. The book includes 150 never-before-published photographs taken by acclaimed artist Awol Erizku, presenting the ultimate behind-the-scenes tour of striking studios across the United States, works in progress by some of the world’s most creative people, and the objects and settings that inspire them. Exclusive profiles inspired by interviews with celebrated curator Isolde Brielmaier offer compelling personal advice and unique insights into the art world, giving readers an inside look at the role of art in society, perspectives on legacy, and what it means to be a Black artist today. An illuminating introduction by lauded scholar and critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores the historical precedents and critical context that led to the exciting current moment of Black contemporary art in America.

Showcasing work across media – including painting, sculpture, textile, collage, photography, and more – the featured artists have won prestigious awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts grant, and are in the collections of leading institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Guggenheim. These artists represent a pivotal moment in American art history, where Black artists are gaining unprecedented institutional recognition and also fundamentally changing conversations about identity, history, and representation in contemporary art. This book captures a crucial juncture – not only showcasing the ways these artists think about their work, but also highlighting important, personal conversations about how their influence will shape the next generation of artists and the broader cultural landscape for decades to come.

Featured artists: Nina Chanel Abney; Derrick Adams; Sanford Biggers; Jordan Casteel; Nick Cave; Renee Cox; Leonardo Drew; Theaster Gates; Rashid Johnson; Titus Kaphar; Glenn Ligon; Kerry James Marshall; Xaviera Simmons; Lorna Simpson; Shinique Smith; Hank Willis Thomas; Mickalene Thomas; Nari Ward; Carrie Mae Weems; and Fred Wilson.

From nine-time Grammy Award–winning artist Anderson .Paak comes a kinky, surreal, and hilariously unhinged collection of stories about a fabled sex shop on Sunset Boulevard.

Peeps on Sunset is the last vestige for true freaks in Los Angeles. Rocco, the store’s reluctant heir, is yanked out of art school by his free-loving hippie parents to breathe new life into the struggling shop he grew up in. The store has questionable stains, dated design, and a weird hole in the bathroom. Now, Rocco has to fix it all while finding himself, not to mention field every fantasy and secret that walks through the door:

A woman has a dangerous sexual obsession with cactuses. A retiree Benjamin Buttons every time she has sex. A maid enjoys the perks of her job after walking in on her celebrity client mid-act. And nobody leaves the store unchanged.

Anderson .Paak’s first book lives somewhere between Goosebumps and Fifty Shades of Grey—a sexy and absurd fever-dream tour of modern desire that celebrate all the ways we come into ourselves. And each other.

Carole Boston Weatherford, a Caldecott Honor winner, creates a celebration of family roots in this uplifting tale about how one young girl sees her family history by looking into a mirror

As a young girl reflects on her family, she notices how her own characteristics are similar to the people around her. She discovers these shared traits create incredible family connections, and they also give each person the opportunity to contribute to the family tree .  

This heartfelt book celebrates the diversity of the people who love us and the joys of being connected to family!

I’ve got my father’s mouth

And my mother’s thick brown waves.

I’ve got my uncle’s chin

Though you can’t tell ‘til he shaves.

I’ve got my brother’s ears

And my sister’s big bright eyes.

I’ve got my grandpa’s hands

A celebration of the love between father and child from Coretta Scott King Award–winning author and Young People's Poet Laureate Carole Boston Weatherford, this beautiful rhyming board book is the perfect gift for dad and everyone who loves him!

Daddy is everything in my eyes.

He's the answer to my hows and whys.

Daddy's a tug boat that pulls me along.

Daddy's a rock band playing our song.

With simple, charming text, and colorful illustrations, My Daddy Is Everything highlights the special role that Daddy plays in a child's life and celebrates the many ways he shows his love!

This stunning and empowering picture book from a New York Times bestselling and ALSC Children’s Literature Legacy Award–winning author and an acclaimed illustrator celebrates a Black mother’s hopes and dreams for her daughter.

As I cradle you, look in your eyes,
your gaze says softly,
I want to know everything.
I promise to show you all that I can.

This love letter from mother to daughter inspires young girls to follow their dreams, no matter what challenges life may bring. Young readers will be reminded that love and support from home will follow them as they venture out into the world.

From one of the first and few women of color to reach the c-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple's former chief of HR, co-creator of the Apple Store culture, and first VP of inclusion and diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.

From one of the first and few women of color to reach the C-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple's former chief of HR and first VP of inclusion and diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.

"You will enjoy reading this book and benefit as a business leader but mostly as a member of the human race."-Ron Johnson, business leader Apple, Target, JCPenney

For her work as a co-creator of the Apple Store cultural experience, Denise Young has been deemed by leadership experts as one of the most emotionally intelligent leaders of her era. In this stirring narrative, part-memoir, part blueprint for action, she shares her vision of what it means to be truly seen at our places of work. As a "first and only" woman of color in boardrooms and leading roles across the Bay Area's booming tech industry, Denise was a trailblazer in a business that was never built for her. The first black and female senior executive under both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Denise was often in "the room where it happened." But within a white male-centric professional culture, she still had to work harder, smarter, and differently to be heard.

In When We Are Seen, Denise shares insights on using your own story, empathy, and intuition to unlock the potential in yourself and others. Her story serves as both solace and strategy for anyone who has ever felt left out, unseen, or ostracized; anyone interested in upending cycles of exclusion; and for those interested in reclaiming our agency in the ongoing quest to thrive and belong.

Denise argues that bringing your truest self to work-from wearing your beloved locs to sharing your artistic passion-and, in turn, holistically seeing the attributes others have to offer is not a passive experience; it is a specific skill we can and should build. And the result is a deeper understanding of what it means to be inclusive and powerfully human on the job.

Choice Outstanding Book

African American intellectual thought has long provided a touchstone for national politics and civil rights, but, as Kimberly Smith reveals, it also has much to say about our relationship to nature. In this first singleauthored book to link African American and environmental studies, Smith uncovers a rich tradition stretching from the abolition movement through the Harlem Renaissance, demonstrating that black Americans have been far from indifferent to environmental concerns.

Beginning with environmental critiques of slave agriculture in the early nineteenth century and evolving through critical engagements with scientific racism, artistic primitivism, pragmatism, and twentiethcentury urban reform, Smith highlights the continuity of twentiethcentury black politics with earlier efforts by slaves and freedmen to possess the land. She examines the works of such canonical figures as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Alain Locke, all of whom wrote forcefully about how slavery and racial oppression affected black Americans' relationship to the environment

Smith's analysis focuses on the importance of freedom in humans' relationship with nature. According to black theorists, the denial of freedom can distort one's relationship to the natural world, impairing stewardship and alienating one from the land. Her pathbreaking study offers the first linkage of the early conservation movement to black history, the first detailed description of black agrarianism, and the first analysis of scientific racism as an environmental theory. It also offers a new way to conceptualize black politics by bringing into view its environmental dimension, as well as a normative environmental theory grounded in pragmatism and aimed at identifying the social conditions for environmental virtue.

Smith's work offers a new approach to established writers and thinkers and shows that they justly deserve a place in the canon of American environmental thought. African American Environmental Thought enriches our understanding of black politics and environmental history, and of environmental theory in general. Because slavery and racism have shaped the meaning of the American landscape, this body of thought offers us fresh conceptual resources by which we can make better sense of our world.