“My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was part of a Problem,” W. E. B. Du Bois once wrote. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood these words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother, the descendant of slaves and tenant farmers—Ailey carries the weight of this Problem on her shoulders.

The daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, Ailey is raised in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. Growing up, she struggles with this duality, a battle for belonging that shapes her identity. On one side are her exacting parents and her imperious, light-skinned grandmother Nana Claire, to whom skin color is paramount. On the other, Ailey feels the pull of the “deep country” of her mother’s land-tending family, whose forebears endured the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.

But how can Ailey live up to everyone’s expectations when half of her family rejects the truth of a fraught racial history, while the rest can’t ever seem to break away from it?

Fearless essays that reclaim the work and words of Black women activists, abolitionists, and movement makers who have long fought for liberation and justice—from a beloved Teen Vogue columnist and an essential new voice in Black feminism.

Jenn M. Jackson has been known to bring deep historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women's freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost in the meantime? A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.

Across thirteen original essays that explore the legacy and work of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements, despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods.

For a new generation of movement organizers and potential co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for all of us. A reclamation of an essential history, and a hopeful gesture towards a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks like.

A new anthology celebrating the African American voices that influenced and shaped the history of the White House

A Penguin Classic

The People’s House is an anthology comprised primarily of first-person accounts, from the eighteenth century to the present, detailing the Black experience in the White House — in turn illustrating how African Americans have influenced the presidency and policy over America’s 250-year history. The collection’s diversity of perspectives — from dressmakers and domestic staff members to abolitionists and civil rights activists, as well as cabinet members, candidates, and elected officials — charts not only a history of African Americans in the most recognizable U.S. institution, but how African Americans have used their power and presence in the White House to urge the nation toward its democratic ideals. Through the words of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Colin M. Powell, Barack Obama, and dozens of other figures, both prominent and lesser-known, this anthology offers an expansive and intimate view of the White House as a key site in the struggle for Black freedom and equal citizenship. Each entry is accompanied by insight from editors Michelle D. Commander and Kathleen M. Kendrick, providing biographical information and historical context to help readers further understand how African Americans have shaped the story and meaning of the People’s House.

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.

Seventeen BIPOC authors from varied backgrounds come together to showcase the diversity of romance and celebrate the wild hearts of teens in this YA Romantasy anthology, These Kindred Hearts, edited by Shari B. Pennant.

An aspiring writer accidentally summons her own book character and struggles to send her new crush back to her fantasy world. The daughter of a royal hell dimension deals with an unwanted betrothal to a boy she's supposed to murder, and questions the meaning of fate. An orphaned thief and a "Chosen One" must go on the run from a tyrannical empire. Two friends confess their feelings for each other in the middle of an earth-shattering apocalypse. A mix of cozy fantasy, high-stakes, action-packed, and everything in between fill these seventeen stories that explore the power and magic of love.

These Kindred Hearts includes stories by Alexene Farol Follmuth, Angela Montoya, Brent Lambert, Cheryl Isaacs, Jamar J. Perry, Jill Tew, Kalynn Bayron, Kwame Mbalia, Maggie Tokuda Hall, Nia Davenport, Shari B. Pennant, Sophie Li, Nikki T. Grant., Vanessa Montalban, Zoraida Córdova, and two unpublished writers selected through a contest.

A powerful picture book biography of Stacey Abrams, politician, voters’ rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, that shows how Abrams’s fight for voters’ rights was inspired by luminaries before her, such as Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer. Brilliant artwork from Laura Freeman, Coretta Scott King Honoree for Hidden Figures, brings Stacey’s journey to life. Perfect for fans of Kamala Harris: Rooted In Justice by Nikki Grimes and I Dissent by Debbie Levy.

Read about Stacey Abrams, politician and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, in this poetic picture book that follows Abrams’s fight for voters’ rights, narrated by Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Septima Poinsette Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer.

“Sometimes she would light the way. Sometimes her way would be lit by others…”

Stacey Abrams was always destined for big things because she always imagined more. Now she protects the least powerful, works toward making voting fair and easy, and demands better for Georgia and every other state in this nation. Stacey Abrams’s determination, perseverance, and courage will inspire younger generations to make meaningful change in the world.

A pilgrimage of poems, stories, voices, and mixed-media collage through the lives of three generations of Black women.

How can we memorialize our dead? How can that memorialization rend the veil between the dead and the living? In her debut volume, brittny ray crowell sifts through decades of obituaries, journals, and other ephemera to exhume the generations of her family from her hometown of Texarkana, Texas. She preserves her relatives’ stories in writing and in works of collage, a style of archive that layers the past and the present literally and poetically.

This unique approach transforms Cord Swell into an altar, an artistically enshrined space where crowell communes with the past and looks to the future. The title poem, in which crowell speaks to an aunt who passed away, poignantly asks, “if there’s any such thing / as paradise . . . / better than the warmth / of your neck . . . / how close am i / to that context of space?” Her question acts as a provisional thesis statement for this collection, a poetic attempt to reveal, redress, and interpret those who came before her, especially in the absence of physical traces. Each poem imagines ways to access family members who have died and calls out to ancestors crowell never met.

In the process, crowell demonstrates capacious syntactical range, nimbly leaping from haibun to erasure poems, interviews to sonnets. She also invents forms she calls “grooves,” which are structured as album tracklists. These techniques marry form with meaning, echoing the voices of lost loved ones in indelible verse. Rhapsodic, inventive, and ambitious, Cord Swell establishes crowell as one of the most creative and dynamic new voices in poetry.

9 black-and-white illustrations

Join us for a montly children's storytime at Kindred Stories. Each Story time will celebrate a special book and be read by a wondertful community mementer. IT also includes a story time. 

Featured Book: Daisy Helps With The Dress 

Featured Reader: Antonia Adams 

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, September 26 @ 11 AM CST 

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

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your spot and let us know you are coming.

ABOUT DAISY HELPS WITH THE DRESS 

When Daisy tries to help with her cousin’s wedding, her misguided assists almost ruin the big day, until she finds a way to pull the dress—and her family—together in this charming picture book by award-winning author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.

Daisy loves helping her family and she knows the best kind of helpers never wait to be asked. That’s why she doesn’t ask before adding finishing touches to her family’s special reused, re-tried, remixed things, like a leftover broccoli topping for Auntie Fontie’s cakes or a good bath for Nana DJ’s “back-in-the-day, rusty, dusty” vintage albums—much to their chagrin.

But what Daisy wants most is to help give her cousin Simone’s recycled wedding dress a little razzle dazzle. She knows just what the vintage dress needs: a little glitter here, a few stickers there to give the dress some flair.

But Daisy’s cousin Simone and the rest of the family are not so happy with her decorations. Can Daisy make things right and help find Simone a new re-lived, re-loved wedding dress?

A Black Woman Did That! spotlights vibrant, inspiring Black women whose accomplishments have changed the world for the better.

A Black Woman Did That! is a celebration of strong, resilient, innovative, and inspiring women of color. Through vibrant illustrations and engaging storytelling, author Malaika Adero spotlights well-known historical figures including Ida B. Wells, Madam CJ Walker, Mae Jemison, and Shirley Chisholm, as well as contemporary stars including Stacey Abrams, Jesmyn Ward, Ava DuVernay, and Amy Sherald.

Readers will recognize some names in the book, but will also be introduced to many important Black women who have changed history or who are reshaping the cultural landscape. They’ll learn:
*how Barbara Harris became the first female bishop of the Episcopal Church
*how Misty Copeland became the first Black principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater
*how the work and inventions of Dr. Patricia Bath have saved or restored the eyesight of people around the world
*how Shirley Chisolm changed the face of politics in America
*how Glory Edim has turned her passion for reading into a thriving online community
*and much more!

A moving combination of memoir, psychology, and practical tools, this book offers Black men guidance and support for reclaiming mental well-being and finding whole, full-hearted living.

Early in his career, actor Courtney B. Vance lost his father to suicide. Recently, he lost his godson to the same fate. Still, as mental health discourse hits the mainstream, it leaves the most vulnerable out of the conversation: Black men.
 
In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes-- including diagnoses of depression and anxiety, reliance on prescription drugs, and suicide-- have skyrocketed in the past decade. Institutionalized racism, microagressions, and stress caused by socioeconomic factors have led Black individuals to face worse mental health outcomes than any other demographic.
 
In  this book, Courtney B. Vance seeks to change this trajectory. Along with professional expertise from famed psychologist Dr. Robin Smith (popularly known as “Dr. Robin”), Courtney B. Vance explores issues of grief, relationships, identity, and race through the telling of his own most formative experiences. Together, Courtney and Dr. Robin provide a guide for Black men navigating life’s ups and downs, reclaiming  mental well-being, and examining  broken pieces to find whole, full-hearted living. Self-care is an act of revolution. It’s time to revolutionize mental health in the Black community.