Search results: 65 results for “by Pen Ken”
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65 results
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What Do Brothas Do All Day?
What Do Brothas Do All Day?
by Ajuan Mance
$17.99Inspired by Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day?, these joyous portraits of Black men engaged in everyday life celebrate the deep roots and rich cultures of African American communities.
Have you ever wondered . . .
What do brothas do all day?
Brothas drive. Brothas dance. Brothas work. Brothas listen. And brothas love.
Scarry’s now-classic book, first published in 1968, is a richly illustrated guide to the places, jobs, and activities that defined the daily lives of grown-ups. Author-illustrator Ajuan Mance created What Do Brothas Do All Day?, like Scarry, in response to children’s innate curiosity about the activities and experiences of others, but also to meet the longing many kids have for characters and communities that look and feel like the people and places they know.
This joyous reflection of real Black men and boys engaged in everyday life is a gift for Black kids who rarely see themselves reflected in the pages of a book and an affirmation of their world and the people who populate it. From grocery shopping and waiting for a trim at the barbershop to singing, dancing, and laughing with friends, Mance captures the beauty in the ordinary, affirming the enduring strength of the Black community.
DIVERSE BOOKS FOR KIDS: This picture book features real Black men the author has observed in the world—everyday people, not models or stereotypes. One fan describes it as "just a rainbow of Black men, a beautiful rainbow of Black men."
LIBRARIAN LOVE: What Do Brothas Do All Day? began as an all-ages zine, but the author began to conceive of it as a children's book after being approached by two children's librarians.
INSPIRED BY A CLASSIC: As the author notes in the book, "I first encountered Richard Scarry’s work in the early 1970s when I was about six years old. The world of adults, with its grocery lists, PTA meetings, shopping trips, and dinner parties, seemed both tantalizingly exotic and impossibly complex. Today, those same descriptors can be applied to the ways that many people of all ages perceive Black men."
AN INVITATION: The book ends with an invitation, perhaps even a call to action: What will you do today?
Perfect for:- Parents and grandparents seeking engaging read-aloud and read-along picture books
- Teachers and librarians looking for books featuring Black communities
- Gift for readers of Jacqueline Woodson, Kwame Alexander, Cedella Marley, and Derrick Barnes books
- Fans of Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day?
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The Rebel King
The Rebel King
by Kennedy Ryan
$17.99*ships in 7-10 business days*
The conclusion to the deeply romantic, emotionally complex love story in the All the King's Men duology from beloved award-winning author Kennedy Ryan. Lennix Hunter has lost everything with Maxim's betrayal and she's determined not to give him the upper hand again, but the connection between them is undeniable and if she wants the world, she'll need Maxim's help.
Raised to resist. Bred to fight. Survival is in their blood, and surrender is never an option.
Though surrender is what Maxim Cade demanded of Lennix Hunter’s body and heart, she had other plans. They were fast-burning fascination and combustible chemistry, the son of an oil baron and the Apache daughter at war with his family, but she trusted him, and he turned out to be a thief who stole her love.
Still, if what they had was a lie, why had it felt so real?
Now, the man she swore to hate is about to have it all, and he wants Lennix at his side. But when the two of them are forced to face the unthinkable, their rocky foundation is tested, as is the invisible thread that seems to wind their fates together. As they navigate a treacherous political landscape in their quest for justice, Maxim and Lennix soon learn that power is a game, and they are merely the pawns and players. Facing insurmountable odds, will they win the world, or will they lose it all?
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Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion
Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion
Gabrielle Stanley Blair
$14.99THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America.
In a series of 28 brief arguments, Blair deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women’s bodies and instead directs the focus on men’s lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.
The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility—and burden—of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.
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Pure Men: A Novel
Pure Men: A Novel
$16.99A young professor grapples with homophobia in Muslim Senegal in this searching, heart-wrenching novel from the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Most Secret Memory of Men.
A viral video makes the rounds in Dakar, showing an incensed crowd that gathers to dig up a grave and drag the corpse from holy ground. When Ndéné, a French literature teacher, watches it, he’s surprisingly affected. Who was this man, and what could he have done to deserve such a fate? The answer soon becomes clear: he was a “góor-jigéen,” one of the so-called “men-women,” the shameful label given to homosexuals, cross-dressers, or any man who lives outside the accepted norm.
Haunted by the video, Ndéné sets out to learn more. With the help of a friend who works in night life, he explores a hidden side of Dakar, away from the rigid Islam of his family and university. Although he feels a certain disgust for homosexuality, he’s moved by the suffering and resilience of the people he meets. But the further he goes, the more he doubts his own identity, threatening to become an object of suspicion and scorn himself.
A powerful, nuanced portrait of queerness in a conservative society, Pure Men asks the fundamental question of how to find the courage to be true to yourself, whatever the cost.
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Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran
Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran
$16.95Banned shortly after publication for its depiction of female freedom, Women Without Men creates an evocative and powerfully drawn allegory of life in contemporary Iran.
"Using the techniques of both the fabulist and the polemicist, Parsipur continues her protest against traditional Persian gender relations in this charming, powerful novella." —Publishers Weekly
This modern literary masterpiece follows the interwoven destinies of five women—including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a prostitute, and a schoolteacher—as they arrive by different paths to live together in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. Drawing on elements of Islamic mysticism and recent Iranian history, this unforgettable novel depicts women escaping the narrow confines of family and society, and imagines their future living in a world without men.
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PRE-ORDER: Men Like Ours
PRE-ORDER: Men Like Ours
$28.99"The most promising debut I've read in decades." --Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Our Country Friends
From brilliant new voice in fiction Bindu Bansinath, a darkly funny and moving story about death, life, and community in a South Asian suburban enclave of New Jersey.
When Matthew Pillai is found dead, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, the women of Willow Road are roped into the investigation of their friend's death.
At the center of the case are the Sharmas--Anita, a widow whose husband introduced Matthew to the neighborhood, and her boundary-pushing daughter, Leila, who called him Uncle. To Anita, who has been in freefall since her arrival in America as a young woman, Matthew's presence offered hope, including a promise of betterment for Leila. The truth, however, is far stranger.
In this darkly funny debut, the women of Willow Road find that despite their internecine quarrels, casual backstabbing, and generational feuds, in the end, there is no one to turn to but each other.
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Memorial
Memorial
Bryan Washington
$18.00Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years—good years—but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. There’s the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.
But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike’s immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.
Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known. And just maybe they’ll all be okay in the end. Memorial is a funny and profound story about family in all its strange forms, joyful and hard-won vulnerability, becoming who you’re supposed to be, and the limits of love.
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A Misrepresented People : Manhood in Black Religious Thought
A Misrepresented People : Manhood in Black Religious Thought
by Darrius D'Wayne Hills
$30.00Although much Black religious scholarship has engaged with feminist theory and womanist thought, a gap remains where little work has been done in religious studies to investigate the Black male experience. A Misrepresented People explores how African American men grapple with identity and masculinity in relation to Black religious thought. This book counters the dominant portrayal of Black men in American society as suspicious, morally defective, and irredeemable, and showcases the strength and relevance of Black religious thought in developing alternative notions of Black manhood.
Drawing on womanist discourses, African American religious thought, literature, and Black male studies, as well as an examination of the writings and sermons of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr., Darrius D’wayne Hills offers a vision of Black male identity that is grounded in interpersonal relationships and connection. Positioning identity formation as a religious concern, Hills expands the application of religious scholarship toward the complex social and material realities faced by Black men. In doing so, this volume offers a much-needed new model for understanding Black male gender identity, illustrating how religious thought fosters more holistic and livable futures for African American men. -
Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture
Young, Black, Rich, and Famous: The Rise of the NBA, the Hip Hop Invasion, and the Transformation of American Culture
Todd Boyd
$18.95In Young, Black, Rich, and Famous, Todd Boyd chronicles how basketball and hip hop have gone from being reviled by the American mainstream in the 1970s to being embraced and imitated globally today. For young black men, he argues, they represent a new version of the American dream, one embodying the hopes and desires of those excluded from the original version.
Shedding light on both perception and reality, Boyd shows that the NBA has been at the forefront of recognizing and incorporating cultural shifts—from the initial image of 1970s basketball players as overpaid black drug addicts, to Michael Jordan’s spectacular rise as a universally admired icon, to the 1990s, when the hip hop aesthetic (for example, Allen Iverson’s cornrows, multiple tattoos, and defiant, in-your-face attitude) appeared on the basketball court. Hip hop lyrics, with their emphasis on “keepin’ it real” and marked by a colossal indifference to mainstream taste, became an equally powerful influence on young black men. These two influences have created a brand-new, brand-name generation that refuses to assimilate but is nonetheless an important part of mainstream American culture. This Bison Books edition includes a new introduction by the author.
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Ernest J. Gaines: Four Novels (LOA #383): The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman / In My Father's House / A Gathering of O ld Men / A Lesson Before Dying (Library of America, 383)
Ernest J. Gaines: Four Novels (LOA #383): The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman / In My Father's House / A Gathering of O ld Men / A Lesson Before Dying (Library of America, 383)
by Ernest J. Gaines
$42.50Born in 1933, the oldest of twelve children in a family of sharecroppers in Oscar, Louisiana, Ernest J. Gaines wrote novels and stories, set on and around the former slave plantation he called home, that are modern classics—nuanced, compassionate portraits of women and men, both Black and white, caught in the vortex of race in America. He joins the Library of America with this volume gathering his four greatest novels.
* The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), the story of an elderly woman born into slavery who witnesses Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement. A living testament to the history, hopes, courage, and survival of her people, Miss Jane is one of the most indelible and unforgettable characters in American fiction.
* In My Father’s House(1978) finds an activist minister organizing a civil rights protest in his town when his estranged son suddenly appears on the scene, threatening to expose his family's secret past.
* A Gathering of Old Men (1983) sees a group of elderly Black men with nothing left to lose decide to make a last stand against the racism that has defined and delimited their lives.
* A Lesson Before Dying(1993, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and an Oprah Book Club selection), in which a local schoolteacher attempts to help a young man falsely convicted of the murder of a white man face execution with dignity.A fitting tribute to a still underappreciated American genius, this volume also includes a chronology of Gaines’s life and career written by his authorized biographer, John Wharton Lowe, and helpful notes.
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ABCs of a Young King's Greatness Coloring Book (I Need You to Know.)
ABCs of a Young King's Greatness Coloring Book (I Need You to Know.)
$9.99Celebrate the greatness of the young kings and black men in your life with this inspiring ABC coloring book.
Featuring detailed illustrations of black and brown boys along with positive affirmations, this empowering coloring book invites you to walk in your power as you create and color. This bold and beautiful coloring book is the perfect gift for your son, brother, father, or any important man in your life that needs to be reminded of their own greatness.
* Beautiful black and brown characters―Inspired by Lora's grandchildren, this coloring book features detailed drawings of black and brown boys.
* Positive affirmations for finding your power―Each page features a message of empowerment and love for a total of 26 encouraging affirmations in this unique ABCs book.
* Creating care through art―By creating, coloring, and celebrating the greatness of black and brown boys, young kings can see beautiful and positive images that look like them.Other books in the I Need You to Know coloring series:
* ABC's of Black Girl Magic
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My Seven Black Fathers: A Young Activist's Memoir of Race, Family, and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole
My Seven Black Fathers: A Young Activist's Memoir of Race, Family, and the Mentors Who Made Him Whole
by Will Jawando
$28.00*ships in 7-10 business days
A call to action and a narrative that runs counter to every racist stereotype that thwarts the lives of men of color today.
Will Jawando tells a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color at a time when Black men are routinely stigmatized. As a boy growing up outside DC, Will, who went by his Nigerian name, Yemi, was shunted from school to school, never quite fitting in. He was a Black kid with a divorced white mother, a frayed relationship with his biological father, and teachers who scolded him for being disruptive in class and on the playground. Eventually, he became close to Kalfani, a kid he looked up to on the basketball court. Years after he got the call telling him that Kalfani was dead, another sickening casualty of gun violence, Will looks back on the relationships with an extraordinary series of mentors that enabled him to thrive.
Among them were Mr. Williams, the rare Black male grade school teacher, who found a way to bolster Will’s self-esteem when he discovered he was being bullied; Jay Fletcher, the openly gay colleague of his mother who got him off junk food and took him to his first play; Mr. Holmes, the high school coach and chorus director who saw him through a crushing disappointment; Deen Sanwoola, the businessman who helped him bridge the gap between his American upbringing and his Nigerian heritage, eventually leading to a dramatic reconciliation with his biological father; and President Barack Obama, who made Will his associate director of public engagement at the White House—and who invited him to play basketball on more than one occasion. Without the influence of these men, Will knows he would not be who he is today: a civil rights and education policy attorney, a civic leader, a husband, and a father.
Drawing on Will’s inspiring personal story and involvement in My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s national initiative to address persistent opportunity gaps facing boys and young men of color, My Seven Black Fathers offers a transformative way for Black men to shape the next generation.
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