Search results: 1000 results for “by Thomas C. Holt”
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1000 results
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In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space
In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space
Irvin Weathersby Jr.
$30.00A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.
Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.
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African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song Edited
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song Edited
by Kevin Young
$45.00A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present.
Only now, in the 21st century, can we fully grasp the breadth and range of African American poetry: a magnificent chorus of voices, some familiar, others recently rescued from neglect. Here, in this unprecedented anthology expertly selected by poet and scholar Kevin Young, this precious living heritage is revealed in all its power, beauty, and multiplicity.
Discover, in these pages, how an enslaved person like Phillis Wheatley confronted her legal status in verse and how an antebellum activist like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voiced her own passionate resistance to slavery. Read nuanced, provocative poetic meditations on identity and self-assertion stretching from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Amiri Baraka to Lucille Clifton and beyond. Experience the transformation of poetic modernism in the works of figures such as Langston Hughes, Fenton Johnson, and Jean Toomer. Understand the threads of poetic history—in movements such as the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, Black Arts, Cave Canem, Dark Noise Collective—and the complex bonds of solidarity and dialogue among poets across time and place.
See how these poets have celebrated their African heritage and have connected with other communities in the African Diaspora. Enjoy the varied but distinctly Black music of a tradition that draws deeply from jazz, hip hop, and the rhythms and cadences of the pulpit, the barbershop, and the street. And appreciate, in the anthology’s concluding sections, why contemporary African American poetry, amply recognized in recent National Book Awards and Poet Laureates, is flourishing as never before.Taking the measure of the tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song sets a new standard for a genuinely deep engagement with Black poetry and its essential expression of American genius. -
The Catacombs: A Novel
The Catacombs: A Novel
William Demby
$17.00A gripping and genre-defying novel by a rediscovered great of twentieth-century Black American writing, about what it means to be a writer at the dawn of a new era
First published in 1965, The Catacombs is a metafictional account set in early 1960s Rome, where the author had returned to study art history after serving on the Italian front during World War II.
African-American expatriate Bill Demby narrates his attempts to write a novel about his friend Doris, who is living in Rome and employed as one of Elizabeth Taylor's handmaidens in the filming of Cleopatra. Utterly dependent upon Doris for the development of his novel, he is both a participant in and observer of her life as she enters into an affair with an Italian count. Bill Demby's growing emotional and artistic involvement in the tumultuous affair of his character-friend leads him on an existential quest for the meaning of truth and fiction, both lived and created, in a world torn by the social upheaval of the early sixties.
Interrupted constantly by headlines from television and newspapers, slipping in and out of fiction and metafiction, The Catacombs is a time capsule from an era on the brink and a novel unlike any other.
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I Accidentally Summoned a Demon Boyfriend
I Accidentally Summoned a Demon Boyfriend
Jessica Cage
$24.99Open a book. Read a spell. Whoop, there he is... a demon.
The last single friend in her group and tired of being stood up by her girls, a drunken Rayna turns to her first love, a book. After jokingly casting a spell her favorite character used to conjure a loving boyfriend, the results aren't nearly as funny.
Because the damn spell worked, just not in the way she thought it would!
Now she has a brooding demon who she needs to sever the magical bond with if she ever wants to live a normal life again.
Lovers of monster romance will enjoy this new book from USA Today Bestselling Author, Jessica Cage!
Order your copy today!
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Ghostroots : Stories
Ghostroots : Stories
'Pemi Aguda
$17.99In this beguiling collection of twelve imaginative stories set in Lagos, Nigeria, ’Pemi Aguda dramatizes the tension between our yearning to be individuals and the ways we are haunted by what came before.
In “Manifest,” a woman sees the ghost of her abusive mother in her daughter’s face. Shortly after, the daughter is overtaken by wicked and destructive impulses. In “Breastmilk,” a wife forgives her husband for his infidelity. Months later, when she is unable to produce milk for her newborn, she blames herself for failing to uphold her mother’s feminist values and doubts her fitness for motherhood. In “Things Boys Do,” a trio of fathers finds something unnatural and unnerving about their infant sons. As their lives rapidly fall to pieces, they begin to fear that their sons are the cause of their troubles. And in “24, Alhaji Williams Street,” a teenage boy lives in the shadow of a mysterious disease that’s killing the boys on his street.
These and other stories in Ghostroots map emotional and physical worlds that lay bare the forces of family, myth, tradition, gender, and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by a deep empathy and glinting with humor, they announce a major new literary talent.
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Clay's Ark (Patternist, 3)
Clay's Ark (Patternist, 3)
$19.99A gorgeous new edition of Book 3 of the Patternist series, in which two immortals chase each other across continents and centuries, binding their fates together -- and changing the destiny of the human race.
This gorgeous, new deluxe edition includes:
* A new cover and package
* Premium French flaps and newly designed, full-color interior covers
* High-quality paper with elegant deckled-edgesBlake Maslin is traveling with his teenage twin daughters through an alternate America marked by volatile class warfare when their car is ambushed. Their attackers appear sickly yet possess inhuman strength, and they transport Blake's family to an isolated compound. There, the three captives discover that the compound's residents have a highly contagious alien disease that has mutated their DNA to make them powerful, dangerous, and compelled to infect others.
If Blake and his daughters do not escape, they will be infected with a virus that will either kill them outright or transform them into outcasts whose very existence is a threat to the world around them.
In the following hours, Blake and his daughters must make a vital choice: risk everything to escape and warn the rest of the world, or accept their new reality—as well as the uncertain fate of the human race. -
Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem by bell hooks
Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem by bell hooks
by bell hooks
$17.99World-renowned scholar and visionary bell hooks takes an in-depth look at one of the most critical issues facing African Americans: a collective wounded self-esteem that has prevailed from slavery to the present day.
Why do so many African-Americans—whether privileged or poor, urban or suburban, young or old—live in a state of chronic anxiety, fear, and shame? Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem breaks through collective denial and dares to tell this truth—that crippling low self-esteem has reached epidemic proportions in our lives and in our diverse communities. With visionary insight, hooks exposes the underlying reality that it has been difficult—if not impossible—for our nation to create a culture that promotes and sustains healthy self-esteem. Without self-esteem people begin to lose their sense of agency. They feel powerless. They feel they can only be victims. The need for self-esteem never goes away. But it is never too late for any of us to acquire the healthy self-esteem that is needed for a fulfilling life.
hooks gets to the heart and soul of the African-American identity crisis, offering critical insight and hard-won wisdom about what it takes to heal the scars of the past, promote and maintain self-esteem, and lay down the roots for a grounded community with a prosperous future. She examines the way historical movements for racial uplift fail to sustain our quest for self-esteem.
Moving beyond a discussion of race, she identifies diverse barriers keeping us from well-being: the trauma of abandonment, constant shaming, and the loss of personal integrity. In highlighting the role of desegregation, education, the absence of progressive parenting, spiritual crisis, or fundamental breakdowns in communication between black women and men, bell hooks identifies mental health as the new revolutionary frontier—and provides guidance for healing within the black community. -
Wander in the Dark
Wander in the Dark
Jumata Emill
$12.99The pulse-pounding thriller from the author of The Black Queen! Two brothers must come together to solve the Mardi Gras murder of the most popular girl in school after one of them is caught fleeing the scene of her death.
Amir Trudeau only goes to his half brother Marcel’s birthday party because of Chloe Danvers. Chloe is rich, and hot, and fits right into the perfect life Marcel inherited when their father left Amir’s mother to start a new family with Marcel’s mom. But Chloe is hot enough for Amir to forget that for one night.
Does she want to hook up? Or is she trying to meddle in the estranged brothers’ messy family drama? Amir can’t tell. He doesn’t know what Chloe wants from him when, in the final hours of Mardi Gras, she asks him to take her home and stay—her parents are away and she doesn’t want to be alone.
Amir never finds out, because when he wakes up, Chloe is dead—stabbed while he was passed out on the couch. And in no time, Amir becomes the only suspect. A Black teenager caught fleeing the scene of a rich white girl’s murder? All of New Orleans agrees: the case is open-and-shut.
Amir is innocent. He has a lawyer, but unless someone can figure out who really killed Chloe, things don’t look good for him. His number one ally? Marcel. Their relationship is messy, but Marcel knows that Amir isn’t a murderer—and maybe proving his innocence will repair the rift between them.
To find Chloe’s killer, Amir and Marcel need to dig into her secrets. And what they find is darker than either could have guessed. Parents will go to any lengths to protect their children, and in a city as old as New Orleans, the right family connections can bury even the ugliest truths.
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Introduction to African Civilizations
Introduction to African Civilizations
$17.95Timely, relevant, and illuminating, this essential book by respected cultural historian, teacher, and author John G. Jackson sheds long overdue light on standard Eurocentric and distorting approaches to the history of Africa from early African civilizations to Africa’s significance in world history.
With brilliantly objective scholarship, respected historian and author John G. Jackson reexamines the outdated, racist, and Westernized history of Africa that is still taught in schools, and presents one infinitely more rich, colorful, varied—and truthful. Challenging the standard dehumanizing and exploitive approaches to African history, from the dawn of prehistory to the resurgent Africa of today--including the portrayal of Africans as “savages” who ultimately benefitted from European enslavement with its “blessings of Christian civilization”—Jackson confronts the parochial historian, devastates the theoretical pretensions of white supremacists, and expands intellectual horizons.
Accessible and informed, fascinating and candid, Introduction to African Civilizations is an important historical guide that will enhance antiracist teachings for the general reader and the scholar alike.
Introduction by John Henrik Clarke, pioneer of African Studies and author of Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust
Foreword by Runoko Rashidi, historian, activist, and author of Introduction to the Study of African Classical Civilizations -
Freedom Fire: Jax Freeman and the Phantom Shriek
Freedom Fire: Jax Freeman and the Phantom Shriek
by Kwame Mbalia
from $9.99Paperback Release- September 15, 2026
The award-winning author of the best-selling Tristan Strong trilogy has created a secret world where kids can wield magic by summoning the power of their ancestors
What do you get when you combine Kwame Mbalia's incredible imagination and world-building talent with trains, history, and ghosts? Nothing less than middle grade magic.
On his twelfth birthday, Jackson "Jax" Freeman arrives at Chicago's Union Station alone, carrying nothing but the baggage of a scandal back in Raleigh. He's been sent away from home to live with relatives he barely knows. But even worse are the strangers who accost him at the train station, including a food vendor who throws dust in his face and a conductor who tries to steal his skin.
At his new school, Jax is assigned to a special class for "summoners," even though he has no idea what those are . . . until he accidentally unleashes an angry spirit on school grounds. Soon Jax is embroiled in all kinds of trouble, from the disappearance of a new friend to full-out war between summoning families.
When Jax learns that he isn't the first Freeman to be blamed for a tragedy he didn't create, he resolves to clear his own name and that of his great-grandfather, who was a porter back in the 1920's. By following clues, Jax and his schoolmates unlock the secrets of a powerful Praise House, evade vengeful ghosts, and discover that Jax may just be the most talented summoner of all.
A unique magic-school fantasy from the best-selling and award-winning author of the Tristan Strong trilogy has just pulled into the station.
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Plantains and Our Becoming: Poems
Plantains and Our Becoming: Poems
by Melania Luisa Marte
$17.00A powerful poetry collection in the vein of BLACK GIRL CALL HOME and IF THEY COME FOR US, about identity, culture, home and belonging.
PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is an imaginative, blistering, beautifully written poetry collection about identity and history on the island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black Diasporic experience.
Through the exploration of the themes of self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational traumas, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots Black stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood, one that is deeply grounded in the heirlooms and teachings of Black celebration as well as preservation.
The collection is structured in the following sections: Part I: Daughter of Diaspora, exploring immigration and identity within the U.S. Part II: A History of Plantains, exploring the aftermath of colonialism, displacement and gentrification for Afro-descendants. -
Humboldt Cut
Humboldt Cut
Allison Mick
$28.00Jordan Peele and Jeff Vandermeer meet The Overstory in comedy writer Allison Mick’s darkly humorous debut eco-horror novel, as a Black woman returns home to the redwood forests of northern California, only to unearth the monsters that lurk among the trees…
Jasmine Bay is a nurse for an Oakland mental health facility, battling her own demons, caught in a spiral of suicidal despair. Estranged from her brother James and his wife Tilly, who was once her best friend, Jas has chosen self-isolation to protect herself—even if it means denying herself a hopeful future with co-worker and potential love interest Henry Lewis.
When her godmother dies, Jas returns to Redceder for the funeral, a logging town where her grandfather William Whipple made a living deforesting the countryside, ripping and raping apart nature’s very foundations for corporate profits. As trees fell to axes and chainsaws, so did dozens of lumberjacks, falling prey to the dangers of their job—and to the ecoterrorism of Jas’s grandfather who was lynched for his crimes.
And buried in the haunted woods are even more dark secrets perpetrated by Jas’s family. Unnatural acts giving birth to entities made of human flesh and petrified bark, seeking to avenge the devastation that ravaged their land. It is an inheritance that threatens to consume the remnants of Jas’s family, and her very sanity. . .
Celebrated comedy writer Allison Mick’s Humboldt Cut exposes the traumatic costs of environmental destruction in an energetic, darkly humorous horror adventure that combines the botanical terrors of VanderMeer’s Annihilation and the psychological horror of The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones with a dash of Jordan Peele.
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