A New York Times Notable Book

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic investigates the roles of race and sex in his own life and in literary history.

Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other Black people or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.

Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. Written in 1996, long before the rise of the genre-defying memoir, The Women was a prescient work of criticism and self-investigation whose clear-eyed insight still feels fresh and urgent to this day. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that created a form all its own.

Celebrate the beautiful brown and black girls in your life with this magical and empowering ABC board book.

Tell your little one that they are magic with ABCs of Black Girl Magic. Featuring enchanting illustrations showcasing the power, beauty, and magic of black and brown girls alongside positive affirmations, this board book is a wonderful way to show your child they are loved and important.

From read alouds to bonding moments, this beautiful board book is the perfect baby shower gift, birthday present, and gift for your daughter, sister, mother, or any strong woman in your life that needs to know they are magic.

You are…

Amazing

Beautiful

Courageous

…and so much more!

Hip, hip, hooray! Today is election day!

Hairiette's class is starting a book club, and she wants to win the vote to be the club's president. No one loves books more than Hairette! Plus, she knows reading can keep her brain healthy―Dr. Bob told her so at her last checkup.

But her classmates think reading is boring! Hairiette decides to show them that they're wrong―reading makes your brain healthy AND it can take you to magical places without ever leaving your room! She does it all the time with Charlie the Comb and Barbara the Barrett. All her friends need is a good book…and a little imagination!

Celebrate the release of If This World We're Mine with Arriel Vinson!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, January 28 @ 7 PM CST

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

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.

• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy If This World We're Mine, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

Please Note: Books purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must purchase a copy from Kindred Stories.If you already have a copy from Kindred Stories feel free to choose the RSVP only option. 

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arriel Vinson is a Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. Her debut YA novel-in-verse, Under the Neon Lights, is a 2026 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp selection, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection. Arriel earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and is a Tin House YA Scholar, Highlights Foundation scholarship recipient, and Walter Grant recipient. Her sophomore novel, If This World Were Mine, is forthcoming in spring 2027. You can connect with her on social media at @arriwrites and find her work at arriwrites.com

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

LIARA TAMANI grew up in Houston, Texas, where every spring meant one thing: rodeo season. She loved getting decked out in her best cowgirl gear and soaking up the music, food, and electric energy of the rodeo, a joy she now shares with her daughter and husband. Her deep Texas roots shine through her storytelling, capturing the spirit and rhythms of the state in all her acclaimed novels: Calling My Name, All the Things We Never Knew, and What She Missed. Before becoming a writer, she attended Harvard Law School and worked as a marketing coordinator for the Houston Rockets and Comets, television production assistant, home accessories designer, floral designer, and yoga and dance teacher. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Duke University.

From the award-winning novelist and poet Dionne Brand, a smart, sensual, and witty novel about what happens when love and intellect are set on a collision course.

Theory begins as its narrator sets out, like many a graduate student, to write a wildly ambitious thesis on the past, present, and future of art, culture, race, gender, class, and politics―a revolutionary work that its author believes will synthesize and thereby transform the world.

While our narrator tries to complete this magnum opus, three lovers enter the story, one after the other, each transforming the endeavor: first there is beautiful and sensual Selah, who scoffs at the narrator’s constant tinkering with academic abstractions; then altruistic and passionate Yara, who rescues every lost soul who crosses her path; and finally spiritual occultist Odalys, who values magic and superstition over the heady intellectual and cultural circles the narrator aspires to inhabit. Each galvanizing love affair (representing, in turn, the heart, the head, and the spirit) upends and reorients the narrator’s life and, inevitably, requires an overhaul of the ever larger and more unwieldy dissertation, with results both humorous and poignant.

By effortlessly telling this short, intense tale in the voice of an unnamed, ungendered (and brilliantly unreliable) narrator, Dionne Brand makes a bold statement not only about love and personhood, but about race and gender―and what can and cannot be articulated in prose when the forces that inhabit the space between words are greater than words themselves.

Theory is a gorgeous, profoundly moving, word- and note-perfect novel of ideas that only a great artist at the height of her powers could write.

Jabari Jumps meets The Magical Yet in this infectiously optimistic and rhythmic picture book that will inspire children to give it a whirl and try again (and again).
A little girl loves to watch the big kids play hula hoop. She wants nothing more than to sway and swirl like them one day.
So, she picks one up, gives it a whirl… and the hoop falls to the ground before she knows it.
Thwump! Clatter clatter!
And even though she picks it up repeatedly, she can’t seem to get the hoop to whirl. Then something magical happens on the last try that changes her forever.
This sweet picture book is perfect for anyone with a dream who is determined to never give up.

* Heartwarming Message: Detailing the importance of persistence and resilience, this story encourages children not to give up on a goal only because it’s difficult at first.
* Classic and Colorful Illustrations bring its readers in and capture the charm of childhood.
* Perfect for Read-Aloud: Complete with sounds of the hoola hoop, optimistic tone, and rhythmic text!

From NAACP Image Award–nominated author Elise Bryant comes a tender, funny novel following a type-A teen whose meticulously coordinated life unravels when she develops a chronic illness.
Jubilee Foster is busy. Between caring for her two younger siblings while her single dad is working, maintaining her perfect GPA, and volunteering at her beloved local community center, she doesn’t have time for trivial things like hobbies or sleep.
And that’s just the way Jubilee likes it. When her to-do list is endless and her color-coded planner is full, it’s easier to ignore the glaring fractures in her life—like her mom’s abandonment, or that her community center is on the brink of closing down for good. Or the reappearance of Neal, her childhood friend turned nemesis, and all of the annoying, distracting feelings he brings.
But then Jubilee starts breaking out in mysterious hives, and her ability to be a perfect student, daughter, sister, and friend begins to fray. As her life buckles under symptoms and side effects, Jubilee will have to tackle the most difficult task on her to-do list yet: accepting help.
Critically acclaimed author Elise Bryant returns with a love letter to eldest daughters, recovering people pleasers, and those managing chronic illnesses in desperate search for the care they deserve.

Capone promised he’d keep his family safe, but Erin’s afraid he’ll die trying, in the third book of #BookTok favorite Jahquel J.’s Delgato Family saga.

Everything’s looking up for Erin. She married her best friend in a picturesque sunset ceremony on the beaches of Barbados, they’re expecting a baby girl, and the pair are surrounded by their loved ones. Erin’s even made nice with Capone’s ex.

But danger’s never far away, and that scares Erin. Every day, Capone risks his life handling business in the streets. Then, a serious health scare forces him to slow down, and Erin and her brother, Jaiden―now entrenched in Capone’s world himself―purchase firearms to protect themselves.

Having dealt with arrests, shoot-outs, high-speed chases, and Molotov cocktails, Erin just wants to live with her husband and daughter in peace. Now that Capone has decided to take a step back from the grind, will she finally get the happily-ever-after she longs for?

The third book in the Delgato Family universe, Capone took BookTok by storm.

Capone III is an urban romance featuring depictions of murder, domestic violence, and substance abuse as well as explicit scenes. It is intended for mature readers.

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.

Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.

This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.

Jahquel J. returns to the Rich family in the sequel to her traditional debut, the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller Rich and Rotten.

Grittier, steamier, and more dangerous than the first book, this dynasty saga goes deeper into the streets beneath Greenwich Pointe’s wealth, where loyalty is tested at every turn and fighting for family may cost blood. Commercial urban crime fiction at its pinnacle.

Tatiana Rich is left with nothing.

With nowhere else to turn, she must depend on the one man who has let her down before. His help may be her only way forward, but she isn't sure it's worth the risk of being disappointed again.

Jonah has always put protecting Tatiana and his goddaughter first. Now, with a new romance building with Yaya, he must find a way to make room for her in his plans without stepping back from the people he has always considered family.

Nazir is working to blend his family, introducing his daughters to each other and the love of his past to his best friend, all while protecting the woman he loves from her own father.

Malcolm Rich kept Nazir from Tatiana once before. Nazir refuses to let him stand in the way of getting his family back, or let him take what isn't his.

This time, he will do whatever it takes, even if it leaves blood on his hands.

Following the tradition of Nikky Finney, Krista Franklin, and Morgan Parker, Good Dress documents the extravagant beauty of Black relationships, language, and community.

In her debut poetry collection, Brittany Rogers explores the audacity of Black Detroit, Black womanhood, class, luxury and materialism, and matrilineage. A nontraditional coming-of-age, Good Dress witnesses a speaker coming into her own autonomy and selfhood as a young adult, reflecting on formative experiences.

With care and incandescent energy, the poems engage with memory, time, interiority, and community. The collection also nudges tenderly toward curiosity: What does it mean to belong to a person, to a city? Can intimacy and romance be found outside the heteronormative confines of partnership? And in what ways can the pursuit of pleasure be an anchor that returns us to ourselves?

Register at https://www.crowdcast.io/e/an-evening-with-zora

We're celebrating the release of the boxed set of Zora Neale Hurston's collection of works, all with reimagined covers illustrated by incredible Black artists, and her newest release of essays, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays.

NYT bestselling author, Morgan Jerkins, will moderate a conversation with Lucy Ann Hurston (scholar and niece of Zora Neale Hurston), Patrick Dougher (cover artist for Their Eyes Were Watching God), and Genevieve West (co-editor of You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays).

About the Boxed Set:

Available for the first time, this amazing boxed set includes 10 repackaged Zora Neale Hurston classics--each with a newly imagined cover by a popular contemporary Black artist. It's a beautifully-imaged package at a very affordable price point.

Cover artists are: Charly Palmer, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jerome Lagarrigue, Patrick Dougher, Diana Ejaita, Jeff Manning, Samira Addo, Terry Lynn, Jamilla Okubo, and Tizta Berhanu.

Books included in the set:

• Dust Tracks on a Road
• Jonah's Gourd Vine
• Mules and Men
• Tell My Horse
• The Complete Stories
• Every Tongue Got to Confess
• Moses, Man of the Mountain
• Seraph on the Suwanee
• Mule Bone
• Their Eyes Were Watching God

About You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays:

Spanning more than 35 years of work, the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by the legendary author of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author.

“One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison

One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white doctor. Among the selections are Hurston’s well-known works such as “How It Feels to be Colored Me” and “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience.” 

The essays in this essential collection are grouped thematically and cover a panoply of topics, including politics, race and gender, and folkloric study from the height of the Harlem Renaissance to the early years of the Civil Rights movement. Demonstrating the breadth of this revered and influential writer’s work, You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays is an invaluable chronicle of a writer’s development and a window into her world and time.