"Lorde's words — on race, cancer, intersectionality, parenthood, injustice — burn with relevance 25 years after her death." — O, The Oprah Magazine

Winner of the 1988 Before Columbus Foundation National Book Award, this path-breaking collection of essays is a clarion call to build communities that nurture our spirit. Lorde announces the need for a radical politics of intersectionality while struggling to maintain her own faith as she wages a battle against liver cancer. From reflections on her struggle with the disease to thoughts on lesbian sexuality and African-American identity in a straight white man's world, Lorde's voice remains enduringly relevant in today's political landscape.

Those who practice and encourage social justice activism frequently quote her exhortation, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." In addition to the journal entries of "A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer," this edition includes an interview, "Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation," and three essays, "I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities," "Apartheid U.S.A.," and "Turning the Beat Around: Lesbian Parenting 1986," as well as a new Foreword by Sonia Sanchez.

"You don't read Audre Lorde, you feel her." — Essence

From the creator of the beloved @PoetryIsNotaLuxury Instagram account,a gorgeously wrought poetry anthology that is a gift and a guide for readers through every season of life.

Inspired by writer and philosopher Audre Lorde’s famous claim: “Poetry is not a luxury,” this anthology proves the vitality of poetry as a crucial source of inspiration, comfort, and delight.

In a first section, “Summer,” you’ll find lush landscapes and love poems for weddings and anniversaries, alongside poems on travel, protest, and expressions of sheer joy and exhilaration. “Autumn” ushers in nostalgic poems about home and family and friendship, fall leaves, nesting and gratitude. You may turn to “Winter” should you require a poem for mourning, some lyrics for loneliness, or an ode to comfort. Rounding out a year’s worth of verse is “Spring,” in which you’ll discover celebratory poems, in the form of praise for rain and flowers, new beginnings, and all that the future might hold.

Each poem within has been chosen from centuries of verse from around the world, with an emphasis on living poets. Friends old and new await, with selections from Rita Dove, Victoria Chang, Ross Gay, Naomi Shihab Nye, C.D. Wright, Eileen Myles, Ada Limón,Ross Gay, Ilya Kaminsky, Jos Charles, and more.

From love poems to elegies, from the heights of new love to the furrows of anxiety, from special occasions to a morning pick-me-up, there is something here for longtime poetry lovers and novices, in any season of need.

Our meeting will be on Thursday, May 25, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

About the Book

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.

Scorching-hot summer. Scorching-hot chemistry. Two teens can’t forget they’re just friends in this sweet, funny, electrifying romance from New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams. Perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Nicola Yoon.
 
MEET AUDRE. Junior class president. Debate team captain. Unofficial student therapist. Desperately in need of a good time.
 
MEET BASH. Mysterious new senior. Everybody’s crush. Tall, floppy, great taste in jewelry. King of having a good time.
 
It’s the last day of school at Cheshire Prep, Brooklyn’s elite academy—and Audre Mercy-Moore’s life is a mess. Her dad cancelled her annual summer visit to his Malibu beach house. Now? She’s stuck in a claustrophobic apartment with her mom, stepdad, and one-year-old sister (aka the Goblin Baby).
 
Under these conditions, she’ll never finish writing her self-help book—ie, the key to winning over Stanford’s admissions board.
 
Cut to Bash Henry! Audre hires him to be her “fun consultant.” His job? To help her complete the Experience Challenge—her list of five wild dares designed to give her juicy book material. She’ll get inspo; he’ll get paid. Everybody wins.
 
He isn’t boyfriend material. And she’s not looking for one. Can they stay professional despite their obvious connection?
 
Fun fact: Audre Mercy-Moore first appeared in the New York Times bestseller Seven Days in June and now stars in her own story!

*Paperback Release Date - 8/18/26*

In this taut Southern family drama, the sins of a favorite son rock a small Mississippi town.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy―no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community. Told from the point of view of the women who love these two men, Dominion illustrates how we enable the everyday violence and casual sins of the patriarchy.

A Black Southern family drama that deals as much in tenderness and humor as it does in brutality, Addie E. Citchens’s Dominion reveals the many sinister ways in which we are shaped by fear and patriarchy.

A startling new dream-like vision of Jamaica―a work of surreal poetic fiction, lavishly studded with ecological prayers, drawings, and footnotes about healing herbs, disappearing flora-fauna, and buried herstories―by Whiting Award winner Marcia Douglas

Zooming into tight focus on present-day life and dashing deep into the past in turns, the pace is fast and fierce in The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive, which continues Marcia Douglas’ “speculative ancestral project” (The Whiting Foundation) begun with The Marvellous Equations of the Dread. Her new poetic and eco-spiritual book carries further the cultural preservation so central to Douglas’ vision. TheShante Dream Arkive brings alive a mosaic of characters―all searching through history for something or someone lost to the island: a mother searches for her missing child through time and space; an undocumented migrant’s struggles with loss while living in the US; a youth wanders through dream-gates seeking liberation and the lost parts of himself. And one key to the whole is Zora Neale Hurston’s left-behind camera. Each chapter/poem opens like an aperture onto another aspect of the dream story. And, each and every potent dream story contains the spirit, beauty, and riddim of Jamaica:

For after three hundred years of slaughter, monk seals know better than to reveal themselves to humans. These days, they stay low, adapting to below surface conditions and establishing habitat with the underwater spirits of drowned horses and slaves disappeared overboard. For things happen below sea that have never been told. There is wheelin there and turnin; and far-far down past brochure azure, cerulean and indigo, there is a vast dark ink and vortices of voices caught up in such a trumpet of rah- &-glory bottomsea sound as to move earth’s axis. And after that, more ink blue, and cobalt and sapphire and a calm-calm wata― velvet and kin to the moon brand new. The monk seals dare not go this far. But the spirits do.

Winner of the 2020 Cave Canem Prize

Gumbo Ya Ya, Aurielle Marie’s stunning debut, is a cauldron of hearty poems exploring race, gender, desire, and violence in the lives of Black gxrls, soaring against the backdrop of a contemporary South. These poems are loud, risky, and unapologetically rooted in the glory of Black gxrlhood. The collection opens with a heartrending indictment of injustice. What follows is a striking reimagination of the world, one where no Black gxrl dies “by the barrel of the law” or “for loving another Black gxrl.” Part familial archival, part map of Black resistance, Gumbo Ya Ya catalogs the wide gamut of Black life at its intersections, with punching cultural commentary and a poetic voice that holds tenderness and sharpness in tandem. It asks us to chew upon both the rich meat and the tough gristle, and in doing so we walk away more whole than we began and thoroughly satisfied.

“I’m in awe. This Side of Beautiful is a beautifully raw work of art. So much passion—for music and for love—drips from the pages for Janae and Landon. Tiye delivered a masterpiece.” - Shanora Williams, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
“Tiye tugs at your heartstrings with two deeply flawed characters in an unforgettable love that is raw and messy, but ultimately... beautiful.”- Delaney Diamond, USA Today Bestselling Author

Janae Warner had it all — platinum records, sold-out arenas, and a life in the spotlight. But the same fire that fueled her rise burned everything down. Branded as unstable and unredeemable, she disappeared from the world she once ruled. Now, after years away, Janae is stepping back into the industry she left behind, determined to reclaim her voice and prove she’s more than the headlines.

Returning to Houston, the city that built her and broke her, Janae faces more than the pressures of a comeback. The emotional storms she’s battled for years still churn within, and while her drive to succeed is unwavering, the world is watching, waiting to see if she will rise again or fall harder than before.

Landon Hayes, a quiet, brilliant guitarist, moves through life with a rhythm and focus that sets him apart. His calm, structured world feels like a contradiction to Janae’s relentless highs and lows, yet their connection feels unexpectedly natural. He is a steady presence that both unsettles and intrigues her in ways she never imagined.

As their bond deepens, Landon’s unwavering presence forces Janae to confront the vulnerability she’s worked so hard to bury. Trusting someone who sees through the walls she’s built may be her greatest risk, but it could also be her path to a second chance she thought she’d never deserve.

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

When Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos, Nigeria to Sugar Land, Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion, pizza parlors, and dance classes.

Desperate to please, she'll happily cater to her family's needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands for a grandson grow urgent as her every move comes under scrutiny. As Ikemefuna finds there’s no way out, her new husband grapples with the influence of his parents against his own increasing affection for her.

As family secrets boil to the surface, Ikemefuna must decide how to scrape herself out of an impossibly sticky situation: a marriage succumbing to generational cycles of pain and silence. In the end, she may be carrying the greatest secret of all. 

An unforgettably delicious thriller, House Woman is about a woman trapped in a dangerous web of conflicting desires, melting in the Texas heat. 

A New York Times bestseller and Oprah's Book Club Pick-the unique and deeply moving saga of four generations of African-American women whose journey from slavery to freedom begins on a Creole plantation in Louisiana.

Beginning with her great-great-great-great grandmother, a slave owned by a Creole family, Lalita Tademy chronicles four generations of strong, determined black women as they battle injustice to unite their family and forge success on their own terms. They are women whose lives begin in slavery, who weather the Civil War, and who grapple with contradictions of emancipation, Jim Crow, and the pre-Civil Rights South. As she peels back layers of racial and cultural attitudes, Tademy paints a remarkable picture of rural Louisiana and the resilient spirit of one unforgettable family.

There is Elisabeth, who bears both a proud legacy and the yoke of bondage... her youngest daughter, Suzette, who is the first to discover the promise-and heartbreak-of freedom... Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene, who uses a determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independence... and Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, who fights to secure her children's just due and preserve their dignity and future.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Cane River presents a slice of American history never before seen in such piercing and personal detail.

We're meeting to discuss Audre and Bash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Thursday, July 10 @ 7PM CST

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

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here. !

ABOUT AUDRE AND BASH ARE JUST FRIENDS

Scorching-hot summer. Scorching-hot chemistry. Two teens can’t forget they’re just friends in this sweet, funny, electrifying romance from New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams. Perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Nicola Yoon.
 
MEET AUDRE. Junior class president. Debate team captain. Unofficial student therapist. Desperately in need of a good time.
 
MEET BASH. Mysterious new senior. Everybody’s crush. Tall, floppy, great taste in jewelry. King of having a good time.
 
It’s the last day of school at Cheshire Prep, Brooklyn’s elite academy—and Audre Mercy-Moore’s life is a mess. Her dad cancelled her annual summer visit to his Malibu beach house. Now? She’s stuck in a claustrophobic apartment with her mom, stepdad, and one-year-old sister (aka the Goblin Baby).
 
Under these conditions, she’ll never finish writing her self-help book—ie, the key to winning over Stanford’s admissions board.
 
Cut to Bash Henry! Audre hires him to be her “fun consultant.” His job? To help her complete the Experience Challenge—her list of five wild dares designed to give her juicy book material. She’ll get inspo; he’ll get paid. Everybody wins.
 
He isn’t boyfriend material. And she’s not looking for one. Can they stay professional despite their obvious connection?
 
Fun fact: Audre Mercy-Moore first appeared in the New York Times bestseller Seven Days in June and now stars in her own story!