From the New York Times bestselling creative team behind The ABCs of Black History comes a statement-making follow-up that celebrates women, their history, and their future by centering the diversity of the disruptors who blazed a path forward for everyone.

In a beautiful picture book brimming with G for Groundbreaking women, National Book Award nominee Rio Cortez and illustrator Lauren Semmer celebrate all the joys, challenges, and historic forward movement of women’s history in the United States, with a special focus on the Black women, brown women, transwomen, and others who make change happen. This is a book about Artists, Activists and Allies, about Civil Rights and Choice, about Freedom Fighters, Headliners, Labor -- and Librarians! It’s about historic moments—Kamala Harris being sworn in as the first African-American and first Asian-American Vice President of the United States; Title IX passing through Congress; Seneca Falls, where the first women’s rights convention was held; the Riot Grrrls movement; and so much more. 

The ABCs of Women’s History is a story of persistence. It’s a story of pride. And it’s a story of progress. This book celebrates the disruptors, the dreamers, the determined, and the do-it-yourself-ers who continue to inspire the next generation of women to build a brighter, better tomorrow.

In this classic work—a blend of memoir social criticism, and political analysis that remains relevant today—the first Black Congresswoman to serve in American history, New York’s dynamic representative Shirley Chisholm, traces her extensive political struggle and examines the problems that have long plagued the American system of government.

“A tremendously impressive book.”—Washington Post

“Her motto and title of her autobiography—Unbossed and Unbought—illustrates her outspoken advocacy for women and minorities during her seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.”—National Women’s History Museum

“I want to be remembered as a woman . . . who dared to be a catalyst of change.”

Political pioneer Shirley Chisholm—activist, member of the House of Representatives and former presidential candidate—was a woman who consistently broke barriers and inspired generations of American women, and especially women of color. Unbossed and Unbought is her story, told in her own words—a thoughtful and informed look at her rise from the streets of Brooklyn to the halls of Congress. Chisholm speaks out on her life in politics while illuminating the events, personalities, and issues of her time, including the schism in the Democratic party in the 1960s and ’70s—all which speak to us today.

In this frank assessment, “Fighting Shirley” recalls how she took on an entrenched system, gave a public voice to millions, and embarked on a trailblazing bid to be the first woman and first African American President of the United States. By daring to be herself, Shirley Chisholm shows how one person forever changed the status quo.

The New Negro (1925) is an anthology by Alain Locke. Expanded from a March issue of Survey Graphic magazine, The New Negro compiles writing from such figures as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Locke himself. Recognized as a foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance, the collection is organized around Locke’s writing on the function of art in reorganizing the conception of African American life and culture. Through self-understanding, creation, and independence, Locke’s New Negro came to represent a break from an inhumane past, a means toward meaningful change for a people held down for far too long.

“[F]or generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being—a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place,’ or ‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.” Identifying the representation of black Americans in the national imaginary as oppressive in nature, Locke suggests a way forward through his theory of the New Negro, who “wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price of seeming to be what he is not.” Throughout The New Negro, leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance offer their unique visions of who and what they are; voicing their concerns, portraying injustice, and illuminating the black experience, they provide a holistic vision of self-expression in all of its colors and forms.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Alain Locke’s The New Negro is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

EVENT DEETS:

When: Thursday, January 9 at 7 PM CST

Where: Hogan Brown Community (2310 Elgin Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP WITH BOOK to support our programming and store or grab a free ticket. 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Irvin is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Esquire, The Atlantic, The Root, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, a BA from Morehouse College and has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNERS

Texas native Anthony Suber is an interdisciplinary artist working and living in SouthEast Texas. He received a BFA from the University of Houston and completed his MFA at Houston Christian University. Throughout his career, Suber has exhibited work and produced multi-tiered activations both nationally and abroad. Suber is a professor of art with the Katherine G. McGovern College at University Houston’s School of Art and an artist-in-residence with Project Row Houses in Houston’s historic Third Ward community. He also serves as the Creative Director for the arts and mental health nonprofit, The Blackman Project. 

Suber’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece, Project Row Houses, Houston, Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, University Museum at Texas Southern University, Houston, Art is Bond Gallery, Houston, John B. Coleman Gallery at Prairie View A&M University, Houston Museum of African American Culture, with solo exhibitions at Red Bud Arts Center in Houston, LRT Gallery, Houston and Cindy Lisica Gallery, Houston. His work has been featured in publications such as Arts and Culture Texas, Glass Tire, The Houston Chronicle, and Free Press Houston. Suber was the recipient of the Artadia Art Prize in 2022. 

Wale is a licensed mental health therapist and a passionate reader who uses her platform (@theehottgirlbooks) to dive deep into powerfully emotional stories written by BIPOC authors. Her love for reading and mental health fosters a passionate approach to her work both online and in the therapy room. When she is not immersed in the literary world, you can find her watching the real housewives or building an elaborate Lego set.

The long-awaited first major monograph on the iconic portraitist of Black Americans

This is the first comprehensive monograph on acclaimed painter Amy Sherald, whose distinctive style of simplified realist portraiture features African American subjects rendered against colorful monochrome backdrops or in everyday settings. Sherald rose to fame after being chosen by former first lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, in 2018, becoming the first African American woman to receive this honor. In addition to reproductions of Sherald’s recent works, the book—published to accompany her solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London in fall 2022—includes illustrations of earlier paintings, as well as an intimate glimpse into Sherald’s process and practice through a series of in-studio photographs. Newly commissioned texts include an art historical analysis of the artist’s work by Jenni Sorkin; a meditation on the politics and aesthetics of Sherald's portraiture by cultural scholar Kevin Quashie; and a conversation between Sherald and acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Amy Sherald was born in Georgia in 1973 and received her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. She has been included in countless group shows at galleries and museums worldwide as well as the subject of solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, among others. Sherald lives in Baltimore and New Jersey.

A Note From Chanecka 

In April 1983, Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple won National Book Awards, one of America's most prestigious literary prizes.  Naylor’s debut novel won the award for First Novel while Walker’s novel  won the prize for overall Fiction. This was a historical moment in Black literature history that has mostly gone unnoticed. As we finish reading the works of Gloria Naylor, it feels necessary to honor these two women’s achievements as well as examine their work in context.

Meeting Details

When: August 21, 2022 at 2PM-4PM

Where: This meeting will be held online with the virtual conferencing platform, Zoom. 

How:  Be sure to register for this month's bonus meeting.

About Project Row Houses

Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. We engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities. 

Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as home base to a variety of community-enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. PRH programs touch the lives of under-resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others. Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The Project Row Houses model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world.

*ships in 7-10 business days

Longlisted • National Book Award (Nonfiction)

Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.

Combining precise philosophy with a torrent of memories, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that powers our civilization, and that without this master-slave dynamic, the calculus bolstering world civilization would collapse. Unlike any other disenfranchised group, Wilderson argues, Blacks alone will remain essentially slaves in the larger Human world, where they can never be truly regarded as Human beings, where, “at every scale of abstraction, violence saturates Black life.”

And while Afropessimism delivers a formidable philosophical account of being Black, it is also interwoven with dramatic set pieces, autobiographical stories that juxtapose Wilderson’s seemingly idyllic upbringing in mid-century Minneapolis with the abject racism he later encounters—whether in late 1960s Berkeley or in apartheid South Africa, where he joins forces with the African National Congress. Afropessimism provides no restorative solution to the hatred that abounds; rather, Wilderson believes that acknowledging these historical and social conditions will result in personal enlightenment about the reality of our inherently racialized existence.

Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of lyrical prose, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit. It positions Wilderson as a paradigmatic thinker and as a twenty-first-century inheritor of many of the African American literary traditions established in centuries past.

Celebrate the release of Positive Obsession with Susana M. Morris!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, February 27 @ 7PM

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

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming.

Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories or purchase the RSVP (BUT I HAVE THE BOOK) ticket. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. 

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. 

In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life: the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories. 

Morris explains what drove Butler: She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susana M. Morris is a Black feminist scholar and a cultural critic who has dedicated her career to studying the interior lives of Black women. She is an associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and the co-founder of The Crunk Feminist Collective. A former Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University and Norman Freeling Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, she is the author of Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler. Her other works include Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women's Literature, the co-edited collection The Crunk Feminist Collection, and the co-authored young adult handbook Feminist AF: The Guide to Crushing Girlhood. Her writing has appeared in Gawker, Long Reads, Cosmopolitan, and Ebony, and she has been featured in venues such as NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, and Essence magazine. 

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Melanye Price is the inaugural Director of The Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University. Dr. Price is an Endowed Professor of Political Science and served as the Principal Investigator for the African American Studies Initiative and the HBCU Student Voting Rights Lab. She has secured grants for the Simmons Center and her own research from various foundations including Mellon, Ford, LUMINA, and others. Price is the author of two books: The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race (NYU, 2016) and Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion (NYU, 2009). She is currently working on her third book project on the five decade history of voting rights activism at Prairie View. She also served as a Special Assistant to Ruth J. Simmons in her last year as President of Prairie View.

Dr. Price completed her B.A. magna cum laude in geography at Prairie View A&M University and her MA and PhD in political science at The Ohio State University. Dr. Price was recently named the 2024 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in the Effron Center for the Study of America at Princeton University. Price has been a Black History Month lecturer for the US Embassy in Germany where she lectured at universities and community organizations across the country. Professor Price was one of the contributors to Stanley Nelson’s documentary, Obama: Through the Fire, which aired on BET. She has been a regular contributor for The New York Times Opinion section and also done political commentary for various local and national outlets. Dr. Price has also served as a consultant and commenter for the audio tour of two major exhibits at the Museum Fine Arts Houston—Philip Guston Now and Kehinde Wiley’s Archaeology of Silence.

In her free time, Melanye is an avid watcher of television, supporter of all things Black and Houston, and intrepid gardener!

The first volume in a major new series offering a compelling glimpse into the transformative and revolutionary world of HBCUs, that reveals the complex stories that their collections tell us.

This book, featuring objects from the museums and archives at five HBCUs—Jackson State, Tuskegee, Florida A&M, Clark Atlanta, and Texas Southern Universities—attests to the aesthetic value of African American cultural production on university campuses, the persistent development and expansion of HBCU academic programs, and the impact of student-led activism on campuses and throughout surrounding communities. Organized into four main sections, focusing on the partner institutions, arts, academics, and activism, this remarkable assembly of images will inspire readers to engage with, reflect on, and examine the unforgettable stories they represent.

The museums and archives at the five HBCUs featured tell unique stories, from detailed community histories and accounts of civil-rights era activism to premiere collections of African American art. Together, these institutions paint a powerful and multifaceted picture of African American academia and beyond.

This multi-volume series of publications stemming from the work of NMAAHC’s HBCU History and Culture Access Consortium (HCAC), is a companion publication to the exhibition that will travel to each participating institution from September 2025.

The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America

Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary Indigenous activism, Afro-Indigenous historian, Kyle T. Mays argues that the foundations of the US are rooted in antiblackness and settler colonialism, and that these parallel oppressions continue into the present. He explores how Black and Indigenous peoples have always resisted and struggled for freedom, sometimes together, and sometimes apart. Whether to end African enslavement and Indigenous removal or eradicate capitalism and colonialism, Mays show how the fervor of Black and Indigenous peoples calls for justice have consistently sought to uproot white supremacy.

It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written with the perspective of white men at the forefront. It could even be said that the historical devaluation and elimination of the experiences of Black people is as American as apple pie. Or rioting after football games. Or calling the cops on Black Americans for walking around their own neighborhoods, or listening to music, or bird-watching, or any other normal everyday activity.