Winner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association 2018
Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association 2018
Winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Honor 2018
Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction 2018
Winner of the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies

The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence.

Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible.

Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

In Africa the past and the present live very much side by side. African thinkers and intellectuals see their people's culture as rooted in time-honoured oral traditions and many African writers today use symbols, images and motifs from these traditions in their works. In this innovative study Dr Okpewho explores what he considers the essence of these traditions - myth - and examines its place in African life, literature and thought. Focusing on a number of tales from a selection of African countries, he shows myth to be the basic imaginative resource from which the larger cultural values derive. An established novelist as well as critic, Dr Okpewho discusses the narrative traditions of Africa - of which he continues to be a part - with balanced sympathy and objectivity. In this work he not only reasserts the pride in African traditions but also gives students of myth a fresh look at an old problem.

Meditative and theoretical, Black Undertow reorients the thinking of blackness away from the Atlantic to the African shorelines of the Indian Ocean, places where queerness and black life frequently brush up against one another. Hugo ka Canham listens for what he names the buzz of the undertow, the traces of African ancestors who linger in water, sand, coastal forts, corals, ritual practices, and unruly imaginations along the shore. In tracking these elusive figures, he develops an approach that honors a queer right to opacity. Canham reconstitutes the siloed disciplinarity that imagines African studies, Black studies, Queer African studies, and Queer studies as necessarily different. When read as coconstitutive instead, Canham demonstrates that they better allow for explicating local life, history, poetics, and theory. In so doing, he forges methods of studying black life that think beyond the limits of traditional, textual archives.

Searching for the truth of her community’s experience during the war with the undead leads a girl to believe they are on the brink of another outbreak in this post-apocalyptic middle grade novel.

Kyle Woodward has never seen a reaper—the Undead War ended before she was born. But every aspect of her life has been shaped by them.

Kyle was raised in a remote compound built for survival and taught to guard against the reaper threat, even while being taught reapers no longer exist. When rumors of new reaper sightings begin to spread, Kyle grows frustrated by her community’s silence and her parents’ refusal to talk about the war. Guided by the gut feeling that there’s more to the story, Kyle decides to document her community’s history and the war that defined it. But the deeper she digs, the more dangerous the secrets she uncovers.

If the truth is being buried on purpose, Kyle might be the only one who can expose it. Because if her community refuses to face what nearly destroyed the world once, they might be standing on the edge of the apocalypse all over again.

In the first book of a new series inspired by African mythology, dragon gods rule the earth and sky—until the gods are betrayed, and one girl embarks on a journey to save the world from war and ruin. From the New York Times bestselling author of Skin of the Sea.

The people are calling . . .
And the gods will answer.

Moremi has only ever known peace in the Kingdom of Kwa, thanks to the two dragon gods keeping an unspeakable evil at bay. But when the king tries to claim the gods’ power for himself, it all goes dreadfully wrong. The great dragons are injured and flee . . . and the world’s darkest shadows are released.

Suddenly, Kwa’s ancient tales of monsters become all too real. Yet as death comes for those around her, Moremi somehow finds herself magically connected to both dragon gods—a feat that should be impossible.

Now, Moremi is Kwa’s only hope for restoring the gods to full strength. But will Jagun, the mysterious prince, let her anywhere near the dragons? And how does her childhood friend, Nox, feel about it all? It may not matter in the end, because if Moremi fails her quest, then she risks the earth caving in and the sky crumbling down.

Discover the 20th Anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat’s unforgettable National Book Award Finalist story collection—complete with a new story.

Arriving one year after the Haitian-American's first novel (Breath, Eyes, Memory) alerted critics to her compelling voice, these 10 stories, some of which have appeared in small literary journals, confirm Danticat's reputation as a remarkably gifted writer.

Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the distance between people's desires and the stifling reality of their lives. A profound mix of Catholicism and voodoo spirituality informs the tales, bestowing a mythic importance on people described in the opening story, "Children of the Sea," as those "in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves." The ceaseless grip of dictatorship often leads men to emotionally abandon their families, like the husband in "A Wall of Fire Rising," who dreams of escaping in a neighbor's hot-air balloon. The women exhibit more resilience, largely because of their insistence on finding meaning and solidarity through storytelling; but Danticat portrays these bonds with an honesty that shows that sisterhood, too, has its power plays. In the book's final piece, "Epilogue: Women Like Us," she writes: "Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter's mouths so they say nothing more."

These stories inform and enrich one another, as the female characters reveal a common ancestry and ties to the fictional Ville Rose. In addition to the power of Danticat's themes, the book is enhanced by an element of suspense—we're never certain, for example, if a rickety boat packed with refugees introduced in the first tale will reach the Florida coast. Spare, elegant and moving, these stories cohere into a superb collection.

In the tradition of Michelle Alexander, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of 40 years of racist public school policy on generations of Black lives

In Punished for Dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love argues that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white-savior egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. This book examines how decades of racist education policies have paved the way for the current structural overhaul of American schools. In this prequel to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Then with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.

A searing sci-fi thriller about a woman reckoning with her past to solve a series of sudden and inexplicable deaths in the face of a coming apocalypse—from the Compton Crook Award–winning author of The Space Between Worlds.

“A bold, beautiful, gut-punch of a story, at turns ferocious and poetic—and sometimes both at once.”—Veronica Roth, New York Times bestselling author of Chosen Ones

“[Those Beyond the Wall] reads like Mad Max: Fury Road was written by Phillip K. Dick and N.K. Jemisin.”—CrimeReads

SHORTLISTED FOR THE URSULA K. LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Elle

In Ashtown, a rough-and-tumble desert community, the Emperor rules with poisoned claws and an iron fist. He can’t show any sign of weakness, as the neighboring Wiley City has spent lifetimes beating down the people of Ashtown and would love nothing more than its downfall. There’s only one person in the desert the Emperor can fully trust—and her name is Scales.

Scales is the best at what she does: keeping everyone and everything in line. As a skilled mechanic—and an even more skilled fighter, when she needs to be—Scales is a respected member of the Emperor’s crew, who’s able to keep things running smoothly. But the fragile peace Scales helps to maintain is fractured when a woman is mangled and killed before her eyes. Even more incomprehensible: There doesn’t seem to be a murderer.

When more bodies start to turn up, both in Ashtown and in the wealthier, walled-off Wiley City, Scales is tasked with finding the cause—and putting an end to it by any means necessary. To protect the people she loves, she teams up with a frustratingly by-the-books partner from Ashtown and a brusque-but-brilliant scientist from the City, delving into both worlds to track down an invisible killer.

But the answers Scales finds are bigger than she ever could have imagined, leading her into the brutal heart beneath Wiley City’s pristine façade and dredging up secrets from her own past that she would rather keep hidden. If she wants to save the world from the earth-shattering truths she uncovers, she can no longer remain silent—even if speaking up costs her everything.

DELUXE EDITION-featuring gorgeous sprayed edges!

The explosive conclusion of Rebecca Johnpee's epic mafia heist romance series that began with The Wicked

Elio
They say there's no rest for the wicked.

For me, it's a vow.

I've ripped through cities and bodies to find the woman who vanished with my heart--and the last clean piece of my sanity. Zahra ran once. She won't run again.

Because this time, I'm not chasing her.

I'm taking her back...for good.

Zahra
I'm trapped in a life that doesn't feel like mine, haunted by a stalker, drowning in vices, and bound to a vow I can't finish.

But there's one last job that can end the monsters who made me. One final heist that can burn their empire to the ground. And I can't pull it off alone.

To win, I'll need my crew. I'll need my friends. And I'll need the one man who can run my plan like it's his own... and improvise like the devil when it all goes wrong.

Because this is the final game. The final heist.

And if I lose, the monsters who made me will finish what they started.

Bride of The Wicked is a dark, slow-burn mafia heist romance with mature themes. Please see the author's content note at the beginning of the book.

Bride of the Wicked
*Enemies to lovers
*Second chance
*Who did this to you?
*Touch her/him and die
*Morally gray MMCs
*Blackmail
*Revenge

From beloved food writer and author of the James Beard Award finalist Black Girl Baking comes a joyous cookbook that transforms everyday meals into something special and unexpected with just a few simple flourishes.

Fanciness is a mindset. It’s realizing that you can make everyday food feel special using what you likely already have on hand. It’s about seeing the act of cooking not just as another thing to do, but as a nourishing ritual to help ease away the day’s stress.

In We Fancy, Jerrelle Guy teaches you how to use pantry staples like canned beans, crackers, or a pint of vanilla ice cream, and tools like sheet pans and your air fryer, to transform typical weeknight dinners into something easy but memorable. Think: Nearly Instantaneous Risotto made with black or roasted garlic, Double-Stacked Black Bean Burgers smashed with tortilla chips, Artichokes in the Perfect Butter Wine Sauce, and Olive Oil Brownie Pudding covered with chopped nuts.

We Fancy shows that cooking is both a creative and a practical act, and in these pages with beautiful and wise writing that is meant to heal, guide and inspire, Jerrelle gives us new recipes and reasons to look forward to dinner.

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana.

Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising children who will be sent abroad to be educated before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the empire. Esi, imprisoned beneath Effia in the Castle’s women’s dungeon and then shipped off on a boat bound for America, will be sold into slavery.

Stretching from the wars of Ghana to slavery and the Civil War in America, from the coal mines in the American South to the Great Migration to twentieth-century Harlem, Yaa Gyasi’s novel moves through histories and geographies and captures—with outstanding economy and force—the troubled spirit of our own nation. She has written a modern masterpiece.