The soul-stirring intersectional biography of the most famous Islamic woman scholar working today, from the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist author of If the Oceans Were Ink and Home, Land, Security.

“A testament to what it means to labor for justice from inside a faith tradition—to love it enough to transform it . . . The Lady Imam is right on time to ignite our courage.”—Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger and Sage Warrior

A feminist scholar-activist, single mother of five, and queer advocate, amina wadud has led a struggle against Islam’s patriarchal establishment that’s been felt keenly all over the world. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X before her, wadud has mobilized faith’s potential as an engine of equality. Yet this American trail-blazer’s story has never been told in book form—until now.

Born Mary Teasley, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, wadud grew up in Maryland with a rare vantage on socioeconomic divides, living through poverty and her sister’s death from an illegal abortion. A gifted student, teenage wadud was sent to live with affluent white families in Weston, Massachusetts. After cross-country hitchhiking and a stint in a Buddhist ashram, she converted to Islam as a twenty-year-old Ivy League student.

wadud devoted her life to studying the Qur’an and challenged centuries of patriarchal interpretations, finding in it equality for all. In Manhattan in 2005, she became the world’s most famous—and infamous—Islamic scholar when she became the first woman in 1400 years to lead men and women together in public Friday prayers.

The Lady Imam chronicles the life of a singular figure not only in Islam, but also in feminism, Black history, and gender studies. With unprecedented access through years of interviews and archival research, Carla Power has written the definitive account of wadud's extraordinary life while shedding light on our deepest questions about faith, family, and social justice.

For fans of the New Camelot series by Sierra Simone and Kennedy Ryan’s All the King’s Men duet, comes The Illusion of Power. A spicy, contemporary romance that follows future First Lady, Selene Taylor, during the integral months of her husband's campaign for the Oval where she finds herself navigating the embarrassment of his infidelity, the dangers of being a Black woman in proximity to political power, and perhaps worst of all, falling for the two men tasked with protecting her.

“ I mean to live and die by my own mind,” Zora Neale Hurston told the writer Countee Cullen. Arriving in Harlem in 1925 with little more than a dollar to her name, Hurston rose to become one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, only to die in obscurity. Not until the 1970s was she rediscovered by Alice Walker and other admirers. Although Hurston has entered the pantheon as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, the true nature of her personality has proven elusive.

Now, a brilliant, complicated and utterly arresting woman emerges from this landmark book. Carla Kaplan, a noted Hurston scholar, has found hundreds of revealing, previously unpublished letters for this definitive collection; she also provides extensive and illuminating commentary on Hurston’s life and work, as well as an annotated glossary of the organizations and personalities that were important to it.

From her enrollment at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy in 1917, to correspondence with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Alain Locke, to a final query letter to her publishers in 1959, Hurston’s spirited correspondence offers an invaluable portrait of a remarkable, irrepressible talent.

Prioritize your mental, physical, and spiritual wellness with this empowering collection of 50 self-care activities curated specifically for Black women to promote self-love.

It’s time for Black women to put themselves first. In a world that systemically devalues both Black people and women, existing at the intersection of these two identities can be a constant struggle. Oludara Adeeyo’s Self-Care for Black Women Deck is here to help you prioritize you—and your mental, physical, and spiritual wellness. These 50 activity cards allow you to kickstart and maintain your self-care journey. You’ll find the self-confidence to celebrate what it means to be a Black woman, so you can live your most authentic life.

A new edition of a landmark work on Black women’s intellectual traditions.
 
An astonishing wealth of literary and intellectual work by nineteenth-century Black women is being rediscovered and restored to print in scholarly and popular editions. In Kristin Waters’s and Carol B. Conaway’s landmark edited collection, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, sophisticated commentary on this rich body of work chronicles a powerful and interwoven legacy of activism based in social and political theories that helped shape the history of North America. The book meticulously reclaims this American legacy, providing a collection of critical analyses of the primary sources and their vital traditions. Written by leading scholars, Black Women’s Intellectual Traditions is particularly powerful in its exploration of the pioneering thought and action of the nineteenth-century Black woman lecturer and essayist Maria W. Stewart, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, novelist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, educator Anna Julia Cooper, newspaper editor Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and activist Ida B. Wells. The distinguished contributors are Hazel V. Carby, Patricia Hill Collins, Karen Baker-Fletcher, Kristin Waters, R. Dianne Bartlow, Carol B. Conaway, Olga Idriss Davis, Vanessa Holford Diana, Evelyn Simien, Janice W. Fernheimer, Michelle N. Garfield, Joy James, Valerie Palmer-Mehta, Carla L. Peterson, Marilyn Richardson, Evelyn M. Simien, Ebony A. Utley, Mary Helen Washington, Melina Abdullah, and Lena Ampadu. The volume will interest scholars and readers of African-American and women’s studies, history, rhetoric, literature, poetry, sociology, political science, and philosophy. This updated edition features a new preface by the editors in the light of new developments in current scholarship.

Residual textures, patterns and structures of the abandoned Ebony and Jet offices represent both the spirit of a Black publishing empire and the sense of its loss

This book by photographer Barbara Karant commemorates the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines and the most influential Black-owned media corporation of its day. Karant spent more than three years documenting the company’s historic building at 820 S. Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago, capturing the last vestiges of the original workspace after the company sold the building in 2010 and relocated in 2012. These vibrant interiors, which remained largely unchanged from 1972 to 2012, fostered the creativity of a staff working in a variety of media. Each floor of the 11-story building flaunted distinct color and pattern combinations, and its bold, contemporary design telegraphed JPC’s position at the forefront of Black American business and culture. Stripped of its furnishings, the interiors of the former JPC headquarters simultaneously represent the spirit of this landmark company and the sense of its loss, of a seminal moment in Black American history and the history of this nation.
Accompanying the approximately 125 color photographs by Karant are documentary images of the original interiors, along with other archival material.  A foreword by Deborah Willis and essays by Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer, and E. James West address JPC’s dominance as an image and tastemaker in mid- to late-20th century America, the landscape of American Black media, the Ebony in-house photo studio, and the site-specific lobby sculpture by Richard Hunt. Short texts by former employees who worked in the building contribute important documentation to JPC’s history. 820 Ebony/Jet is a tribute to the achievements of this remarkable American company.

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Have shame, guilt, or codependency seemingly become insurmountable hurdles in your life? Do you struggle with forgiveness, setting boundaries, and putting yourself first? Are negative self-talk and people-pleasing tendencies preventing you from feeling fulfilled?

Sylvester McNutt III, life coach and host of the Free Your Energy podcast, shares the stories of his own traumas and challenges to reveal the lessons he’s learned to overcome obstacles and truly thrive.

To help guide you down your own path of healing, Sylvester provides:

• Strategies for managing stress, setting boundaries, and cultivating healthy habits
• Practical tactics for processing childhood trauma and being present as an adult
• Tools to move beyond the feelings of pain that are holding you back
• Inspiring advice that will urge you to keep moving forward

A nuanced profile, in image and text, of the great Black Power leader at the exhilarating moment of the movement’s ascendancy

Gordon Parks’ 1967 Life magazine essay “Whip of Black Power” is a nuanced profile of the young, controversial civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Carmichael gained national attention and inspired media backlash when he issued the call for Black Power in Greenwood, Mississippi, in June 1966. Parks shadowed him from the fall of 1966 to the spring of 1967, as Carmichael gave speeches, headed meetings and promoted the growing Black Power movement. Parks’ photos and writing addressed Carmichael’s intelligence and humor, presenting the whole man behind the headline-making speeches and revealing his own advocacy of Black Power and its message of self-determination and love.
Stokely Carmichael and Black Power delves into Parks’ groundbreaking presentation of Carmichael, with analysis of his images and accompanying text about the charismatic leader. Lisa Volpe explores Parks’ complex understanding of the movement and its leader, and Cedric Johnson frames Black Power within the heightened political moment of the late 1960s. Carmichael’s own voice is represented through a reprint of his important 1966 essay “What We Want.”
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a photographer, filmmaker, musician and author whose 50-year career focused on American culture, social justice, the civil rights movement and the Black American experience. Born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks was awarded the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in 1942, which led to a position with the Farm Security Administration. In 1969 he became the first Black American to write and direct a major feature film, The Learning Tree, and his next directorial endeavor, Shaft (1971), helped define a film genre.