Pull up in your best to celebrate Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Pulitzer winning author, Michell S. Jackson and one of our favorite artist/community members, Tay Butler. 

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 7PM

Where: The Reading Room HTX (401 Franklin Street, 77201)

How: RSVP to grab your free ticket or RSVP book to reserve your seat and your copy of the book while supporting our programming. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Use discount code: SALE to receive 30% off. 

Michael Jackson’s closest sister pulls back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of the Jackson family, Michael’s tortured soul, and her own love for her brother in this intimate portrait of a beloved, yet troubled, pop legend.

In this shocking New York Times bestselling memoir, La Toya Jackson pays heartfelt tribute to her legendary brother Michael’s tortured soul and offers unprecedented insight into the troubled entertainer’s tragic destruction.

La Toya Jackson was always closer to Michael than anyone knew. Now, she sheds light on the intimate moments she shared with the beloved pop legend and unveils the disturbing behind-the-scenes dealings that she believes foretold his death. Like Michael, La Toya experienced an upbringing that made her vulnerable to exploitation, and her own journey led to hell and back at the hands of her former manager and husband. Here, in vivid and candid detail, she reveals the most painful episodes of her deeply personal story and explores how anyone—regardless of fame, fortune, or status—can be trapped in a cycle of abuse. La Toya ultimately found the courage to break free, rebuild her life and career, and reconcile with her close-knit family. Her unforgettable story will touch the hearts of millions of fans and inspire anyone who feels as if there’s nowhere to go that it is possible to truly start over...

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

More than 30 acclaimed writers—including diverse voices such as Nikki Giovanni, David Omotosho Black, Natasha Trethewey, Barry Jenkins, Jacqueline Woodson, Tayari Jones, and Angela Flournoy—reflect on their experience and expertise in this unique book on the craft of writing that focuses on the Black creative spirit.

How We Do It is an anthology curated by Black writers for the creation and proliferation of Black thought. While a creator’s ethnicity does not solely define them, it is inherently part of who they are and how they interpret the world.

For centuries, Black creators have utilized oral and written storytelling traditions in crafting their art. But how does one begin the process of constructing a poem or story or character? How do Black writers, when faced with questions of “authenticity,” dive deep into the essence of their lives and work to find the inherent truth? How We Do It addresses these profound questions. Not a traditional “how to” writing handbook, it seeks to guide rather than dictate and to validate the complexity and range of styles—and even how one thinks about craft itself.

An outstanding list of contributors offer their insights on a range of important topics. Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown explores the lives personified in poetry, while Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey explores decolonizing enduring metaphors. National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy illuminates the pain of grief in all forms and how it can be revealed in the act of creation, and iconoclast Nikki Giovanni offers an elegiac declaration on language.

New and previously published essays and interviews provide encouragement, examples, and templates, and offer lessons on everything from poetic form and plotting a story to the lessons inherent in the act of writing, trial & error, and finding inspiration in the works of others, including those of Toni Morrison, Shakespeare, and Edward P. Jones. A handbook and a reference tool, How We Do It is a thoughtful and welcome tool that offers direction to help Black artists establish their own creative practice while celebrating and widening the scope of the Black writer’s role in art, history, and culture.

Contributors include David Omotosho Black, Jericho Brown, Breena Clark, Rita Dove, Camille T. Dungy, W. Ralph Eubanks, Curdella Forbes, Angela Flournoy, Ernest Gaines, Nikki Giovanni, Marita Golden, Ravi Howard, Terrance Hayes, Mitchell S. Jackson, Barry Jenkins, Charles S. Johnson, Tayari Jones, Jamaica Kincaid, Tony Medina, E. Ethelbert Miller, Elizabeth Nunez, Carl Phillips, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Rion Amilcar Scott, Evie Shockley, Natasha Trethewey, Frank X Walker, Afaa M. Weaver, Crystal Wilkinson, Jacqueline Woodson, Tiphanie Yanique.

Step into the vibrant streets of the 1970s Bronx and witness the exact moment a global movement began. Birth of a Culture gives you a front-row seat to the origins of hip-hop, told through the firsthand experiences of Grandmaster Flash—one of the founding pioneers who helped build the culture from the ground up.

When you read this book, you feel the pulse of the neighborhood parks, hear the scratch of the vinyl, and experience the raw energy of a community turning its daily struggles into a revolutionary art form. This is not just a collection of dates and facts. It is a deeply personal narrative written by Grandmaster Flash and coauthor Robert “Scoop” Jackson that brings you into the rooms and onto the streets where music changed forever.

What you will discover inside:

* An Authentic Pioneer Perspective: Read a personal narrative from the mind of Grandmaster Flash, complete with untold stories of the earliest park jams and legendary club nights.
* The Blueprint of a Movement: Understand exactly how DJing, MCing, break dancers, and graffiti artists merged to form the core pillars of a massive cultural shift.
* Untold History Revealed: Uncover the real stories behind the evolution of hip-hop and culture.
* Timeless Cultural Relevance: Explore how the innovation born in the Bronx directly influences the music, art, and social movements you interact with every day.

This book cuts through the myths to deliver an authentic, chronological history—bringing you alongside Grandmaster Flash as he invents the groundbreaking Quik Mix Theory and helps transform a landscape of social unrest into a global movement. With turntables and microphones, the young innovator sparked a cultural explosion that quickly swept the world.

More than a timeline of musical milestones, this Birth of a Culture explores the profound power of community, resilience, and unapologetic creativity. The challenges and triumphs detailed within these pages mirror the social issues we still face, proving that music remains our most vital tool for connection and change.

Whether you are a lifelong hip-hop fan, a dedicated music historian, or simply someone who loves powerful stories of cultural triumph, this book belongs on your shelf. Once you’ve read Birth of a Culture, you can say you know the undeniable heartbeat of hip-hop's true origins.

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Illustrated by New York Times best-selling artist Bea Jackson, this poignant story speaks to Lunella Lafayette's insecurities about her hair as School Picture Day approaches.

Sure, Lunella may be a genius Super Hero (Moon Girl), but when someone makes unkind comments about her hair, she questions whether she needs to change it for School Picture Day. She is, after all, still a 13-year-old girl. Ultimately, Lunella figures out the hairstyle that makes her feel like her best self for her school picture, but not before struggling with what that means for her.

Readers will explore and relate to themes of self-kindness, patience, identity, and acceptance in this charming and funny story.

If you like this book, you might also considering adding these titles to your library:

• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: One Girl Can Make a Difference
• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Lunella's Journal
• Night Night Groot
• Snow Day for Groot!
• Captain Marvel: What Makes a Hero

Comi Johnson entered college with a high-school diploma, an associate's

degree and a broken heart. Betrayed by her high-school sweetheart and best friend she swore

off love, dating, and athletes. Then she met a basketball star and 1st round draft pick Dray

Townsend, and the attraction was instant. A chance pairing in class created a friendship that

made each other question everything they thought they knew about love.

Then one night changed the course of their friendship forever. After years of not speaking to one

another they run into each other in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, Dray's latest conquest is

determined to come between him and Comi. After battling social media lies and rumors and the

paparazzi Dray and Comi finally find their footing and form a lasting relationship.

As Comi and Dray navigate the complexities of friendship, feelings, and life they discover that

love is as complicated as the game itself- full of victories, heartbreaks, and choices that will

shape who they become.

Incidental Contact is not just a sports romance; it's a journey of self-discovery, resilience and

courage. Comi and Dray's story captures the tension between hope and vulnerability, ambition

and sacrifice and speaks to the hopeless romantics that believe that love conquers all.

The definitive early-career survey of one of the most compelling photographers of his generation.

Tyler Mitchell’s photography is animated by dreams of paradise and joy against the backdrop of history. Since his rise to prominence in the worlds of art and fashion, Mitchell has created images of beauty, utopia, and the American landscape that expand the imaginary of Blackness in the twenty-first century. Wish This Was Real is the definitive early-career survey of Mitchell’s work, offering a comprehensive look into the subjects driving his artistic practice, from his genre-bending portraits made in the United States, Europe, and West Africa to his photographs printed on diaphanous fabrics and sculptures that reference Black intellectual heritage. Presenting new perspectives by leading writers on his long-standing themes of self-determination and the extraordinary radiance of the everyday, Wish This Was Real shows how photography can be rooted in a collective past while evoking imagined futures.

The autobiography of a Black woman who defied nineteenth-century conventions to become a preacher, popular speaker, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist. 

Sojourner Truth was an incredible, remarkable, epoch-defying woman who escaped from slavery and successfully sued for her son’s freedom, in addition to her career as a wildly successful orator and activist—a woman alive to the hypocrisies of her age, and unafraid to talk about them.

Her autobiography, which she dictated, is an outstanding historical document. Truth’s tale sheds a light on realities of slavery that are still rarely discussed: that she was a slave in upstate New York, not on a Southern plantation; that Dutch was her first language; that the circumstances of her slavery isolated her from a broader Black community; that her experience of religion was a racially integrated one, and became the means of her independence. Ultimately, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is the story of a great American that reveals aspects of slavery and free Black life that are too often overlooked.

A beautifully written and often speculative story collection infused with Caribbean and African myths and cultures, exploring love, betrayal, motherhood, death, and home.

GROUNDED IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND INFUSED WITH TRADITIONS of Africa and the Caribbean, A Good Haunting: Stories spins myth, magic, and realism into heartrending tales of characters seeking love and connection. Death is the primary antagonist in each of these stories, sometimes appearing as death of self, other times as death of a loved one, and often as both.

In the title story, “A Good Haunting,” a widower in the midst of an unorthodox death ritual uses humor to deal with grief and guilt while coming to terms with unsavory details about his spouse’s sudden death. In “The Way of the Volt,” an eighteenth-century African queen is made immortal, sold into slavery, and left to face a series of impossible choices that force her to struggle with what it means to be human. In “The Sunset Toll,” members of the last community on earth disappear one by one until there are just three people left, trying to maintain hope even as they question the forces that keep them trapped on earth.

The characters wrestle with foes, agonize at crossroads, and face painful truths, all while grappling with grief, love, betrayal, motherhood, and ideas of home. Some triumph, some do not―but they all emerge irrevocably changed by their experiences.

Margot, Wesley, and Josephine have the perfect weekend planned to celebrate the end of summer before starting high school — and nothing is going to get in the way of their big adventure in London.

But while staying with Margot’s mom and her new boyfriend, Teddy, in Notting Hill, something happens that they just can’t ignore...

Join the trio as they chase clues across wild West London, following the trail of a shockingly creative murderer — and some seriously cool street art. From skate parks and tower blocks to canal towpaths, their investigation leads them all the way to a float at the colorful Notting Hill Carnival — the biggest party of the year!

Can Margot, Wesley, and Josephine piece together the evidence in time to solve the mystery at the heart of London’s coolest streets?

Praise for Sharna Jackson:
“I utterly loved The Good Turn; it’s bone-deep brilliant — a joy to the very end. It’s so warm and so funny, and so ferociously on the side of justice and of hope. I adored it.” — Katherine Rundell

"The power of George Jackson's personal story remains painfully relevant to our nation today, with its persistent racism, its hellish prisons, its unjust judicial system, and the poles of wealth and poverty that are at the root of all that. I hope the younger generation, black and white, will read Soledad Brother."  —Howard Zinn, author, A People's History of the United States

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life.
Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

Melvin Mitchell believes that the 2016 opening of the NMAAHC signals either a black architect renaissance or the demise of the black architect-practitioner corps in the U.S. by 2040 if not earlier…along with the demise of Black America’s cultural, political, and spatial beachheads in America’s big cities. He argues in this book that America’s perennial housing crisis - most acutely manifested in Black America’s accelerating displacement from America’s cities – must be countered by a new progressive 21st century movement that re-invents the revolutionary construction-based architecture modus operandi deployed 100 years ago by Booker T. Washington. Mitchell believes that Washington completed the build-out of the Tuskegee Institute campus as a counter to America’s building of the “White City” aka the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair-Columbian Exposition 600 miles to the north in Chicago, Illinois. Mitchell argues that the centerpiece of a new “architecture” must realign with the needs of Black America for majorincreases in home and business ownership and wealth creation. That requires a massive “Buy the Block”-type redevelopmentin urban Black America. Today that must entail nothing short of the literal building of at least one million newaffordable housing units in urban Black America by Black America between now and 2030. The means to accomplishsuch a moon shot are there in existing and emerging progressive legislation. The American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, the Green New Deal, and the Opportunity Zones Act must all beharnessed with the trillions of available public dollars, private equity funds, and black nouveau rich wealth to createand sustain an African American-dominated urban affordable housing industry. That may not be the answer but is mostcertainly one of several heretofore missing pieces.