A bold manifesto arguing that there is a clear precedent for paying reparations to atone for America’s original sin of slavery, offering a compelling legal strategy to achieve this goal—from the acclaimed author of The Whiteness of Wealth.

The idea of reparations is not a new or original one; it is one that is baked into American history.

When the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862 went into effect, wealthy slaveowners like Margaret Barber were compensated for the loss of their enslaved workers. Barber received $9,000—an equivalent to $250,000 today. When a group of Italian immigrants were lynched in 1892, President Harrison compensated Italy a total of $25,000 for their deaths—an equivalent to almost $766,000 today. The Indian Claims Commission, an arm of the federal government, paid Indigenous Americans $818 million for underhandedly stealing their land in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—an equivalent to almost $350 billion today.

Dorothy A. Brown addresses the glaring question: if reparations can be achieved for others, why not for Black Americans? If lynching can be remedied for Italian immigrants, and slaveholders compensated for losses associated with abolition and emancipation, then the government’s failure to provide such remedies to Black communities harmed by similar violence, loss, and destruction is long overdue. The fight for reparations is truly a fight for the soul of America, to produce the country our founding fathers idealized but never achieved.

Getting to Reparations makes a logical and necessary case for reparations for Black Americans. It lays out a path as to how we might achieve this, built on the frameworks used throughout U.S. history by the government to pay restitution. It is now time to do the same for America's Black population.

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In The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown draws on decades of cross-disciplinary research to show that tax law isn’t as colorblind as she’d once believed. She takes us into her adopted city of Atlanta, introducing us to families across the economic spectrum whose stories demonstrate how American tax law rewards the preferences and practices of white people while pushing black people further behind. From attending college to getting married to buying a home, black Americans find themselves at a financial disadvantage compared to their white peers. The result is an ever-increasing wealth gap, and more black families shut out of the American dream.

On the heels of the bestseller success of her  novel The Wedding, Dorothy West,  the last surviving member of the Harlem  Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that  explore both the realism of everyday life, and the  fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one  woman's life in a mythic time. Traversing the  universal themes and conflicts between poverty and  prosperity, men and women, and young and old, and  compiling writing that spans almost seventy years,  The Richer, The Poorer not only  affords an unparalleled window into the  African-American middle class, but also delves into the  richness of experience of "one of the finest writers  produced in this country during the Roaring  Twenties"(Book Page).

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In 1997, the image of the “Welfare Queen” dominated white America’s perceptions of Black women. Legislation was being proposed to deny benefits to children born to welfare mothers and to require insertion of birth-control implants as a condition of receiving aid. Meanwhile, a booming fertility industry was catering primarily to infertile white couples.

Dorothy Roberts’s landmark book, Killing the Black Body, made a powerful entrance into the national conversation of the era, exposing America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies, from slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s. These abuses point not only to the degradation of Black motherhood, but to the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs from the feminist agenda. Killing the Black Body turns twenty next year and is as relevant today as it was upon publication. In our current moment of Black Lives Matter, Between the World and Me, and authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Roxane Gay speaking out about feminism and race, Killing the Black Body offers a vision of reproductive freedom that respects each and every American.

From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who “has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades” (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter’s journey to understand her parents’ marriage—and her own identity.

Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s where relationships barely crossed the “colorline.” Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage wasn’t just a part of her upbringing, it was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her entire childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages—a project he never finished but shaped every aspect of their family life.

As a 21-year-old graduate student, Dorothy’s father dedicated himself to the study of interracial marriage and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together over the years they interviewed over 500 couples and assembled stunning stories about interracial marriages that took place as early as the 1880s—studying, but also living, championing, and believing in their power to advance social equality.

Decades later, while sorting through her father’s papers, Roberts uncovers a truth that upends everything she thought she knew about her family: her father’s research didn’t begin with her parents’ love story—it came long before it. This discovery forces her to wrestle with her father’s intentions, her own views about interracial relationships, and where she fits in that story. Rather than finish the book her father never published, Roberts immerses herself in their archive of interviews to trace the story of her parents and to better understand her own.

Though grounded in her parents’ research, it’s Roberts’ captivating storytelling that drives this memoir. In following the arc of her parents’ interviews and marriage, The Mixed Marriage Project invites us into the everyday lives of interracial couples in Chicago over four decades. Along the way, Roberts reflects on her own childhood as a Black girl with a white father, and how those experiences shaped her into one of today’s most prominent public thinkers and scholars on race. Blurring the boundaries between the political and the personal, between memoir and history, The Mixed Marriage Project is a deeply moving meditation on family, race, identity, and love.

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A BreakBeat Poets anthology of writings by Muslims who are women, queer, genderqueer, nonbinary, or trans.

The collected poems dispel the notion that there is one correct way to be a Muslim by holding space for multiple, intersecting identities while celebrating and protecting those identities.

Halal If You Hear Me features poems by Safia Elhillo, Fatimah Asghar, Warsan Shire, Tarfia Faizullah, Angel Nafis, Beyza Ozer, and many others.

Fatimah Asghar is the creator of the Emmy-Nominated web series Brown Girls, now in development for HBO. She is the author of If They Come For Us and a recipient of a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. She is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and a Kundiman fellow. In 2017, she was listed on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC and a Cave Canem fellow, she holds an MFA from the New School. In 2018, she was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.

Celebrate the release of Good Spirits with Tiffanie Barriere! This special evening will feature an author conversation with Tiffanie and Chef Dominic Lee, owner of Augustine’s, followed by a cocktail tasting featuring recipes from the book. Join us for an engaging evening of conversation, cocktails, and good spirits!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, December 10 @ 7PM

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

How: 

• RSVP ONLY
  Reserve your seat and participate in the tasting.

  RSVP WITH BOOK
  Reserve your seat and purchase a copy of Good Spirits, supporting both the author and our store programming. Your book will be available for pickup at the event. Includes the tasting.

  RSVP (I ALREADY HAVE THE BOOK)
  Reserve your seat and let us know you plan to bring a copy of Good Spirits that you previously purchased from another bookseller. Includes the tasting.

Please Note: Generally books purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must either purchase a copy from Kindred Stories or select the RSVP: I Already Have the Book ticket option, which allows you to bring a copy purchased elsewhere. If you already purchased your book from Kindred Stories, you may select the RSVP Only ticket option and bring your Kindred Stories copy to the event.

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The must-have companion for classic cocktails, mocktails, and creative drinks, plus historical insights, from a celebrated industry icon.

Good Spirits is a culture-rich cocktail exploration that seamlessly blends practiced technique with deep historical knowledge. For master bartender and cocktail educator Tiffanie Barriere, the bar has always been a place where history, creativity, and community combine. From gold-standard martinis and expert Manhattans to drinks inspired by mood, the cocktail curious will learn not only how to skillfully mix and pour with joy, but also about the fascinating and often untold history behind our favorite drinks and spirits.

In addition to the backstories and recipes for 125 cocktails, enthusiasts will find illuminating essays about choosing and using spirits and the legacies (both bitter and sweet) behind them; important historical figures who invented our favorite drinks, liqueurs, and bar tools; and truths that track the impact of trends and cocktail movements. Zero-proof variations abound thanks to the ingenious concept of cocktail “stock”, while dozens of bold-flavored syrups, shrubs, and infusions make it just as easy and exciting to take a drink in a no-alcohol direction as a boozy one. Insights on tools, garnishing, ice types, and the difference between shaking, rolling, and aerating set you up to hone your mixology and make drinks with confidence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tiffanie Barriere is a bartender’s bartender and award-winning mixologist, educator, and hospitality leader. The former beverage director at One Flew South, the “Best Airport Bar in the World,” she has been honored as a Food & Wine Game Changer and a Tales of the Cocktail Visionary Award recipient. She has contributed cocktail recipes to several cocktail books and cookbooks, including Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice and Modern Classic Cocktails. Her work has also been featured in Imbibe, Forbes, Essence, and Southern Living. She is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Rooted in the unique tapestry of Creole culture, Chef Dominick Lee’s culinary journey pays heartfelt homage to his New Orleans heritage. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Lee’s passion for cooking led him to The Art Institute of Houston, where he received the inaugural “Underbelly Scholarship” from James Beard award-winning chef Chris Shepherd. His journey to his Bachelors in Culinary Management included roles as sous chef at Bay Oaks Country Club, Executive Sous Chef under James Beard semifinalist Chef Kiran Verma at Kiran’s and stages at some of the most highly acclaimed restaurants in the country, including Alinea (2 Michelin Stars), Next (1 Michelin Star), and Blue Hill at Stone Barns (2 Michelin Stars). At 29, Lee became one of the youngest executive chefs in Houston, taking the helm at Poitín Bar & Kitchen where he earned accolades such as Texas Monthly’s 2019 Best New Restaurants and a number of “Rising Star Chef” distinctions.

In 2021, Lee relocated to Europe to study Creole food derivatives and served as head chef at Villa Lena in Tuscany. Two years later, he returned back to The States, opening Alligator Pear in New York City, which showcased a New American menu inspired by New Orleans. Now, Lee has returned to Houston to open Augustine’s, a progressive Creole restaurant exploring the many dimensions of his Creole heritage — debuting Summer 2026.

Gail Simmons will be in conversation with Chris Shepherd on November 17th at the Hobby Center as part of her official book tour.  Get tickets HERE!

From author, culinary expert, and Top Chef judge Gail Simmons comes a fun, informative, and trailblazing guide to a rarely-explored side of hospitality: how to be a great guest.

Countless influential voices have written books about hosting, offering tips for what to cook, how to set the perfect table, mix the best drinks and create the most welcoming vibes. But hospitality, by definition, involves at least two people; where is the advice for guests?

Culinary expert and perennial Top Chef judge Gail Simmons is something of a professional on the subject. As a tastemaker and lifestyle authority, she is invited to countless social events running the gamut from world-class fine dining and international affairs to neighborhood potlucks. Through it all, she knows that for any gathering to be a success, guests must rise to the occasion and actively embrace their role.

In Guesting, Gail unpacks the reciprocal nature of this relationship and explores the sometimes-tricky choreography that governs its dance. She also shares her essential tenets of guesting, and proven strategies for navigating any social situation (yes, even assigned seating). From dinner parties to weddings, religious observances to restaurants, Guesting guides readers through all types of “get-togethers” with confidence and grace. It also connects the vital role guesting plays in our wellbeing and the integrity of our collective culture, at a moment when technology and the temptation for short-term comfort have diminished our inherent need to create―and maintain―human relationships.

And since any good guest knows that bringing something to the table is always the right move, Gail shares ideas and recipes for thoughtful store-bought contributions, homemade food gifts, and favorite dishes to share with a crowd. Whether you’re visiting an old friend, going out for dinner, or attending a milestone celebration, Gail has the answers and inspiration to help you become the consummate guest.

Celebrate the release of We Exist in the Whisper with Lupe Mendez!

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, August 5 @ 7 PM CST

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

How:

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.
• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy of the book, supporting both the author and our store programming.
• RSVP (I ALREADY HAVE THE BOOK) if you plan to bring a copy you previously purchased from another bookseller.

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 ( I ALREADY HAVE THE BOOK) ticket. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

"One day all these classrooms / will no longer hold any of us. / Leave no evidence we were here. / We exist in the whisper…." Lupe Mendez's innovative new collection captures a unique time in Houston, Texas, "a sliver of a moment for Mexican-American and Mexican communities in the early 1970s," that explores Houston ISD's racist plan to integrate schools by sending Mexican-American children-labeled as white-to predominantly African-American schools, thereby satisfying federal desegregation laws.

Incensed that its children would have to travel to schools that were no better than the ones they could walk to, the Chicano community resisted by instituting a walkout, or huelga, and creating its own schools in churches, homes and neighborhood centers. Weaving poetry and history, the book contains "found" poems created from newspaper articles about the strike; oral history interviews with teachers, principals and students; notes from visits the author made to the sites where classes were held more than 50 years ago; docupoems created from official Huelga School papers; and historical documents such as photographs, charts, fliers and letters.

In his illuminating notes about the book, Mendez describes the methodology for creating this collection and includes a list of best practices for the "poethnographer." His research revealed the racism that existed in this era, perpetuated by the majority white population and between brown and black populations forced to compete for every resource. Ultimately, Mendez asserts the Huelga School strike had a critical impact on Houston, both in the development of Mexican-American leaders who got their start in these "freedom schools" and the nascent collaborations between diverse communities. This creative, thought-provoking volume is a must-read for anyone interested in education, history and Mexican Americans' fight for equality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Originally from Galveston, TX, Lupe Mendez is a Writer, Editor, Educator, and Artivist…  
He is the author several books poetry and multi-genre works, including WHY I AM LIKE TEQUILA (Willow Books, 2019), winner of the 2019 John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry, PRAYER HOLDING NIGHT: NEW & SELECTED WORKS (Texas Christian University Press, 2025) and WE EXIST IN THE WHISPER: HUELGA SCHOOL WORKS (Arte Publico Press, 2026). He is the founder of Tintero Projects which works with emerging Latinx writers and other writers of color within the Texas Gulf Coast Region, with Houston as its hub.

Lupe earned his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Texas @ El Paso and currently serves as Poetry Editor for the Texas Observer  and Huizache: the Magazine of a New America and Associate Editor for the Acentos Review.  He has been awarded residencies and fellowships from CantoMundo, Macondo, the National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures, the Poetry Foundation + Crescendo Literary Poetry Incubator, the Betsy Hotel Writer’s Room and was one of twenty-five recipients of the inaugural Houston BIPOC Arts Network Fund (now HOUSTON IN COLOR) Artist Award for 2023. . Lupe is a 20+ year veteran in education having served classrooms across K through College in public, private and charter school settings.  Mendez is Texas Poet Laureate Emeritus (Texas Poet Laureate 2022 - 2023).

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Aris Kian (she/her) is a Houston enthusiast and student of abolition. Her poems are published with Button Poetry, West Branch, Obsidian Lit, and elsewhere. As an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of Houston. Her team Smoke Slam coached by Ebony Stewart ranked #1 at the 2025 Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam and #1 at the 2024 Southern Fried Poetry Slam. She previously served as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate and was chosen as a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow.

Whether it’s payday, a new deal, or a side hustle paying off, this is the smell of goals turning into reality. Crisp “New Money” freshness hits first, followed by Palo Santo to clear the path for abundance, and finished with Worn Leather, a reminder that you’ve earned every luxury. This scent is a celebration of the grind, the glow-up, and the satisfaction of stacking your wins high.

11 oz (*up to 80hrs burn time) - Double Wick

All Natural Soy Wax, No Harsh Chemicals or Phthalates