Search results: 26 results for “toni ann johnson”
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26 results
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But Where's Home?: A Novella and Stories
But Where's Home?: A Novella and Stories
$24.95It's 1963 in the small town of Monroe, New York. The Arringtons, a Black family, buy a house in a picturesque, all-white neighborhood. Some residents are welcoming, but many react to Dr. Philip Arrington, his wife Velma, and their daughters Livia and Maddie by conspiring against their success in both big and small ways. Amid this mix of hostility and shaky acceptance, the Arringtons must navigate their careers, deal with a volatile marriage, and raise their daughters.
But Where's Home?, Toni Ann Johnson's new collection of linked short stories explores the sometimes painful and often humorous experiences of the Arringtons as an upper-middle-class Black family in a predominantly white, working-class community. This book follows Johnson's previous collection, Light Skin Gone to Waste, which won the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award. Through multiple perspectives and moments in time, from the 1960s to 2022, readers are invited into the lives of the eldest daughter, who longs for her father's affection while striving for independence; the youngest daughter, who seeks to overcome childhood pain through music and love; a father practicing psychology while engaging in affairs with the white women of the town; and a mother dealing with infidelity while raising her daughters in a place that rejects them.
Deeply emotional, funny, and unflinchingly honest, But Where's Home? lays bare the realities of Black life in America, challenging readers to confront racism, classism, colonized thinking, narcissism, abuse, and troubled parent-child relationships. Johnson's complex and interwoven characters create a kaleidoscope of truths about human nature and race relations in the United States.
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A Mercy
A Mercy
Toni Morrison
$17.00NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In “one of Morrison’s most haunting works” (The New York Times),the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the story of a mother and a daughter—a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
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The Bluest Eye
The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
$17.00NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. -
Sula
Sula
by Toni Morrison
$17.00This rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines from their close-knit childhood in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.
Nel Wright has chosen to stay in the place where she was born, to marry, raise a family, and become a pillar of the black community. Sula Peace has rejected the life Nel has embraced, escaping to college, and submerging herself in city life. When she returns to her roots, it is as a rebel and a wanton seductress. Eventually, both women must face the consequences of their choices. Together, they create an unforgettable portrait of what it means and costs to be a black woman in America. -
Love
Love
by Toni Morrison
$16.00In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching. -
Tar Baby
Tar Baby
by Toni Morrison
$35.00The author of Song of Solomon now sets her extraordinary novelistic powers on a striking new course. Tar Baby, audacious and hypnotic, is masterful in its mingling of tones—of longing and alarm, of urbanity and a primal, mythic force in which the landscape itself becomes animate, alive with a wild, dark complicity in the fates of the people whose drama unfolds. It is a novel suffused with a tense and passionate inquiry, revealing a whole spectrum of emotions underlying the relationships between black men and women, white men and women, and black and white people.
The place is a Caribbean island. In their mansion overlooking the sea, the cultivated millionaire Valerian Street, now retired, and his pretty, younger wife, Margaret, go through rituals of living, as if in a trance. It is the black servant couple, who have been with the Streets for years—the fastidious butler, Sydney, and his strong yet remote wife—who have arranged every detail of existence to create a surface calm broken only by sudden bursts of verbal sparring between Valerian and his wife. And there is a visitor among them—a beautiful young black woman, Jadine, who is not only the servant’s dazzling niece, but the protegée and friend of the Streets themselves; Jadine, who has been educated at the Sorbonne at Valerian’s expense and is home now for a respite from her Paris world of fashion, film and art.
Through a season of untroubled ease, the lives of these five move with a ritualized grace until, one night, a ragged, starving black American street man breaks into the house. And, in a single moment, with Valerian’s perverse decision not to call for help but instead to invite the man to sit with them and eat, everything changes. Valerian moves toward a larger abdication. Margaret’s delicate and enduring deception is shattered. The butler and his wife are forced into acknowledging their illusions. And Jadine, who at first is repelled by the intruder, finds herself moving inexorably toward him—he calls himself Son; he is a kind of black man she has dreaded since childhood; uneducated, violent, contemptuous of her privilege.
As Jadine and Son come together in the loving collision they have both welcomed and feared, the novel moves outward—to the Florida backwater town Son was raised in, fled from, yet cherishes; to her sleek New York; then back to the island people and their protective and entangling legends. As the lovers strive to hold and understand each other, as they experience the awful weight of the separate worlds that have formed them—she perceiving his vision of reality and of love as inimical to her freedom, he perceiving her as the classic lure, the tar baby set out to entrap him—all the mysterious elements, all the highly charged threads of the story converge. Everything that is at risk is made clear: how the conflicts and dramas wrought by social and cultural circumstances must ultimately be played out in the realm of the heart.
Once again, Toni Morrison has given us a novel of daring, fascination, and power. -
Toni at Random : The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship
Toni at Random : The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship
Dana A. Williams
from $17.99An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.
A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms.
Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.
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Rise to the Sun
Rise to the Sun
by Leah Johnson
$17.99*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*
Olivia is an expert at falling in love . . . and at being dumped. But after the fallout from her last breakup has left her an outcast at school and at home, she’s determined to turn over a new leaf. A crush-free weekend at Farmland Music and Arts Festival with her best friend is just what she needs to get her mind off the senior year that awaits her.
Toni is one week away from starting college, and it’s the last place she wants to be. Unsure about who she wants to become and still reeling in the wake of the loss of her musician-turned-roadie father, she’s heading back to the music festival that changed his life in hopes that following in his footsteps will help her find her own way forward.
When the two arrive at Farmland, the last thing they expect is to realize that they’ll need to join forces in order to get what they’re searching for out of the weekend. As they work together, the festival becomes so much more complicated than they bargained for. Olivia and Toni will find that they need each other, and music, more than they ever could have imagined.
Packed with irresistible romance and irrepressible heart, bestselling author Leah Johnson delivers a stunning and cinematic story about grief, love, and the remarkable power of music to heal and connect us all.
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Books Are Political Action Enamel Pin
Books Are Political Action Enamel Pin
$12.00Honor the legacy of Toni Morrison and the transformative power of literature with our “Books Are Political Action” enamel pin. Inspired by Morrison’s iconic words, this pin celebrates the radical, world-shaping force of storytelling—and the readers who carry that truth with them.
Crafted with high-quality hard enamel and a smooth, elegant finish, this pin features a bold, beautifully lettered design that stands out on totes, denim jackets, backpacks, and lanyards. Its durable construction ensures it stays secure through every march, meeting, book club, and bookstore visit.
Perfect for educators, organizers, book lovers, and anyone who believes in the power of stories to spark change, this pin is more than an accessory—it’s a declaration.
Wear it as a reminder of the work, the beauty, and the responsibility of reading with intention.
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God Help the Child
God Help the Child
by Toni Morrison
$14.95*Ships in 7-10 business days*
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.
At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” -
PRE-ORDER: And If I Die Before I Wake: A Memoir
PRE-ORDER: And If I Die Before I Wake: A Memoir
$30.99They may be the author of the #1 most banned book in America, but George M. Johnson isn't finished telling their story yet. Written with unflinching emotion and unapologetic boldness, And If I Die Before I Wake is nothing short of a testimony -- one the world desperately needs to hear.
George M. Johnson is no stranger to death. In this debut adult memoir, readers are invited to witness as they navigate an HIV diagnosis, alcoholism, tremendous loss, and nationwide book bans over the span of 15 years. Through the highs and lows of life in the spotlight, they have clung to family and community like never before -- finding their most authentic self along the way.
Drawing inspiration from Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, And If I Die Before I Wake explores grief, trauma, sexuality, and the Black family through the lens of transformation, healing, and hope. Poetic, grounded, and bursting with signature humor, this is New York Times-bestselling author George M. Johnson more bold, more brave, and more daring than ever.
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Toni Morrison Book Lovers Sticker
Toni Morrison Book Lovers Sticker
$4.00Product Description: Celebrate empowerment and creativity with our "Inspirational Black Literary Icons Vinyl Sticker Collection," featuring ten vibrant pop art renditions of influential activists and writers. Perfect as stocking stuffers, Christmas gifts, or tokens of motivation year-round, these stickers bring a touch of inspiration to laptops, notebooks, water bottles, stationery and more. Each sticker in this exclusive collection showcases a bold, colorful portrait of an iconic figure, crafted by talented Black artists. From the revolutionary spirit of Angela Davis to the literary genius of Toni Morrison, these stickers not only decorate but also honor the legacies of these trailblazers.
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