107 Books Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

Click for more detail about Summer Is Here by Renée Watson Summer Is Here

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (May 07, 2024)
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New York Times bestselling creators Renée Watson and Bea Jackson offer a picture book ode to a picture-perfect summer day, from sunrise to sunset.

Summer is here!

No dark clouds in the sky,
it’s a perfect day for play.
What joy will summer bring me today?

Summer is finally here, and she’s bringing the most perfect day! From sunup to sundown, there’s so much to do on this lovely summer day. With summer comes fresh fruit, sweet and tangy, jump ropes for leaping and dancing, and friends at the pool swimming and floating. Summer brings family cookouts under shady trees, gardens overflowing, and the familiar song of the ice-cream truck. This beautiful ode to all the season’s sensations follows one girl’s perfect day in an exploration of joy, family, friendship, sunshine, and wonder.

Her stars shimmer like spilled glitter across the sky.
I whisper a wish and say goodbye to the day.
I wish summer would stay.

Renée Watson celebrates iconic childhood joys in this love letter to summer featuring bright, sun-drenched art from Bea Jackson.


Click for more detail about Ways to Build Dreams by Renée Watson Ways to Build Dreams

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Oct 17, 2023)
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Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award winner Renée Watson continues her bestselling young middle grade series starring Ryan Hart, a girl who is pure spirit and sunshine.

Middle school is just around the corner for Ryan Hart, which means it’s time to start thinking about the future—and not just how to prank her brother, Ray!
During Black History Month, Ryan learns more about her ancestors and local Black pioneers, and their hopes for the future, for her generation. She wonders who she wants to be and what kind of person her family hopes she becomes. Drawing on the ambitions of those who came before her and her own goals, Ryan is determined to turn her dreams into reality.
Grow and shine and share with Ryan Hart in this series that brings ever more humor, more love, and more fun.

Acclaim for Ways to Make Sunshine

  • A New York Times Best Children’s Book of the Year
  • A Parents Magazine Best Book of the Year
  • A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
  • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
  • A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
  • A WORLD Magazine Best Book of the Year
  • An Amazon Best Book of the Year


Click for more detail about I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction by Kidada E. Williams I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

by Kidada E. Williams
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 17, 2023)
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For readers of Carol Anderson, Tiya Miles, and Clint Smith, I Saw Death Coming is an indelible and essential book that speaks to some of the most pressing questions of our times.

From a groundbreaking scholar, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost.

The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom after 1865. They were besieged by a campaign of white supremacist violence that persisted through the 1880s and beyond. For too long, their lived experiences have been sidelined, impoverishing our understanding of the obstacles post-Civil War Black families faced, their inspiring determination to survive, and the physical and emotional scars they bore because of it.

In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting readers into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives. Drawing on overlooked sources and bold new readings of the archives, Williams offers a revelatory and, in some cases, minute-by-minute record of nighttime raids and Ku Klux Klan strikes. And she deploys cutting-edge scholarship on trauma to consider how the effects of these attacks would linger for decades—indeed, generations—to come.


Click for more detail about Jump In! by Shadra Strickland Jump In!

by Shadra Strickland
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Jan 10, 2023)
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Click for more detail about Lotus Bloom and the Afro Revolution by Sherri Winston Lotus Bloom and the Afro Revolution

by Sherri Winston
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Sep 06, 2022)
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From the beloved author of President of the Whole Fifth Grade, a story about a young Black girl who summons the courage to fight against a discriminatory dress code—and stand up for herself.

Lotus Bloom just wants to express herself—with her violin, her retro style, and her peaceful vibe, not to mention her fabulous hair.

This school year, Lotus is taking her talent and spirit to the seventh grade at a new school of the arts. The one where she just might get to play under the famous maestro, a violin virtuoso and conductor of the orchestra. But Lotus’s best friend, Rebel, thinks Lotus should stay at their school. Why should this fancy new school get all the funding and pull the brightest kids out? Rebel wants Lotus to help her protest, but Lotus isn’t sure. If she’s going to be in the spotlight, she’d rather it be for her music.

Then, when boys throw paper wads and airplanes into Lotus’s afro, Lotus finds herself in trouble for a dress code violation. Lotus must choose—should she stay quiet and risk her beloved hair, or put aside her peaceful vibe and risk everything to fight back?

Inspired by real stories of Black girls fighting dress codes that discriminate against their hair and culture, beloved author Sherri Winston introduces a memorable character who finds her way to speak up for what’s right, no matter what it takes.


Click for more detail about Kick Push by Frank Morrison Kick Push

by Frank Morrison
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Apr 19, 2022)
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Award-winning picture book creator Frank Morrison makes his author/illustrator debut in an exuberant story about being yourself.

Epic has tricks you won’t believe. He’s the kick flipping, big rail king. When his family moves to a new neighborhood, he can’t wait to hit the street with his skateboard. But his old moves don’t feel fresh without a crew to see ’em. Epic thinks about giving up his board to fit in, but an encouraging word from his dad helps him see that the trick to making new friends is to always be yourself. Be you… be epic!

Award-winning illustrator Frank Morrison offers a heartwarming, dynamic celebration of self-expression, inspired by his own journey through fatherhood.


Click for more detail about Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms by Jamar J. Perry Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms

by Jamar J. Perry
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Feb 01, 2022)
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As the true Descendant, I command to open
The door to Chidani; it shall be broken

Magic awaits those who seek the queen’s peace
And all the suffering you feel will cease

Those who open the histories will hear a sound
What was lost has finally been found.

Cameron Battle grew up reading The Book of Chidani, cherishing stories about the fabled kingdom that cut itself off from the world to save the Igbo people from danger. Passed down over generations, the Book is Cameron’s only connection to his parents who disappeared one fateful night, two years ago.

Ever since, his grandmother has kept the Book locked away, but it calls to Cameron. When he and his best friends Zion and Aliyah decide to open it again, they are magically transported to Chidani. Instead of a land of beauty and wonder, they find a kingdom in extreme danger, as the Queen’s sister seeks to destroy the barrier between worlds. The people of Chidani have been waiting for the last Descendant to return and save them … is Cameron ready to be the hero they need?

Inspired by West African and Igbo history and mythology, this adventurous middle-grade fantasy debut perfect for fans of Aru Shah and Tristan Strong celebrates the triumphs and challenges of a boy finding his truth path to greatness.


Click for more detail about Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood by Damaris B. Hill Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood

by Damaris B. Hill
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 25, 2022)
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From the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing comes a new book of narrative in verse that takes a personal and historical look at the experience of Black girlhood.

In Breath Better Spent, DaMaris B. Hill hoists her childhood self onto her shoulders, together taking in the landscape of Black girlhood in America. At a time when Black girls across the country are increasingly vulnerable to unjust violence, unwarranted incarceration, and unnoticed disappearance, Hill chooses to celebrate and protect the girl she carries, using the narrative-in-verse style of her acclaimed book A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing to revisit her youth. There, jelly sandals, Double Dutch beats, and chipped nail polish bring the breath of laughter; in adolescence, pomegranate lips, turntables, and love letters to other girls’ boyfriends bring the breath of longing. Yet these breaths cannot be taken alone, and as she carries her childhood self through the broader historical space of Black girls in America, Hill is forced to grapple with expression in a space of stereotype, desire in a space of hyper-sexuality, joy in a space of heartache.

Paying homage to prominent Black female figures from Zora Neale Hurston to Whitney Houston and Toni Morrison, Breath Better Spent invites you to walk through this landscape, too, exploring the spaces-both visible and invisible-that Black girls occupy in the national imagination, taking in the communal breath of girlhood, and asking yourself: In a country like America, what does active love and protection of Black girls look like?


Click for more detail about Be a King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream and You by Carole Boston Weatherford Be a King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream and You

by Carole Boston Weatherford
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Jan 11, 2022)
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With poetic text and dynamic art, award-winning creators Carole Boston Weatherford and James E. Ransome use key moments from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life to inspire future generations to stand up for what’s right, make the world a better place, and be a King.

You can be a King. Stamp out hatred. Put your foot down and walk tall.
You can be a King. Beat the drum for justice. March to your own conscience.

Featuring a dual narrative of the key moments of Dr. King’s life alongside a modern class as the students learn about him, this engaging story highlights principles that readers today can emulate in their own lives. As times change, Dr. King’s example remains, encouraging a new generation of children to take charge and change the world … to be a King.


Click for more detail about I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer by Carole Boston Weatherford I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer

by Carole Boston Weatherford
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 04, 2022)
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The inspiring story of the Black explorer who made the first successful expedition to the North Pole.

Matthew Henson was not meant to lead an ordinary life-his dreams had sails. Those dreams took him from the port of Baltimore and onto the sea, seeking adventures around the world. He may have started out as a cabin boy on the ship of Robert Peary, but he would quickly prove himself as an explorer. And after decades of determination in the face of danger, Henson was part of a crew-one white man, one Black man, and four Inuit men-who finally did what no one had ever done before: they made it to the North Pole.

Told in poetic first-person narration by award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford with art from award-winning illustrator Eric Velasquez, I, Matthew Henson is the thrilling and inspiring story of a hidden figure from American history.


Click for more detail about The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah The Last Gift

by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Bloomsbury Publishing (Oct 12, 2021)
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From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, an astounding meditation on family, self and the meaning of home.

Abbas has never told anyone about his past-before he was a sailor on the high seas, before he met his wife Maryam outside a drugstore in Exeter, before they settled into a quiet life with their children, Jamal and Hanna. Now, at the age of sixty-three, he suffers a collapse that renders him unable to speak about things he thought he would one day have to.

Jamal and Hanna have grown up and gone out into the world. They were both born in England but cannot shake a sense of apartness. Hanna calls herself Anna now, and has just moved to a new city to be near her boyfriend. She feels the relationship is headed somewhere serious, but the words have not yet been spoken out loud. Jamal, the listener of the family, moves into a student house and is captivated by a young woman with dark blue eyes and her own complex story to tell. Abbas’s illness forces both children home, to the dark silences of their father and the fretful capability of their mother, Maryam, who has never thought to find herself-until now.


Click for more detail about Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah Gravel Heart

by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Bloomsbury Publishing (Oct 12, 2021)
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From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a powerful story of exile, migration, and betrayal.

Salim has always known that his father does not want him. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, he is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. Tourists arrive, the island’s white sands obscuring the memory of recent conflict—the longed-for independence from British colonialism swiftly followed by bloody revolution. When his father moves out, retreating into disheveled introspection, Salim is confused and ashamed. His mother does not discuss the change, nor does she explain her absences with a strange man; silence is layered on silence.

When glamorous Uncle Amir, now a senior diplomat, offers Salim an escape, the lonely teenager travels to London for college. But nothing has prepared him for the biting cold and seething crowds of this hostile city. Struggling to find a foothold, and to understand the darkness at the heart of his family, he must face devastating truths about those closest to him—and about love, sex, and power. Evoking the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound understanding, Gravel Heart is a powerfully affecting story of isolation, identity, belonging, and betrayal, and Abdulrazak Gurnah’s most astonishing achievement.


Click for more detail about Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert with Erin I. Kelly Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South

by Winfred Rembert with Erin I. Kelly
Bloomsbury Press (Sep 07, 2021)
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Photo of Patsy Rembert at TuskegeePatsy Rembert at Tuskegee
Patsy Gammage and Winfred Rembert met in 1970 while Rembert was in prison and doing forced labor near her home in Turner County, GA. After four years of letter-writing, the two married upon his release and moved north, settling in New Haven, CT, where they raised eight children and Mrs. Rembert became a longtime youth advocate. It was Patsy who first convinced her husband to pursue art seriously, and to tell his life story visually, using the leather-tooling skills he’d learned in prison. Now Winfred’s widow, Patsy is central to the journey that became Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South.

“A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear.” —Bryan Stevenson, AALBC bestselling author of Just Mercy and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent seven years on chain gangs. During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of fifty-one and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgia’s Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute, exuberant and heartfelt, to Cuthbert’s Black community and the people, including Patsy, who helped him to find the courage to revisit a traumatic past, Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger of Civil Rights protest, the brutalities of incarceration, his search for his mother’s love, and the epic bond he found with Patsy.

Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and painted leather that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and society.

“Rembert’s art expresses the legacy of slavery, the trauma of lynching, and the anguish of racial hierarchy and white supremacy while illuminating a resolve to fight oppression and injustice. He has the ability to reveal truths about the human struggle that are transcendent, to evoke an understanding of human dignity that is broad and universal.” —Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of JUST MERCY and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative

“At turns harrowing and haunting, Chasing Me to My Grave is a testament to the rich cultural resources and the poetry of Black Southern life. Rembert’s paintings, brilliantly composed, kinetic, and enchanting, are interspersed through his reflections about life in the cotton and carceral South. The language is elegant and vernacular, his observations are insightful and poignant. And through it all, joy, no matter how elusive, never disappears.” —Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

Chasing Me to My Gravee is both a literary and artistic triumph. Winfred Rembert’s memoir of the carceral state in the Jim Crow South is a profoundly moving, devastatingly painful, and wonderfully transformative experience. Rembert’s earthy prose, evocative images, and grace in the face of racial oppression is an inspiring true story that will forever change the way we look at the system of mass incarceration and unequal justice and those who resisted with love, beauty, and artistic brilliance. This book is a must read for all who are interested in finding out the roots of our current racial crisis as well as the possibilities for truth, justice, and healing.” —Peniel E. Joseph

Chasing Me to My Grave is a brilliant reminder of where we’ve come from as a country. We’ve come to accept William Faulkner’s adage, ’The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ But Rembert’s account reminds us that it is in the remembering of the past that we keep it from becoming prologue. From the Jim Crow South to the chain gang to a life as an artist, Rembert reminds us of the terror and the possibility of America. That he became an artist while in prison says something about the gifts we bury, that he lived to tell this harrowing tale says something about the strength of this man.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts

Book Review

Click for more detail about The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

by Carol Anderson
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jun 01, 2021)
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From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment—and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.

A Kirkus Reviews 8 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer

In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a "pro-gun" nor an "anti-gun" book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.

From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless—revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.

Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don’t), their life—as surely as Philando Castile’s, Tamir Rice’s, Alton Sterling’s—may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson’s penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.


Click for more detail about Love Is a Revolution by Renée Watson Love Is a Revolution

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury YA (Feb 02, 2021)
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From New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Ren�e Watson comes a love story about not only a romantic relationship but how a girl finds herself and falls in love with who she really is.

When Nala Robertson reluctantly agrees to attend an open mic night for her cousin-sister-friend Imani’s birthday, she finds herself falling in instant love with Tye Brown, the MC. He’s perfect, except … Tye is an activist and is spending the summer putting on events for the community when Nala would rather watch movies and try out the new seasonal flavors at the local creamery. In order to impress Tye, Nala tells a few tiny lies to have enough in common with him. As they spend more time together, sharing more of themselves, some of those lies get harder to keep up. As Nala falls deeper into keeping up her lies and into love, she’ll learn all the ways love is hard, and how self-love is revolutionary.

In Love Is a Revolution, plus size girls are beautiful and get the attention of the hot guys, the popular girl clique is not shallow but has strong convictions and substance, and the ultimate love story is not only about romance but about how to show radical love to the people in your life, including to yourself.


Click for more detail about The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women by Catherine E. McKinley The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women

by Catherine E. McKinley
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 19, 2021)
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This book focuses on promoting health equity and addressing health disparities among Indigenous peoples of the United States (U.S.) and associated Territories in the Pacific Islands

A Choice Outstanding Title of the Year
A USA Today "Must-Read for Black History Month"
An NPR "Goats and Soda" Editors’ Pick
A BookRiot Favorite Nonfiction Book of the Year

An unprecedented visual history of African women told in striking and subversive historical photographs—featuring an Introduction by Edwidge+Danticat and a Foreword by Jacqueline Woodson.

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological—bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty—“poverty porn.” But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870–1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans—most starkly, striking nudes—revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It’s a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways—even if it’s only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance

by Nikki Grimes
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 05, 2021)
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From Children’s Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance—paired with full-color, original art from today’s most talented female African-American illustrators.

For centuries, accomplished women—of all races—have fallen out of the historical records. The same is true for gifted, prolific, women poets of the Harlem Renaissance who are little known, especially as compared to their male counterparts.

In this poetry collection, bestselling author Nikki Grimes uses The Golden Shovel poetic method to create wholly original poems based on the works of these groundbreaking women-and to introduce readers to their work.

Each poem is paired with one-of-a-kind art from today’s most exciting female African-American illustrators, including: Vanessa Brantley-Newton, Cozbi Cabrera, Pat Cummings, Nina Crews, Laura Freeman, Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Ebony Glenn, April Harrison, Ekua Holmes, Keisha Morrison, Daria Peoples-Riley, Andrea Pippins, Shadra Strickland, and Elizabeth Zunon.

Legacy also includes a foreword, an introduction to the history of the Harlem Renaissance, author’s note, and poet biographies, which make this a wonderful resource and a book to cherish.

Acclaim for One Last Word
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor winner
A New York Public Library Best Kids Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, Middle Grade
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Nonfiction


Click for more detail about Alienation and Freedom: The Psychiatric Writings by Frantz Fanon Alienation and Freedom: The Psychiatric Writings

by Frantz Fanon
Bloomsbury Academic (Aug 20, 2020)
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Frantz Fanon’s career as a psychiatrist had a crucial impact upon his thinking as an anti-colonialist thinker and activist. Indeed, much of the iconic writing in The Wretched of the Earth is shaped by his powerful experiences as a young doctor working in hospitals in France, Algeria and Tunisia.
The writing collected here, written during his professional career as a neuro-psychiatrist between 1951 and 1960 and in parallel to his political work, reveals much about how Fanon’s thought developed. The trajectory of this volume shows that for him, it was increasingly impossible to separate a human’s surrounding culture from their psychopathology, and most essentially, from their development of mental illness. Ethnopsychiatry was influenced by its surroundings, and in Algeria, Fanon noted that they were decidedly colonial, arguing that for his North African and largely Muslim patients, treatment within the standard Eurocentric psychiatric-hospital system was therefore ineffective. For Fanon then, his psychiatric practice represented only part of a much larger struggle.
Although he enjoyed the life of a revolutionary, an ambassador and a journalist, as soon as freedom was won, Frantz Fanon’s plan was to devote the next part of his life to psychiatric work and the resolution of psychiatry’s institutional and ethnocultural problems. This volume elucidates then, how it is completely impossible to separate his political, revolutionary and literary lives from the psychiatric practice and writings that indelibly shaped his thinking about oppression, alienation and the search for freedom.


Click for more detail about Frantz Fanon’s Plays: The Plays by Frantz Fanon Frantz Fanon’s Plays: The Plays

by Frantz Fanon
Bloomsbury Academic (Aug 20, 2020)
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Prior to becoming a psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon wanted to be a playwright and his interest in dialogue, narrative and metaphor continued throughout his writing and career. His interest in theatre developed during the years that he was studying medicine, and in 1949 he wrote the plays The Drowning Eye (L’Oeil se noie), and Parallel Hands (Les Mains parallales). These texts were rumoured to exist, but were thought to have been lost forever until their discovery and release in French in 2016. This first English translation of the texts offers an extraordinary insight into Fanon’s thinking and preoccupations as a young man.
Inspired by nineteenth and twentieth- century existentialist philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Seren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Fanon’s plays explore experiential preoccupations with consciousness and identity. The Drowning Eye is one of Fanon’s earliest explorations of race and is seen to offer a forceful rejection of the contemporary negritude movement of intellectuals such as Aime Cesaire and Leon Damas. In it, Fanon posits that those of a different ethnicity should not be objectified and matters of difference should be matters of indifference. Parallel Heads represents some of Fanon’s most experimental writing. It is a four-act tragedy written in the style of Ancient Greek drama and includes the killing of a king and strong and determined female characters, who frequently criticise their male counterparts. The inclusion of such tropes has been interpreted by critics as the killing of the white, male Father and Fanon’s own indictment of masculine patriarchy, thus supporting the theory that despite his engagement with different genres, a rich revolutionary seam runs throughout his work.
The imaginative and violent vocabulary used throughout the plays gives us a totally different kind of Fanon to the writer we encounter later in The Wretched of the Earth. In this unique view of one of the most important political voices of the twentieth century, Alienation and Freedom: The Plays shows us Fanon at his most lyrical, experimental and yet, provocative.


Click for more detail about Southwest Sunrise by Nikki Grimes Southwest Sunrise

by Nikki Grimes
Bloomsbury Publishing (May 05, 2020)
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From Children’s Literature Legacy Award winner Nikki Grimes and highly-acclaimed illustrator Wendell Minor comes a stunning picture book about the beauty of the natural world and finding a new place to call home.

The beauty of the natural world is just waiting to be discovered …

When Jayden touches down in New Mexico, he’s uncertain how this place could ever be home. But if he takes a walk outside, he just might find something glorious.

Flowers in bright shades …
Birds and lizards and turtles, all with a story to tell …
Red rock pillars towering in the distance …
Turquoise sky as far as the eye can see …

Perhaps this place could be home after all.

Gorgeously poetic and visually stunning, this story from acclaimed creators Nikki Grimes and Wendell Minor celebrates the beauty of the Southwest as a young boy sees it for the very first time.

Acclaim for One Last Word
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Winner
A New York Times Editor’s Choice


Click for more detail about Ways to Make Sunshine by Renée Watson Ways to Make Sunshine

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury Publishing (Apr 28, 2020)
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From Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Ren�e Watson comes the first book in a young middle grade series about Ryan Hart, a girl who is pure spirit, kindness, and sunshine.

Ryan Hart has a lot on her mind—school, self-image, and especially family. Her dad finally has a new job, but money is tight. That means some changes, like selling their second car and moving into a new (old) house. But Ryan is a girl who knows how to make sunshine out of setbacks. As her brother says when he raps about her, she’s got the talent that matters most: it’s a talent that can’t be seen, she’s nice, not mean!

Ryan is all about trying to see the best in people, to be a good daughter, a good sister, a good friend. But even if her life isn’t everything she would wish for, when her big brother is infuriating, her parents don’t quite understand, and the unexpected happens, she always finds a way forward, with grace and wit. And plenty of sunshine.

Acclaimed author Ren�e Watson writes her own version of Ramona Quimby, one starring a Black girl and her family, in this start to a charming new series.


Click for more detail about Inventing Victoria by Tonya Bolden Inventing Victoria

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury YA (Jan 14, 2020)
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As a young black woman in 1880s Savannah, Essie’s dreams are very much at odds with her reality. Ashamed of her beginnings, but unwilling to accept the path currently available to her, Essie is trapped between the life she has and the life she wants.

Until she meets a lady named Dorcas Vashon, the richest and most cultured black woman she’s ever encountered. When Dorcas makes Essie an offer she can’t refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education, and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, D. C. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.


Click for more detail about Saving Savannah by Tonya Bolden Saving Savannah

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury YA (Jan 14, 2020)
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From acclaimed author Tonya Bolden comes the story of a teen girl becoming a woman on her own terms against the backdrop of widespread social change in the early 1900s.

Savannah Riddle is lucky. As a daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington D.C., she attends one of the most rigorous public schools in the nation — black or white — and has her pick among the young men in her set. But lately the structure of her society — the fancy parties, the Sunday teas, the pretentious men, and shallow young women — has started to suffocate her.

Then Savannah meets Lloyd, a young West Indian man from the working class who opens Savannah’s eyes to how the other half lives. Inspired to fight for change, Savannah starts attending suffragist lectures and socialist meetings, finding herself drawn more and more to Lloyd’s world.

Set against the backdrop of the press for women’s rights, the Red Summer, and anarchist bombings, Saving Savannah is the story of a girl and the risks she must take to be the change in a world on the brink of dramatic transformation.

"Poetic, breathtaking, descriptive and fast-paced… . An excellent choice for YA historical fiction shelves." —School Library Journal, starred review, on INVENTING VICTORIA

"Seamlessly weaves aspects of black history into the detailed narrative… . Victoria emerges as a fully realized character, a product of all her experiences. The depiction of Washington, D.C.’s African-American elite is rich and complex … A compelling and significant novel." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on INVENTING VICTORIA

"Bolden captures the period with meticulous detail… . [An] engrossing coming-of-age story." —The Horn Book Magazine on INVENTING VICTORIA

"The rich descriptions of people and life in early America will fascinate readers as the book introduces them to this widely overlooked population in history." —Booklist on INVENTING VICTORIA

"Readers will fall in love with Bolden’s gentle lyricism as she unflinchingly unfolds a difficult story." —Shelf Awareness, starred review, on CROSSING EBENEZER CREEK

"Bolden … bravely concludes this concise, moving story with a historically accurate and horrifying ending." —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on CROSSING EBENEZER CREEK

"The well-executed premise, a compelling love story, and unique historical details will appeal to fans of Ruta Sepetys’s Salt to the Sea … This moving and engrossing portrayal of a little-known historical tragedy belongs on all YA shelves." —SLJ, starred review, on CROSSING EBENEZER CREEK

"A poetic, raw, and extraordinary imagining of a little-known, shameful chapter in American history." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on CROSSING EBENEZER CREEK

"With keen insight, Bolden mines a lesser-known historical event and brings the human cost vividly to life … Bolden’s trenchant, powerful novel is a strong testament to the many lost lives that certainly did—and still do—matter." —Booklist, starred review, on CROSSING EBENEZER CREEK


Click for more detail about A Voice Named Aretha by Katheryn Russell-Brown A Voice Named Aretha

by Katheryn Russell-Brown
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 07, 2020)
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"An excellent introduction to an American icon." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"This richly detailed look at the Queen of Soul is an essential biography of an American icon." - School Library Journal, starred review

"This beautifully illustrated look at the life of the world-renowned Queen of Soul is a sensational introduction for young readers to the artist’s life and body of work." - Booklist

"Hits the highlights of Franklin’s life… . Freeman’s illustrations … capture much of the body language, facial expression, and head-thrown-back joy associated with Franklin’s performance." - BCCB

"Franklin’s ongoing support of civil rights is a recurring theme….Freeman’s clear, crisp illustrations add welcome vibrancy to the text’s straightforward narrative style." - Publishers Weekly

"Russell-Brown’s debut text has an innate musicality, mixing judicious use of onomatopoeia with often sonorous prose." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on LITTLE MELBA AND HER BIG TROMBONE

"An excellent match of breezy text and dynamic illustrations tells an exhilarating story." - Starred review, School Library Journal on LITTLE MELBA AND HER BIG TROMBONE

"Staccato rhythms pepper the fluid prose." - Publishers Weekly, starred review, on LITTLE MELBA AND HER BIG TROMBONE


Click for more detail about Chiaroscuro by Jackie Kay Chiaroscuro

by Jackie Kay
Oberon Books (Oct 31, 2019)
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I want to find it all now
know our names know the others in history
so many women have been lost at sea
so many stories have been swept away

Chiaroscuro: (noun) the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.

Aisha, Yomi, Beth and Opal couldn’t be more different, but when Aisha hosts a dinner party, the friends soon discover that they’re all looking for an answer to the same question. Does it lie in Aisha’s childhood? Or in Beth and Opal’s new romance? Who will tell them who they really are?

What starts out as a friendly conversation between women, soon turns heated when Yomi reveals what she really thinks about Beth and Opal’s relationship.

A searing, tender look at queer Black womanhood by award-winning writer and Scots Makar Jackie Kay.


Click for more detail about One Person, No Vote: How All Voters Are Not Treated Equally by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden One Person, No Vote: How All Voters Are Not Treated Equally

by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Sep 17, 2019)
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From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling—and timely—history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin.In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans as the nation gears up for the 2018 midterm elections.


Click for more detail about Ruby Finds a Worry by Tom Percival
Ruby Finds a Worry

by Tom Percival
Bloomsbury Publishing (Sep 03, 2019)
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A young girl’s sense of adventure and exploration vanishes when she discovers a Worry that grows and grows until she learns how to get rid of it.


Click for more detail about Some Places More Than Others by Renée Watson Some Places More Than Others

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury Publishing (Sep 03, 2019)
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RENÉE WATSON is the Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author of the novels Piecing Me Together, This Side of Home, What Momma Left Me, Betty Before X, co-written with Ilyasah Shabazz, and two picture books: Harlem’s Little Blackbird and A Place Where Hurricanes Happen. Ren�e is the founder of I, Too, Arts Collective, a nonprofit committed to nurturing underrepresented voices in the creative arts. She lives in New York City.
www.reneewatson.net; @harlemportland (Instagram); @reneewauthor (Twitter)


Click for more detail about In West Mills by De’Shawn Charles Winslow In West Mills

by De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jun 04, 2019)
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For readers of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie and The Turner House, an intimately told story about a woman living by her own rules and the rural community that struggles to understand her.

Azalea “Knot” Centre is determined to live life as she pleases. Let the people of West Mills say what they will; the neighbors’ gossip won’t keep Knot from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, nineteenth-century literature, and the company of men. And yet, Knot is starting to learn that her freedom comes at a high price. Alone in her one-room shack, ostracized from her relatives and cut off from her hometown, Knot turns to her neighbor, Otis Lee Loving, in search of some semblance of family and home.

Otis Lee is eager to help. A lifelong fixer, Otis Lee is determined to steer his friends and family away from decisions that will cause them heartache and ridicule. After his failed attempt as a teenager to help his older sister, Otis Lee discovers a possible path to redemption in the chaos Knot brings to his doorstep. But while he’s busy trying to fix Knot’s life, Otis Lee finds himself powerless to repair the many troubles within his own family, as the long-buried secrets of his troubled past begin to come to light.

Set in an African American community in rural North Carolina from 1941 to 1987, In West Mills is a magnificent, big-hearted small-town story about family, friendship, storytelling, and the redemptive power of love.

“There are plenty of adjectives that could describe Winslow’s debut: endearing, certainly. Hilarious, absolutely. Charming, for days. But none of them are adequate to this quietly complicated, impossibly big-hearted novel about family, migration and the unbearable difficulties of love. Here’s a cast of characters you won’t soon forget.” —Ayana Mathis, bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie


Click for more detail about Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family by Elizabeth Zunon Grandpa Cacao: A Tale of Chocolate, from Farm to Family

by Elizabeth Zunon
Bloomsbury Publishing (May 21, 2019)
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This beautifully illustrated story connects past and present as a girl bakes a chocolate cake with her father and learns about her grandfather harvesting cacao beans in West Africa.

Chocolate is the perfect treat, everywhere!

As a little girl and her father bake her birthday cake together, Daddy tells the story of her Grandpa Cacao, a farmer from the Ivory Coast in West Africa. In a land where elephants roam and the air is hot and damp, Grandpa Cacao worked in his village to harvest cacao, the most important ingredient in chocolate. "Chocolate is a gift to you from Grandpa Cacao," Daddy says. "We can only enjoy chocolate treats thanks to farmers like him." Once the cake is baked, it’s ready to eat, but this isn’t her only birthday present. There’s a special surprise waiting at the front door …


Click for more detail about Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan Watch Us Rise

by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan
Bloomsbury YA (Apr 03, 2019)
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"This stunning book is the story I’ve been waiting for my whole life; where girls rise up to claim their space with joy and power.” —Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Speak

Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Renée Watson teams up with poet Ellen Hagan in this YA feminist anthem about raising your voice.Jasmine and Chelsea are best friends on a mission—they’re sick of the way women are treated even at their progressive NYC high school, so they decide to start a Women’s Rights Club. They post their work online—poems, essays, videos of Chelsea performing her poetry, and Jasmine’s response to the racial microaggressions she experiences—and soon they go viral. But with such positive support, the club is also targeted by trolls. When things escalate in real life, the principal shuts the club down. Not willing to be silenced, Jasmine and Chelsea will risk everything for their voices—and those of other young women—to be heard. Renée Watson and debut novelist Ellen Hagan present two dynamic, creative young women who stand up and speak out in a novel that features their compelling art and poetry along with powerful personal journeys that will inspire readers and budding poets, feminists, and activists.Acclaim for Piecing Me Together
2018 Newbery Honor Book
2018 Coretta Scott King Author Award
2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Young Adult Finalist"Timely and timeless." —Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming"Watson, with rhythm and style, somehow gets at … the life-changing power of voice and opportunity." —Jason Reynolds, award-wining author of When I Was the Greatest and coauthor of All American Boys"Brilliant." —John Green, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Fault in Our Stars* “Teeming with compassion and insight." —Publishers Weekly, starred review * "A timely, nuanced, and unforgettable story about the power of art, community, and friendship." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review * "A nuanced meditation on race, privilege, and intersectionality." —SLJ, starred review * "Will resonate with many readers." —BCCB, starred review

Book Review

Click for more detail about I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter by David Chariandy I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter

by David Chariandy
Bloomsbury Publishing (Mar 05, 2019)
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"This is a beautiful meditation on what it means to be among a racial minority, and a blueprint honoring one’s heritage" —Publishers Weekly

"Remarkable … Reminds us of the deep history and connectedness of all human life" - BookPage

"There is, as you pick it up, nothing to prepare you for its power, unless you already know Chariandy’s fiction. He writes slender books that go straight to the heart. His most recent novel, Brother, was about a boy shot by a policeman and the aftermath for his family. It was piercingly moving. But this new book is devastating in a new way because it is nonfiction—and personal" - The Observer

"David Chariandy’s letter to his daughter is in turns disquieting, heartfelt, unflinchingly tender, wry; writ large with love throughout. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful books I have ever read." —Aminatta Forna, author of HAPPINESS

"Chariandy’s stunning book is a precise puncturing of the post-racial bubble, as well as an incredibly personal and powerful letter. I wish I could have read this when I was growing up."" —Nafkote Tamirat, author of THE PARKING LOT ATTENDANT

"I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You builds upon foundational discussions of race and gender, layering in intersections of class and citizenship with a flawless hand. Chariandy is smart, tender, and often funny as he weaves together narrative and analysis to navigate perhaps the most complex relationship of all: that of father and daughter."" —Sara Novic, author of GIRL AT WAR

"A brilliant, powerful elegy … pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life." —Marlon James, Man Booker Prize-winning author of A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS, on BROTHER

"Brother is a surprising, and really shocking novel, unafraid of exploring the overlaps in love, loss, sexuality, race, place, terror and class. It is bold. It is brilliant. It marks the beginning of an absolutely mammoth literary talent." —Kiese Laymon, author of LONG DIVISION and HEAVY

"A breathtaking achievement … A compulsive, brutal and flawless novel that is full of accomplished storytelling with not a word spare." —Afia Akbar, Observer on BROTHER

"An exquisite novel, crafted by a writer as talented and precise as Junot Díaz and Dinaw Mengestu. It has a beating heart and a sharp tongue. It is elegant, vital, indubitably dope-the most moving book I’ve read in a year." —Dina Nayeri, The Guardian on BROTHER

"Riveting, composed, charged with feeling, Brother surrounds us with music and aspiration, fidelity and beauty." —Madeleine Thien, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING on BROTHER

"Mesmerizing. Poetic. Achingly soulful. Brother is a pitch-perfect song of masculinity and tenderness, and of the ties of family and community." —Lawrence Hill, author of THE BOOK OF NEGROES, on BROTHER

"Crackles with electric energy … An important, vital and groundbreaking book. You really need to read it. It’s that good." —Medium on BROTHER

"Chariandy’s often elegiac tone and stately but spare prose establish a compelling melancholic mood. [This] revisitation of familiar territory pays off with its singular observations and insights. A novel with sentences to savour, Brother also rewards an unhurried reader with a poetic vision that while sad is also lovely." —The Toronto Star on BROTHER

"What can fiction do for us at a time when we are looking to understand other people’s truths? As it turns out in this book, everything … This book is a high-wire act—a taut, highly visual, time-stopping story … filled with moments of swagger and bravery, of recklessness and love that sparks against the dull pain of tragedy … With Brother, Chariandy has written a book worth reading through an entire library to find." —Hannah Sung, The Globe and Mail on BROTHER

"Brother diffracts the spare light toward feeling again, after tragedy. Chariandy deftly assembles that which has come apart in the life of a Black family; their privacies assaulted, their desires unmet. Such a timbrous novel. Such a tender work." —Dionne Brand, author of WHAT WE ALL LONG FOR on BROTHER


Click for more detail about A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by Damaris B. Hill A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland

by Damaris B. Hill
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 15, 2019)
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"While many explorations of the prison system focus on the male experience, DaMaris B. Hill shines a light on the plight of incarcerated black American women … It’s a difficult, powerful subject, and a history far too few Americans are familiar with; Hill tells these stories with passion and strength, illuminating the ongoing struggle to be free." - Nylon, Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"In piercing thought and extraordinary verse [DaMaris B. Hill] explores what it means to be bound for black women across history and into the present moment. She does not write to argue innocence and guilt but to illuminate experience, to honor struggle and expression, and to affirm love." - Asheville Citizen Times

"At exactly the right time, University of Kentucky professor DaMaris B. Hill has written a powerful collection of poems examining the incarceration of Black women … I will be processing this book for a long time." - Ms. Magazine.com

"Hill creates an intimate atmosphere that allows for a rich exploration of fully formed heroines … they are soothsayers, truth-tellers, mavericks and revolutionaries." - BookPage

With a lyricism that sings, swings, and stings, poet and writer Hill reflects on black women who resisted violent racism and misogyny, ranging from the notable and notorious (Fannie Lou Hamer, Eartha Kitt, Ida B. Wells, Joanne Little) to lesser-known, no-less-heroic women." —Booklist, starred review

"Hill’s first full-length collection gives voice to the history of black women in the United States who have undergone incarceration and oppression. To be bound suggests to be trapped; however, Hill’s poems illustrate how oppression can summon inner-strength, resistance, and revolution." - Publishers Weekly

"In this distinctive inquiry in verse, Hill reflects on black women who resisted violent racism and misogyny, ranging from the notable and notorious to the lesser-known yet no less heroic." - Booklist, Top Ten Diverse Nonfiction

"DaMaris B. Hill writes the poetry of the bound black woman across the ages in this haunting, powerful collection. What you will read here is not just poetry, though. This book offers an education. This book bears witness. This book is a reckoning." —Roxane Gay

"Stunning. It feels as if I have been waiting for this book my whole life. It’s a call and response, a poetic dialogue, a deep honoring of all that black women have endured and created and inspired. The voices Hill has found embody the women in her book with heart and allow us to know them in their essence. This is a brave, brilliant, beautiful account of love. Unforgettable." —Eve Ensler

"Honest, intelligent, brutal, the poems in A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing will not soothe or temper the weight of a violent misogynistic history. Instead, they serve as a much-needed resurrection. DaMaris B. Hill is a brilliant poet historian who has created an important lyrical excavation that’s never been more necessary." —National Book Award Finalist Ada Lim�n, author of THE CARRYING

"This book challenged me to reconsider what I knew of American history. Hill has crafted an indelible affirmation of the power of women, black women in particular, in rich verse that is at once a history, a reckoning, a balm, and call to empathy and action." —Mitchell S. Jackson, Whiting Award-winning author of THE RESIDUE YEARS and the forthcoming memoir SURVIVAL MATH


Click for more detail about Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali by Randal Maurice Jelks Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali

by Randal Maurice Jelks
Bloomsbury Academic (Jan 10, 2019)
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In 1964, Muhammad Ali said of his decision to join the Nation of Islam: “I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want to be.”

This sentiment, the brash assertion of individual freedom, informs and empowers each of the four personalities profiled in this book. Randal Maurice Jelks shows that to understand the black American experience beyond the larger narratives of enslavement, emancipation, and Black Lives Matter, we need to hear the individual stories. Drawing on his own experiences growing up as a religious African American, he shows that the inner history of black Americans in the 20th century is a story worthy of telling.

This book explores the faith stories of four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali. It examines their autobiographical writings, interviews, speeches, letters, and memorable performances to understand how each of these figures used religious faith publicly to reconcile deep personal struggles, voice their concerns for human dignity, and reinvent their public image. For them, liberation was not simply defined by material or legal wellbeing, but by a spiritual search for community and personal wholeness.


Click for more detail about Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson Lift Every Voice and Sing

by James Weldon Johnson
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 08, 2019)
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Click for more detail about What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson What Momma Left Me

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury YA (Jan 08, 2019)
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Rediscover New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor- and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning author Renée Watson’s heart-rending debut, about one girl’s journey to reconnect to joy.Serenity is good at keeping secrets, and she’s got a whole lifetime’s worth of them. Her mother is dead, her father is gone, and starting life over at her grandparents’ house is strange. Luckily, certain things seem to hold promise: a new friend who makes her feel connected, and a boy who makes her feel seen. But when her brother starts making poor choices, her friend is keeping her own dangerous secret, and her grandparents put all of their trust in a faith that Serenity isn’t sure she understands, it is the power of love that will repair her heart and keep her sure of just who she is. Renée Watson’s stunning writing shines in this powerful and ultimately uplifting novel.


Click for more detail about Inventing Victoria by Tonya Bolden Inventing Victoria

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury YA (Jan 08, 2019)
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In a searing historical novel, Tonya Bolden illuminates post-Reconstruction America in an intimate portrait of a determined young woman who dares to seize the opportunity of a lifetime.As a young black woman in 1880s Savannah, Essie’s dreams are very much at odds with her reality. Ashamed of her beginnings, but unwilling to accept the path currently available to her, Essie is trapped between the life she has and the life she wants. Until she meets a lady named Dorcas Vashon, the richest and most cultured black woman she’s ever encountered. When Dorcas makes Essie an offer she can’t refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education, and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, D. C. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.


Click for more detail about This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality

by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 08, 2019)
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Recipient of a Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honor
Winner of the 2019 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction
A NYPL Top Ten of 2019
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

In 1956, one year before federal troops escorted the Little Rock 9 into Central High School, fourteen year old Jo Ann Allen was one of twelve African-American students who broke the color barrier and integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee. At first things went smoothly for the Clinton 12, but then outside agitators interfered, pitting the townspeople against one another. Uneasiness turned into anger, and even the Clinton Twelve themselves wondered if the easier thing to do would be to go back to their old school. Jo Ann—clear-eyed, practical, tolerant, and popular among both black and white students—found herself called on as the spokesperson of the group. But what about just being a regular teen? This is the heartbreaking and relatable story of her four months thrust into the national spotlight and as a trailblazer in history. Based on original research and interviews and featuring backmatter with archival materials and notes from the authors on the co-writing process.


Click for more detail about Reign of Outlaws (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure) by Kekla Magoon Reign of Outlaws (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure)

by Kekla Magoon
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 23, 2018)
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When twelve-year-old Robyn Loxley set out to save her parents, she never could’ve predicted that she would become Robyn Hoodlum, leader of the rebellion against the harsh government led by Ignomus Crown. But Robyn’s attempt to free her parents has failed, and on top of that, her friends have been captured. And now Crown has given her 72 hours to turn herself in—or else. Now Robyn must decide between sacrificing herself, saving her parents and friends, or advancing the rebellion. With the stakes higher than ever, will Robyn be able to succeed?With an unforgettable heroine and a diverse band of characters, readers will be on the edge of their seats in this action-packed, much-anticipated series conclusion.


Click for more detail about We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide

by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury YA (Sep 11, 2018)
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Carol Anderson’s White Rage took the world by storm, landing on the New York Times bestseller list and best book of the year lists from New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Review of Books. It launched her as an in-demand commentator on contemporary race issues for national print and television media and garnered her an invitation to speak to the Democratic Congressional Caucus. This compelling young adult adaptation brings her ideas to a new audience. When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with Jim Crow laws; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration was limited when blacks were physically blocked from moving away from the South; the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to laws that disenfranchised millions of African American voters and a War on Drugs that disproportionally targeted blacks; and the election of President Obama led to an outburst of violence including the death of black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri as well as the election of Donald Trump.This YA adaptation will be written in an approachable narrative style that provides teen readers with additional context to these historic moments, photographs and archival images, and additional backmatter and resources for teens.


Click for more detail about One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

by Carol Anderson
Bloomsbury Publishing (Sep 11, 2018)
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Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction
10 Best Books of the Year—Washington Post
Best Books of the Year—Boston Globe
BookRiot’s Best Books of the Year
New York Public Library’s Best Books of the Year for Nonfiction
NPR’s “Best Books of the Year"
Bustle’s "25 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year"
From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling—and timely—history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin.In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice.Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.


Click for more detail about Brother by David Chariandy Brother

by David Chariandy
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jul 31, 2018)
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"A brilliant, powerful elegy from a living brother to a lost one, yet pulsing with rhythm, and beating with life." —Marlon James

"Highly recommend Brother by David Chariandy—concise and intense, elegiac short novel of devastation and hope." —Joyce Carol Oates, via Twitter

WINNER—Toronto Book Award
WINNER—Rogers’ Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize
WINNER—Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction

Esquire Best Books of the Year
Kirkus Best Books of the Year
Guardian Best Books of the Year
New York Public Library Best Books of the Year

Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
PEN Open Book Awards Longlist
Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Longlist
The Believer Book Awards Longlist

"Every sentence feels like a polished stone." —Entertainment Weekly

"Elegiac and incendiary" —Boston Globe

"A dwarf star of mourning and regret" —Wall Street Journal

"Elegant, vital, indubitably dope" —Guardian

"An important, vital and groundbreaking book" —Medium

"An absolutely mammoth literary talent" —KIESE LAYMON

"Riveting, composed, charged with feeling" —MADELEINE THIEN

In luminous, incisive prose, a startling new literary talent explores masculinity, race, and sexuality against a backdrop of simmering violence during the summer of 1991.

One sweltering summer in the Park, a housing complex outside of Toronto, Michael and Francis are coming of age and learning to stomach the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. While their Trinidadian single mother works double, sometimes triple shifts so her boys might fulfill the elusive promise of their adopted home, Francis helps the days pass by inventing games and challenges, bringing Michael to his crew’s barbershop hangout, and leading escapes into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.

Propelled by the beats and styles of hip hop, Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael’s dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.

Honest and insightful in its portrayal of kinship, community, and lives cut short, David Chariandy’s Brother is an emotional tour de force that marks the arrival of a stunning new literary voice.


Click for more detail about Crossing Ebenezer Creek by Tonya Bolden Crossing Ebenezer Creek

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury USA (May 29, 2018)
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When Mariah and her young brother Zeke are suddenly freed from slavery, they join Sherman’s march through Georgia. Mariah wants to believe that the brutalities of slavery are behind them, but even as hope glimmers, there are many hardships yet to come. When she meets a free black named Caleb, Mariah dreams in a way she never dared … of a future worth living and the possibility of true love. But even hope comes at a cost, and as the difficult march continues toward the churning waters of Ebenezer Creek, Mariah’s dreams are as vulnerable as ever. In this powerful exploration of a little-known tragedy perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys, readers will never forget the souls of Ebenezer Creek.A School Library Journal Best Book of 2017, Young Adult


Click for more detail about Alienation and Freedom by Frantz Fanon Alienation and Freedom

by Frantz Fanon
Bloomsbury Academic (Apr 19, 2018)
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Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer. He was the author of classic works such as Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961). He was one of the most significant anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist thinkers of the 20th Century.

Jean Khalfa is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Trinity College Cambridge, UK. He is the editor of the first complete edition of Michel Foucault’s History of Madness (2006) and author of Poetics of the Antilles (2016) and an upcoming work on Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

Robert J. C. Young, FBA, is Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New York University, USA. He is the author of White Mythologies (1990), Colonial Desire (1995), Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001), The Idea of English Ethnicity (2008), Empire, Colony, Postcolony (2015).

Steven Corcoran is a writer and translator living in Berlin. He has edited and translated several works by Jacques Ranciere, including Dissensus (2015) and The Lost Thread (2016).


Click for more detail about Be a King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream and You by Carole Boston Weatherford Be a King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream and You

by Carole Boston Weatherford
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 02, 2018)
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You can be a King. Stamp out hatred. Put your foot down and walk tall.

You can be a King. Beat the drum for justice. March to your own conscience.Featuring a dual narrative of the key moments of Dr. King’s life alongside a modern class as the students learn about him, Carole Weatherford’s poetic text encapsulates the moments that readers today can reenact in their own lives. See a class of young students as they begin a school project inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and learn to follow his example, as he dealt with adversity and never lost hope that a future of equality and justice would soon be a reality. As times change, Dr. King’s example remains, encouraging a new generation of children to take charge and change the world … to be a King.


Click for more detail about Planet Middle School by Nikki Grimes Planet Middle School

by Nikki Grimes
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 02, 2018)
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For twelve years, Joylin Johnson’s life has been just fine. A game of basketball with the boys-especially her friend Jake-was all it took to put a smile on her face. Baggy jeans, T-shirt, and hair in a ponytail were easy choices. Then, everything suddenly seemed to change all at once. Her best girl friend is now flirting with her best guy friend. Her clothes seem all wrong. Jake is acting weird, and basketball isn’t the same. And worst of all, there is this guy, Santiago, who appears from … where? What lengths will Joy go to—and who will she become—to attract his attention? In short poems that perfectly capture the crazy feelings of adolescence and first crushes, award-winning author Nikki Grimes has crafted a delightful, often hilarious, hearttugging story.


Click for more detail about Reign of Outlaws (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure) by Kekla Magoon Reign of Outlaws (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure)

by Kekla Magoon
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 24, 2017)
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When twelve-year-old Robyn Loxley set out to save her parents, she never could’ve predicted that she would become Robyn Hoodlum, leader of the rebellion against the harsh government led by Ignomus Crown. But Robyn’s attempt to free her parents has failed, and on top of that, her friends have been captured. And now Crown has given her 72 hours to turn herself in—or else. Now Robyn must decide between sacrificing herself, saving her parents and friends, or advancing the rebellion. With the stakes higher than ever, will Robyn be able to succeed?With an unforgettable heroine and a diverse band of characters, readers will be on the edge of their seats in this action-packed, much-anticipated series conclusion.


Click for more detail about Book or Bell? by Chris Barton Book or Bell?

by Chris Barton
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 17, 2017)
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The first page has Henry hooked.The second page has him captivated.The third page …BBBBRRRRIIIIINNNNNGGGGG!… will have to wait.That is, unless Henry ignores the bell, stays put, and keeps on reading the most awesome book.By not springing up with the ringing of the bell, Henry sets off a chain reaction unlike anything his school or town has ever seen. Luckily, Mayor Wise, Governor Bright, and Senator Brilliant know exactly what the situation calls for:A louder bell. MUCH louder.With this hilarious, high-energy satire from bestselling author Chris Barton and illustrator Ashley Spires, readers will be cheering louder still as one of their own continues to just stay put.


Click for more detail about Little Shaq: Star of the Week by Shaquille O’Neal Little Shaq: Star of the Week

by Shaquille O’Neal
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Sep 19, 2017)
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Created by Shaquille O’Neal and illustrated in full color by Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award winner Theodore Taylor III, the Little Shaq series celebrates family, friends, and community and will have kids cheering for reading

Little Shaq has always wanted his own kitten, but his parents aren’t sure he’s responsible enough. When Little Shaq is chosen as his class’s Star of the Week, he knows that this is his moment to shine, to prove to his parents that they can count on him. Will Little Shaq be able to show he’s ready for his very own pet?


Click for more detail about White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

by Carol Anderson
Bloomsbury USA (Sep 05, 2017)
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National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016
A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America—now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson.As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in The Washington Post suggesting that this was, instead, "white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames," she argued, "everyone had ignored the kindling." Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America’s first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal. Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.


Click for more detail about This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature

by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton
Bloomsbury USA (Jul 18, 2017)
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Writers from Alice Walker to Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on one of the most vital gatherings of writers and readers in the world.The Palestine Festival of Literature was established in 2008 by authors Ahdaf Soueif, Brigid Keenan, Victoria Brittain and Omar Robert Hamilton. Bringing writers to Palestine from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power." Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, This Is Not a Border is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world’s most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations. Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Miéville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman.


Click for more detail about Crossing Ebenezer Creek by Tonya Bolden Crossing Ebenezer Creek

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (May 30, 2017)
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When Mariah and her young brother Zeke are suddenly freed from slavery, they join Sherman’s march through Georgia. Mariah wants to believe that the brutalities of slavery are behind them, but even as hope glimmers, there are many hardships yet to come. When she meets a free black named Caleb, Mariah dreams in a way she never dared … of a future worth living and the possibility of true love. But even hope comes at a cost, and as the difficult march continues toward the churning waters of Ebenezer Creek, Mariah’s dreams are as vulnerable as ever. In this powerful exploration of a little-known tragedy perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys, readers will never forget the souls of Ebenezer Creek.


Click for more detail about This Side of Home by Renée Watson This Side of Home

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Feb 14, 2017)
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A captivating and poignant coming-of-age urban YA debut about sisters, friends, and what it means to embrace change.Maya Younger and her identical twin sister, Nikki, have always agreed on the important things. Friends. Boys. School. They even plan to attend the same historically African American college.
But nothing can always remain the same.As their Portland neighborhood goes from rough-and-tumble to up-and-coming, Maya feels her connection to Nikki and their community slipping away. Nikki spends more time at trendy coffee shops than backyard barbecues, and their new high school principal is more committed to erasing the neighborhood’s "ghetto" reputation than honoring its history. Home doesn’t feel like home anymore. As Maya struggles to hold on to her black heritage, she begins to wonder with whom—or where—she belongs. Does growing up have to mean growing apart?In a captivating coming-of-age story, Renée Watson explores the experiences, transitions, and cultural expectations of young African Americans in a changing world.


Click for more detail about Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Feb 14, 2017)
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“Watson, with rhythm and style, somehow gets at the toxicity of sympathy, the unquenchable thirst of fear, and the life-changing power of voice and opportunity, all wrapped up in Jade – the coolest young lady in the world. Or at least, in Portland, Oregon. Simply, Piecing Me Together is a book you’ll want to hug!” – Jason Reynolds

Jade believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she’s ever going to succeed. Her mother tells her to take advantage of every opportunity that comes her way, and she has. She accepted a scholarship to a mostly white private school and even Saturday morning test prep opportunities. But some opportunities feel more demeaning than helpful. Like an invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship programme for “at-risk” girls. Except really, it’s for Black girls. From “bad” neighborhoods. And just because Maxine, her college-graduate mentor, is Black, doesn’t mean she understands Jade. And maybe there are some things Jade could show these successful women about the real world and finding ways to make a real difference.


Click for more detail about One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance

by Nikki Grimes
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 03, 2017)
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  • A 2017 New York Public Library Best Kids Book of the Year
  • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017, Middle Grade
  • A School Library Journal Best Book of 2017, Nonfiction

In this collection of poetry, Nikki Grimes looks afresh at the poets of the Harlem Renaissance — including voices like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and many more writers of importance and resonance from this era — by combining their work with her own original poetry. Using “The Golden Shovel” poetic method, Grimes has written a collection of poetry that is as gorgeous as it is thought-provoking.

This special book also includes original artwork in full-color from some of today’s most exciting African American illustrators, who have created pieces of art based on Nikki’s original poems.

Featuring art by:

Educators: review the teaching guide.


illustration from One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes

A foreword, an introduction to the history of the Harlem Renaissance, author’s note, poet biographies, and index makes this not only a book to cherish, but a wonderful resource and reference as well.

A 2017 New York Public Library Best Kids Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017, Middle Grade
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2017, Nonfiction


Click for more detail about Rebellion of Thieves (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure) by Kekla Magoon Rebellion of Thieves (A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure)

by Kekla Magoon
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 18, 2016)
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Robyn Loxley can’t rest now that she’s the #1 Most Wanted Fugitive, Robyn Hoodlum. The harsh Nott City governor, Ignomus Crown, may have increased the reward for her capture, but this won’t stop Robyn from masterminding her biggest mission yet: infiltrating the governor’s mansion to rescue her parents. The perfect opportunity arises when the Iron Teen contest comes to Sherwood. If Robyn scores high enough, she’ll be invited to a dinner at the mansion. But performing well in the contest could put her directly in Crown’s sights. Can she and her crew of misfit friends pull off such a grand scheme, or are they walking into bigger trouble than they can handle?Continuing her high-adventure Robin Hood reboot, National Book Award finalist Kekla Magoon delivers more action and intrigue, as this unforgettable heroine and her motley crew fight for justice.


Click for more detail about Little Shaq by Shaquille O’Neal Little Shaq

by Shaquille O’Neal
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 18, 2016)
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The start of a brand new series by Shaquille O’Neal and illustrated by 2014 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award winner Theodore Taylor III, Little Shaq is sure to be a hit with young readers.

When Little Shaq and his cousin Barry accidentally break their favorite video game, they need to find a way to replace it. That’s when Little Shaq’s science project inspires a solution: a gardening business. They can water their neighbors’ gardens to raise money for a new game! Little Shaq and Barry make a great team both on and off the basketball court, but will their business be as successful as they hoped?

Showing kids that anything is possible with the support of friends and family, Little Shaq will inspire them to love reading, play fair, and have fun!

Read all the books in the Little Shaq series!


Click for more detail about Little Shaq Takes a Chance by Shaquille O’Neal Little Shaq Takes a Chance

by Shaquille O’Neal
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Apr 26, 2016)
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This new story in the exciting series created by Shaquille O’Neal and illustrated by Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award winner Theodore Taylor III, encourages kids to find their own true talents. Like most kids, Little Shaq doesn’t love trying new things, especially if he might not be very good at them. So when his class is assigned projects for the school’s upcoming art show, he’s not sure that his skills will transfer from the basketball court to the art studio. Rosa Lindy and Barry have their projects all figured out. Can Little Shaq find the confidence to embrace his own style and create a piece for the show?Continuing this series that celebrates community, family, and education, Little Shaq Takes a Chance will inspire readers the to be brave, have fun, and love reading!


Click for more detail about The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial by Susan E. Goodman The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial

by Susan E. Goodman
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 05, 2016)
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2017 Orbis Pictus Honor Book
2017 Jane Addams Peace Association Honor Book
2017 Teachers’ Choice Pick, International Literacy Association
An NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Book of 2017
In 1847, an African American girl named Sarah Roberts attended school in Boston. One day she was told she could never come back. She didn’t belong. The Otis School was for white children only.
The Roberts family fought this injustice and made history. Roberts v. City of Boston was the first case challenging our legal system to outlaw segregated schools. Sometimes even losing is a victory.  They lost their case but Sarah’s cause was won when people, black and white, stood together and said, No more. Now, right now, it is time for change!
With gorgeous art from award-winning illustrator E. B. Lewis, The First Step is an inspiring look at the first lawsuit to demand desegregation—long before the American Civil Rights movement, even before the Civil War.
Backmatter includes: An integration timeline, bios on key people in the book, list of resources, and author’s note.


Click for more detail about Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimké Rachel

by Angelina Weld Grimké
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Sep 08, 2015)
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Rachel is a young, educated, middle-class woman born into an African-American family in the early 20th century—a world in which ignorance and violence prevail. Her dreams of getting married and becoming a mother collide with the tragic events of her family’s past as she confronts the harsh reality of a racist world.


Click for more detail about This Side of Home by Renée Watson This Side of Home

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Feb 03, 2015)
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Identical twins Nikki and Maya have been on the same page for ""everything""-friends, school, boys and starting off their adult lives at a historically African-American college. But as their neighborhood goes from rough-and-tumble to up-and-coming, suddenly filled with pretty coffee shops and boutiques, Nikki is thrilled while Maya feels like their home is slipping away. Suddenly, the sisters who had always shared everything must confront their dissenting feelings on the importance of their ethnic and cultural identities and, in the process, learn to separate themselves from the long shadow of their identity as twins.

In her inspired YA debut, Renee Watson explores the experience of young African-American women navigating the traditions and expectations of their culture.


Click for more detail about Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities by Craig Steven Wilder Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities

by Craig Steven Wilder
Bloomsbury Press (Sep 02, 2014)
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A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution’s complex and contested involvement in slavery—setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown’s troubling past was far from unique. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a leading historian of race in America, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy.

Many of America’s revered colleges and universities—from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and the University of North Carolina—were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the "savages" of North America and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities were dependent on human bondage and became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained it.

Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.

Book Review

Click for more detail about The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson The Residue Years

by Mitchell S. Jackson
Bloomsbury USA (May 06, 2014)
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Mitchell S. Jackson grew up black in a neglected neighborhood in America’s whitest city, Portland, Oregon. In the ’90s, those streets and beyond had fallen under the shadow of crack cocaine and its familiar mayhem. In his commanding debut autobiographical novel, Mitchell writes what it was to come of age in that time and place, with a breakout voice that’s nothing less than extraordinary.

The Residue Years switches between the perspectives of a young man, Champ, and his mother, Grace. Grace is just out of a drug treatment program, trying to stay clean and get her kids back. Champ is trying to do right by his mom and younger brothers, and dreams of reclaiming the only home he and his family have ever shared. But selling crack is the only sure way he knows to achieve his dream. In this world of few options and little opportunity, where love is your strength and your weakness, this family fights for family and against what tears one apart.


Click for more detail about The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act by Clay Risen The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act

by Clay Risen
Bloomsbury Press (Apr 01, 2014)
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. This one law so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, it seems preordained

•as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, ""no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."" But there was nothing predestined about the victory: a phalanx of powerful senators, pledging to ""fight to the death"" for segregation, launched the longest filibuster in American history to defeat it. The bill’s passage has often been credited to the political leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, or the moral force of Martin Luther King. Yet as Clay Risen shows, the battle for the Civil Rights Act was a story much bigger than those two men. It was a broad, epic struggle, a sweeping tale of unceasing grassroots activism, ringing speeches, backroom deal-making and finally, hand-to-hand legislative combat. The larger-than-life cast of characters ranges from Senate lions like Mike Mansfield and Strom Thurmond to NAACP lobbyist Charles Mitchell, called ""the 101st senator"" for his Capitol Hill clout, and industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who helped mobilize a powerful religious coalition for the bill. The ""idea whose time had come"" would never have arrived without pressure from the streets and shrewd leadership in Congress—all captured in Risen’s vivid narrative. This critical turning point in American history has never been thoroughly explored in a full-length account. Now, New York Times editor and acclaimed author Clay Risen delivers the full story, in all its complexity and drama.


Click for more detail about Chewing Gum Dreams by Michaela Coel Chewing Gum Dreams

by Michaela Coel
Oberon Books (Apr 01, 2014)
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Tracey Gordon, the 67 bus, friendship, sex, UK garage, school, music, teachers, friendship, periods, emergency contraceptive, arse and tits, friendship, raves, tampons, white boys, God, money. Friendship. Aaron, Candice, sex and Connor Jones. Chewing Gum Dreams is a one-woman play that recalls those last days of innocence before adulthood.

Written and performed by Michaela Coel who spent her childhood in Hackney, London, Chewing Gum Dreams won the 2012 Alfred Fagon Award.


Click for more detail about We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Yea by Jackie Sibblies Drury We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Yea

by Jackie Sibblies Drury
Bloomsbury Publishing (Mar 25, 2014)
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I’m not doing a German accent
You aren’t doing an African accent
We aren’t doing accents

A group of actors gather to tell the little-known story of the first genocide of the twentieth century. As the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present, what seemed a far-away place and time is suddenly all too close to home. Just whose story are they telling?

Award-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury collides the political with the personal in a play that is irreverently funny and seriously brave.

We Are Proud To Present … received its European premiere at the Bush Theatre, London, on 28 February 2014.


Click for more detail about Grandma’s Gift by Eric Velasquez Grandma’s Gift

by Eric Velasquez
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Oct 08, 2013)
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This prequel to Eric Velasquez’s biographical picture book Grandma’s Records is the story of a Christmas holiday that young Eric spends with his grandmother. After they prepare their traditional Puerto Rican celebration, Eric and Grandma visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a school project, where he sees a painting by Diego Velasquez and realizes for the first time that he could be an artist when he grows up. Grandma witnesses his fascination, and presents Eric with the perfect Christmas gift-a sketchbook and colored pencils-to use in his first steps toward becoming an artist. A heartwarming story of self-discovery, Grandma’s Gift is a celebration of the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.


Click for more detail about Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward Men We Reaped

by Jesmyn Ward
Bloomsbury USA (Sep 17, 2013)
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“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” —Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life—to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truth—and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Ward’s memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation by Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation

by Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II
Bloomsbury Academic (Mar 14, 2013)
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Bringing together contributors from a wide-range of critical perspectives, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation is an analytic history of the diverse contributions of Black artists to the medium of comics. Covering comic books, superhero comics, graphic novels and cartoon strips from the early 20th century to the present, the book explores the ways in which Black comic artists have grappled with such themes as the Black experience, gender identity, politics and social media.

Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation introduces students to such key texts as:
* The work of Jackie Ormes
* Black women superheroes from Vixen to Black Panther
* Aaron McGruder’s strip The Boondocks


Click for more detail about Ada’s Rules: A Sexy Skinny Novel by Alice Randall Ada’s Rules: A Sexy Skinny Novel

by Alice Randall
Bloomsbury USA (Dec 24, 2012)
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Ada Howard is the wife of the preacher at Nashville’s Full Love Baptist Tabernacle. Witha whole congregation to help tend to, plus the kids at the daycare where she works, two grown daughters, and two ailing parents, Ada’s busy taking care of a lot of people. She hardly has time to take care of herself. And her husband’s been so busy lately she’s suspicious some other woman may be taking care of him …Then it comes: the announcement of her 25-year reunion in twelve months’ time, signed with a wink by her old flame. Ada gets to thinking about the thrills of young love lost, and the 100 or so pounds she’s gained, and she decides it’s high time for a Health and Beauty Revival. So she starts laying down some rules. The first rule is: Don’t Keep Doing What You’ve Always Been Doing. And so begins a long journey on the way to less weight and more love. And so begins a long journey… Ada’s Rules is an action plan to change a body and a life — but it’s also about falling back in love with the life you’ve got.


Click for more detail about The Hungry Ear: Poems Of Food And Drink by Kevin Young The Hungry Ear: Poems Of Food And Drink

by Kevin Young
Bloomsbury USA (Oct 16, 2012)
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Food and poetry: in so many ways, a natural pairing, from prayers over bread to street vendor songs. Poetry is said to feed the soul, each poem a delicious morsel. When read aloud, the best poems provide a particular joy for the mouth. Poems about food make these satisfactions explicit and complete.Of course, pages can and have been filled about food’s elemental pleasures. And we all know food is more than food: it’s identity and culture. Our days are marked by meals; our seasons are marked by celebrations. We plant in spring; harvest in fall. We labor over hot stoves; we treat ourselves to special meals out. Food is nurture; it’s comfort; it’s reward. While some of the poems here are explicitly about the food itself: the blackberries, the butter, the barbecue—all are evocative of the experience of eating. Many of the poems are also about the everything else that accompanies food: the memories, the company, even the politics. Kevin Young, distinguished poet, editor of this year’s Best American Poetry, uses the lens of food - and his impeccable taste - to bring us some of the best poems, classic and current, period. Poets include:
Elizabeth Alexander, Elizabeth Bishop, Billy Collins, Mark Doty, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Gluck, Seamus Heaney, Tony Hoagland, Langston Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Matthew Rohrer, Charles Simic, Tracy K. Smith, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Mark Strand, Kevin Young


Click for more detail about Finding Family by Tonya Bolden Finding Family

by Tonya Bolden
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Aug 07, 2012)
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Delana has never known her parents. Raised by her aunt and a reclusive grandfather, Delana has lived a sheltered existence, nurtured on her aunt’s wild family stories. But when her aunt dies, Delana embarks on a quest to unravel the truth. This moving fictional story is imagined from real antique photographs.


Click for more detail about Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World by Catherine E. McKinley Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World

by Catherine E. McKinley
Bloomsbury USA (Jun 12, 2012)
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Brimming with rich, electrifying tales of the precious dye and its ancient heritage, Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan; Jewish “rag traders”; a Massachusetts textile factory owner; and African slaves-her ancestors were traded along the same Saharan routes as indigo, where a length of blue cotton could purchase human life.

McKinley’s journey in search of beauty and her own history leads her to the West African women who dye, trade, and wear indigo-women who unwittingly teach her that buried deep in the folds of their cloths is all of destiny and the human story.


Click for more detail about Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward Salvage the Bones

by Jesmyn Ward
Bloomsbury USA (Apr 24, 2012)
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A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch’s father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn’t show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn’t much to save. Lately, Esch can’t keep down what food she gets; she’s fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull’s new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child’s play and short on parenting.

As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield to their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family-motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce-pulls itself up to face another day. A big-hearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.


Click for more detail about What Momma Left Me by Renée Watson What Momma Left Me

by Renée Watson
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Feb 28, 2012)
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Serenity knows she is good at keeping secrets, and she’s got a whole lifetime’s worth of them. Her mother is dead, her father is gone, and starting life over at her grandparents’ house is strange. Luckily, certain things seem to hold promise: a new friend, a new church, a new school. But when her brother starts making poor choices, and her grandparents believe in a faith that Serenity isn’t sure she understands, it is the power of love that will keep her sure of just who she is. Renée Watson shines as a new talent in this powerful and ultimately uplifting first novel.


Click for more detail about In Darkness by Nick Lake In Darkness

by Nick Lake
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 17, 2012)
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Winner of the 2013 Michael L. Printz AwardThis is the story of "Shorty"-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. Surrounded by the bodies of the dead, increasingly weak from lack of food and water, Shorty begins to hallucinate. As he waits in darkness for a rescue that may never come, a mystical bridge seems to emerge between him and Haitian leader Toussaint L’Ouverture, uniting the two in their darkest suffering-and their hope.A modern teen and a black slave, separated by hundreds of years. Yet in some strange way, the boy in the ruins of Port au Prince and the man who led the struggle for Haiti’s independence might well be one and the same …


Click for more detail about High On The Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa To America by Jessica B. Harris High On The Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa To America

by Jessica B. Harris
Bloomsbury USA (Jan 12, 2012)
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Acclaimed cookbook author Jessica B. Harris has spent much of her life researching the food and foodways of the African Diaspora. High on the Hog is the culmination of years of her work, and the result is a most engaging history of African American cuisine. Harris takes the reader on a harrowing journey from Africa across the Atlantic to America, tracking the trials that the people and the food have undergone along the way. From chitlins and ham hocks to fried chicken and vegan soul, Harris celebrates the delicious and restorative foods of the African American experience and details how each came to form such an important part of African American culture, history, and identity. Although the story of African cuisine in America begins with slavery, High on the Hog ultimately chronicles a thrilling history of triumph and survival. The work of a masterful storyteller and an acclaimed scholar, Jessica B. Harris’s High on the Hog fills an important gap in our culinary history.
Praise for Jessica B. Harris:
"Jessica Harris masters the ability to both educate and inspire the reader in a fascinating new way." -Marcus Samuelsson, chef owner of Restaurant Aquavit

Book Review

Click for more detail about Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration Of Rosa, Barack, And The Pioneers Of Change by Michelle Cook Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration Of Rosa, Barack, And The Pioneers Of Change

by Michelle Cook
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Jan 03, 2012)
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This unique picture book is part history, part poetry, and entirely inspirational. It takes the reader step by simple step through the cumulative story of the US Civil Rights Movement, showing how select pioneers’ achievements led up to the landmark moment when we elected our first black president. Each historical figure is rendered by a different award-winning illustrator, highlighting the singular and vibrant contribution that each figure made.

Includes Illustrations by the following illustrators:


Click for more detail about Reflections: (English edition) by Ahdaf Soueif Reflections: (English edition)

by Ahdaf Soueif
Bloomsbury USA (Dec 06, 2011)
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The Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, houses manuscripts, textiles, ceramics and other works from the seventh century to the present day, and is one of the world’s most encyclopedic collections of Islamic art. The origin of its artifacts ranges from Spain to Egypt to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia. Reflections, edited by British-Egyptian novelist and critic Ahdaf Soueif, showcases these works, and creates a work of art in itself. More than twenty writers and thinkers from around the world, including Adam Foulds, Kamila Shamsie, Suad Amiry, and Pankaj Mishra, have taken works in the museum’s collection and used them to launch essays, poems, and other pieces which allow the reader to explore 14 centuries of Islamic art and culture. Luxuriously designed to reference traditions of Islamic art and book design, as well as the landmark MIA building designed by I.M. Pei, Reflections is illustrated with photographs of the pieces the writers have chosen as their inspiration. Contributors include: Adam Foulds · Anton Shammas · Eric Hobsbawm · Ghassan Zaqtan · Jabbour al-Douaihy · James Fenton · Jim Khalili · Kamila Shamsie · Marcus du Sautoy · Najwa Barakat · Nasser Rabbat · Oliver Watson · Pankaj Mishra · Philip Hensher · Radwa Ashour · Raja Shehadeh · Riz Ahmed · Sarah Maguire · Shirin Neshat · Slavoj Zizek · Sonia Jabbar · Suad Amiry · Tash Aw · Youssef Rakha


Click for more detail about Katori Hall Plays One by Katori Hall Katori Hall Plays One

by Katori Hall
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Sep 15, 2011)
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An important new voice for African-American theatre, Katori Hall explores the lives of black and often invisible Americans with vivid language, dynamic narratives and richly textured characterisation.

Hoodoo Love is Hall’s debut play, a tale of love, magic, jealousy and secrets in 1930s Memphis, written in vivid language which captures the spirit of the Blues.

Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is set in a Memphis beauty shop/boarding house during the final days of WWII. Rich with humor and history, it is a story about friendship and finding love in unexpected places.

Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play 2009, The Mountaintop is a historical-fantastical two hander, portraying the penultimate day in the life of Martin Luther King.

Hurt Village won the 2011 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Set in a real-life Memphis housing project, it explores in vivid and at times brutal detail a long-lasting legacy of drug abuse, child abuse, crime, and self-hatred within a poor, working-class, multi-generational Black family.

This first collection of Katori Hall’s dramatic works demonstrate her unique voice for the theatre, which is visceral, passionate and energetic. Hall portrays disenfranchised portions of society with fearless humanity and startling accomplishment.


Click for more detail about Planet Middle School by Nikki Grimes Planet Middle School

by Nikki Grimes
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Sep 13, 2011)
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For twelve years, Joylin Johnson’s life has been just fine, thank you very much. A game of basketball with the boys-especially her friend Jake-was all it took to put a smile on her face. Baggy jeans, T-shirt, and hair in a ponytail were easy choices. Then suddenly the world seemed to turn upside down, and everything changed at once. Her best girl friend is now flirting with her best guy friend. Her clothes seem all wrong. Jake is acting weird, and basketball isn’t the same. And worst of all, there is this guy, Santiago, who appears from … where? What lengths will Joy go to-and whom will she become-to attract his attention? In short poems that perfectly capture the crazy feelings of adolescence and first crushes, award-winning author Nikki Grimes has crafted a delightful, often hilarious, hearttugging story.


Click for more detail about Play, Louis, Play!: The True Story of a Boy and His Horn by Muriel Harris Weinstein Play, Louis, Play!: The True Story of a Boy and His Horn

by Muriel Harris Weinstein
Bloomsbury USA Childrens (Dec 07, 2010)
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The childhood of Louis Armstrong was as fascinating as the great musician himself-and this chapter book biography tells it like never before. Play, Louis, Play! is written from the point of view of Louis’ closest companion throughout his youth-his horn! In a jazz-inflected, exuberant voice, this unusual narrator tells it all, starting with the small New Orleans hock shop where little Louis bought his first trumpet for five hard-earned dollars.As Louis goes from a street quartet to the marching band of the Colored Waif ’s Home to the big sounds of New Orleans jazz clubs, author Muriel Harris Weinstein creates a moving portrait of the jazz legend. Includes a detailed author’s note, glossary of jazz terms, and bibliography.


Click for more detail about The Art Of Losing: Poems Of Grief And Healing by Kevin Young The Art Of Losing: Poems Of Grief And Healing

by Kevin Young
Bloomsbury USA (Mar 16, 2010)
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Poetry serves a unique role in our lives, distilling human experience and emotion down to truths as potent as they are brief. There are two times most people turn to it: for love and loss. Although collections of love poetry abound, there are very few anthologies for the grieving. In The Art of Losing, editor Kevin Young Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption), with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal a gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss.
Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W.H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.


Click for more detail about Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation by Rawn James  Jr. Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation

by Rawn James Jr.
Bloomsbury Press (Jan 19, 2010)
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The riveting story of the two crusading lawyers who led the legal battle to end segregation, one case and one courtroom at a time.  The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the culmination of a decades-long legal campaign. Root and Branch is the epic story of the two fiercely dedicated lawyers who led the fight from county courthouses to the marble halls of the Supreme Court, and, in the process, laid the legal foundations of the civil rights movement.  Charles Hamilton Houston was the pioneer: After becoming the first African-American on the Harvard Law Review, he transformed the law school at all-black Howard University into a West Point for civil rights advocacy.  One of Houston’s students at Howard was a brash young man named Thurgood Marshall. Soon after Marshall’s graduation, Houston and Marshall opened the NAACP’s legal office. The abstemious, proper Houston and the folksy, easygoing Marshall made an unlikely duo, but together they faced down angry Southern mobs, negotiated with presidents and senators, and convinced even racist judges and juries that the Constitution demanded equal justice under law for all American citizens.  Houston, tragically, would die before his strategy came to fruition in the Brown suit, but Marshall would argue the case victoriously and go on to become the first African-American Supreme Court justice—always crediting his mentor for teaching him everything he knew. Together, the two advocates changed the course of American history.


Click for more detail about Rebel Yell: A Novel by Alice Randall Rebel Yell: A Novel

by Alice Randall
Bloomsbury USA (Sep 29, 2009)
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Abel Jones Jr., a civil rights lawyer’s son turned black Washington neo-con, has met an unlikely end: collapsing at the Rebel Yell dinner theater, surrounded by actors in Confederate regalia, with his white second wife at his side. Hope Jones Blackshear, Abel’s first wife and mother of his only son, is left confounded by the turn his life took in his later years. Sharing a drink after the funeral with Abel’s old friend Nicholas Gordon, Hope lets herself reminisce about first meeting Abel at Harvard, and their early married days as a foreign service couple in Manila and Martinique. But her own version of history is altered by that of Nicholas, a dandified Brit who seems to know more than he lets on. To fully understand the story of Abel Jones, for her own sake and that of their teenage son, Hope journeys from Nashville to Rome, seeking the connection between the Abel she loved, a child of Southern terror in the sixties, and the Abel who became a White House watchdog of global terror, driven to measures Hope could never have imagined.The work of one of our gutsiest writers, Rebel Yell is a novel of resilient love, political intrigue, and family secrets, steeped in our country’s racial history and framing our unique political moment.


Click for more detail about Slumberland: A Novel by Paul Beatty Slumberland: A Novel

by Paul Beatty
Bloomsbury USA (Aug 11, 2009)
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Critical darling Paul Beatty’s highly original, widely praised novel of race, identity, and underground music.After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes in search of Charles Stone, a little know avant-garde jazzman, to play over his sonic masterpiece. His quest brings him to a recently unified Berlin, where he stumbles through the city’s dreamy streets ruminating about race, sex, love, Teutonic gods , the prevent defense, and Wynton Marsalis in search of his artistic-and spiritual-other. Ferocious, bombastic, and laugh-out-loud funny, Slumberland is vintage Paul Beatty and belongs on the shelf next to Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, and Junot Diaz.


Click for more detail about I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer by Carole Boston Weatherford I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer

by Carole Boston Weatherford
Bloomsbury Publishing (Jan 01, 2008)
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Matthew Henson was not meant to lead an ordinary life. His dreams had sails.

They took him from the port of Baltimore, around the world, and north to the pole.

No amount of fear, cold, hunger, or injustice could keep him from tasting adventure and exploring the world.

He learned to survive in the Arctic wilderness, and he stood by Admiral Peary for years on end, all for the sake of his goal.

And finally, after decades of facing danger and defying the odds, he reached the North Pole and made history.

At last, Henson had proved himself as an explorer-and as a man.


Click for more detail about Diablerie: A Novel by Walter Mosley Diablerie: A Novel

by Walter Mosley
Bloomsbury USA (Dec 26, 2007)
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In this icy noir from a master of American fiction, the darkest secrets are the ones we keep hidden from ourselves.

Ben Dibbuk has a good job, an accomplished wife, a bright college-age daughter, and a patient young mistress. Even as he goes through the motions of everyday life, however, inside he feels nothing. The explanation for this emotional void lies in the years he spent as a blacked-out drunk before pulling his life together years in which he knows he committed acts he doesn’t remember. Then a woman from his past turns up at a gala for his wife’s new gig at a magazine called Diablerie and makes it clear that she remembers something he doesn’t. Their encounter sets wheels in motion that will propel Dibbuk toward new knowledge, and perhaps the chance to feel again. With the same erotic force as Killing Johnny Fry, but grounded in a far darker vision of human nature, Diablerie is a transfixing new novel from one of our most powerful writers.


Click for more detail about Brown Sugar: Over 100 Years of America’s Black Female Superstars (New and Updated Edition) by Donald Bogle Brown Sugar: Over 100 Years of America’s Black Female Superstars (New and Updated Edition)

by Donald Bogle
Bloomsbury Academic (Jun 01, 2007)
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With a wink or a nod, a shake of their shoulders or hips, America’s "Dark Divas," "Sepia Sirens," "Black Beauties" have acted out fantastic stories full of whispers and secrets. They have played with the myths, created legends, turned the social order topsy-turvy. One thing is certain: in 20th- and 21st-century America, an impressive lineup of African American women have dazzled and delighted the world with their energy and style.

Who are these great women of the stage and screen? the singers, dancers, comediennes, actresses? In this groundbreaking book, Donald Bogle narrates a sweeping history and describes a remarkable tradition that was largely unknown or not understood - or simply unacknowledged.

Each of the women in Brown Sugar has a perfected public personality uniquely her own - Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Fredi Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Katherine Dunham, Marian Anderson, Moms Mabley, Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge, Leontyne Price, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Cicely Tyson, Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Bassett, Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey, Halle Berry, Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans, Lil’ Kim, Alicia Keyes, Beyoncé Knowles, and many others.

Diva style has sometimes been part put-on, part come-on, part camp, and part reflection of an authentic African American cultural tradition. Haughtiness, control, shrewdness, energy, extravagance, optimism, and humor are all a part of it. "Dazzle your audience," they seemed to say, "but never lose your cool."

Yet, there are often the tears behind the mask, the hideous realities of racism and exploitation, the pain hiding behind the smile, the concealed anxieties, private lives in ruins: all the obstacles and pressures involved in making it to the top.

Always, however, there is the redemption through these women’s art.

In these pages are the incandescent women who have lit up Broadway and movie screens; turned clubs, cafés, concert halls, and televisions aglow with their particular brand of black magic; sold millions of cds and dvds; and are the subjects of endless fascination in the tabloids and on the Internet.

Onstage and off, the lives of these captivating women, their follies and fortunes, trials, tragedies, transformations, and triumphs, their inimitable style, have become a cherished part of our own.


Click for more detail about The Great Negro Plot: A Tale Of Conspiracy And Murder In Eighteenth-Century New York by Mat Johnson The Great Negro Plot: A Tale Of Conspiracy And Murder In Eighteenth-Century New York

by Mat Johnson
Bloomsbury USA (Jan 23, 2007)
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In 1741, New York City was thrown into an uproar when a sixteen-year-old white woman, an indentured servant named Mary Burton, testified that she was privy to a monstrous conspiracy against the white people of Manhattan. Promised her freedom by authorities if she would only uncover the plot, Mary reported that the black men of the city were planning to burn New York City to the ground. As the courts ensnared more and more suspects and violence swept the city, 154 black New Yorkers were jailed, 14 were burned alive, 18 were hanged, and more than 100 simply "disappeared"; four whites wound up being executed and 24 imprisoned. Even as the madness escalated, however, officials started to realize that Mary Burton might not be telling the truth. Expertly written by the acclaimed author of Drop and Hunting in Harlem, The Great Negro Plot is a brilliant reconstruction of a little-known moment in American history whose echoes still reverberate today.


Click for more detail about Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive by Carole Boston Weatherford Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive

by Carole Boston Weatherford
Walker and Company (Jan 01, 2007)
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Jesse Owens grew up during the time of Jim Crow laws, but segregation never slowed him down. After setting world records for track in high school and college, he won a slot on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. That year, the Olympics were in Berlin, then controlled by the Nazis, and Hitler was certain they would be a chance to prove to the world that Aryans were superior to all other races. But the triumph of Jesse’s will helped him run through any barrier, winning four gold medals and the hearts of millions, setting two world records, and proving the Nazi dictator unmistakably wrong.

The story of Jesse Owens comes alive for young readers with Carole Boston Weatherford’s award-winning free verse poetry. Eric Velasquez tackles this challenging subject with the use of pastels for the first time in twenty years-a technique that is both heart-stopping and immediate.


Click for more detail about Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel by Walter Mosley Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel

by Walter Mosley
Bloomsbury USA (Dec 26, 2006)
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This bold new novel from Walter Mosley startles in both its rawness and its honest portrayal of a man on a quest for sexual redemption in midlife. When Cordell Carmel catches his longtime girlfriend with another man, the act that he witnesses seems to dissolve all the boundaries he knows. In that instant, the calm existence of this middle-aged New York City man becomes something unrecognizable: he wants revenge, but also something more. Killing Johnny Fry is the story of Cordell’s dark, funny, soulful, and outrageously explicit sexual odyssey in search of a new way of life. His guide is a mysterious woman named Sisypha, who leads him deep into the erotic heart of the city. Killing Johnny Fry marks new territory for Walter Mosley, bestselling author of Devil in a Blue Dress and many other books in different genres: sci-fi, politics, literary fiction. It will surprise, provoke, inspire, and make you blush. Above all, it is about a man questioning the rules we take for granted and the powerful and sometimes disturbing connections that occur between people when these rules are removed.


Click for more detail about Bling: The Hip-Hop Jewelry Book by Gabriel Tolliver and Reggie Osse Bling: The Hip-Hop Jewelry Book

by Gabriel Tolliver and Reggie Osse
Bloomsbury USA (Oct 31, 2006)
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A flashy, fun, photographic celebration of living the good life in all its glory?blinged out.


Click for more detail about Glow in the Dark by Lisa Teasley Glow in the Dark

by Lisa Teasley
Bloomsbury USA (Aug 22, 2006)
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“[Lisa Teasley] lights up the plunge into the abyss that can result from knowing people far too well.”―Greg Tate, Village Voice

Lost souls, the disenfranchised, the destitute: these are the denizens of Lisa Teasley’s stories. There’s Magda, the drug-addicted surfer chick, Gita, who juggles sexual relationships, and Boogie, an overweight ten-year-old. Teasley follows her characters deep into the mire. “Baker” emerged from the 1997 rape and murder of a seven-year-old in a Nevada casino. In “Holiday Confessional,” a character flees after witnessing a crime to then share the secret with two strangers in a bar. Set in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Baja, Lisa Teasley’s stories illuminate society’s darker side.

“Teasley writes with a daring and original voice…Glow in the Dark is an unusually assured first story collection, and Lisa Teasley deserves high praise for giving the American short story an honest and original shot in the arm.” —San Francisco Chronicle


Click for more detail about Heat Signature: A Novel by Lisa Teasley Heat Signature: A Novel

by Lisa Teasley
Bloomsbury USA (Aug 22, 2006)
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Part noir, part odyssey, Heat Signature mines the psychological and emotional landscape of loss as a son tries to cope with the murder of his mother.

Sam Brown sets out on a road trip from his home in a small California desert town to the cooler, greener climes of the Northwest. He tells himself he just needs a break, from his father, a dead-end relationship with a stripper, his job as a nurse, and his troubled best friend. But what he can’t escape, no matter how many miles he travels, is the memory of his mother, July, who was brutally murdered sixteen years earlier and visits him regularly in his dreams. Sam’s grief is sorely renewed when he learns July’s murderer is soon to be released from prison. Overcome by strong feelings of panic and revenge, he turns to women. He re-connects with a former patient in Los Angeles. In Santa Barbara he meets a sage/philosopher who inspires him to put order in his life. In Oregon, he falls in love with an arborist whose woodsy home provides peace and refuge—at least for a while. Simultaneous with Sam’s journey, his mother’s story unfolds, coming to a climax when the details of July’s grisly murder are revealed. Through a fast-paced, gripping narrative, Heat Signature explores the complexities of family and friendship, love and loss, race and sexuality.


Click for more detail about Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor by Paul Beatty Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor

by Paul Beatty
Bloomsbury USA (Jan 17, 2006)
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This book is less a comprehensive collection of African-American humor than a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted friend-a sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed with the blues, hip-hop, political speeches, and the world’s funniest radio sermon. The subtle musings of Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, and Harryette Mullen are bracketed by the profane and often loud ruminations of Langston Hughes, Darius James, Wanda Coleman, Tish Benson, Steve Cannon, and Hattie Gossett. Some of the funniest writers don’t write, so included are selections from well-known yet unpublished wits Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mike Tyson, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Selections also come from public figures and authors whose humor, although incisive and profound, is often overlooked: Malcolm X, Suzan-Lori Parks, Zora Neale Hurston, Sojourner Truth, and W.E.B. Dubois.

Groundbreaking, fierce, and hilarious, this is a necessary anthology for any fan or student of American writing, with a huge range and a smart, political grasp of the uses of humor.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Jeff Buckley’s Grace by Daphne A. Brooks Jeff Buckley’s Grace

by Daphne A. Brooks
Continuum International Publishing Group (Apr 28, 2005)
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The power and influence of Grace increases with each passing year. Here, Daphne Brooks traces Jeff Buckley’s fascinating musical development through the earliest stages of his career, up to the release of the album. With access to rare archival material, Brooks illustrates Buckley’s passion for life and hunger for musical knowledge, and shows just why he was such a crucial figure in the American music scene of the 1990s.

EXCERPT:
Jeff Buckley was piecing together a contemporary popular music history for himself that was steeped in the magic of singing. He was busy hearing how Dylan channeled Billie Holiday in Blonde On Blonde and how Robert Plant was doing his best to sound like Janis Joplin on early Led Zeppelin recordings. He was thinking about doo-wop and opera and Elton John and working at developing a way to harness the power of the voice…In the process, he was re-defining punk and grunge attitude itself by rejecting the ambivalent sexual undercurrents of those movements, as well as Led Zeppelin’s canonical cock rock kingdom that he’d grown up adoring. He was forging a one-man revolution set to the rhythms of New York City and beyond. And he was on the brink of recording his elegant battle in song for the world to hear.


Click for more detail about Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution

by Ronin Ro
Bloomsbury USA (Jul 02, 2004)
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The spectacular life and times of Jack Kirby, the legendary forefather of American comic books.For fifty years, Jack Kirby drew more pages than any other comic book artist. As talented as he was prolific, Kirby was responsible for many of the most well-known and beloved superheroes in popular culture. With his first writing partner Joe Simon, he created Captain America, DC Comics’s Sandman, and the lucrative genre of the romance comic. In the 1960s, Kirby paired with Stan Lee to develop a pantheon of heroes that included, among others, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Silver Surfer, and the Inhumans. Together with Lee, this artist and writer forever changed the American comic book by introducing angst-ridden heroes, sympathetic villains, and a dynamic visual style that has influenced every artist who followed. The inspiration behind The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Jack Kirby has been hailed by Wizard magazine as "Without any doubt…the single most important creator in the History of American Comic Books." In Tales to Astonish, Ronin Ro chronicles Kirby’s poverty-stricken origins in the Lower East Side, his early commercial triumphs and failures, his renowned partnership with Stan Lee, his continuing artistic innovations (the production department hated him for pasting photographs into his pages), and his lengthy legal battles with Marvel comics over the ownership of his original art. An insightful portrait of one of its most enduring-and overlooked-artists, Tales to Astonish is also a lively, novelistic account of the comic book industry, from its inauspicious origins to its sensational successes.


Click for more detail about Dive: A Novel by Lisa Teasley Dive: A Novel

by Lisa Teasley
Bloomsbury USA (Mar 18, 2004)
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Lisa Teasley’s seductive debut novel is at once a thriller, a love story, and a meditation on what makes each one of us unique.Ray Rose is a charming construction worker in Florida, plagued with guilt about a violent crime he committed a year earlier. Ruby Falls is a beautiful animator whose freewheeling L.A. lifestyle is suddenly derailed when she stumbles upon a bloody crime scene at the Laurel Canyon guest house where she lives. Fleeing their respective home lives in search of reinvention, the two adventurers head for Alaska, where their paths eventually cross. The fireworks are immediate. But as Ray and Ruby, surrounded by their remarkable friends, try to settle down into something more domestic, a sudden accident changes all their expectations for the future. With luminously original prose and a fast-paced, eminently readable sense of story, Lisa Teasley brings alive a diverse and vital cast of characters, who find the promise of redemption through their interconnected lives.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by Donald Bogle Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films

by Donald Bogle
Continuum International Publishing Group (Aug 01, 2003)
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This study of black images in American motion pictures, is re-issued for its 30th anniverary in its 4th edition. It includes the entire 20th century through black images in film, from the silent era to the unequalled rise of the new African American cinema and stars of today. From "The Birth of a Nation", "Gone with the Wind", and "Carmen Jones" to "Shaft", "Do the Right Thing", "Waiting to Exhale", "The Hurricane", and "Bamboozled", Donald Bogle reveals the way the image of blacks in American cinema has changed - and also the shocking way in which it has often remained the same.


Click for more detail about Hunting in Harlem by Mat Johnson Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson
Bloomsbury USA (May 14, 2003)
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Gentrification-by any means necessary.

With the help of new employees Cedric, Bobby, and Horus-three ex-cons trying to forge a new life-Lester Baines’s Horizon Realty is bringing Harlem back to its renaissance. Fate seems to be working in Lester’s favor when Harlem’s undesirable tenants begin to get clumsy and meet early deaths by accident. A deadbeat dad electrocutes himself in the bathtub. A drug dealer takes flight from his fire escape. A pimp is shot dead by police when they mistake his wallet for a handgun. That’s where Horizon steps in. Block by block, Lester and his crew clear out the rubble and the rabble, filling once dilapidated brownstones with black professionals handpicked for their shared vision of Harlem as a shining icon for the race.

Rumors of the Chupacabra, a mythical monster claiming the lives of Harlem’s unfortunate, run rampant with Harlem’s youth. But it isn’t until an ambitious reporter begins to investigate the extraordinarily high accident rate in Harlem that Lester starts to get a little nervous about Horizon’s future. For Lester, no cost is too high in protecting Horizon and his vision for restoration. The battle for gentrification and for the souls and very lives of the ex-cons plays out on the streets of Harlem and against a backdrop of beautiful Manhattan brownstones.

Mat Johnson has created vividly memorable characters and a story that stands out as one of the most controversial and explosive in years. As sure to ignite debate as it is to entertain, Hunting in Harlem is an old-fashioned page-turner with a fresh and brave voice.

Book Review

Click for more detail about Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth by Derrick Bell Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth

by Derrick Bell
Bloomsbury USA (Oct 25, 2002)
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From the New York Times bestselling author Derrick Bell, a profound meditation on achieving success with integrity.As one of the country’s most influential law professors, Derrick Bell has spent a lifetime helping students struggling to maintain a sense of integrity in the face of an overwhelming pressure to succeed at any price. Frequently asked how he managed to be so extraordinarily successful while never giving up the fight for justice and equality, Bell decided to spend his seventieth year writing a book of insight and guidance. The result, Ethical Ambition, is a deeply affecting, uplifting, and brilliant series of meditations that not only challenges us to face some of the most difficult questions that life presents, but dares to offer some solutions.Using incidents from his own life, Bell also looks to literature, history, and other contemporary figures who have refused to compromise their beliefs. In chapters that explore passion, faith courage, inspiration, humility, and relationships, Ethical Ambition address the most fundamental issues of life.


Click for more detail about Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Fourth Edition by Bryant Terry Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, Fourth Edition

by Bryant Terry
Bloomsbury Academic (Oct 24, 2001)
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Completely updated to include the entire twentieth century, this new fourth edition covers all the latest directors, stars, and films including Summer of Sam, Jackie Brown, The Best Man, and The Hurricane. From The Birth of a Nation—the groundbreaking work of independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux—and Gone with the Wind to the latest work by Spike Lee, John Singleton, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry and Will Smith, Donald Bogle reveals the ways in which the depiction of blacks in American movies has changed—and the shocking ways in which it has remained the same.


Click for more detail about Drop by Mat Johnson Drop

by Mat Johnson
Bloomsbury USA (Sep 30, 2000)
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A new voice in American fiction recalling the work of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, Drop is an irreverent and unforgettable coming-of age-story about a 31-year-old black man who struggles to break out of the ghetto. Chris Jones has a gift for creating desire-no doubt a result of his own passion and desire to be anywhere but where he is, to be anyone but himself. He has a knack for creating effective ad campaigns. His work lands him a gig in London. Far away from his Philly roots, Chris is raking in the dough, has a Nigerian girlfriend, a beautiful apartment, and goes clubbing in the West End. He enjoys the role of the successful black American, living among the bourgeois Africans and West Indians of London. No longer afraid of what he calls the ’Pop pop pop’ of gunfire so prevalent on the streets of his hometown, Chris is finally free. But life takes a turn for the worse, and Chris finds himself back where he started, forced back to Philadelphia where his only job prospect is answering phones at the electrical company, helping the poor pay their heating and lighting bills. Surrounded by his brethren, the down and out, indigent, the hopeless, Chris hits bottom. Only a stroke of inspiration and faith will get him back on his feet. Drop is a funny, moving and ultimately profound tale of a man determined to break the pattern of the ghetto he despises and who, in the process, is forced to come to terms with his hatred for himself.


Click for more detail about Whitewash by Ntozake Shange Whitewash

by Ntozake Shange
Walker and Company (Oct 01, 1997)
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A young African-American girl is traumatized when a gang attacks her and her brother on their way home from school and spray-paints her face white. Based on a true story.


Click for more detail about Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions by James Haskins Outward Dreams: Black Inventors and Their Inventions

by James Haskins
Walker and Company (Apr 01, 1991)
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Discusses black inventors and their contributions, including Benjamin Bradley, Madam Walker, and George Washington Carver.


Click for more detail about The Maroons of Jamaica: A History of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal by Mavis C. Campbell The Maroons of Jamaica: A History of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal

by Mavis C. Campbell
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (Jul 30, 1988)
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“A careful and thorough study of the Jamaican Maroons from the British conquest to the late 18th century.”

This richly textured study of the struggles of the Maroons of Jamaica against the British colonial authorities, their subsequent collaboration with and betrayal by them, will be of great interest to historians of Africa… . Elegantly written … the author … makes her own contribution to current debates on resistance and collaboration. —Michael Crowder, Institute of Commonwealth Studies