6 Books Published by BenBella Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

With so much of our lives lived online, we’ve never been more connected—or disconnected from what’s most important to us.

It’s time to let go of our curated online worlds and get beyond our need for likes. For all that we think we’re getting out of social media, we’re also getting duped. The perfection echo chamber oftentimes makes us feel like we’re getting left behind.

The truth is, life is messy, but curated online fabulousness makes it hard to let our true selves show, and it impedes our ability to have real, meaningful connections. Depression, anxiety, and suicide are also on the rise, and the virtual world is partially to blame, affecting our self-worth, our friendships, and the way we choose to navigate our real lives.

As the founder and CEO of Squad, an app company built on connectedness, Isa Watson knows firsthand why we need to learn how to be more genuine. The digital world is her lifeblood, but it’s also been an Achilles’ heel: She struggled privately with some of the biggest challenges life can throw at you, while online she seemed to be living her best life—earning high-profile accolades, taking fabulous trips, and partying with the likes of many big name celebrities. It took a personal crisis to make her realize that she needed to change.

In Life Beyond Likes, she gets real, sharing practical guidance on:

• Getting over the addiction to likes, and letting your true self shine
• Recognizing your own damaging habits and developing healthy ones
• Determining when a friendship has run its course
• Getting comfortable with discomfort in order to make real connections

Drawing from a wealth of experiences including being the youngest published chemist in the world, working as executive in the upper echelons at JPMorgan Chase, and founding

White Fear has shaped our democracy and society from the beginning—and today, it’s more intense and visible than ever. To neutralize it, we must first understand it.

For two centuries, the deep-seated fear that many White people feel—of losing power, of losing economic standing, of losing a particular “way of life”—has been the driving force behind American politics and culture.

White Fear enabled the rise of Donald Trump. It’s behind the recent flood of restrictive voting laws disproportionately impacting people of color. It’s why reactions to movements like Black Lives Matter and football players taking a knee have been so negative and so strong.

As we approach a future where White people will become the racial minority in the US, something estimated to occur as early as 2043, that fear is only intensifying, festering, and becoming more visible. Are we destined for a violent clash? What can we do to step into our country’s inevitable future, without tearing ourselves apart in the process?

Nationally renowned journalist and award-winning author Roland Martin has been sounding this alarm for more than a decade. In White Fear, he provides a primer on how White Fear has shaped, and continues to shape, our democracy and our culture. He connects the separate puzzle pieces, from the Tea Party Movement to the decline of White American optimism to the diminishing blue-collar workforce, to illuminate the larger picture of what will unfold in America over the next decade-plus, and offers a better way forward.

If we want to create the kind of country that we’re all welcome in and proud to live in, we can no longer ignore White Fear. We must learn to recognize, understand, and dismantle it.

And as the last few years have shown, we don’t have any time to lose.

You know you have the talent to make it in the beauty industry, but figuring out where to begin can feel like a mystery—and cosmetology schools often don’t prepare students for the business end of these jobs … which can make or break your career.

Consider this book your crash course on how current and aspiring beauty professionals can profit from their passions to create wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

Entrepreneur and celebrity hairstylist Kiyah Wright knows exactly what it takes to amass wealth in the hair and beauty industry. From the time she was just 14 years old and doing hair in her grandmother’s basement for $20 a pop, Kiyah had found her calling. By 17, she had 200 clients and netted over $60K a year. Now, 25 years later, she’s at the top of her game with A-List Hollywood clientele, two Emmy Awards, two Hollywood Beauty Awards, a thriving business, and a million-dollar brand.

In From Beauty to Business, Wright breaks down her seven proven success principles that helped her achieve her goals:

• Developing a success mindset
• Understanding the business of the beauty business
• Finding your niche
• Diversifying with multiple streams of income
• Growing your platform to grow your profits
• Preparing for the unexpected
• Planning for your future

She also lays out crucial success strategies not taught in hair or beauty schools about entrepreneurship, finance, branding, marketing, product distribution, how to harness the power of social media, and how to build wealth. Whether you’re working from your house or a salon, From Beauty to Business will set you up for success with practical tools for thriving in the beauty business on your own terms.

This first-of-its-kind sourcebook features Kiyah’s favorite success affirmations, industry-themed business templates, worksheets, and the foolproof strategies Kiyah used to attract and retain superstar clients like Tyra Banks, Jennifer Hudson, Ciara, Iman, Taraji P. Henson, and Gabrielle Union.

Whether you’re looking for tips in your career as a hairstylist, makeup artist, esthetician, or other beauty professional, From Beauty to Business is the ultimate resource guide that will set you on a straight path to success.

In 2004, the Academy Award?nominated movie Hotel Rwanda lionized hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina for single-handedly saving the lives of all who sought refuge in the Hotel des Mille Collines during Rwanda’s genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. Because of the film, the real-life Rusesabagina has been compared to Oskar Schindler, but unbeknownst to the public, the hotel’s refugees do not endorse Rusesabagina’s version of the events.

In the wake of Hotel Rwanda’s international success, Rusesabagina is one of the most well-known Rwandans and now the smiling face of the very Hutu Power groups who drove the genocide. He is accused by the Rwandan prosecutor general of being a genocide negationist and funding the terrorist group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

For the first time, learn what really happened inside the walls of Hotel des Mille Collines.

In Inside the Hotel Rwanda, survivor Edouard Kayihura tells his own personal story of what life was really like during those harrowing days within the walls of that infamous hotel and offers the testimonies of others who survived there, from Hutu and Tutsi to UN peacekeepers. Kayihura writes of a divided society and his journey to the place he believed would be safe from slaughter.

The book exposes the Hollywood hero of the film Hotel Rwanda, Paul Rusesabagina, as a profiteering and politically ambitious Hutu Power sympathizer who extorted money from those who sought refuge, threatening to send those who did not pay to the génocidaires, despite pleas from the hotel’s corporate ownership to stop.

Inside the Hotel Rwanda is at once a memoir, a critical deconstruction of a heralded Hollywood movie alleged to be factual, and a political analysis aimed at exposing a falsely created hero using his fame to be a political force, spouting the same ethnic apartheid that caused the genocide two decades ago.

Kayihura’s Inside the Hotel Rwanda offers an honest and unflinching first-hand account of the reality of life inside the hotel, exposing the man who exploited refugees and shedding much-needed light on the plight of his victims.

Stereotypes aren’t funny when they follow you everywhere.

This is the rallying cry that author Sophia A. Nelson wants all of America to grapple with when it comes to the way we view and treat black women.

Black Woman Redefined was inspired in part by what Nelson calls ?open season on accomplished black women,” which reached a tipping point in 2007 when Don Imus referred to black female Rutger’s University basketball co-eds as ?nappy-headed hos.” Since then, we’ve seen First Lady Michelle Obama caricatured on the infamous New Yorker cover, when she was called ?angry” and ?unpatriotic”; the 2009 groundbreaking Yale University Study on professional black women titled, ?Marriage Eludes High-Achieving Black Women”; ABC’s ?Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?” and the Internet video that went viral, ?Black Marriage Negotiations,” featuring a successful black woman interviewing a nice black man to be her mate in a robotic, controlling, emasculating, Bible-thumping demeanor. More recently, we were subjected to the 2011 Super Bowl commercial that started a national firestorm featuring an ?angry black woman” throwing a soda can at her mate, after first kicking, slapping, and emasculating him.

Nelson says black women are tired of such depictions that portray them as manless, childless, angry, and unfulfilled. Nelson sets out to change this cultural perception, taking readers on a no-holds-barred journey into the hearts and minds of accomplished black women to reveal truths, tribulations, and insights like never before.

She says it is time for a REDEFINITION among black women in America.