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A Life of Turmoil: The short stories of Ana Franken 08150017
A Life of Turmoil: The short stories of Ana Franken 08150017 Johanna Sparrow Excerpt Yes, Mother The turmoiled relationship of Ana Franken a Short Story “Sometimes I wish that I had all boys...
Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love
Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love Zane Excerpt Chapter One: Sexual Addiction Sexual addiction is a topic very near and dear to my heart. When I first decided to write my novel Add...
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION Khristi Lauren Adams Excerpt INTRODUCTION The turn of the millennium has seen an upsurge in new and young African writers and this has been particularly noticeable in terms of the num...
Chicken on a Leash: Lessons in Strength of Mind
Chicken on a Leash: Lessons in Strength of Mind Dorothea Grimes-Frederick Excerpt Even Dogs Cry August 25, 196 Dear Diary, The only thing bad about living next door to a rent-subsidize...
Zora Neale Hurston: A Life In Letters by Carla Kaplan
Zora Neale Hurston: A Life In Letters by Carla Kaplan Zora Neale Hurston Excerpt Chapter 1 “DE TALKIN’ GAME” The Twenties (and Before) First and foremost a storyteller, with ...
Faith in the Valley: Lessons for Women on the Journey to Peace
Faith in the Valley: Lessons for Women on the Journey to Peace Iyanla Vanzant Excerpt Chapter 1 The Valley of Light Teaches us the lesson of stillness, through the imposition of a state of so...
A leap of Faith
A leap of Faith Anita L. Helm Excerpt PREFACE For some time now, I have wanted to write a story about my life—I’m still living, so this is my capture of my first half. I hope the stories...
WHEN MINORITIES LEAD IN AMERICA: A Black Theologians Political Journey
WHEN MINORITIES LEAD IN AMERICA: A Black Theologians Political Journey Herman J. Fountain Jr. Excerpt Growing up in the fifties in Louisville, Kentucky, I wondered how much I was like the other kids ...
Into Africa: A Personal Journey
Into Africa: A Personal Journey Yvonne Blackwood Excerpt “On Sunday afternoon Adamson and I returned to Labadi Beach. I did a double take when we entered the gate. The empty stretch of beach I&...
The Messenger Reader
The Messenger Reader Sondra Kathryn Wilson Excerpt In this short story, Fenton Johnson introduces the reader to Elizabeth (Eliza) Jan, an African-American servant. Liza, a Southerner, finds herself w...
A Day Late and a Dollar Short
A Day Late and a Dollar Short Terry McMillan Excerpt Way I see it can’t nobody tell me nothing I don’t already know. At least not when it comes to my kids. They all grown, but in a whol...
Journey To Justice
Journey To Justice Johnnie Cochran Excerpt WHY I WANTED TO BE A LAWYER I have often been asked why I wanted to be a lawyer. One of the most important things that happened to me during ...
West of Rehoboth
West of Rehoboth Alexs D. Pate Excerpt The soft summer held them all. They gently sat upon the shimmering flecks of sun hidden in the cut grass. They came together like this every Fourth of July. It ...
On The Shoulders Of Giants: My Journey Through The Harlem Renaissance
On The Shoulders Of Giants: My Journey Through The Harlem Renaissance Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Excerpt "Some Technicolor Bazaar" How Harlem Became the Center of the Universe Harlem!&helli...
Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him)
Hot Johnny (and the Women Who Loved Him) Sandra Jackson-Opoku Excerpt He knew just how to feed them You see all our hungry faces in the photo album of his life. And you wonder. Who is ...
Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008
Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Excerpt Introduction Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Ind...
No Man’s Compass
No Man’s Compass S. D. Hines Excerpt Michael Healy carried a sidearm, a .45 colt revolver. As the two men ran towards the boy, Michael gasped to his brother, "Get the boy…to safety…I...
An Approach to Style: The 21 Reminders
An Approach to Style: The 21 Reminders William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White Excerpt In the final chapter of The Elements of Style, E. B. White provides a list of guidelines to help writers develop a di...
On My Journey Now: Looking At African-American History Through The Spirituals
On My Journey Now: Looking At African-American History Through The Spirituals Nikki Giovanni Excerpt America was looking for very, very, very cheap labor, because they wanted workers who were e...
Greed: A Seven Deadly Sins Novel
Greed: A Seven Deadly Sins Novel Victoria Christopher Murray Excerpt Chapter 1 “Just got paid…it’s Friday night.” I tapped the button on my steering wheel, silencing the bo...
Unsung Heroes
Unsung Heroes Elizabeth Ross Haynes Excerpt In casting about for stories to read to a little friend, one day I drew from the Library "My Life and Times" by Frederick Douglass. I knew that t...
Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge
Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge Ellis Cose Excerpt To forgive the truly horrible is to kiss the robe of God, to emulate no less a figure than the dying Jesus Chr...
Mass Deception
Mass Deception Hallema Excerpt Chill bumps appear out of nowhere when I think about that particular period of my life. The memory still haunts me to this day. I’d just arrived bac...
Standing Tall
Standing Tall Jake Sloan Excerpt 1 The Culture: Southern Influence at a West Coast Installation, 1930—1961 The year 1961 was the one that a future president of the United States, Barack Husse...
Wolf Hustle
Wolf Hustle Cin Fabré Excerpt Introduction The hustle has always been with me. Once I discovered the stock market I became infected with the delirious joy that comes from a successful speculative ...
Night Hawks: Stories
Night Hawks: Stories Charles Johnson Excerpt The Weave Three thieves battered through a wall, crawled close to the floor to dodge motion detectors and stole six duffel bags filled with human hair ...
You Are Free: Stories
You Are Free: Stories Danzy Senna Excerpt What’s the Matter with Helga and Dave? When I married Hewitt, I didn’t realize — among other things — that I would become a member...
Remembering Margo: A Triumphant Life, A Tragic Death, And Life’s Greatest Deception
Remembering Margo: A Triumphant Life, A Tragic Death, And Life’s Greatest Deception Donzella Michele Malone Excerpt PREFACE It was a cool and ra...
Gone Fishin’
Gone Fishin’ Walter Mosley Excerpt Gone Fishin' CHAPTER ONE Mouse had changed. Before he announced his engagement to EttaMae he was a happy man, full of himself. It's true that he...
Not My Will
Not My Will Khara Campbell Excerpt Prologue “Virtue, your man dogged you and you gonna let him get away with that mess? If I was you, I would be busting some holes in his tires and smashing ou...
The Selling of Joseph
The Selling of Joseph Dieudonne Mayi Excerpt Dedication To African slaves in the Americas, Caribbean, and Europe, the silent and unknown black slave… Your treatment was so in...
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Ibram X. Kendi Excerpt PART I Cotton Mather CHAPTER 1 Human Hierarchy THEY WEATHERED BRUTAL WINTERS, suffered...
Provenance: A Novel
Provenance: A Novel Donna Drew Sawyer Excerpt Prologue Park Place, Virginia - Fall 1909 “Hank, run!” was the last thing he heard Junior say. Deputies struggled to hold and handcuff ...
Lifelines: The Black Book Of Proverbs
Lifelines: The Black Book Of Proverbs Askhari Johnson Hodari and Yvonne Mccalla Sobers Excerpt Introduction The tongue of Egyptian experience has the most truth. A lie runs in Cuba only until th...
Topaz
Topaz Beverly Jenkins Excerpt Chicago May 1884 Under the cover of the darkness, Katherine Love stood with her back pressed closely against the outside wall of the warehouse, hoping she couldn&r...
In the Still of the Night: Personal Safety for Women
In the Still of the Night: Personal Safety for Women Andrea Foy Excerpt Une Nuit de Paris\ “How did I get myself into this mess?” I thought. There I was, riding on the Metro out of Par...
The New Negro: Voices Of The Harlem Renaissance
The New Negro: Voices Of The Harlem Renaissance Jose Andres and Matt Goulding Excerpt “Harlem” by Alain Locke If we were to offer a symbol of what Harlem has come to mean in the short s...
A Promised Land (Deluxe Signed Edition)
A Promised Land (Deluxe Signed Edition) Barack Obama Excerpt Preface I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency—after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the l...
A Promised Land
A Promised Land Barack Obama Excerpt Preface I began writing this book shortly after the end of my presidency—after Michelle and I had boarded Air Force One for the last time and traveled we...
Tuff: A Novel
Tuff: A Novel Paul Beatty Excerpt Now on this, the last cool night of summer, Brooklyn was short three more niggers for Winston to hate. Although he addressed all black men as “God,” Ch...
Peace From Broken Pieces: How To Get Through What You’re Going Through
Peace From Broken Pieces: How To Get Through What You’re Going Through Iyanla Vanzant Excerpt It is often difficult to identify the exact moment that your life falls apart. In most cases, it is not a...
Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan
Author: The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan Beowulf Sheehan Excerpt Photographing Gregory Pardlo, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, at his home was an exercise in seeing love in the tactile. ...
Holding Pattern
Holding Pattern Jeffery Renard Allen Excerpt Black flutter, Mamma flashed about the room, workbound, her shiny knee-length black leather boots working against the wood floor like po...
Murder At Cape Three Points
Murder At Cape Three Points Kwei Quartey Excerpt PROLOGUE Cape Three Points, the southernmost tip of Ghana, is beautiful and wild. Verdant forest covers the three finger-like peninsulas th...
Shoe’s on the Otha’ Foot
Shoe’s on the Otha’ Foot Hunter Hayes Excerpt Chapter 1 "I REMINISCE" Precisely four forty-seven p.m., and the damn beat-beat of my heart is racing to catch up with the tick-...
Church Boy
Church Boy Connie Barrett Excerpt Chapter One: His mind raced as he maneuvered his way behind Charlie’s store ’ past the dumpsters, the broken crates, over the scrap heap. He had...
The Devil’s Shadow
The Devil’s Shadow Ian K. Smith Excerpt Prologue Chicago, Illinois December 3, 2004 3:00 A.M. The Metropolitan Bank of Chicago was located on Michigan Avenue between Washington and Madison stre...
Blue Blood (Ivy League Mysteries)
Blue Blood (Ivy League Mysteries) Pamela Thomas-Graham Excerpt Chapter One: We’re Not in Cambridge Anymore Georgian. Gothic. Houses. Colleges. The Yard. Old Campus. Widener. Sterli...
Prince and Me: His #1 Fan: My Minneapolis Memories
Prince and Me: His #1 Fan: My Minneapolis Memories Andrea Foy Excerpt NEW YEAR’S EVE, PART 1 I spent New Year’s Eve 1992 in Minneapolis with friends I met from the Controversy Fan Clu...
My Brown Baby
My Brown Baby Denene Millner Excerpt Chapter 1 My Escort into Motherhood I WAS A YOUNG REPORTER WHEN I MET HER—full of energy, I had a flat stomach, still 120 pounds soaking wet, still ea...
Introduction: The Isley Brothers’ 3+3
Introduction: The Isley Brothers’ 3+3 Darrell M. McNeill Excerpt Introduction The Isley Brothers Are America’s Most Tenured Rock and Roll Group: Deal with it. All you are ever told in this ...
Woleté The Story of an Enslaved Ethiopian Girl
Woleté The Story of an Enslaved Ethiopian Girl Aklilu Kidanu Woldegiorgis Excerpt Part 5 The Catastrophe In one unsuspecting bright morning, the lives of a happy girl and her childhood friends ch...
The Fisher King: A Novel
The Fisher King: A Novel Paule Marshall Excerpt Chapter 1 "Had the brass-face to come round me playing the Sodom and Gomorrah music!" The old woman they said was his g...
Chapter 7: Why Did Rosa Parks Hug Me?
Chapter 7: Why Did Rosa Parks Hug Me? Nita Wiggins Excerpt Chapter 7: Why Did Rosa Parks Hug Me? In my next job, at WTVM-TV in Columbus, Georgia, I landed a position that came with a prestigious t...
You Only Get Better: Celebrating Life Every Step of the Way
You Only Get Better: Celebrating Life Every Step of the Way Connie Briscoe, Lolita Files, and Anita Bunkley Excerpt The brass headboard thumped against the wall as he rolled off of her and onto his b...
You Only Get Better: Celebrating Life Every Step of the Way
You Only Get Better: Celebrating Life Every Step of the Way Connie Briscoe, Lolita Files, and Anita Bunkley Excerpt The brass headboard thumped against the wall as he rolled off of her and onto his b...
Drone Child Chapters 1 and 2
Drone Child Chapters 1 and 2 David H. Rothman Excerpt CHAPTER ONE: THE DEATHS OF PAPA AND MAMA BOULE-BOULE People called me “The Fix-It Boy.” I repaired broken radios and TVs around ou...
Drone Child Chapters 1 and 2
Drone Child Chapters 1 and 2 David H. Rothman Excerpt CHAPTER ONE: THE DEATHS OF PAPA AND MAMA BOULE-BOULE People called me “The Fix-It Boy.” I repaired broken radios and TVs around ou...
The Savion Sequence
The Savion Sequence D. Amari Jackson Excerpt PROLOGUE “How could this be?” marveled the wide-eyed Nubian, removing the protective mask covering his nose and mouth so his partner could ...
The Savion Sequence
The Savion Sequence D. Amari Jackson Excerpt PROLOGUE “How could this be?” marveled the wide-eyed Nubian, removing the protective mask covering his nose and mouth so his partner could ...
Jelani’s Key Chapter II
Jelani’s Key Chapter II D. Amari Jackson Excerpt Chapter II The Bully of Benning Road
Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ with Mother Nature
Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ with Mother Nature Dick Gregory Excerpt 1Warning: The Author Has Determined That Not Reading the Following Pages Is Dangerous to Your Health ...
The Future Has a Past
The Future Has a Past J. California Cooper Excerpt A Shooting Star Now, you don’t know me. And, I know that you know that nobody knows everything. But a person does have to go by whatever ...
Obsessive Intimacies
Obsessive Intimacies Yani Excerpt This nigga must’ve either lost his fucking mind or he thinks I’m still the same dumb and naïve Tierra from high-school and college. I know muthafucking ...
Pieces from Life’s Crazy Quilt
Pieces from Life’s Crazy Quilt Marvin V. Arnett Excerpt When my mother saw the smiles on our faces, she heaved a sigh of relief. When she asked my father what he though of my teacher, he answer...
The Colored Garden
The Colored Garden O.H. Bennett Excerpt From Chapter One: Meeting the Gardener In the middle of Kentucky farmland where a cornfield of withered brown stalks meets the grass of a cow pasture there ...
Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life
Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life Michael Strahan and Veronica Chambers Excerpt WHAT I LEARNED FROM HERSCHEL WALKER Rule #1 Help can—and will—c...
Life, Love & Loneliness
Life, Love & Loneliness Crystal Lacey Winslow Excerpt CHAPTER 3 - LYRIC DEVANEY At 11:00 am sharp, Richard’s black Mercedes- Benz arrived. His driver got out and opened the door and Richard ...
My Love, My Love: or The Peasant Girl
My Love, My Love: or The Peasant Girl Rosa Guy Excerpt Chapter One On that island where rivers run deep, where the sea sparkling in the sun earns it the name Jewel of the Antilles, the tops of t...
Sister Betty Says I Do
Sister Betty Says I Do Pat G’Orge Walker Excerpt Chapter 1 One year later… Moments earlier the sun had slowly rose on this sure-to-be blazing hot Saturday morning. For much of her adult ...
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass Excerpt PREFACE In the month of August 1841, I attended an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket, at which it was my happiness to beco...
Will by Will Smith
Will by Will Smith Robert Fleming Excerpt one FEAR I’ve always thought of myself as a coward. Most of my memories of my childhood involve me being afraid in some way-afraid of other kids,...
Running to Fall — Chapters 1 & 2
Running to Fall — Chapters 1 & 2 Kalisha Buckhanon Excerpt ONE MARCH 2021 Right around time things started reopening, the late March thaw brought a lifeless girl up to the tail end of the Grays...
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa Excerpt Chapter 1 An Ordinary Day “It’s Memorial Day. Y&rsq...
Running to Fall — Chapters 1 & 2
Running to Fall — Chapters 1 & 2 Kalisha Buckhanon Excerpt ONE MARCH 2021 Right around time things started reopening, the late March thaw brought a lifeless girl up to the tail end of the Grays...
Adultery
Adultery Paulo Coelho Excerpt Every morning, when I open my eyes to the so-Âcalled “new day,” I feel like closing them again, staying in bed, and not getting up. But I can’t do t...
Chaser: A Novel
Chaser: A Novel Miasha Excerpt Kenny, Stop, Pleeeease! Kennnnyyy!” I cried for my life. It wasn’t even about the baby anymore because I was sure it was dead. There was no ...
Diamonds and Pearl
Diamonds and Pearl K’wan Excerpt CHAPTER 1 New Orleans, L.A.: Sept. 2005 “It looks bad out there, man.” Larry said staring out the rain slicked window of the second floor bedroom. I...
To Find You
To Find You Cerece Rennie Murphy Excerpt Part I: In The Beginning I wait for him here, at the place where the night sky and the earth become lovers. In the tall grass of our homeland, between two k...
The Immortality Of Influence
The Immortality Of Influence Salome Thomas-El Excerpt Foreword by Will Smith If you finish this book and are not inspired to immediately go out and effect change in your community, then you w...
Wonderful Ethiopians Of The Ancient Cushite Empire, Book 1
Wonderful Ethiopians Of The Ancient Cushite Empire, Book 1 Drusilla Dunjee Houston Excerpt The minds of men today are stirred with eager questionings about the origin of civilization and about ...
Sometimes I Cry
Sometimes I Cry Linda Dominique Grosvenor Excerpt I have never been more anxious in my entire life than I am right now. I’m sitting at my desk with an hour or more to kill and a list of things...
After
After Marita Golden Excerpt The bullets discharge from the muzzle of officer Carson Blake’s sixteen round Beretta with the tinny explosive popping sound of a toy gun. He will not remember exact...
Shedding Light From My Journeys
Shedding Light From My Journeys DuEwa M. Frazier Excerpt R Ju Iz Spanish Mami, mami, ju look so good, are ju married ? I think in a past life I was Spanish cause the pa...
A Family Affair
A Family Affair ReShonda Tate Excerpt Prologue Everyone that had ever crossed paths with Adele Wells knew that she was not a woman to be crossed. In the nine years that Lorraine Dawson ha...
Cowards and Angels
Cowards and Angels Aileen Muhammad Excerpt Mia (From Cowards and Angels) Death before dishonor. An embrace like no other. A fair exchange. An honored declaration that life’s sagging hypocr...
The Man Who Cried I Am
The Man Who Cried I Am John A. Williams Excerpt FOREWORD by Graham Hodges The publication of John A. Williams’ fourth novel, The Man Who Cried I Am, in October, 1967, caused cr...
Chasing Ava
Chasing Ava Siera London Excerpt Ava had been distracted for days, Logan noticed. When he’d questioned her, she denied that there was a problem. But she seemed more fragile and solitary. Even w...
The Husband We Share
The Husband We Share London St. Charles Excerpt Chapter One Lauren Carter screamed and bolted upright in her bed, snatched from the reoccurring nightmare that had plagued her for years. She touched ...
Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter
Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X Excerpt INTRODUCTION By Dr. Nathan Hare With the return of “white nationalism” to the international stage and the White House and new th...
Cayenne
Cayenne Janice Pernell Excerpt Nia eyed Michael with a mixture of defiance and loathing. The man who’d captured her heart in the past three months was now her captor, in a very literal but surr...
Killens Review of Arts & Letters
Killens Review of Arts & Letters Clarence V. Reynolds Excerpt Fiction Excerpt: “Lynched” by Kim-Marie Walker When mother named me Madame Augusta Nero in 1920, she intended whites aroun...
Death in the City
Death in the City Keith Kareem Williams Excerpt “Where I’m from, if you get shot you don’t tell. If you survive the bullets, you find the shooter yourself and get your revenge. ...
Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit
Sacred Woman: A Guide to Healing the Feminine Body, Mind, and Spirit Queen Afua Excerpt CHAPTER 1 KHAMITIC NUBIAN PHILOSOPHY THEY SAY OUR WAY IS DEAD. THEY SAY OUR WAY IS NO MORE. THAT THE NI...
Food and the City
Food and the City Ina Yalof Excerpt Alexander SmallsThe Cecil Daylight floods his Harlem apartment, an eclectic space crammed with old and new mementos from a well-traveled, well-lived life. The...
Of One Blood
Of One Blood Pauline Hopkins Excerpt Chapter One The recitations were over for the day. It was the first week in November and it had rained about every day the entire week; now freezing temperatur...
The Water Dancer
The Water Dancer Ta-Nehisi Coates Excerpt And I could only have seen her there on the stone bridge, a dancer wreathed in ghostly blue, because that was the way they would have taken her back when I w...
Unbossed: How Black Girls Are Leading the Way
Unbossed: How Black Girls Are Leading the Way Helon Habila and Kadija Sesay Excerpt Chapter 1 When she was just five years old, Ssanyu Lukoma fell in love with a book called Rosa, an inspiring chi...
The End of Race Politics
The End of Race Politics Coleman Hughes Excerpt Chapter 1Race, Anti-racism, and Neoracism For most of my life, I saw my mother as neither black nor white. Her Puerto Rican father was darker-skinned ...
Done in the Dark
Done in the Dark Tamara Morgan Excerpt Though she knew she should take comfort that Mama Ella was going to ‘a better place,’ despite her grandmother’s efforts Karina’s faith i...