AALBC Search
Chapter One
Chapter One Catherine Joy White Excerpt Silence This thread of gold that ties me to my mother, my grandmother, and the women who came before looks a lot like the color purple. Like the purple hibi...
Black Man’s Version to Exhale
Black Man’s Version to Exhale Akie F. Davis Excerpt Introduction We know all too well of the frustrating encounters that many Black women have had when dealing with Black men. However, little h...
Table of Contents <em>Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice</em>
Table of Contents Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice Nkechi Taifa Excerpt Table of Contents Black Power, Black Lawyer: Memoir of Nkechi Taifa Prologue—“Judge Not” Red Ba...
Brothers, Lust, and Love: Thoughts on Manhood, Sex, and Romance
Brothers, Lust, and Love: Thoughts on Manhood, Sex, and Romance William July II Excerpt SBF Seeking Mr. Right. Must be 6’3", 215, have a mustache, degree in law or medicine from Ivy Leagu...
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...
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...
From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter—and Win
From Presence to Power: How to Take On the Fights That Matter—and Win Rashad Robinson Excerpt 1 Presence Is Not Enough Definition: Presence is about visibility, the ability to make something—a ...
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...
I Can’t Wait on God
I Can’t Wait on God Albert French Excerpt Chapter One Pittsburgh, 1950 Summer night air was always sticky kind of air, had that stinkin mill smoke stuck all in it. Them old freight trains ...
The Unmaking Of The Black Man
The Unmaking Of The Black Man Gibran Tariq and Gregory S. Jones Excerpt THE OTHER END OF THE STICK The social revolution for the control of the black image had a profound impact on the sistas as w...
Black Girl You Are Atlas
Black Girl You Are Atlas Renée Watson Excerpt at•las | \ ’at-les \ from Merriam-Webster Dictionary 1 capitalized: a Titan who for his part in the Titans’ revolt against the gods ...
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 ...
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...
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother James McBride Excerpt CHAPTER ONE Dead I’m dead. You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty y...
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...
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...
Polo Cowboy Chapter 1
Polo Cowboy Chapter 1 G. Neri Excerpt Preface: Mama is fuming. “Say that again.” I swallow and take a deep breath. “I ain’t goin’ back to Detroit.” Five m...
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 ...
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...
Done in the Dark
Done in the Dark Tamara Morgan Excerpt Chapter 1 Though she knew she should take comfort that Mama Ella was going to ‘a better place,’ despite her grandmother’s efforts Karina&rsqu...
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...
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...
Let the Oppressed Go Free: Exploring Theologies of Liberation
Let the Oppressed Go Free: Exploring Theologies of Liberation Marvin Andrew McMickle Excerpt The Invisible Black Woman It seems that African American men who worked tirelessly to reverse the st...
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...
Fifteen Years Delayed
Fifteen Years Delayed Angelia Vernon Menchan Excerpt Prologue Damn… there she is after fifteen years, still, even button-upped, a living breathing wet dream in the flesh. Feeling breath o...
God in the Ghetto: A Prophetic Word Revisited
God in the Ghetto: A Prophetic Word Revisited William Augustus Jones Jr. Excerpt Chapter 1: The System “The System” refers implicitly to the American trinity of capitalism, racism,...
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...
Preface
Preface Kekla Magoon Excerpt Preface: When people talk about the Black Panthers, sometimes they speak in hushed tones, as if history itself could overhear. As if the Panthers are a secret no one s...
The Other Side of the Game
The Other Side of the Game Anita Doreen Diggs Excerpt CHAPTER 5 EVELYN Phil is taking me to B.B. King’s blues club in Manhattan so I’m trying to find the right pair ...
Table of Contents <em>Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice</em>
Table of Contents Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice Patrice Lawrence Excerpt Chapter 1 Al I’m hungry. Really hungry. I want to fill the biggest bowl with cornflakes and ...
Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems
Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems Professor Griff Excerpt Breaking Karma #5 i It is like a scene in a play. His bald spot shines upward between dark tufts of hair. We are sitting in a pool of...
A Voice from the South
A Voice from the South Excerpt In the clash and clatter of our American Conflict, it has been said that the South remains silent. Like the Sphinx, she inspires vociferous disputation, but hersel...
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...
Coming Forth by Day
Coming Forth by Day Kakwasi Somadhi Excerpt Excerpt from Chapter Seven When Loretha showed up with Solly that hot July evening, the village was already crowded. Men and women with Afros as big as ...
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...
My Love Notes to a Black Man
My Love Notes to a Black Man Lana Reid Excerpt Your Utopia in Me This morning when the alarm rang I was a warm mahogany cocoon that enveloped you A slumbering medley of brown arms and legs wrapp...
The Secret Lives of the Four Wives
The Secret Lives of the Four Wives Lola Shoneyin Excerpt Chapter One – Polygamist I didn’t just happen upon this room; I dreamed of the pale green walls before I arrived. Now the built...
Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems
Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems Wanda Coleman Excerpt “Wanda Why Aren’t You Dead“ from Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems “American Sonnet“ from Wicked Ench...
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...
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 Truth About Men: The Secret Side Of The Opposite Sex
The Truth About Men: The Secret Side Of The Opposite Sex Ian Smith Excerpt THE FIRST PRINCIPLETHE SUBTLE ART OF HOOKING US There’s a big misperception that men never want to be in commit...
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...
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...
Street Sweeper
Street Sweeper Ronin Ro Excerpt I was trying to get him to look me in the eye. But he wouldn’t. Not even when I got one inch from his nose. Nothing. No reaction. That’s the thing abou...
Chapter One
Chapter One Ibram X. Kendi Excerpt Chapter One Definitions Racist: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea. Antiracist: One who is...
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...
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...
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...
Everything Fades Away
Everything Fades Away Zane Excerpt An Excerpt (expletives redacted) Lust is the benefit of self at the expense of others. Love is the benefit of others at the expense of self. The first lick...
Grandpa! Tell Us a Story Drinking from Ancient Wells the Story of the Game Black People Play/Trilogy Book One: The Game’s Soul
Grandpa! Tell Us a Story Drinking from Ancient Wells the Story of the Game Black People Play/Trilogy Book One: The Game’s Soul Orchester Benjamin Excerpt If you dig deep en...
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...
Chapter 3 Jonathan Fraiser
Chapter 3 Jonathan Fraiser J. A. Faulkerson Excerpt Mr. Black led me down a spiral, granite staircase surrounded by granite walls with more ornate carvings on them. When we reached the...
Foreword Justice for Marcus Garvey
Foreword Justice for Marcus Garvey Julius Garvey Excerpt Foreword Excerpt by Ta-Nehisi Coates “I grew up in a household where Malcolm X was Jesus, and I guess that would make Garvey God. Gar...
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...
Chapters 1 and 2
Chapters 1 and 2 Harlow Giles Unger Excerpt Chapters 1 and 2 Chapter 1College Is Not for Everyone So your kid says he or she wants to go to college. “All my friends are going!&rdq...
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...
Alain Locke: An Introduction
Alain Locke: An Introduction Charles Molesworth Excerpt ALAIN LOCKE: AN INTRODUCTION(Part 1) Alain Locke established his intellectual brilliance by a lifetime of study ...
Cane
Cane Jean Toomer Excerpt Introduction to Cane As it appeared in the Perennial Classic edition copyright 1969 by Arna Bontemps LOOKING back on the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s,...
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 ...
Like Sweet Buttermilk
Like Sweet Buttermilk S.F. Powell Excerpt …Viv entered their sitting room, where she lay down to think, pulling the afghan strewn across the loveseat around her. More thinking, however, didn...
A Lesson Before Dying
A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines Excerpt I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still,...
Morning Drive to Midnight
Morning Drive to Midnight Renee Prewitt Killingsworth Excerpt After working together awhile, Adrienne and Selena developed a bond that transcended simple friendship. Adrienne used to say they clicke...
A Letter for My Mother
A Letter for My Mother Nina Foxx Excerpt Nina Foxx’s Letter: A Letter to My Once Mother-in-Law Charlenne, The doctors say that it won’t be long now. Your son just called and told m...
Where to Choose: A Novel
Where to Choose: A Novel Penny Mickelbury Excerpt Chapter Four Late-morning sun shone directly down on the purple and lilac and pink and white bougainvillea; shone easily through the tops of to...
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...
Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle
Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle Nora Deloach Excerpt Carrie Smalls shrugged. "I reckon you think ’cause your job throw you to be with her that you know her better than anybody else. My questi...
Forbidden Fruit
Forbidden Fruit Stanley Gazemba Excerpt The air over the village that evening was pregnant with tension. A thick dark cloud loomed heavy above the grey colored thatch huts that dotted the steep green...
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...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
Raisins in Milk – Chapter 1
Raisins in Milk – Chapter 1 Chauncey Ridley Excerpt Raisins in Milk – Chapter 1 Mandarin, Florida Springtime 1913 The breeze that came in from the sea was warm. It brought with it also the...
Chapters <a href="#1">1</a> & <a href="#12">12</a>: The Fund by Kevin P. Chavous
Chapters 1 & 12: The Fund by Kevin P. Chavous Kevin P. Chavous Excerpt Chapter 1 𝒥ackson Lowery was in trouble. The man was coming at him again. Jackson was much taller, but the shorter man w...
Chapters <a href="#1">1</a> & <a href="#12">12</a>: The Fund by Kevin P. Chavous
Chapters 1 & 12: The Fund by Kevin P. Chavous Kevin P. Chavous Excerpt Chapter 1 𝒥ackson Lowery was in trouble. The man was coming at him again. Jackson was much taller, but the shorter man w...
Introduction and Chapter 9 – B. C. Franklin
Introduction and Chapter 9 – B. C. Franklin Carlos Moreno Excerpt Introduction and Chapter 9 – B. C. Franklin “Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as yo...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
Haint Blue
Haint Blue Katherine Dempsey Excerpt Go On Girl! Book Club’s 2021 Unpublished Writers Award Winner Haint BlueChapter One March 2021 “My brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rus...
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...
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...
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...
The Root of All Evil
The Root of All Evil Gibran Tariq and Gregory S. Jones Excerpt Chapter One November 1942 It was one thing to be cold, but quite another to be freezing. Not long ago, Paul Madsen, had been warm ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
Juneteenth
Juneteenth Ralph Ellison Excerpt After Ellison’s death on April 16, 1994, speculation about the existence of the second novel reignited. In an article in the New York Times, William Grimes asse...
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 ...
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...
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-...
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...
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...
Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare
Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare James Baldwin Excerpt Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare—James Baldwin, 1964 Every writer in the English language, I should imagine, has at some point h...
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&...
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle Chris Hedges Excerpt Now the death of God combined with the perfection of the image has brought us to a whole new state of expe...
Love Don’t Come Easy
Love Don’t Come Easy J.T. Smith Excerpt After finishing my job with Lance, I hurried back home and washed up. Looking at the alarm clock on my nightstand, I saw that it was a little after three. I hu...