Ann A. Shockley

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Louisiana

An Anthology and Critical Guide

Forty-one Afro-American women writers are examined in this unique anthology. Ranging from recognized poets to women who were "lost" or forgotten, the vitality of their literary endeavors paved the way for modern Afro-American tradition.

Afro-American Women Writers, 1746-1933

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Chigozie Obioma

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Novel

In a Nigerian town in the mid 1990's, four brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family. Told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, THE FISHERMEN is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990's Nigeria, in the small town of Akure. When their strict father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the ominous, forbidden nearby river, they meet a dangerous local madman who persuades the oldest of the boys that he is destined to be killed by one of his siblings. What happens next is an almost mythic event whose impact-both tragic and redemptive-will transcend the lives and imaginations of its characters and its readers. Dazzling and viscerally powerful, The Fishermen never leaves Akure but the story it tells has enormous universal appeal. Seen through the prism of one family's destiny, this is an essential novel about Africa with all of its contradictions-economic, political, and religious-and the epic beauty of its own culture. With this bold debut, Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the most original new voices of modern African literature, echoing its older generation's masterful storytelling with a contemporary fearlessness and purpose.

The Fishermen

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Siri Hustvedt

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A provocative tale told through a series of scholarly texts draws on notebooks and conflicting accounts about the life and work of an acclaimed artist who after years of being marginalized conceals her female identity behind three male fronts.

The Blazing World

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Daniel Halpern

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories

A wide-ranging collection of short stories celebrates the postwar masters of the form, including Russell Banks, T. C. Boyle, Amos Oz, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ann Beatie, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Ben Okri, Angela Cater, and many others. Reprint.

The Art of the Story

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David Henry

Joe Henry

Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him

"Richard Pryor was chain lightning to everything around him. He shocked the world through with human electricity. He blew all our comfortable balance to hell. And Furious Cool captures it brilliantly." --Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin


Richard Pryor was arguably the single most influential performer of the second half of the twentieth century, and certainly he was the most successful black actor/comedian ever. Controversial and somewhat enigmatic during his life, Pryor's performances opened up a  whole new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn't just new--it was theretofore unthinkable.

Now, in this groundbreaking and revelatory work, Joe and David Henry bring him alive again both as a man and as an artist, providing an in-depth appreciation of his talent and his lasting influence, as well as an insightful examination of the world he lived in and the myriad influences that shaped both his persona and his art.

"Brothers David and Joe Henry have brought Richard Pryor back to pulsating life, affirming both his humanity and his immortality as a comic--and tragic--genius." --The Huffington Post

"A sleek, highly literate biography that places the comic in the pop-cultural context of his times." --Bloomberg News

"It would be enough if Furious Cool was a profile of Pryor's uncanny talents, psychic turmoil, and ungovernable behavior, but it's also a fascinating history of black comedy . . . Furious Cool captures Pryor's frenetic routines and stage presence on the page . . . The inextricable legacy of Richard Pryor--his boldness, inventiveness, candor, and empathy--lives on." --Los Angeles Magazine

"An addictively readable study of the path of this outsized talent . . . Someday, when fewer people know Richard Pryor's name, Furious Cool will be the best defense against the worst sort of forgetting--the kind that involves who we are now, who we loved once, and why." --Esquire

Furious Cool

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Gloria Naylor

A motley group of misfits takes on a magical aura at Bailey's Cafe+a7 as each character describes his or her motivations, desires, obsessions, and idiosyncracies. By the author of The Women of Brewster Place. 40,000 first printing. National ad/promo. Tour.

Bailey's Café

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Naguib Mahfouz

The first book of the Cairo Trilogy recreates turn-of-the-century Cairo, with characters who are simultaneously disciplined and sensual

Palace Walk

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Jane Mount

The books that we choose to keep --let alone read-- can say a lot about who we are and how we see ourselves. In MY IDEAL BOOKSHELF, dozens of leading cultural figures share the books that matter to them most; books that define their dreams and ambitions and in many cases helped them find their way in the world. Contributors include Malcolm Gladwell, Thomas Keller, Michael Chabon, Alice Waters, James Patterson, Maira Kalman, Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, Miranda July, Alex Ross, Nancy Pearl, David Chang, Patti Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Dave Eggers, among many others. With colorful and endearingly hand-rendered images of book spines by Jane Mount, and first-person commentary from all the contributors, this is a perfect gift for avid readers, writers, and all who have known the influence of a great book.

My Ideal Bookshelf

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Dorothy West

Adelaide M. Cromwell

Living Is Easy

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Edward Kelsey Moore

Told with wit, style, and compassion, this is the story of friendship among three women weathering the ups and downs of life in a small Midwestern town. When Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean meet as teenagers in the mid-sixties, the civil rights movement is moving along and so are their everyday lives. Their regular gathering place is Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner, the first black-owned business in downtown Plainview, Indiana. Dubbed the Supremes by their friends, the inseparable trio is watched over by big-hearted Earl during their complicated high school days, and then every Sunday after church as they marry, and have children and grandchildren. Sitting at the same table for almost forty years, these best friends grow up, gossip, and face the world together with pointed humor, some sorrow, and much joy. Meet Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean--once you meet them, they will be your friends forever...

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

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Illona Linthwaite

A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World

Spanning the centuries from Sappho's Greece to tenth-century Japan, from nineteenth-century Chile to Zindziswa Mandela's twentieth-century South Africa, the voices of these women poets express themes of love, injustice, motherhood, and loss, and the oppressions of race and sex. The sequence of the poems moves from youth to old age, and they bear witness to the triumphs as well as the pain and frustration of women in many times and in many places. Among the many poets whose work is included are Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Judith Kazantzis, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Irina Ratushinskaya and Alice Walker. Illona Linthwaite began gathering this collection several years ago, initially for a theatrical performance. Here, in this unique exchange between women of many races, affirming their differences and what they have in common, are more than 150 poems which assert the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth's challenge, "Ain't I a Woman!" In addition to the poems, there are biographies of the 91 contributors.

Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World

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Ernest J. Gaines

A compelling debut love story set in a deceptively bucolic Louisiana countryside, where blacks, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy coexistence--by the award-winning author of A Lesson Before Dying and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

After living in San Francisco for ten years, Jackson returns home to his benefactor, Aunt Charlotte. Surrounded by family and old friends, he discovers that his bonds to them have been irreparably rent by his absence. In the midst of his alienation from those around him, he falls in love with Catherine Carmier, setting the stage for conflicts and confrontations which are complex, tortuous, and universal in their implications.

Catherine Carmier

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Dinaw Mengestu

From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, a recipient of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award, The New Yorker's 20 Under 40 award, and a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. 

All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart--one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.
 
Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn.

All Our Names

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Kurt Vonnegut

Stories

Tender stories of love, incisive essays on human greed and misery, and imaginative tales of futuristic happenings reveal Vonnegut's versatility and vision

Welcome to the Monkey House

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Sandra Cisneros

Poems

Reflecting a multiplicity of moods and images, this spirited collection of poetry celebrates the varied feminine aspects of love, from the erotic to the reflective. Reprint. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

Loose Woman

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bell hooks

Social Studies

Ending Racism

"hooks's books help us not only to decolonize our minds, souls, and bodies; on a deeper level, they touch our lives." --Cornel West
More than two decades before Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement roiled America, bell hooks was declaring that abolishing racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. In Killing Rage, one of our premier cultural and social critics brings the Black feminist's voice to bear on this country's public discourse on race, redressing the historical shunting of women's writing in this sphere to the side. In incisive essays, hooks addresses the wide spectrum of topics dealing with race and racism in the United States: friendship between Black women and white women; psychological trauma among African Americans; and internalized racism in movies and the media. hooks tackles the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it, sharing a vision where "killing rage"--the fierce anger of Black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism--offers not only a wellspring of love and strength, but also a realistic catalyst for positive change.
This seminal book is one Americans need today if we're to remain united tomorrow.
"An angry book that pulls no punches.... Her frankness and willingness to face up to the divisive issues that refuse to go away make her a voice to be reckoned with in the debate on race in America." --The New York Review of Books

Killing Rage

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Dimitry Elias Léger

A native of Haiti, Dimitry Elias Léger makes his remarkable debut with this story of romance, politics, and religion that traces the fates of three lovers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the challenges they face readjusting to life after an earthquake devastates their city. Reflecting the chaos of disaster and its aftermath, God Loves Haiti switches between time periods and locations, yet always moves closer to solving the driving mystery at its center: Will the artist Natasha Robert reunite with her one true love, the injured Alain Destiné, and live happily ever after? Warm and constantly surprising, told in the incandescent style of José Saramago and Roberto Bolaño, and reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez’s hauntingly beautiful Love in The Time of Cholera, God Loves Haiti is an homage to a lost time and city, and the people who embody it.

God Loves Haiti

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Helen Macdonald

An award-winning best-seller from the UK recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery.

H Is for Hawk

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Raquel Cepeda

How I Became Latina

In 2009, Raquel Cepeda embarked on an exploration of her genealogy using ancestral DNA testing to uncover the truth about her family and the tapestry of races and ethnicities that came together in an ambiguous mix in her features, resulting in "a beautiful story of reconciliation and redemption" (Huffington Post) with her identity and what it means to be Latina.

Digging through memories long buried, Cepeda journeyed not only into her ancestry but also into her own history. Born in Harlem to Dominican parents, she was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in the Paraíso (Paradise) district in Santo Domingo while still a baby. It proved to be an idyllic reprieve in her otherwise fraught childhood. Paraíso came to mean family, home, belonging. When Cepeda returned to the US, she discovered her family constellation had changed. Her mother had a new, abusive boyfriend, who relocated the family to San Francisco. When that relationship fell apart, Cepeda found herself back in New York City with her father and European stepmother: attending tennis lessons and Catholic schools; fighting vicious battles with her father, who discouraged her from expressing the Dominican part of her hyphenated identity; and immersed in the '80s hip-hop culture of uptown Manhattan. It was in these streets, through the prism of hip-hop and the sometimes loving embrace of her community, that Cepeda constructed her own identity.

Years later, when Cepeda had become a successful journalist and documentary filmmaker, the strands of her DNA would take her further, across the globe and into history. Who were her ancestors? How did they--and she--become Latina? Her journey, as the most unforgettable ones often do, would lead her to places she hadn't expected to go. With a vibrant lyrical prose and fierce honesty, Cepeda parses concepts of race, identity, and ancestral DNA among Latinos by using her own Dominican-American story as one example, and in the process arrives at some sort of peace with her father.

Bird of Paradise

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Greg Kot

Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom's Highway

The untold story of living legend Mavis Staples--lead singer of The Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the Civil Rights era--researched and written by acclaimed music journalist and author Greg Kot.

This is the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples--lead singer of the Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. Now in her seventies, Mavis has been a fixture in the music world for decades. One of the most enduring artists of popular music, she and her family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a sound track to the civil rights movement--inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. himself.

Critically acclaimed biographer and Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot cuts to the heart of Mavis Staples's music, revealing the intimate stories of her sixty-year career. From her love affair with Bob Dylan, to her creative collaborations with Prince, to her recent revival alongside Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, this definitive account shows Mavis as you've never seen her before. I'll Take You There was written with the complete cooperation of Mavis and her family. Readers will also hear from Prince, Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne, Marty Stuart, Ry Cooder, Steve Cropper, and many other individuals whose lives have been influenced by Mavis's talent.

Filled with never-before-told stories, this fascinating biography illuminates a legendary singer and group during a historic period of change in America.

I'll Take You There

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Mark Ribowsky

Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Marfield Prize, National Award for Arts Writing “Evokes the fire of Redding.... Ribowsky tells the story with nonstop energy, while always probing for the larger social and musical pictures.” —New York Times Book Review When he died in one of rock's string of tragic plane crashes, Otis Redding was only twenty-six, yet already the avatar of a new kind of soul music. The beating heart of Memphis-based Stax Records, he had risen to fame belting out gospel-flecked blues in stage performances that seemed to ignite not only a room but an entire generation. If Berry Gordy's black-owned kingdom in Motown showed the way in soul music, Redding made his own way, going where not even his two role models who had preceded him out of Macon, Georgia—Little Richard and James Brown—had gone. Now, in this transformative work, New York Times Notable Book author Mark Ribowsky contextualizes his subject's short career within the larger cultural and social movements of the era, tracing the crooner's rise from preacher's son to a preacher of three-minute soul sermons. And what a quick rise it was. At the tender age of twenty-one, Redding needed only a single unscheduled performance to earn a record deal, his voice so "utterly unique" (Atlantic) that it catapulted him on a path to stardom and turned a Memphis theater-turned-studio into a music mecca. Soon he was playing at sold-out venues across the world, from Finsbury Park in London to his ultimate conquest, the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival in California, where he finally won over the flower-power crowd. Still, Redding was not always the affable, big-hearted man's man the PR material painted him to be. Based on numerous new interviews and prodigious research, Dreams to Remember reintroduces an incredibly talented yet impulsive man, one who once even risked his career by shooting a man in the leg. But that temperament masked a deep vulnerability that was only exacerbated by an industry that refused him a Grammy until he was in his grave—even as he shaped the other Stax soul men around him, like Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, and Booker T. and The MG's. As a result, this requiem is one of great conquest but also grand tragedy: a soul king of truth, a mortal man with an immortal voice and a pain in his heart. Now he, and the forces that shaped his incomparable sound, are reclaimed, giving us a panoramic of an American original who would come to define an entire era, yet only wanted what all men deserve—a modicum of respect and a place to watch the ships roll in and away again.

Dreams to Remember

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Gayl Jones

The life of black faith healer, Harlan Jane Eagleton as she travels from town to town, curing people. She describes her work and records her observations of human nature. By the author of Eva's Man.

The Healing

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Monica Tyran

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