A midwife by trade, Madame Loretta has a secret surrogacy business specializing in selling fair complexion babies to an elite clientele, but when one of her gurls delivers an albino chold into laye 1800s rural Louisiana's very superstitious and colorist soci, everything Madame Lorettas  has built may come crashing down. 

With themes of colorism, racism, religious syncretism, and the relationship between parent and child, Madame Loretta's Girls is mysterious, dark, and intriguing.  

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

North Carolina

Madame Loretta's Girls

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Like new condition.   Hard cover with jacket. No highlighting or dog eared pages.  Only defect pen written name on inside cover. 

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

A family saga focuses on matriarch Mama Flora, an African American woman whose husband dies at the hand of white landowners

Mama Flora's Family

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No highlights.  No bent or dog eared pages.  

How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics

From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. 

"Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." --The Boston Globe

With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan's story into an audacious exploration of Christianity's shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.

The Origin of Satan

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#hardcover #history #womenshistory #christianhistory #war 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

During the tumultuous Hundred Years' War between England and France, a teenage peasant girl followed her heart and helped save a nation. A vision from God, received in her parents' garden, instructed her to take up arms and help restore the kingdom of France. Without consulting her family, Joan left home on one of the most remarkable personal quests in history. As a young girl in a world of men, she faced unimaginable odds, yet her belief in her mission propelled her forward. Within months Joan was directing soldiers and bravely fighting for her nation. Before long she had become a national hero and was the guest of honor at her king's coronation. Yet fame ultimately became her undoing. The English shrewdly realized that Joan's demise and defamation would disgrace France and provide a more direct route to victory. Captured in war, Joan became a pawn in one of the longest and bloodiest wars in history.

Since her death at the age of nineteen in 1431, Joan of Arc has maintained a remarkable hold on our collective imagination. She was a teenager of astonishing common sense and a national heroine who led men in battle as a courageous warrior. Yet she was also abandoned by the king whose coronation she secured, betrayed by her countrymen, and sold to the enemy. In this meticulously researched landmark biography, Donald Spoto expertly captures this astonishing life and the times in which she lived. Neither wife nor nun, neither queen nor noblewoman, neither philosopher nor stateswoman, Joan of Arc demonstrates that anyone who follows their heart has the power to change history.

Joan

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A Novel





India, 1986: Mukta, a ten-year-old village girl from the lower caste Yellama cult has come of age and must fulfill her destiny of becoming a temple prostitute, as her mother and grandmother did before her. In an attempt to escape her fate, Mukta is sent to be a house girl for an upper-middle class family in Mumbai. There she discovers a friend in the daughter of the family, high spirited eight-year-old Tara, who helps her recover from the wounds of her past. Tara introduces Mukta to an entirely different world--one of ice cream, reading, and a friendship that soon becomes a sisterhood.

But one night in 1993, Mukta is kidnapped from Tara's family home and disappears. Shortly thereafter, Tara and her father move to America. A new life in Los Angeles awaits them but Tara never recovers from the loss of her best friend, or stops wondering if she was somehow responsible for Mukta's abduction.

Eleven years later, Tara, now an adult, returns to India determined to find Mukta. As her search takes her into the brutal underground world of human trafficking, Tara begins to uncover long-buried secrets in her own family that might explain what happened to Mukta--and why she came to live with Tara's family in the first place.

Moving from a traditional Indian village to the bustling modern metropolis of Mumbai, to Los Angeles and back again, this is a heartbreaking and beautiful portrait of an unlikely friendship--a story of love, betrayal, and, ultimately, redemption.

The Color of Our Sky

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#paperback #autobiography #blackhistorymonth #nonfiction 

The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

“Heartbreaking and uplifting… a searing book about race and prejudice in America… brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit.”—Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents’ marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black. In this extraordinary and powerful memoir, Williams recounts his remarkable journey along the color line and illuminates the contrasts between the black and white worlds: one of privilege, opportunity and comfort, the other of deprivation, repression, and struggle. He tells of the hostility and prejudice he encountered all too often, from both blacks and whites, and the surprising moments of encouragement and acceptance he found from each. Life on the Color Line is a uniquely important book. It is a wonderfully inspiring testament of purpose, perseverance, and human triumph. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Life on the Color Line

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#hardcover #nonfiction #memoir #biography #personalgrowth #selfhelp #blackwomen #blackauthor #blackhistorymonth 

How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person

The creator of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal" details the one-year experiment with saying "yes" that transformed her life, revealing how accepting unexpected invitations she would have otherwise declined enabled powerful benefits.

Year of Yes

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#paperback #blackhistorymonth #blackwomen 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Meridian is a poignant and powerful story of the American South in the 1960s and of one woman who risks her life for the people she loves. Meridian Hill, a courageous young activist, creates peace and understanding by dedicating herself heart and soul to her civil rights work, touching the lives of all those she meets even when her health begins to deteriorate. With the old rules of Southern society collapsing around her, Meridian fights a lonely battle to reaffirm her own humanity, and that of all her people.

Meridian

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Wrinkles around bottom edge. #paperback #blackhistorymonth #intersectionality #feminism 

Black Women Bare All about Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips, and Other Parts

Candid, witty and insightful, Naked is a compelling collection of essays that captures what today's black women think about their bodies - from head to toe. Tackling such issues as hair texture, skin colour, weight and sexuality, it follows women on their paths to acceptance - and enjoyment - of features unique to themselves to a place where it doesn't matter how big the breasts or how long the legs, only what is in their hearts. Includes contributions from Kelis, Iyanla Vanzant, Jill Nelson, ash bindle and Melissa Ford.

Naked

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#blackhistorymonth #blackwomen #skincolorpolitics #culture#paperback 

Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Post-Racial America

In the United States, as in many parts of the world, people are discriminated against based on the color of their skin. This type of skin tone bias, or colorism, is both related to and distinct from discrimination on the basis of race, with which it is often conflated. Preferential treatment of lighter skin tones over darker occurs within racial and ethnic groups as well as between them. While America has made progress in issues of race over the past decades, discrimination on the basis of color continues to be a constant and often unremarked part of life.

In Color Matters, Kimberly Jade Norwood has collected the most up-to-date research on this insidious form of discrimination, including perspectives from the disciplines of history, law, sociology, and psychology. Anchored with historical chapters that show how the influence and legacy of slavery have shaped the treatment of skin color in American society, the contributors to this volume bring to light the ways in which colorism affects us all--influencing what we wear, who we see on television, and even which child we might pick to adopt. Sure to be an eye-opening collection for anyone curious about how race and color continue to affect society, Color Matters provides students of race in America with wide-ranging overview of a crucial topic.

Color Matters

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After a parrot makes fun of Sooki's big ears, long nose, and wrinkled skin, the "saggy baggy" elephant isn't too sure of himself. But once he meets some beautiful creatures who look just like him, Sooki celebrates with a joyful "one-two-three-kick." For over 50 years, parents and children have treasured this tale, with gorgeous art by Gustaf Tenggren, the illustrator ofThe Poky Little Puppy.

The Saggy Baggy Elephant

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#blackhistorymonth #feminism #blackwomen 

Alice Walker

Alice Walker's early story, "Everyday Use," has remained a cornerstone of her work. Her use of quilting as a metaphor for the creative legacy that African Americans inherited from their maternal ancestors changed the way we define art, women's culture, and African American lives. By putting African American women's voices at the center of the narrative for the first time, "Everyday Use" anticipated the focus of an entire generation of black women writers.

This casebook includes an introduction by the editor, a chronology of Walker's life, an authoritative text of "Everyday Use" and of "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," an interview with Walker, six critical essays, and a bibliography. The contributors are Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Thadious M. Davis, Margot Anne Kelley, John O'Brien, Elaine Showalter, and Mary Helen Washington.


Everyday Use

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#paperback #historical #fiction #blackhistorymonth 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Novellas

"A formidable and lasting contribution to American literature." --Chicago Tribune

Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. The author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, most notably the acclaimed novel Native Son and his stunning autobiography, Black Boy, Wright stands today as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.

Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."

Uncle Tom's Children

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#paperback #blackhistorymonth #blackhistory #africa #folklore

This collection illuminates the unbroken chain of the black oral tradition which is alive in America. The Youngs, who are storytellers and teachers, have assembled an anthology that bears out both the richness and variety of a cultural heritage that has crossed the Atlantic, survived the ignominy of slavery, and triumphed over the ignorance of racism and bigotry. In his introduction, Dr. Rex Ellis underscores the multicultural opportunity this collection offers: They are stories that continue to ....

African-American Folktales

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#paperback #blackhistorymonth #classic #play

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play

It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster crows. Screen doors slam. The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card game rises just above the wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the sound of the blues, played and sung by young men and women with little more than a guitar in their hands and a dream in their hearts.

August Wilson's Seven Guitars is the sixth chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that explores the hope, heartbreak, and heritage of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The story follows a small group of friends who gather following the untimely death of Floyd "Schoolboy" Barton, a local blues guitarist on the edge of stardom. Together, they reminisce about his short life and discover the unspoken passions and undying spirit that live within each of them.

Seven Guitars

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2-3 writing underlines.  #paperback #colorism #colorcomplex #culture #blackhistorymonth 

Why Skin Color Matters

Shades of Difference addresses the widespread but little studied phenomenon of colorism--the preference for lighter skin and the ranking of individual worth according to skin tone. Examining the social and cultural significance of skin color in a broad range of societies and historical periods, this insightful collection looks at how skin color affects people's opportunities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America. Is skin color bias distinct from racial bias? How does skin color preference relate to gender, given the association of lightness with desirability and beauty in women? The authors of this volume explore these and other questions as they take a closer look at the role Western-dominated culture and media have played in disseminating the ideal of light skin globally. With its comparative, international focus, this enlightening book will provide innovative insights and expand the dialogue around race and gender in the social sciences, ethnic studies, African American studies, and gender and women's studies.

Shades of Difference

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#paperback #feminism #blackwomen #blackhistorymonth #intersectionality #graduatereading some writing and yellow pages

The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

“History at its best--clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject”--Toni Morrison

Acclaimed by writers Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou, Paula Giddings's When and Where I Enter is not only an eloquent testament to the unsung contributions of individual women to our nation, but to the collective activism which elevated the race and women's movements that define our times. From Ida B. Wells to the first black Presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm; from the anti-lynching movement to the struggle for suffrage and equal protection under the law; Giddings tells the stories of black women who transcended the dual discrimination of race and gender--and whose legacy inspires our own generation. Forty years after the passing of the Voting Rights Act, when phrases like “affirmative action” and “wrongful imprisonment” are rallying cries, Giddings words resonate now more than ever.

When and Where I Enter

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No writing/highlights.   Pages starting to yellow. #paperback #blackhistory #music #blackculture 

Games, Plays, Songs and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage

Growing up in the rural South, Bessie Jones sang her way through long hours of field work and child tending, entertaining her young companions with chants and riddles or joining them for a rousing evening of ring dances and singing plays. These songs and games, recorded in Step It Down by folklorist Bess Lomax Hawes, capture the shape and color of the crowded, impoverished, life-demanding, and life-loving days of the black family of sixty years ago, revealing the strength and vitality of African and slave traditions in black American life.

The power of music and motion to transform a world of scarcity and hardship into one of laughter and joy echoes throughout Bessie Jones's words:

"And the other childrens and I would go in the bottom and have a frolic, instead of going to bed. I was just up for that singing, and I remembered they used to say . . . 'Come on, Lizzie!' and we'd go down a way and we'd have a dance. Oh it was pretty. . . . You know, it was just as good as the blues-better, better in a way. When the old folks would go to work or go off or something, we'd put on them long dresses and, boy, we'd have a time."

Step It Down weaves together the lyrics, music, and description of traditional Afro-American children's songs as well as Jones's comments on their meaning and "feel." Whether reciting "Tom, Tom, Greedy Gut" or demonstrating the more complex steps of "Ranky Tank" and "Buzzard's Lope," Bessie Jones always viewed the amusements of the young as preparation for adult roles and relationships, and as a teacher, she developed her own philosophy of how a black child is socialized into the larger community. Grounded in the values of black society, her songs taught children about cooperative interaction and mutual concern, not about competition and individual achievement, showing them how to create fun out of nothing more than their hands, feet, voices, and imaginations.

Step It Down

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Yellowing pages, may have light highlights. #paperback #blackwomen #africanamericannonfiction 


Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America

A history of the culture and politics behind the ever-changing state of black hair - from 15th century Africa to present-day US - this fascinating book is an entertaining look at the intersection of the personal, political and popular aspects of hair styles, tracing a unique aspect of black American history. An entertaining and concise survey... A book that successfully balances popular appeal with historical accuracy' - Publishers Weekly 'Impressive work of cultural history' - Book Page 'Comprehensive and colourful' - Essence'

Hair Story

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#paperback #animals #animallover #adogspurpose 

A Novel for Humans

Searching for his purpose over the course of multiple canine lives, Bailey is reborn as a golden-haired puppy after a tragic death as a stray and shares a loving bond with young Ethan before he again dies and starts over.

A Dog's Purpose

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One Crazy Summer

Tape on spine. Inside pages are perfect. No writing or highlighting.#paperback #paperback #college #highschool #writer

Philosophy

This succinct introduction to modern theories of literature and the arts demonstrates how each theory is built and what it can accomplish.

 * Represents a wide variety of theories, including phenomenological theory, hermeneutical theory, gestalt theory, reception theory, semiotic theory, Marxist theory, deconstruction, anthropological theory, and feminist theory.
   
 * Uses classic literary texts, such as Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, Spenser's The Shephearde's Calender and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to illustrate his explanations.
   
 * Includes key statements by the major proponents of each theory.
   
 * Presents the different theories objectively, allowing students to decide which if any, they subscribe to.
   
 * Gives students a sense of the potential of theory.
   
 * Includes a glossary of technical terms.

How to Do Theory

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#hardcover #fiction #internationalbestseller #basedontruestory #Germany1943 #WWII 

At the Wolf's Table is the internationally bestselling novel based on the untold true story of the women conscripted to be Hitler’s food tasters, from author Rosella Postorino. "They called it the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf’s Lair. 'Wolf' was his nickname. As hapless as Little Red Riding Hood, I had ended up in his belly. A legion of hunters was out looking for him, and to get him in their grips they would gladly slay me as well." Germany, 1943: Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Sauer’s parents are gone, and her husband Gregor is far away, fighting on the front lines of WWII. Impoverished and alone, she makes the fateful decision to leave war-torn Berlin to live with her in-laws in the countryside, thinking she’ll find refuge there. But one morning, the SS come to tell her she has been conscripted to be one of Hitler’s tasters: twice a day, she and nine other women go to his secret headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, to eat his meals before he does. Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, and the women like Rosa who insist they aren’t Nazis, even as they risk their lives every day for Hitler’s. As secrets and resentments grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic climax. What’s more, one of Rosa’s SS guards has become dangerously familiar, and the war is worsening outside. As the months pass, it becomes increasingly clear that Rosa and everyone she knows are on the wrong side of history.

At the Wolf's Table

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A Guide for GLBT Singles, Couples, and Families

Presents a guide to gay and lesbian legal rights, offering information onuch topics as medical benefits, social security benefits, domesticartnerships, child custody, and financial transactions.

Browse by categories

Ashay Mozee

Madame Loretta's Girls

Alex Haley; David Stevens

Mama Flora's Family

Elaine Pagels

The Origin of Satan

Donald Spoto

Joan

Amita Trasi

The Color of Our Sky

Gregory Howard Williams

Life on the Color Line

Shonda Rhimes

Year of Yes

Alice Walker

Meridian

Akiba Solomon (Editor); Ayana Byrd (Editor); Sonia Sanchez (Foreword by)

Naked

Kimberly Jade Norwood (Editor)

Color Matters

Kathryn Jackson

The Saggy Baggy Elephant

Barbara T. Christian (Editor)

Everyday Use

Richard Wright

Uncle Tom's Children

Richard Young; Judy D. Young

African-American Folktales

August Wilson

Seven Guitars

Evelyn Nakano Glenn (Editor)

Shades of Difference

Paula J. Giddings

When and Where I Enter

Bessie Jones; Bess Lomax Hawes

Step It Down

Ayana D. Byrd; Lori L. Tharps

Hair Story

W. Bruce Cameron

A Dog's Purpose

Rita Williams-Garcia

One Crazy Summer

Wolfgang Iser

How to Do Theory

Rosella Postorino; Leah Janeczko (Translator)

At the Wolf's Table

Brette McWhorter Sember

Gay and Lesbian Rights

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