Abdulrazak Gurnah

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

A Novel

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ” A NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS “Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away.” —New York Times From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa. When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back–until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.

Afterlives

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Sister Souljah

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A USA TODAY Bestseller Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read “50 Most Impactful Black Books Of The Last 50 Years” —Essence Renowned hip-hop artist, political activist, and bestselling author Sister Souljah brings the streets of New York to life in a powerful and utterly unforgettable first novel. I came busting into the world during one of New York's worst snowstorms, so my mother named me Winter. Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn't want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top. Featuring a Special Collector’s Edition Reader’s Guide—including an author Q&A, detailed character analyses, and the author’s own remarks about the meaning of her story.

The Coldest Winter Ever

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Sam Chaiton

Terry Swinton

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Freeing of Rubin Hurricane Carter

A true story in which an African-American teen tries to help Rubin "Hurricane" Carter receive a fair trial for the murder of three men in 1966.

Lazarus and the Hurricane

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E. Lynn Harris

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Reuniting for a weekend nearly a decade after their graduation from Howard University, four friends--and their spouses or significant others--play a game called "If This World Were Mine," a diversion that brings to light sexual tensions, dark secrets, failed dreams, and hidden animosities. 150,000 first printing. Tour.

If This World Were Mine

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Jacqueline Woodson

"When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world"--

Harbor Me

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Hill Harper

MANifest Your Destiny

Offering inspirational advice in a down-to-earth style, this unique compilation of letters provides wisdom, guidance, and heartfelt insight to help the reader chart their own path to success. Based on the author's motivational speaking at inner-city schools across the country, the letters deal with the tough issues that face young people today.

Bombarded with messages from music and the media, Harper set out to dispel the stereotypical image of success that young people receive today and instead emphasizes alternative views of what it truly means to be a successful male, such as educational and community achievements and self-respect. Intended to provide this frequently regarded "lost generation" of young men with words of encouragement and guidance, Harper's deep-rooted passion regarding the plight of today's youth drove him to write this book, sure to change the lives of readers for years to come.



Letters to a Young Brother

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Sanyika Shakur

The Autobiography of an L. A. Gang Member

One of L.A.'s most notorious gang leaders takes readers inside the world of gang wars, recounting his ascension through the gang hierarchy, surviving attacks by rival gangs, and life in prison.

Monster

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Ralph Ellison

Charles Johnson

"Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr., TIME
 
From the renowned author of the classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth is brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise. With a new introduction by National Book Award-winning author and scholar Charles R. Johnson.

Here is Ellison, the master of American vernacular--the preacher's hyperbole and the politician's rhetoric, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.
 
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying senator Adam Sunraider to the Reverend A. Z. Hickman, the itinerant Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. His history encompasses camp meetings where he became the risen Lazarus to inspire the faithful; the more ordinary joys of Southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker; lovemaking with a young woman in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals?

Juneteenth (Revised)

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Dick Gregory

Reading Between the Lies

Dick Gregory has been an unsparing and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years: a friend of such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, Gregory is an unrelenting, lifelong activist against social injustice, whether he was marching in Selma during the Civil Rights movement or organizing student demonstrations to protest the Vietnam War, participating in rallies for Native American and feminist rights or fighting apartheid in South Africa.

Known as much for his comedic achievements--as an actor, author, and social critic--as for his activism, Gregory is the forebearer of today's new generation of black comics, including W. Kamu Bell and Trevor Noah. But Gregory has always kept it indisputably real when discussing race in America, fearlessly lacing laughter with controversial truths in a manner that is inimitable his own.

Now, in Defining Moments in Black History, Gregory charts the empowering yet often obscured past of the African American experience. In his unapologetically candid voice, he moves from African ancestry and surviving the middle passage to modern-day protests, A captivating journey through time, this collection of provocative essays explores historical movements such as the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, as well as cultural touchstones, among them Marian Anderson's performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and Billie Holiday's haunting delivery of "Strange Fruit."

Here is an essential, unique, no-holds-barred history lesson, sure to provoke, enlighten, uplift, and entertain--from one our greatest legends.

Defining Moments in Black History

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Arthur Golden

The "memoirs" of one of Japan's most celebrated geishas describes how, in 1929, as a little girl, she is sold into slavery, her efforts to learn the arts of the geisha, the impact of World War II, and her struggle to reinvent herself to win the man she loves. Reissue. (A Columbia Pictures film, directed by Rob Marshall, releasing Winter 2005, starring Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Koji Yakusho, & Gong Li) (Historical Fiction)

Memoirs of a Geisha

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Margo Jefferson

A Memoir

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * An extraordinary look at privilege, discrimination, and the fallacy of post-racial America by the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic

Jefferson takes us into an insular and discerning society: "I call it Negroland," she writes, "because I still find 'Negro' a word of wonders, glorious and terrible."
 
Margo Jefferson was born in 1947 into upper-crust black Chicago. Her father was head of pediatrics at Provident Hospital, while her mother was a socialite. Negroland's pedigree dates back generations, having originated with antebellum free blacks who made their fortunes among the plantations of the South.
 
It evolved into a world of exclusive sororities, fraternities, networks, and clubs--a world in which skin color and hair texture were relentlessly evaluated alongside scholarly and professional achievements, where the Talented Tenth positioned themselves as a third race between whites and "the masses of Negros," and where the motto was "Achievement. Invulnerability. Comportment."
 
Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions, while reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments--the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the falsehood of post-racial America.

Negroland

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Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

A piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and black in America.

Friday Black

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Hubert Selby

Darren Aronofsky

Richard Price

Over twenty years after its first publication in 1978, Requiem for a Dream makes it to the big screen in a major motion picture starring Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Jared Leto, and Christopher McDonald. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the highly acclaimed director of Pi, the movie was released in November 2000. In this searing novel, two young hoods, Harry and Tyrone, and a girlfriend fantasize about scoring a pound of uncut heroin and getting rich. But their habit gets the better of them, consumes them and destroys their dreams. "Selby's place is in the front rank of American novelists. His work has the power, the intimacy with suffering and morality, the honesty and moral urgency of Dostoevsky's....To understand Selby's work is to understand the anguish of America." -- The New York Times Book Review

Requiem for a Dream

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Chinua Achebe

A searing satire of political corruption and social injustice from the celebrated author of Things Fall Apart

In the fictional West African nation of Kangan, newly independent of British rule, the hopes and dreams of democracy have been quashed by a fierce military dictatorship. Chris Oriko is a member of the president's cabinet for life, and one of the leader's oldest friends. When the president is charged with censoring the opportunistic editor of the state-run newspaper--another childhood friend--Chris's loyalty and ideology are put to the test. The fate of Kangan hangs in the balance as tensions rise and a devious plot is set in motion to silence a firebrand critic.

From Chinua Achebe, the legendary author of Things Fall Apart, Anthills of the Savannah is "A vision of social change that strikes us with the force of prophecy" (USA Today).


Anthills of the Savannah

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"My favorite novel." --Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"A magical writer--one of the greatest of the twentieth century." --Margaret Atwood
 
"African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe." --Toni Morrison                   

The second novel in Chinua Achebe's masterful African trilogy, following Things Fall Apart and preceding No Longer at Ease
 
When Things Fall Apart ends, colonial rule has been introduced to Umuofia, and the character of the nation, its values, freedoms, religious and socio-political foundations have substantially and irrevocably been altered. Arrow of God, the second novel in Chinua Achebe's The African Trilogy, moves the historical narrative forward. This time, the action revolves around Ezeulu, the headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, which is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. The novel is a meditation on the nature, uses, and responsibility of power and leadership. Ezeulu finds that his authority is increasingly under threat from rivals within his nation and functionaries of the newly established British colonial government. Yet he sees himself as untouchable. He is forced, with tragic consequences, to reconcile conflicting impulses in his own nature--a need to serve the protecting deity of his Umuaro people; a desire to retain control over their religious observances; and a need to gain increased personal power by pushing his authority to the limits. He ultimately fails as he leads his people to their own destruction, and consequently, his personal tragedy arises. Arrow of God is an unforgettable portrayal of the loss of faith, and the downfall of a man in a society forever altered by colonialism.

Arrow of God

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Angela Flournoy

A novel centered on the journey of the Turner family and its thirteen siblings, particularly the eldest and youngest, as they face the ghosts of their pasts both an actual haint and the specter of addiction the imminent loss of their mother, and the necessary abandonment of their family home in struggling Detroit"

The Turner House

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Kacen Callender

Logan Gray is the stereotypical bad boy of Hollywood--a talented but troubled actor who the public love to hate for his self-destructive behavior and overall bad reputation. Mattie Cole is an up-and-coming golden boy, adored by all. Handsome and wholesome, he secretly deals with issues of ingrained shame about his sexuality despite being out and playing a gay character in his breakout role. When Mattie is cast as the love interest in Logan's newest film, Logan calls him "untalented" in the press, and buzz for their romantic movie takes a nosedive. To restore positive publicity for the film, they're forced to act in their own private script--a fake-dating scheme to save Logan's job and the movie. As the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop. And while both need the movie to be a success for their own reasons, neither thought opposites would actually attract. But the publicity machine and old wounds may stand in the way of their own happily-ever-after.

Stars in Your Eyes

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Qian Julie Wang

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world--an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent * A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to "beautiful country." Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian's parents were professors; in America, her family is "illegal" and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.

In Chinatown, Qian's parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly "shopping days," when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn's streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center--confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

But then Qian's headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor's visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you've always lived here.

Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

Beautiful Country

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Frank H. Wu

Race in America Beyond Black and White

Writing in the tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois, Cornel West, and others who confronted the "color line" of the twentieth century, journalist, scholar, and activist Frank H. Wu offers a unique perspective on how changing ideas of racial identity will affect race relations in the twenty-first century. Wu examines affirmative action, globalization, immigration, and other controversial contemporary issues through the lens of the Asian-American experience. Mixing personal anecdotes, legal cases, and journalistic reporting, Wu confronts damaging Asian-American stereotypes such as "the model minority" and "the perpetual foreigner." By offering new ways of thinking about race in American society, Wu's work dares us to make good on our great democratic experiment.

Yellow

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Rebecca Walker

Autobiography of a Shifting Self

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol—and offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at once strikingly unique and truly universal.

Black White and Jewish

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Carol Anderson

The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

From the Civil War to our combustible present, and now with a new epilogue about the 2016 presidential election, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson reframes our continuing conversation about race. White Rage chronicles the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America. As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as "black rage," historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, "white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames," she writes, "everyone had ignored the kindling." Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House. Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

White Rage

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Matthew R. Kay

How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom

Do you feel prepared to initiate and facilitate meaningful, productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you looking for practical strategies to engage with your students? Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, "it is not light that is needed, but fire" Matthew Kay has spent his career learning how to lead students through the most difficult race conversations. Kay not only makes the case that high school classrooms are one of the best places to have those conversations, but he also offers a method for getting them right, providing candid guidance on: How to recognize the difference between meaningful and inconsequential race conversations. How to build conversational "safe spaces," not merely declare them. How to infuse race conversations with urgency and purpose. How to thrive in the face of unexpected challenges. How administrators might equip teachers to thoughtfully engage in these conversations. With the right blend of reflection and humility, Kay asserts, teachers can make school one of the best venues for young people to discuss race.

Not Light, but Fire

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Lorraine Hansberry

An African-American family is united in love and pride as they struggle to overcome poverty and harsh living conditions, in the award-winning 1959 play about an embattled Chicago family

A Raisin in the Sun

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Bernice L. McFadden

Having struggled throughout her life for an understanding of her identity, Sherry wonders at an uncharacteristic display of anger on the part of her mother and digs into her family's past throughout the course of a cross-country journey. By the author of Sugar. 15,000 first printing.

Browse by categories

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Afterlives

Sister Souljah

The Coldest Winter Ever

Sam Chaiton; Terry Swinton

Lazarus and the Hurricane

E. Lynn Harris

If This World Were Mine

Jacqueline Woodson

Harbor Me

Hill Harper

Letters to a Young Brother

Sanyika Shakur

Monster

Ralph Ellison; Charles Johnson

Juneteenth (Revised)

Dick Gregory

Defining Moments in Black History

Arthur Golden

Memoirs of a Geisha

Margo Jefferson

Negroland

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Friday Black

Hubert Selby; Darren Aronofsky; Richard Price; Hubert Selby

Requiem for a Dream

Chinua Achebe

Anthills of the Savannah

Chinua Achebe

Arrow of God

Angela Flournoy

The Turner House

Kacen Callender

Stars in Your Eyes

Qian Julie Wang

Beautiful Country

Frank H. Wu

Yellow

Rebecca Walker

Black White and Jewish

Carol Anderson

White Rage

Matthew R. Kay

Not Light, but Fire

Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun

Bernice L. McFadden

Nowhere Is a Place

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