Lalita Tademy

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Texas

Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

Cane River

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Kathryn Stockett

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Georgia

Limited and persecuted by racial divides in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, three women, including an African-American maid, her sassy and chronically unemployed friend and a recently graduated white woman, team up for a clandestine project against a backdrop of the budding civil rights era. Reprint. A #1 best-selling novel. 2 million first printing.

The Help

62974ce7-2729-4520-8110-0eb02fefbd7c-1

Ann Petry

Tayari Jones

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

Explores the life and dreams of a young woman who struggles to raise her son in a suffocating ghetto world of racism, human degradation, and uncontrolled violence

The Street

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Brit Bennett

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

District of Columbia

A Novel

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

The Vanishing Half

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#hardcover #firstedition #africanamericanwomen 

Illinois

Bigmama didn't shop at Woolworth's. It wasn't because Woolworth's charged more for things than the hawker who drove through the neighborhood; it was because black shoppers were not welcome in stores on the Main Streets of towns like Bryan, Texas.

Bigmama was Sunny Nash's grandmother, and when Sunny was growing up in the 1950s, she learned from her elders what life was and should be. Through her own young eyes, she saw not only the indignities and economic hardships her family and friends suffered--unpaved roads, mosquito-infested ditches and outdoor toilets, back stairs to balcony seating in the movies--but also the love and warmth of everyday life in Candy Hill, a segregated neighborhood.

In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, but with the power of real-life perspective, Sunny Nash tells her pre-civil rights story with immediacy and poignancy. For those familiar with the restrictions of the segregated South, Nash also shares the secret of surviving with spirit intact: the ordinary and special moments of her family, friends, and herself in Candy Hill; how they tolerated and overcame prejudices; how they dealt with daily obstacles in earning a living, receiving an education, voting, and purchasing property; and what they learned from one another.

In this valuable contribution to Texas and its racial history, Nash fills the book with powerful vignettes that provide insight into this time of segregation and change.

Bigmama Didn't Shop Woolworth's

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Five Women in Black Music

"The blues - what is it, or what are they? Singular or plural - a way to sing or the way you feel? Big Star Fallin' Mama tells what the blues is about, in an extraordinary narrative of five black women and black music." "With grace and style, Hettie Jones explores the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin. Each of these gifted singers made a unique contribution to the blues, and to the world." "This revised edition features new material which covers musical trends and performers relevant to today's culture, such as the rap and hip-hop movements and the pop singer Whitney Houston. It includes over thirty photographs and a foreword by the music critic Nelson George, as well as an updated bibliography, discography, and index."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Big Star Fallin' Mama

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#hardcover #africanamericanwomen #biography 

A Sisterfriends' Tribute in Words and Pictures

Forty African American women reflect on the life and accomplishments of Betty Shabazz, who raised her six children and carried on the work of her husband, Malcolm X, after his assassination.

Betty Shabazz

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#hardcover #firstedition #africanamericanwomen #novel 

Alice Andrews, a reporter in Newark, falls in love with handsome, Harvard-educated surgeon Jack Russworm, but class differences--especially his upper-crust African-American background--threaten their romance. A first novel. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Good Hair

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Fiction, Essays and Conversations

On December 9, 1995, Toni Cade Bambara died at the age of fifty-six, a profound loss to American culture. In its obituary the New York Times called her a major contributor to the emerging genre of black women's literature, along with the writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. The author of many acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, among them three pioneering and timeless volumes: Gorilla, My Love and The Seabirds Are Still Alive, both collections of stories, and The Salt Eaters, a novel, Bambara had not published a new book in the fourteen years prior to her death. She developed during that time a keen interest in film - as a scriptwriter, filmmaker, critic, and teacher - and collaborated on several television documentaries, including The Bombing of Osage Avenue, about the police assault on the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia, and on the W. E. B. Du Bois Film Project. Bambara also helped to launch the careers of many other black women filmmakers. Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions is a brilliant distillation of Bambara's original sensibility and a confirmation of her status as one of America's great post-World War II writers. Here is a rich selection of her writings, many of which have never before appeared in print: stories (Madame Bai and the Taking of Stone Mountain, Ice, Luther on Sweet Auburn), essays (Language and the Writer, The Education of a Storyteller), film criticism (School Daze), and a revealing interview.

Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions

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California

West Virginia

One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned, fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and affecting today as when it was first published -- perhaps the most widely read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American literature.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Michele Harper

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

A Memoir

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book “Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring.” —The New York Times Book Review “An incredibly moving memoir about what it means to be a doctor.” —Ellen Pompeo As seen/heard on Fresh Air, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Weekend Edition, and more An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn’t move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process. The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper’s journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky: How to tell the truth when it’s simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn’t the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

The Beauty in Breaking

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#paperback #historicalfiction #fiction #africanamericanwomen #booktomovieadaptation #historical #kathrynstockett #thehelp 

#paperback #africanamericanwomen #thehelp #historicalfiction #fiction #classic #novel 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Nebraska

#paperback #fiction #bernardineevaristo #africanamericans #africanamericanwomen #british #contemporary #literary 

Florida

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity among an interconnected group of Black British women

Girl, Woman, Other

02087b65-a7bd-4646-9e89-25568f11bc84-1

Gabby Rivera

Juliet Milagros Palante is a self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke from the Bronx. Only, she’s not so closeted anymore. Not after coming out to her family the night before flying to Portland, Oregon, to intern with her favorite feminist writer–what’s sure to be a life-changing experience. And when Juliet’s coming out crashes and burns, she’s not sure her mom will ever speak to her again.

But Juliet has a plan–sort of. Her internship with legendary author Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff, is sure to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian” thing. Except Harlowe’s white. And not from the Bronx. And she definitely doesn’t have all the answers . . .

In a summer bursting with queer brown dance parties, a sexy fling with a motorcycling librarian, and intense explorations of race and identity, Juliet learns what it means to come out–to the world, to her family, to herself.

"Juliet, a self-identified queer, Bronx-born Puerto Rican-American, comes out to her family to disastrous results the night before flying to Portland to intern with her feminist author icon--whom Juliet soon realizes has a problematic definition of feminism that excludes women of color"--

Juliet Takes a Breath

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#paperback #fiction #zorahurston #classic #africanamericanwomen #zoranealehurston ##africanamericans ##africanamericans 

Connecticut

Candice Carty-Williams

ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT! “[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” —Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. With “fresh and honest” (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.

Queenie

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Zakiya Dalila Harris

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Good Morning America, Esquire, and Read with Marie Claire Book Club Pick and a People Best Book of Summer Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Time, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, Bustle, BuzzFeed, Parade, Goodreads, Fortune, and BBC ​​Urgent, propulsive, and sharp as a knife, The Other Black Girl is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.

The Other Black Girl

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#hardcover #fiction #bookofthemonth #family #historicalfiction #thevanishinghalf #africanamericanwomen #botm 

New Hampshire

#paperback #africanamericanwomen #poetry 

Poetry by Black American Women, 1746-1980

This chronologically arranged anthology covers black women poets from Wheatley to Giovanni.

Black Sister

6b8adacb-60f6-47b2-a7c7-ac29d5d2bacc-1

Yaa Gyasi

Indiana

A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

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Lalita Tademy

Cane River

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Ann Petry; Tayari Jones

The Street

Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half

S. Nash

Bigmama Didn't Shop Woolworth's

Hettie Jones; Nelson George (Foreword by)

Big Star Fallin' Mama

Jamie Foster Brown

Betty Shabazz

Benilde Little

Good Hair

Toni Cade Bambara; Toni Morrison (Editor, Preface by)

Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions

Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Michele Harper

The Beauty in Breaking

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other

Gabby Rivera

Juliet Takes a Breath

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie

Kathryn Stockett

The Help

Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Other Black Girl

Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half

Erlene Stetson (Editor)

Black Sister

Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom