Showing titles in African American

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition.

When Lizzie McDuffie, maid to Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, boldly proclaimed herself FDR’s “Secretary-On-Colored-People’s-Affairs,” she became more than just a maid—she became the President’s eyes and ears into the Black community. After joining the White House to work alongside her husband, FDR’s personal valet, Lizzie managed to become completely indispensable to the Roosevelt family. Never shy about pointing out injustices, she advocated for the needs and rights of her fellow African Americans when those in the White House blocked access to the President.

With richly imagined, relatable characters, Kingdom of No Tomorrow tells a story of Black love, self-determination, and the importance of revolution in the midst of injustice.

In the small college town of Troy, Alabama, amidst the backdrop of 1967, Katia Daniels lives a life steeped in responsibility. At the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, she pours her heart into nurturing the young lives under her care, harboring a longing for children of her own. Katia's romantic entanglement with an older man brings comfort but also stirs questions about the path she's chosen. The weight of her family's history bears down on her; a twin brother is missing in action in the heart of the Vietnam War.

Brilliant and uncompromising, piercing and funny, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is essential listening. This new edition of award-winning author Kiese Laymon’s first work of nonfiction looks inward, drawing heavily on the author and his family’s experiences, while simultaneously examining the world—Mississippi, the South, the United States—that has shaped their lives. With subjects that range from an interview with his mother to reflections on Ole Miss football, Outkast, and the labor of Black women, these insightful essays highlight Laymon’s profound love of language.

Osira was born and raised in the insular, suffocating town of Curdle Creek. Stuck in time and entrenched in elusive traditions, Curdle Creek has one particularly strict policy: one in, one out - and one day, it is Osira's turn. Forced into the great unknown, the sinister reality of her birthplace unravels around her. As she comes face-to-face with those she believed were lost, Osira must reckon with all she has ever been told and confront the insidious cruelties of inheritance.

After suffering a horrifying, yet soul stirring death experience, worldwide top bitch Winter Santiaga, of The Coldest Winter Ever, is alive and facing a dilemma that every living person faces: how to respond to the Fear of God, awareness of heaven and hell, while pursuing and satisfying deep desires for sex, fun, love, money, revenge, and fame. In her new novel, Love After Midnight, Sister Souljah delivers a powerful hip-hop hood style, global romantic comedy.

Be Holding is a love song to legendary basketball player Julius Erving—known as Dr. J—who dominated courts in the 1970s and ‘80s as a small forward for the Philadelphia ‘76ers. But this book-length poem is more than just an ode to a magnificent athlete. Through a kind of lyric research, or lyric meditation, Ross Gay connects Dr. J’s famously impossible move from the 1980 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers to pick-up basketball and the flying Igbo and the Middle Passage, to photography and surveillance and state violence, to music and personal histories of flight and familial love.

Bee Tyler needs a break. In the bustling San Francisco tech community, no one ever seems to stand still—especially her perfect sister and business partner, Beth. So when her best friend suggests a getaway on the wildly popular house-swap app, Vacate, Bee decides a countryside retreat might be exactly what she needs.

These piercing, surprising poems look to familial history, rituals of faith, and the natural world to explore how the intersecting cultures of Blackness and queerness relate to each other. As the collection evolves, the listener is challenged and empowered to seek expansiveness in spaces that have not previously been excavated, reckon with the complexities of interpersonal relationships, and explore memory as a catalyst for self-determination.

Told from the perspectives of statesman and orator Frederick Douglass, and journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, Before 13th is a story that illuminates the contradictions of freedom. Friends and rivals, Douglass and Wells clashed over how to grapple with the racism and exoticism that defined portrayals of African Americans at the 1896 Chicago World’s Fair, where Douglass was invited to speak after they had initially agreed to boycott the event. It uses the story of this real-life conflict as a lens through which we see the history of slavery and incarceration as never before.

From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Scrimmage (Book #3) and be prepared to get deeply captivated in this romantic story.

Being a firefighter isn’t easy. Especially for a Black woman. Working with family helps a little. But when somebody from your company doesn’t come back from a call, it’s brutal—as in, “How’m I supposed to go on?” brutal. And one death took me to a really dark place. A year later, I’m at the Pirates’ hockey training facility. Just another day on the job. Until I find a charred journal. I look inside for the owner’s name, but the words on the page punch me in the gut. It’s like reading my own thoughts. Reliving my own pain.

On a rainy day in May 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis begins to search for the sixty-five acres of land she inherited from her father’s family. The quest leads her to uncover a dark secret: In every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes—and is mysteriously whisked back in time. With only a family Bible and a map marked with the locations of mysterious containers to aid her, Cecily heads to the library, hoping to discover the truth of how this curse began, and how it might be ended.

Broken, disillusioned, shattered. This wasn’t the life they dreamed of, the promises they were given when they said I do. India, Kierre, and LaTavia aren’t looking through those rose colored glasses anymore. Lives in shambles, marriages barely existing even on life support, the best friends gather the wagons trying to navigate where they all go from here.

Parish “Pain” Wells is a man freshly reintroduced to society, after serving time in state prison. Prior to his fall, Pain had been a heist man who showed the promise of someone who could go on to be a legend. His trajectory changed on the night he had made the mistake of accepting a ride from a friend, and found himself behind bars for the one crime he hadn’t committed. Several years later, Pain returns home to a world that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. The only one who still remains in his corner is his ailing grandmother.

Veycosi, in training as a griot (an historian and musician), hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Chynchin’s Colloquium of scholars. However, unexpected events prevent that from happening. Fifteen Ymisen galleons arrive in the harbor to force a trade agreement on Chynchin. Veycosi tries to help, hoping to prove himself with a bold move, but quickly finds himself in way over his head.

Operated by the same family for more than a century, Midnight Blues may be fun for the locals and the tourists, but as of late, the club hasn't been fun for its owner, Big Shirley Duncan, or her son Tyrese, descendants of the original proprietors. The pair finds themselves in the middle of a turf war between local politicians, developers, and a ruthless underworld boss, Jean LeBlanc, who is looking to make a name for himself. Afraid for the first time in her life that her family may lose control of The Blues, Big Shirley sends Tyrese to New York to see her brother-in-law, LC Duncan.

A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads. It buzzed so low she thought she could catch it in her hands. Bessie was fearless. She knew there was freedom in those wings.