Showing titles in Black & African American

An insightful portrait of Muhammad Ali from the New York Times bestselling author of At the Altar of Speed and The Big Bam. It centers on the cultural and political implications of Ali's refusal of service in the military—and the key moments in a life that was as high profile and...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives...

A Black woman’s guide to authentic happiness, healing, and radical transformation “If you asked my grandmother what self-care was,” says Chianti Lomax, “I’m pretty sure her response would be: ‘Self-care? That’s for rich white women!’” Our mothers and grandmothers were too busy...

During the three decades before the American Civil War, Southern slaveholders tried to end the anti-slavery movement. They exerted their influence by censoring the press and the mail, attacking and killing abolitionists, burning buildings, drafting frightening new laws and repealing others, and terrorizing and abducting Northern free Blacks. Northerners began to realize that the Slave Power would not rest until slavery was allowed to plant itself all over the nation; many stopped compromising and pushed back.

Like two intrepid leftist sleuths, Herb Boyd and Don Rojas take a deep dive into the files of the CIA, mainly inspired by Malcolm X's belief that he was under surveillance. They unearth and disclose enough evidence to confirm Malcolm's suspicion as well as to suggest, through circumstantial...

In this startling group memoir, four friends - Black and White, gay and straight, immigrant and American-born - use Toni Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty. Tackling everything from first love and Soul Train to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors take up what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance.

In this provocative and captivating dialogue, bell hooks and Cornel West come together to discuss the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. The two friends and comrades in struggle talk, argue, and disagree about everything from community to capitalism in a series of intimate conversations that range from playful to probing to revelatory. In evoking the act of breaking bread, the book calls upon the various traditions of sharing that take place in domestic, secular, and sacred life.

Acclaimed New Yorker contributor Lauren Michele Jackson delivers an essay collection devoted to the back—and the conflicting ideas we load upon it. Moving across literature, film, sport, visual art, and U.S. history, Jackson probes how the back carries powerful ideas about beauty, gender...

In 1921, Tulsa’s Greenwood District - known then as the nation’s “Black Wall Street” - was one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, a white mob, inflamed by rumors that a young black man had attempted to rape a white teenage girl, invaded Greenwood. By the end of the following day, thousands of homes and businesses lay in ashes, and perhaps, as many as 300 people were dead.

Black women have higher rates of premature birth than other women in America. This cannot be simply explained by economic factors, with poorer women lacking resources or access to care. Even professional, middle-class Black women are at a much higher risk of premature birth than low-income White women in the United States. Dána-Ain Davis looks into this phenomenon, placing racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas which developed during the era of slavery.

Power from the Podium: The Story of Black Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos, is a wonderfully written story of two Olympic icons whose silent Black Power protest at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico reverberated worldwide. From the awards podium during the playing of the American National Anthem, Tommie and John, heads bowed with their black-gloved fists raised in the Black Power symbol, signified one of the most powerful protests in sports history that called attention to Black social justice and racial inequality.

The last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon disappear. They leave behind a collective memory of segregation shaped increasingly by its horrors and heroic defeat, but not a nuanced understanding of everyday life in Jim Crow America. In The South, Adolph L. Reed Jr.—New Orleanian, political scientist, and according to Cornel West, "the greatest democratic theorist of his generation"—takes up the urgent task of recounting the granular realities of life in the last decades of the Jim Crow South.

“Excellent . . . stunning.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates The devastating story of how fugitive slaves drove the nation to Civil War A New York Times Notable Book Selection * Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize* Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award * A New York Times Critics' Best Book For...

The page-turning and revelatory true story of America’s disastrous 1835 attack on the Seminoles in pre-statehood Florida, and the two men—a Black American and a renowned Indigenous warrior—who fought back for their homes and freedom, from the author of the “eye-opening marvel of a...

Focusing on disparities in employment, housing, education and health care, Wise argues that racism is indeed still an acute problem in the United States today and that colorblind policies actually worsen the problem of racial injustice. Colorblind presents a timely and provocative look at contemporary racism and offers fresh ideas on what can be done to achieve true social justice and economic equality.

In Black Trans Feminism Marquis Bey offers a meditation on blackness and gender nonnormativity in ways that recalibrate traditional understandings of each. Theorizing black trans feminism from the vantages of abolition and gender radicality, Bey articulates blackness as a mutiny against racializing categorizations; transness as a nonpredetermined, wayward, and deregulated movement that works toward gender's destruction; and black feminism as an epistemological method to fracture hegemonic modes of racialized gender.

Prioritize your peace of mind. Black women deal with devaluing challenges too often. Yet there can be a way to face them head-on while helping yourself heal and grow stronger. That is why I Came to Slay is a motivational book for black women you won't want to miss. Covering strategies on conquering boundaries, harmful labels, and more, you'll find many ways to take action and emerge victorious.

Miss America, can we really close a 100,000 dollar gap that has been driven by race? The better question is: How did our country get here? The sad question is: Did you even know this racially fed wealth gap existed? Time has been up; let's talk about it. This book dissects American history and explores biased laws and fundamentals that caused the racial wealth gap plaguing the economy and Black America.

The first biography to rescue the true story of Josiah Henson, restoring to history his role in the Underground Railroad Josiah Henson led a fascinating life―from the plantation fields of Maryland to the Georgetown Market to the plantations of Kentucky to escaping to freedom in Canada to being...

Smith tells the joyful story of the musicians, the radio DJs, the record labels, and the live venues where jazz not only survived but thrived in the 1960s. In an era marked by turmoil and struggle, popular jazz offered a powerful outlet for joy, resilience, pride, and triumph.