Books
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Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters
"An epic love song and remarkable ballad of generations." --Leslie Jamison "I couldn't write about Black motherhood without writing about America." --Sasha Bonet Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha's mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission. When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bonét was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey--not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature--Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them--to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it. The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves--as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.
$30.00
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Truly
The long-awaited memoir of the legendary Lionel Richie. As a storyteller second to none, Lionel Richie is ready to tell it all. In this intimate, deeply candid memoir, Lionel revisits hilarious and harrowing events to inspire all who doubt themselves or feel their dreams don't matter. Lionel chronicles lessons learned during his unlikely story of remarkable success--his dramatic transformation from painfully shy, "tragically" late bloomer to world-class entertainer and composer of love songs that have played as the soundtrack of our lives. Funny, warm, and riveting, Lionel recalls his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he grew up on its university campus during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, raucous adventures as a member of The Commodores, coming-of-age in late 1960s Harlem, culture shock playing gigs on the French Riviera, the big break of being signed to Motown, his meteoric solo career that included an Olympics performance witnessed by two billion around the globe, all the way through to writing and recording "We Are the World" and his current multi-generational fame as a judge on American Idol. Even with its turbulence, loss, and near-calamity, Lionel's journey takes us on a thrill ride and delivers a memoir for the ages--reminding us of the power of love to elevate our own lives and our world.Lionel Richie's memoir includes three eight-page photo inserts.
$36.00
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Night Watch: Poems
From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young's new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in "All Souls," evoking "The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers." Another central sequence, "The Two-Headed Nightingale," is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American "Carolina Twins." Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young's poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: "As one we sang, /we spake-- / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole." In "Darkling," a cycle of poems inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where "the dead don't know / what to do / with themselves." Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: "It's like a language, / loss--," he writes, "learnt only / by living--there--." Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, "don't dare sing Amazing Grace"--that "National / Anthem of Suffering." Instead, he suggests, "When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down." This collection will stand as one of Young's best--his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
$29.00
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Nobody Can Give You Freedom: The Political Life of Malcolm X
A "provocative, insightful, and urgent" (Peniel E. Joseph) new examination of Malcolm X that shows how the iconic figure was always dedicated to a global movement for Black liberation Malcolm X is one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century. Across countless films, documentaries, and books, we have come to know him as a violent and tragic figure, who, when considered next to Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, was ultimately and perhaps dangerously misguided. But in the wake of continued police brutality and the rise of white supremacy, it's time to revisit Malcolm X and ask: What do we really know about what he believed, and what can we do with that political philosophy today? In Nobody Can Give You Freedom, Kehinde Andrews draws on the speeches and writings of Malcolm X to upend the conventional understanding of Malcolm--from his alleged misogyny to his putative proclivity for violence. Instead, Andrews argues that Malcolm X embraced equality across genders and foresaw a more inclusive approach to Black liberation that relied on grassroots efforts and community building. Far from a doomed ideologue, Malcolm X was in fact one of the most important, and misunderstood, intellectuals of the twentieth century, whose lessons on how to fight white supremacy are more important than ever.
$30.00
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New Book: Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Things
Nikki Giovanni's extraordinary final collection--a landmark of American literature--speaks to the fury of our current political moment while reflecting on the tragedies and triumphs of her early life.For decades, Nikki Giovanni's poetry has been at the forefront of American culture. The New Book is a towering work of protest against the divisions of our time, leavened with moments of joy and reflection about her indelible legacy, her family history, and the small pleasures of her richly lived life.In The New Book, Nikki Giovanni slashes at the ridiculousness of our cultural and political climate: "We have no secrets/since the world shrunk/and the icebergs melted/and all the year books/are digitized./... and we press Like/or No Like/as if it mattered."She remembers 2020 and its cataclysmic reckoning with police brutality and white supremacy: "I do understand that republicans/Are cowards and so are those nazis/Cheering/And those kkk we now call police killing/Not to mention father and sons chasing unarmed Black men/and running their cars into crowds/Pretending they are brave or something/They are not only cowards/And nazis but evil fools/And who go to bed white/Wake up American/And hate themselves for having/To share this earth/They will not overcome/And we will not love them."But also in the same poem: "But what does 2020 mean to me/A chance to learn to open oysters/Talk to my friends/Catch up on my reading/Tell myself I am going to dust the house/Lie about it/...Enjoy my own company not to mention football/And remember there will be tomorrow/Because there will be/And evil will go and good will come/I am Black/We have seen much worse."With this collection, which includes brief letters and short prose from her life as well as poetry, Giovanni reaffirms her place as a giant of literature, a canny truth-teller, an indispensable radical orator, and one of America's preeminent cultural critics. It is a book to be savored, and shared."If there was a need for poetry that galvanized and inspired, there was also a demand for poetry that comforted and unified -- and Ms. Giovanni provided on both counts." -- The Washington Post
$26.00
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Iron Will: An Amputee's Journey to Athletic Excellence
The story of the first bilateral above-the-knee amputee to become and IRONMAN champion. Roderick Sewell II was born without the tibia in both of his legs. Before he turned two years old, his mother, Marian, made the tough choice to have his legs amputated so that he could continue wrestling with his cousins and climbing his grandmother's good furniture. But when Marian's modest income couldn't cover the prosthetics Roderick needed to attend school, she made another impossible decision: to leave her job so that California Children's Services would pay for Roderick's prosthetic legs. Roderick and his mother were left homeless, keeping their long stays in shelters a secret while he learned to swim at the YMCA. All the while, Marian instilled in Roderick the lessons of gratitude, love, and patience to build his confidence in his disability, his identity as a Black boy, and his true passion, sports. Roderick was still homeless when he met coaches from the Challenged Athletes Foundation. They gave him his running legs, and his life quickly changed for the better. He learned how to challenge his body to become a fierce competitor and athlete--with his mom cheering from the sidelines all the while. Iron Will is the story of an athlete with an indomitable spirit and proof that a winner's mindset is about more than physical and mental endurance. It's about the unique places you can find love, and the rewards of conquering your fears.
$29.00
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Blue Opening: Poems
Blue Opening, Chet'la Sebree's brilliant, illuminating poetry collection, grapples with origins--of illness, of language, of the universe--as the speaker contemplates whether she, too, can be a site of origin through motherhood. Navigating chronic health challenges alongside grief and questions about the nature of knowledge and religion, she searches personal history and the cosmos for answers to the unknowable. With startling clarity and vivid tenderness, Blue Opening calls into question not only where to begin, but how to create, across thirty-two poems that press the fluid boundaries of form through sonnets, prose poems, odes, and two unforgettable poetic sequences. As the speaker traverses loss, possibility, and the choice, or often the lack of choice, in the direction of her future, she determines to press forward even as she is "unsure of what shape this language should take / and hulling, from blue rock, faith."
$18.00
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Wilderness
"Wonderfully ambitious.... Flournoy explores the complexity of friendship, family, and home in a voice that is expansive yet intimate, humorous yet devastating. I loved this book." -- Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half and The MothersAn era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife--in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood--overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences--swoops in and stays.Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January's got a relationship with a "good" man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.As these friends move from the late 2000's into the late 2020's, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another--amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy's masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
$30.00
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Parable of the Sower
From a celebrated, award-winning author, a modern classic about a young girl fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Margaret Atwood. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy--a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny. Includes a foreword by LeVar Burton and an afterword by N. K. Jemisin Lauren's story continues in The Parable of the Talents. "In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched."--The New Yorker
$19.99
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