African American English

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In her stunning debut, the creator of Black Liturgies weaves stories from three generations of her family alongside contemplative reflections to discover the “necessary rituals” that connect us with our belonging, dignity, and liberation. “This is the kind of...

A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post Chicago Tribune NPR Vogue Elle Real Simple InStyle Good Housekeeping Parade Slate Vox Kirkus Reviews Library Journal BookPage Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize An Instant New...

Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in...

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE “Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth’s promise, of the quest to find one’s tribe and one’s calling...

“Sheer entertainment… Bennett infuses wit and an arch sensibility into her prose… This is not mere froth, it is pure confection.” – New York Times Book Review “[A] pitch-perfect murder mystery… If The Crown were crossed with Miss Marple…, the result would probably be something...

If you can count on one thing from "Madea" Mabel Simmons, star of the smash hits Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea's Family Reunion, and Madea's Witness Protection, it's that she's got something to say. Now the beloved, sharp-tongued, pistol-packing grandmother has her own...

1919, the Year of Racial Violence recounts African Americans' brave stand against a cascade of mob attacks in the United States after World War I. The emerging New Negro identity, which prized unflinching resistance to second-class citizenship, further inspired veterans and their fellow Black citizens. In city after city, Black men and women took up arms to repel mobs that used lynching, assaults, and other forms of violence to protect white supremacy; yet, authorities blamed Blacks for the violence, leading to mass arrests and misleading news coverage.

In this thought-provoking book, the Black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley's music finally receive recognition and praise. After Baz Luhrmann’s movie, Elvis, hit theaters, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley’s music and style...

Read by the author. Greatness and mediocrity are separated by one thing--how you respond to rejection. People who crumble beneath the weight of rejection never realize their full potential, but people who learn to use rejection as a catalyst experience fulfillment in their lives. Nona Jones has...

*Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times * WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic...

Nikki Maxwell deals with the trials and triumphs of middle school in this fifteenth installment of the #1 New York Times bestselling Dork Diaries series! Ooh la la! Nikki Maxwell and her band are on their way to Paris, but they run into some roadblocks on the way… And Nikki’s French skills...

An exuberant return to the four unforgettable heroines of Waiting to Exhale—the novel that changed African American fiction forever. Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale was more than just a bestselling novel—its publication was a watershed moment in literary history. McMillan's sassy...

Don't miss this acclaimed audiobook, read by the author—winner of an Odyssey Honor and an AudioFile Earphones Award winner! The Poet X is also the winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award. Fans of Jacqueline...

Zami: A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers “Zami is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women...

The definitive autobiography from Eve, the multiplatinum, Grammy Award–winning, Emmy-nominated rapper, singer-songwriter, actor, mother, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. In 1999, Eve Jihan Cooper made history with her solo debut album, Let There Be Eve…Ruff Ryders’ First Lady...

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick “A love story like no other, and this one…will have you gripped from page one.” —Vogue “An unabashed ode to living with, and despite, pain and mortality.” —The New York Times Book Review A New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award...

In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected. The Quinns - all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers - live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules. Rozelle's children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are 12 years old so that they can help support her by going to work.

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” writes Du Bois, in one of the most prophetic works in all of American literature. First published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. Du Bois’ writing draws on his early experiences, from teaching in the hills of Tennessee, to the death of his infant son, to his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.

The young adult follow-up to the bestselling Newbery Award book and movie sensation, Holes. Two years after being released from Camp Green Lake, Armpit is home in Austin, Texas, trying to turn his life around. But it's hard when you have a record and everyone expects the worst from you. The...

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.