African American Families

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.

In this compelling urban tale, Karim Spencer becomes a successful businessman - despite being raised by a bootlegger in a bad section of town. His sister is a down-on-her-luck stripper with a gangsta-wannabe son, and his despondent brother is serving a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit.

The Hairstons is the extraordinary story of the largest family in America, the Hairston clan. With several thousand black and white members, the Hairstons share a complex and compelling history: divided in the time of slavery, they have come to embrace their past as one family.

The infamous Reverend Curtis Black's sordid past is no secret, as his wife, Charlotte, is well aware. But when Curtis' long-time mistress and mother of his illegitimate two-year-old, dies, he and Charlotte have no choice but to raise Curtina together. While the living, breathing reminder of her husband's infidelity infuriates Charlotte, Curtis couldn't be happier to finally have his whole family together....

Racquel and Marcella are sisters with very little in common, except that each wants what the other has. Racquel has a beautiful house, a fulfilling career and a loving husband. But driven by her desperate longing for a child, she is alienating her husband and family. Marcella is a single mom, trying to support her two children with a low paying job, food stamps, and occasional child support from a deadbeat ex-husband. She won't allow anyone to interfere with her dream for a better lifestyle, not even her own children.

Simone Garcia-Hampton is starting over at a new school, and this time things will be different. She's making real friends, making a name for herself as student director of Rent, and making a play for Miles, the guy who makes her melt every time he walks into a room. The last thing she wants is for word to get out that she's HIV-positive, because last time...well, last time things got ugly.

Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation.

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.

In this deeply researched, movingly narrated portrait of the extended Townsend family, R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama.

The most any one of us can hope for is a good death, but what is a good death? It’s going in peace. Going without pain. Going without being a burden to the ones we love. Leaving some good behind. Many in the African American community don't like to think or talk about the end, good or otherwise. So we die and leave a mess or someone we love dies and leaves us a mess. This book is a guide to help African Americans deal with what we in the culture call “transitioning” or “homegoing”.

At 72, Johnny Ribkins shouldn't have such problems: he's got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it's curtains. What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African American family that has been gifted with superpowers that are a bit, well, odd. Okay, very odd. For example, Johnny's father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he's been there or not.

As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre.

In this gripping, emotionally-layered novel set in Prohibition-era Martha’s Vineyard, a young woman from a Black seafaring family plunges into the dangerous world of rum-running to save her home and uncover the truth about her father’s death. Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea is a gift...

In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative.

Knight Barron, the second eldest son of the Barron family is led by duty, honor, and chivalry. Above all else, he is dedicated to his family. When it’s his turn to accept a marriage planned by his parents, Knight steps up fully prepared to play dutiful husband. What Knight cannot foresee is another woman falling into his life. A woman that isn’t a part of the plan, but has him intrigued. It doesn’t take long before Knight is questioning whether to choose family loyalty or his happiness.

Maleeka Madison is a dark skinned African-American girl. She feels uncomfortable and wishes she had lighter skin. When her teacher, Miss Saunders, who suffers from a rare skin condition, shows that there is more to people than the color of their skin, Maleeka learns to appreciate and accept who she truly is.

In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children.

New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber and award-winning novelist Eric Pete team up to deliver the first in a much-anticipated new trilogy. The Family Business features two times the heat, two times the fun, and two times the drama as the members of an unforgettable family (not to mention their lovers and hangers-on) find their way in and out of trouble. As their many fans will attest, Weber and Pete share a talent for penning juicy fiction that their audience can’t get enough of.

A stand-in girlfriend and a handsome business heir find that their fake summer fling is feeling way too real in this new romance by USA Today bestselling author Kristina Forest. Noelle Lewis doesn’t have time for long walks on the beach, brunch with the girls, or summer vacations. She’s too...

According to the 2010 US census, more than 70 percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis. Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north.