African American Families

In Modern Conversations of a Slave Mother, Mitchelle Harvey amplifies the voice of African-American mothers and shares the multi-generational experiences of these strong and resilient women who managed to thrive through adversity. In this book you will find out how challenges turn into success.

A “raw, tensely plotted, profound high-wire act of a book” (Téa Obreht) on the intricacies of marriage, class, and race, and just how far one man will go to protect his family—and himself. Sharif is a good person. He knows that he is good because he’s aware of the privilege that he...

In this “achingly beautiful debut” (The Boston Globe), a young Black gay man, estranged from his father, must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex. “A beautiful, clear-eyed portrait of love in the face of religious and familial betrayal...

Marilyn Grimes is a wife, mother, sister, and daughter. Today she's decided to be something different: herself. First, she has to find out who that is...

A “vivid, urgent” (Entertainment Weekly) story that follows a young man faced with a fraught decision: escape a dangerous past alone—or brave his old life and keep the woman he loves. Sayon Hughes longs to escape the volatile Bris­tol neighborhood known as Ends, the tight-knit but...

In the vein of Such a Fun Age, a whip-smart, compulsively readable novel about two upper-class stay-at-home mothers—one white, one Black—living in a ""perfect"" suburb that explores motherhood, friendship, and the true meaning of sisterhood amidst the backdrop of America’s all-too-familiar...

The Millions “Most Anticipated” Books of 2023 Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker...

In this analysis of social history, examine the complex lineage of America's oppression of Black companionship. According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs...

An "intoxicating, propulsive...utterly mesmerizing" novel about Black life in Philadelphia and the struggle to build intimate connections through the eyes of a struggling ex-Army grad student (Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!) After a deployment in the Iraq War, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find...

Jamie MacKenzie was my light in a childhood of captivity—until his clan ripped him away and left me in the dark. Now, he's back. No longer a boy, but a battle-hardened ex-Marine, armed with vengeance and regrets. He says he’ll burn the world to the ground to free me—even if I fight him every step of the way. But I’m not just haunted by my past… I belong to a ruthless Bratva tsar who branded me as his. And he won’t let me go without a war.

A professional job turns personal for jet-setting contract killer Gideon in this sexy, thrilling page-turner by New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey. As a hit man from the time he was very young, money, women, and danger have always ruled Gideon’s life; but for the first...

The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But after her...

Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by the grief of a recent devastating miscarriage and Noah's fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having a child, no longer wants to bring a Black body into the world.

The new edition of an American masterpiece, this is the harrowing story of Ursa Corregidora, a blues singer in the early 20th century forced to confront the inherited trauma of slavery. A literary classic that remains vital to our understanding of the past, Corregidora is Gayl Jones’s powerful...

You just can't plan for this kind of thing. Diane Tate certainly hasn't. She never expected to slowly lose her talented husband to the debilitating effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. As a respected family court judge, she's spent her life making tough calls, but when her 68-year-old husband's health worsens and Diane is forced to move him into an assisted living facility, it seems her world is spinning out of control. As Gregory's memory wavers and fades, Diane and her children must reexamine their connection to the man he once was - and learn to love the man he has become.

Both an epic history and an intimate family story, a startling account of the lives of Black cops in one Midwestern city. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, a Black police organization in Cleveland called the Black Shield was causing a stir. Officers broke ranks with their fellow cops...

A mysterious organization recruits an ambitious scion of elite Black DC society—but to what end? This electric debut novel brilliantly contends with family legacies and what it takes to break free from the expectations of others. Nina Johnson has always taken pride in belonging to The Tenth...

Stigmatized at birth due to his interracial parentage and reared in a household poisoned by domestic abuse, Kevin Matthews is orphaned at age ten after losing his mother to a violent attack at the hands of his father, who is jailed for the crime. Raised by his paternal grandfather, a Baptist Minister who instills values of the church as a base for recovery, Kevin is content with life in rural Louisiana during the 1970s until disturbing news surfaces regarding his mother's attack—news that sheds doubt on his father's guilt, and leads Kevin to relive painful memories.

“FAMILY TREE is warm, rich, textured, and impossible to put down.” –Nora Roberts Dana Clarke has always longed for the stability of home and family–her own childhood was not an easy one. Now she has married a man she adores and is about to give birth to their first child. But though her...

This book is not just a collection of personal narratives or academic research; it is a bridge, connecting lived experience with scholarly insight to provide a holistic and empowering perspective. Within this book, you'll find a compassionate and supportive space to explore the complex emotional landscape of Black women, from the intergenerational impact of trauma to the systemic factors that contribute to relationship challenges.