African Art

From the family that brought you the Lena in the Spotlight series and the popular For Girls Like You magazine comes Ansley’s Big Bake Off, book one in the Daniels Sisters series. This realistic fiction story of family, friendship, and the challenges that so many young girls face each day...

Inspired by a powerful New York Times article that went viral, this young readers’ edition tells the uplifting true story of Black men and women from Compton, California, who found purpose through raising and riding horses. The Compton Cowboys are a group who grew up in the city where...

An electrifying memoir from the pioneering cultural icon The New Yorker called “the coolest person in New York,” whose fearless creativity reshaped the worlds of art, music, and style Fab 5 Freddy doesn’t just have a great story—he is the story. Name a seismic cultural shift, and chances...

Keith Hatschek tells the story of three determined artists: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived by the Brubecks in 1956, the musical's journey to the stage for its 1962 premiere tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement.

Black Panther is one of the most financially successful and culturally impactful films to emerge from the American film industry in recent years. When it was released in 2018 it broke numerous records and resonated with audiences all around the world. In Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, author Terence McSweeney explores the film from a diverse range of perspectives, seeing it as not only a comic book adaptation and a superhero film, but also a dynamic contribution to the discourse of both African and African American studies.

In this biography of Chester B. Himes (1909-1984), Lawrence P. Jackson depicts the improbable life of the controversial writer whose novels confront sexuality, racism, and social injustice. In absorbing detail, Jackson explores Chester Himes's middle-class origins, eight years in prison, painful odyssey as a Black World War II-era artist, and escape to Europe, where Himes became internationally famous for his Harlem detective series.

“From its gripping opening pages…Life Sentences may be the most absorbing, entertaining mystery published in the last year.” —Boston Globe USA Today calls Laura Lippman, “A writing powerhouse,” and Life Sentences powerfully confirms it. Past and present, truth and memory collide...

Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey, and the hidden hand of God that changed history Journalist and baseball lover Ed Henry reveals for the first time the backstory of faith that guided Jackie Robinson into not only the baseball record books but the annals of civil rights advancement as well...

“Frank…writes with genuine adoration for and authority on the South Carolina Lowcountry from which she sprang….[Her] stuff is never escapist fluff—it’s the real deal.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution Return to Tall Pines in the long-awaited sequel to Dorothea Benton Frank’s beloved...

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two great playgrounds of the decade--Harlem and Paris. In Paris he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. He knew the musicians and dancers, the drunks and dope fiends. In Harlem...

Banish burnout, worry, and stress once and for all with these practical tips and strategies for relaxing, going beyond simple self-care to chill your mind, body, and soul. Women are resilient leaders driven to achieve but can often feel stressed out. They are being adversely impacted by the...

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, this passionate and provocative book tells the complete story of Black music in the last 50 years, and in doing so, outlines the perilous position of Black culture within white American society. In a fast-paced narrative, Nelson George’s book chronicles the rise and fall of “race music” and its transformation into the R&B that eventually dominated the airwaves, only to find itself diluted and submerged as crossover music.

At the height of the ideological antagonism of the Cold War, the US State Department unleashed an unexpected tool in its battle against Communism: jazz. From 1956 through the late 1970s, America dispatched its finest jazz musicians to the far corners of the earth, from Iraq to India, from the Congo to the Soviet Union, in order to win the hearts and minds of the Third World and to counter perceptions of American racism.

Solomon Stein has dreams of success in the music industry. At the breakout of his music career, he is bought into the fold of Detroit-based, One By One Records (IXI), the hottest hip-hop label in the country. But the deeper Sal gets into the world of IXI, he realizes everything that glitters isn't gold. Pushy corporate reps who want to steal his house, his growing feelings for a mysterious industry executive, and obscure messages hidden in plain sight are making it impossible to know what to believe.

In 1964, Martha and the Vandellas recorded "Dancing in the Street." at Motown's Hitsville USA Studio. By the summer, the sixties were in full swing. As the country grew more radicalized in those few months, "Dancing in the Street" gained currency as an activist anthem. Told by the writer who is legendary for finding the big story in unlikely places, Ready for a Brand New Beat chronicles that extraordinary summer of 1964 and showcases the momentous role that a simple song about dancing played in history.

In her senior year of college, asha bandele and a group of other writers went to a prison to read their works for a Black History Month program. There, she met Rashid, a man who was serving 20 to life for murder, a man who spoke softly and wisely, a man who would become asha’s soul mate. This is her account of a relationship that has thrived despite terrific odds.

When The Flip Wilson Show debuted in 1970, Black faces were still rare on television, Black hosts nonexistent. So how did Clerow “Flip” Wilson go from Jersey City grade-school dropout to national celebrity, heralded on the cover of Time as “TV’s first black superstar”? Flip is a candid, entertaining biography of a consummate comedian who changed the face of American popular culture.

In this powerful and comprehensive guide in the spirit of Jambalaya and Sacred Woman, an herbalist celebrates ancient and modern African holistic healing. “The message of this book is: hold onto your yams, your collards, watermelon, and roots. There is magic, mystery, connection, and healing...

An examination of African American imagery and participation in American movies includes a timeline of important African American events in film history and discusses the achievements of noted celebrities.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. He lifted himself out of illiteracy and soon became an innovative, widely admired, and hugely popular speaker on antislavery circuits (both American and British) and went on to write the earliest African American works in a plethora of genres....