African Art

A Sweet Valley High for a new generation, a dishy, dazzling YA drama set against the backdrop of an elite charter school where stars are made—or fade. When Chyna gets a scholarship to the newest, most prestigious sports school in the city, it’s the best opportunity to do the gymnastics she...

Sassy is the new hire on the call center floor. A sexy, young tender with a curvy shape to match her style, Sassy quickly becomes a mouthwatering temptation for all who look her way. She seemingly has the perfect distraction with her boyfriend, John, working on the same floor. But as John tries to fan off anyone who dares stare too long, Sassy appears to have different motives in mind with the mysteriously intriguing HoLLyRod...who just so happens to be a master in the art of cheating.

A provocative, revelatory history of British Romanticism that examines the impact of the transatlantic slave economy on the lives and times of some of our most beloved poets—with urgent lessons for today "[P]owerful, revelatory. . . . [A]s a writer Nabugodi is warm and witty, her prose both...

A collection of self-contained chapters exploring human imperfections, life, and death through humor and raw introspection, perfect for readers who enjoy character-driven, literary fiction. The characters in Dominic Hoffman's tales of Late Rehearsals are familiar. Their choices are recognizable...

One of the world’s greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world’s most popular form Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do? What...

The figure of the horse, at once earthly and transcendent, represented the contradictions of freedom and captivity that enabled young Octavia to develop her nuanced sense of voice and place. Drawing on previously unknown archival research, this volume illustrates how Butler's development as a writer was tied to her extraordinary resourcefulness and self-awareness growing up as an awkward, bookish Black girl in segregated, Cold War Pasadena.

In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells - for the first time - the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood. Spanning 60 years, this deliciously entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which many Blacks made a place for themselves in an industry that originally had no place for them. Through interviews and the personal recollections of Hollywood luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable history that remains largely obscure to this day.

Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of...

In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein examines the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, civil rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through releasing dozens of covers of her white male contemporaries.

Tess Chakkalakal gives listeners the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered "mixed race." Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing.

A former college president and bestselling author offers leadership lessons for today’s troubled campuses Higher education is under assault from all sides. Scandals, protests, and dramatic resignations dominate the news cycle, and the pressure has grown so severe that the average tenure of...

This heartfelt, poignant YA debut is a second-chance summer romance that will steal your heart—perfect for fans of Heartstopper, Some Girls Do, and It’s Not Like it’s a Secret. This summer, Elsie is finally going to confess her feelings to her longtime—and long-distance—crush. Ada’s...

A ballerina at the height of her powers becomes consumed with finding her missing brother in this “striking debut” (Oprah Daily). “A compelling novel about the spiritual and bodily costs of the dogged pursuit of art.”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS...

Anna Cameron is disheartened. With her usually peaceful world under attack, the 14-year-old is anxious about fighting against invisible enemies. When an African chief takes his place as a new Quentin Academy professor, bringing with him a new science, she hopes all is not lost.

A young woman finds herself in the crosshairs of powerful and very dangerous enemies when she travels to Cairo to uncover the truth about her brother’s mysterious death in this smart, atmospheric, and propulsive literary thriller from the acclaimed author of A Beautiful Crime and Orient...

When a house party goes terribly wrong, a suburban town fractures, exposing disturbing truths about the community—perfect for fans of Little Fires Everywhere and Ask Again, Yes. “The House Party will keep readers on the edge of their seats.”—PopSugar It’s the party of the year...

Even as our world has suffered through successive upheavals, Jesse McCarthy contends, "something was happening in the world of culture: a surging and unprecedented visibility at every level of Black art making". Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? reckons with this resurgence, arguing for the central role of art and intellectual culture in an age of widening inequality and moral crisis. McCarthy reinvigorates the essay form as a space not only for argument but for experimental writing that mixes and chops the old ways into new ones.

A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.

Few television shows revolutionized comedy as profoundly or have had such an enormous and continued impact on our culture as In Living Color. Inspired by Richard Pryor, Carol Burnett, and Eddie Murphy, Keenen Ivory Wayans created a television series unlike any that had come before it. In Living Color shaped American culture in ways both seen and unseen. Now, Homey Don't Play That! reveals the complete, captivating story of how In Living Color overcame enormous odds to become a major, zeitgeist-seizing hit.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A “rich hybrid of memoir and history” (The New Yorker) of the literary art form that has transformed the cultural landscape, by one of its influential practitioners, an award-winning poet, professor, and slam champion...