African Culture

Already a major international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi’s sweeping and much-needed survey of African history traces the continent’s extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective. “Equal parts gripping and galvanizing. . . . Researched across more than 30...

The Akan are an African indigenous group found primarily in the southern parts of Ghana, as well as in Cote d'Ivoire and in Togo. This audiobook explores certain aspects of Akan language, culture, and tradition that point to association with star beings from the Sirius star system. The Akan, the Bakwama, the Bambara, the Dogon and just about every African ethnic group is connected to the Sirius star system in one way or another. These connections can be found in their legends, their language and their culture.

This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

Emmy Award-winning storyteller Bobby Norfolk brings his electrifying energy to world folktales (African, Eastern European, Appalachian, and Irish traditions), to the delight of all ages. From Anansi, the African trickster, to Jack, the bumbling, lucky, persevering Everyman of traditional stories, Norfolk's characters instruct while they entertain.

Africa is the continent where the first humans were born. They explored the vast land and produced the first tools. And although we migrated from that continent, we never completely abandoned it. From the beginning of time, humans lived and worked in Africa, leaving evidence of their existence in the sands of the Sahara Desert and the valleys of the great rivers such as the Nile and the Niger.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.

In Jezebel Unhinged Tamura Lomax traces the use of the jezebel trope in the Black church and in Black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men's cultural and institutional power to discipline and define Black girlhood and womanhood. Drawing on writing by medieval thinkers and travelers, Enlightenment theories of race, the commodification of women's bodies under slavery, and the work of Tyler Perry and Bishop T. D. Jakes, Lomax shows how Black women are written into religious and cultural history as sites of sexual deviation.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER with 5+ hours of bonus material not found in the print version and read by Leslie Jones. AudioFile Magazine awarded the recording an ‘Earphones Award’, saying: “No listener can leave this memoir unaffected as Jones laughs and sobs, sharing the highs and lows...

The compelling account of how two heritages united in their struggle to gain freedom and equality in America. The first paths to freedom taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages. There, black men and women found acceptance and friendship among our country's original inhabitants. Though they seldom appear in textbooks and movies, the children of Native and African American marriages helped shape the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation.

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore Bell Hooks's electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As Hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a "powerful site for intervention, challenge and change." And intervene, challenge, and change is what hooks does best.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story - Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks examines in Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which Hooks moves from place to place, only to end where she began—her old Kentucky home.

Make no mistake, the sacred gods are active. The African continent is home to ancestors, sacred deities, and diverse cultures. Among them is the Yoruba tradition, one of Africa’s most powerful societies. Standing the test of time and thriving against extinction, the Yoruba culture is one of the few African cultures that have crossed the vast oceans and continue to thrive today. Devotees spend their lives under the sacred guiding influence of the gods and are open to sharing the secrets of Orisha with those who seek knowledge.

A “fascinating” and “rare” (National Review) biography of Thomas Sowell, one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering...

Exploring the role and relevance of a conservative tradition in a competitive and evolving world.

African folktales come in many different types. Some are myths explaining the origins of things, while others are tales of heroes with supernatural abilities. Animal stories are many and varied, and they usually involve some kind of trickster who uses his wiles to get out of sticky situations and sometimes into them. There are also cautionary tales explaining why it is important to behave well and treat others with respect, while other stories have a style and shape similar to that of a fairy tale.

In this striking novel about an unforgettable childhood, four Nigerian brothers encounter a madman whose mystic prophecy of violence threatens the core of their close-knit family Told by nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of a...

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama, aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled out to various plantations, where they made desperate attempts to maintain both their culture and also fit into the place of captivity to which they'd been delivered.

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.