Collection: Shop Black

It's 2008, and ten-year-old Montgomery "Monty" Carver is out to find the origin of a golden key found in his Southside Chicago community--which may or may not host the next Olympic games, or supply the next President of the United States, or... have a potential ghost hanging around.

In 2008 Chicago, in the Southside community of Washington Park, Montgomery"Monty" Carver had hoped for the best summer ever! Unfortunately, things aren't going as planned. Monty is struggling to prove to his parents that he's old enough to be without adult supervision--especially after a very embarrassing incident with a metal detector. Man!

So when Monty finds a golden key in Old Lady Jenkins's sunflowers, he decides he's going to unravel the key's mystery all by himself, thank you very much. No parents allowed. Besides, he's ten years old now, and he's mastered the perfectly round 'fro! (It takes a protractor, you see.)

Soon Monty's hunt to determine the origin of the key leads him to discover the rich history--like famous Black jockeys!--of his Chicago community, which has been speculating its future since one of their residents, Barack Obama, is running for president and the Olympics might come to town in 2016.

On top of all that speculating, there are rumors going around that a ghost is hanging out behind their apartment building, and that Monty's elementary school may have to close.

So much to solve! Should the Olympics come to Washington Park? What happens if his school closes? Is there really a ghost? And where, oh where, did the key come from anyway? Monty is determined to find out.

From the NAACP Image Award-nominated author of Happily Ever Afters comes a dual POV rom-com about Reggie and Delilah, who fall in love through missed connections and chance meetings on holidays over the course of a year. Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon and Jenny Han, with crossover appeal for readers of Jasmine Guillory and Talia Hibbert romances.

Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow--which is how she ends up singing in her friends' punk band as a favor, even though she'd prefer to hide at the merch table.

Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family.

These two, who have practically nothing in common, meet for the first time on New Year's Eve. And then again on Valentine's Day. And then again on St. Patrick's Day. It's almost like the universe is pushing them together for a reason.

Delilah wishes she were more like Reggie--open about what she likes and who she is, even if it's not cool. Except . . . it's all a front. Reggie is just role-playing someone confident. The kind of guy who could be with a girl like Delilah.

As their holiday meetings continue, the two begin to fall for each other. But what happens once they realize they've each fallen for a version of the other that doesn't really exist?

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies.

William A. Darity Jr.'s new foreword highlights Williams's insights for a new generation of readers, and Colin Palmer's introduction assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Black Panther meets X-Men in this "fast-paced, action-packed, and empowering" (A. F. Steadman, New York Times bestselling author of Skandar and the Unicorn Thief) middle grade adventure about a British Nigerian girl who learns that her Afro hair has psychokinetic powers--perfect for fans of Amari and the Night Brothers, The Marvellers, and Rick Riordan!

Onyeka has a lot of hair---the kind that makes strangers stop in the street and her peers whisper behind her back. At least she has Cheyenne, her best friend, who couldn't care less what other people think. Still, Onyeka has always felt insecure about her vibrant curls...until the day Cheyenne almost drowns and Onyeka's hair takes on a life of its own, inexplicably pulling Cheyenne from the water.

At home, Onyeka's mother tells her the shocking truth: Onyeka's psychokinetic powers make her a Solari, one of a secret group of people with superpowers unique to Nigeria. Her mother quickly whisks her off to the Academy of the Sun, a school in Nigeria where Solari are trained. But Onyeka and her new friends at the academy soon have to put their powers to the test as they find themselves embroiled in a momentous battle between truth and lies...

The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this "groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States" (Ibram X. Kendi)--the perfect companion to An Indigenous People's History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States.

An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are--and have always been--instrumental in shaping our country.

In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.

A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.

A charming and nature-filled picture book about a young boy who connects with his busy dad over their love of nature. Perfect for fans of Fatima's Great Outdoors by Ambreen Tariq and Hike by Pete Oswald.

Tim has always loved nature. His dad always taught him to explore and adventure through their own backyard. So Tim observed, he collected, and he recorded it all in his nature journal, just like Dad!

But when one day Dad is too busy to look at his findings, Tim takes it upon himself to show Dad all his adventures. And after looking through his dad's old nature journals, Tim gets sleepy and goes on some dreamy adventures of his own.

An imaginative and heartwarming story about the bond between Tim and his dad, and the beautiful adventures that lie waiting in the world, The Nature Journal is a sweet story of love and nature for the youngest budding explorers.

A timely groundbreaking book in the vein of Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, one of the country's foremost voices on reparations, offers a radical and vital new framework going beyond the current debate over this controversial issue.

For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American community far exceed what a plot of land or a check could repair.

While reparations are being widely debated once again, current petitions to redress the lasting and collateral consequences of slavery have not moved past economic solutions, even though we know that monetary redress alone is not enough. Not only would many wounds be left unhealed, but relying solely on economics would continue a legacy of neglect for African Americans. In this thoughtful and sure-to-be controversial book, Marcus Anthony Hunter argues that a radical shift in our outlook is necessary; we need more comprehensive solutions such as those currently sought by today's educators, historians, activists, organizers, Afrofuturists, and socially conscious citizens.

In Radical Reparations, this conversation shifter, social justice pioneer, change agent, and inventor of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which redefined the global conversation on racism and social justice, offers a unifying and unconventional framework for achieving holistic and comprehensive healing of African American communities. Hunter reimagines reparations through a profound new lens as he defines seven types of compensation: political, intellectual, legal, economic, spatial, social, and spiritual, using analysis of historical documents, comparative international cases, and speculative parables.

Profound and revolutionary, trenchant and timely, Radical Reparations provides a compellingly and provocatively reframing of reparations' past, present, and future, offering a unifying way forward for us all.

True friendship never ends.

Best friends forever. That's the vow Joy, Diane, Rochelle and Yvette made when they were children, and even in their mid-thirties, the friends have always been there for each other--through the highs and lows of life and love. Until forever comes up against a terminal cancer diagnosis. Nothing could have prepared them for what life would look like when four became three.

But Yvette was prepared.

Her final gift to her girls is an all-expenses-paid trip to Jamaica like they had always talked about but kept putting off as life got in the way.

The Jamaican getaway seems to come at the perfect time as the remaining friends deal with their grief, dashed hopes, and unexpected relationship drama. Sick of putting her dreams to open a spa on hold, not to mention her husband's lack of support, Joy decides she's moving forward with her new business--with or without him. The thunderous ticking of Diane's biological clock has her wondering if her desire to have a baby will ever come true, and her husband's bizarre behavior has her questioning if he's still on board. And after witnessing her friends' imploding relationships, single mother Rochelle is content to do life on her own, but her heart doesn't seem to get the memo when a new man unexpectedly enters the picture.

Guided by Yvette's spirit, the friends must lean on each other now more than ever before as they learn to navigate their new normal, take unexpected risks and live life with no reservations.

Praise for No Reservations:

"At times both deeply emotional and heartwarmingly funny, No Reservations encapsulates the beauty of the unbreakable bond of enduring friendships and true sisterhood."

--Farrah Rochon, New York Times bestselling author of The Hookup Plan

• Stand-alone novel with a blend of heart and heartbreak and strong cast of diverse characters
• Perfect for fans of Jane Green, Nancy Thayer, and Kimberla Lawson Roby
• Includes discussion questions for book clubs

Stealing a baby dragon was easy! Hiding it is a little more complicated, in this sequel to reviewer favorite Dragons in a Bag.

Jaxon had just one job--to return three baby dragons to the realm of magic. But when he got there, only two dragons were left in the bag. His best friend's sister, Kavita, is a dragon thief!

Kavita only wanted what was best for the baby dragon. But now every time she feeds it, the dragon grows and grows! How can she possibly keep it secret? Even worse, stealing it has upset the balance between the worlds. The gates to the other realm have shut tight! Jaxon needs all the help he can get to find Kavita, outsmart a trickster named Blue, and return the baby dragon to its true home.

NBA champion, sports analyst, and successful businessman Shaquille O'Neal is a lively and entertaining addition to the #1 New York Times Bestselling Series!

Shaquille O'Neal discovered his love of basketball while spending time in an afterschool program called the Boys & Girls Club of America. Standing over six feet tall by the time he turned eleven years old, Shaq--as he is affectionately known--continued to practice the game and stunned the country with his phenomenal skills. From leading his high-school team to its first-ever state title to becoming the first pick in the 1992 NBA draft and going on to win four NBA championships, Shaq proved that he could dominate almost any player.

But the fifteen-time All Star who played for six teams throughout his nineteen-year NBA career isn't just a force on the court, he is also an actor, television host, musician, and businessman who is always ready to crack a joke or bust a dance move.

With such a welcoming personality and immense talent, it is easy to see why Shaquille O'Neal is often considered one of the greatest players in NBA history.

"Alive with delicious prose and the cacophony of '90s Harlem, Big Girl gifts us a heroine carrying the weight of worn-out ideas, who dares to defy the compulsion to shrink, and in turn teaches us to pursue our fullest, most desirous selves without shame." --Janet Mock

Malaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church's stuffy basement community center. A quietly inquisitive eight-year-old struggling to suppress her insatiable longing, she would much rather paint alone in her bedroom, or sneak out with her father for a sampling of Harlem's forbidden street foods.

For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother, Nyela, a painfully proper professor struggling to earn tenure at a prestigious university. But their relentless prescriptions--fad diets of cottage-cheese and sugar-free Jell-O, high-cardio African dance classes, endless doctors' appointments--don't work on Malaya.

As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand "ladyness" and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called "femininity" that holds no room for her body. She finds solace in the lyrical riffs of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, and in the support of her sensitive father, Percy; still, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya's weight. Nothing seems to help--until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.

Exquisitely compassionate and clever, Big Girl is "filled with everyday people who, in Mecca Jamilah Sullivan's gifted hands, show us the love and struggle of what it means to be inside bodies that don't always fit with the outside world" (Jacqueline Woodson). In tracing the perils and pleasures of the inheritance that comes with being born, Sullivan pushes boundaries and creates an unforgettable portrait of Black womanhood in America.

Wendell Berry has never been afraid to speak up for the dispossessed. The Need to Be Whole continues the work he began in The Hidden Wound (1970) and The Unsettling of America (1977), demanding a careful exploration of this hard, shared truth: The wealth of the mighty few governing this nation has been built on the unpaid labor of others.

Without historical understanding of this practice of dispossession-the displacement of Native peoples, the destruction of both the land and land-based communities, ongoing racial division--we are doomed to continue industrialism's assault on both the natural world and every sacred American ideal. Berry writes, "To deal with so great a problem, the best idea may not be to go ahead in our present state of unhealth to more disease and more product development. It may be that our proper first resort should be to history: to see if the truth we need to pursue might be behind us where we have ceased to look." If there is hope for us, this is it: that we honestly face our past and move into a future guided by the natural laws of affection. This book furthers Mr. Berry's part in what is surely our country's most vital conversation.

"Dazzling . . . a verbal and visual feast that defies genres." --The Washington Post

"Hayes [is] one of the best and most important poets now writing." --Craig Morgan Teicher, Poetry

From the National Book Award-winning author of Lighthead, Terrance Hayes, a fascinating collection of graphic reviews and illustrated prose addressing the last century of American poetry--to be published simultaneously with his latest poetry collection, So to Speak

Canonized, overlooked, and forgotten African American poets star in Terrance Hayes's brilliant contemplations of personal, canonical, and allegorical literary development. Proceeding from Toni Morrison's aim to expand the landscape of literary imagination in Playing in the Dark ("I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography"), Watch Your Language charts a lyrical geography of reading and influence in poetry. Illustrated micro-essays, graphic book reviews, biographical prose poems, and nonfiction sketches make reading an imaginative and critical act of watching your language. Hayes has made a kind of poetic guidebook with more questions than answers. "If you don't see suffering's potential as art, will it remain suffering?" he asks in one of the lively mock poetry exam questions of this musing, mercurial collection. Hayes's astonishing drawings and essays literally and figuratively map the acclaimed poet's routes, roots, and wanderings through the landscape of contemporary poetry.

"Masterfully flips the first installment on its head... James makes the mythic tantalizingly real.'" --Esquire

"Even more brilliant than the first." --Buzzfeed

An Instant New York Times Bestseller and NPR Best Book of 2022 pick

From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the second book in the Dark Star trilogy.

In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It's also the story of a century-long feud--seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch--that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi's power is considerable--and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.

Both a brilliant narrative device--seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman--as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon's world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE. A landmark history--the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early twentieth century.

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors.

Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery--more than epidemics--that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history.

For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see.

"The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that's long overdue...In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary." -- Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade

""One of the most profound contributions to North American history."--Los Angeles Times

"Superb. . . . A great American writer speaks with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives." --New York Times Book Review

A striking new edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author's grandson.

When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy." Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races."

Wright's once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him--whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he may his way north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to "hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo." More than seventy-five year later, his words continue to reverberate. "To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness," John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. "Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear."

One of the great American memoirs, Wright's account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance--a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.