Collection: Shop Black

Oh Sis, You're Pregnant! is a book that mostly focuses on the common knowledge that mothers should consider when having their first baby but also shares topics that can be beneficial for moms on their second, third, or fourth baby - such as VBAC's, how to plan financially for your impending birth, maintaining your relationship and friendships during motherhood, and how to self advocate for your rights in a world that can already view you as less than. ▪ Oh Sis, You're Pregnant focuses on Black Millennial motherhood ▪ Oh Sis, You're Pregnant ties in the age of social media and its effect on parenting ▪ Oh Sis, You're Pregnant uses cultural references and jargon for relatability ▪ Oh Sis, You're Pregnant doubles as a pregnancy and motherhood guide as well as tells the story of the author, Shanicia Boswell, to an audience that is already familiar with her background.

A classic memoir that's gripping, funny, and ultimately unforgettable from the bestselling former National Ambassador of Books for Young People. A strong choice for summer reading--an engaging and powerful autobiographical exploration of growing up a so-called "bad boy" in Harlem in the 1940s.

As a boy, Myers was quick-tempered and physically strong, always ready for a fight. He also read voraciously--he would check out books from the library and carry them home, hidden in brown paper bags in order to avoid other boys' teasing. He aspired to be a writer (and he eventually succeeded).

But as his hope for a successful future diminished, the values he had been taught at home, in school, and in his community seemed worthless, and he turned to the streets and to his books for comfort.

Don't miss this memoir by New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers, one of the most important voices of our time.

A collection of essential writings from the iconic foremother of Black intellectual history, feminism and activism

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual and community activist whose prescient insights and eloquent prose underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African-American social and political activism.

This volume brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Priest's debut collection, Horsepower, is a cinematic escape narrative that radically envisions a daughter's waywardness as aspirational. Across the book's three sequences, we find the black-girl speaker in the midst of a self-imposed exile, going back in memory to explore her younger self--a mixed-race child being raised by her white supremacist grandfather in the shadow of Churchill Downs, Kentucky's world-famous horseracing track--before arriving in a state of self-awareness to confront the personal and political landscape of a harshly segregated Louisville. Out of a space that is at once southern and urban, violent and beautiful, racially-charged and working-class, she attempts to transcend her social and economic circumstances. Across the collection, Priest writes a horse that acts as a metaphysical engine of flight, showing us how to throw off the harness and sustain wildness. Unlike the traditional Bildungsroman, Priest presents a non-linear narrative in which the speaker lacks the freedom to come of age naively in the urban South, and must instead, from the beginning, possess the wisdom of "the horses & their restless minds."

FROM "RODEO"

The four-wheeler is a chariot. Horse-wraiths
Kicking up a plume of spirits in the dirt behind us.
Her arms kudzu around my middle. Out here,

In the desert, everything is invisible.
Only the locusts' flat buzz gives
Them away. Everything native & quieting

Perennial & nighthawk black
As we ride through: the cowgirls,
The witch & the water sky-mirror-split,

The severity of squall lines. Also, the lips
Parting air like lightning & the girl
Blowing bubbles--in each one
a rainbow.

A fresh and fun celebration of natural hair for babies and toddlers!

My Hair is the perfect introduction to an array of beautiful hairstyles for tiny naturalistas-in-training!

Known for her popular Black Queens and Black Kings coloring books for adults, Danielle Murrell Cox creates a colorful and bouncy board book to pair with favorites such as Happy to Be Nappy by bell hooks; Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry; and I Love My Hair by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley.

A great gift for baby showers, birthdays, and other special occasions!

When their love is put to the ultimate test and their foundation is cracked, can they repair the damages to their covenant, or will their life together be over as quickly as it began?

Young and deeply in love, Mone't and Austin have the world at their fingertips. They were the beacon of love in the hood of Ganton Hills; a couple worth protecting. But the hood politics don't exist outside of the nine blocks. With a sudden thrust into success, Mone't and Austin face trials and tribulations they never imagined nor have the tools to handle.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Terry McMillan comes an honest look at a modern romance, from love at first sight to painful reality to working toward a happy ending....

Franklin Swift was a sometimes-employed construction worker and a not-quite-divorced dad of two. Zora Banks was a teacher, singer, and songwriter. They met in a Brooklyn brownstone, and there could be no walking away....

In this funny, gritty love story, Franklin and Zora join the ranks of fiction's most compelling couples as they move from Scrabble to sex, from layoffs to the limits of faith and trust. Disappearing Acts is about the mystery of desire and the burdens of the past. It's about respect--what it can and can't survive. And it's about the safe and secret places that only love can find.

In 1936, teenager MacNolia Cox became the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition. Supposedly prevented from winning, the precocious child who dreamed of becoming a doctor was changed irrevocably. Her story, told in a poignant nonlinear narrative, illustrates the power of a pivotal moment in a life.

Inside Out and Back Again meets One Crazy Summer and Brown Girl Dreaming in this novel-in-verse about fitting in and standing up for what's right.

It's 1969, and the Apollo 11 mission is getting ready to go to the moon. But for half-black, half-Japanese Mimi, moving to a predominantly white Vermont town is enough to make her feel alien. Suddenly, Mimi's appearance is all anyone notices. She struggles to fit in with her classmates, even as she fights for her right to stand out by entering science competitions and joining Shop Class instead of Home Ec. And even though teachers and neighbors balk at her mixed-race family and her refusals to conform, Mimi's dreams of becoming an astronaut never fade--no matter how many times she's told no.

This historical middle-grade novel is told in poems from Mimi's perspective over the course of one year in her new town, and shows readers that positive change can start with just one person speaking up.

Winner of the 2015-2016 APALA Literature Award in the Children's category!

* "Readers will be moved by the empathetic lyricism of Mimi's maturing voice."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* "This novel stands out with it's thoughtful portrayal of race and its embrace of girls in science and technical fields. The verse, though spare, is powerful and evocative, perfectly capturing Mimi's emotional journey."--School Library Journal, starred review

Learn hundreds of Black history's most important events on every day of the year!

Unearth all of Black history's most significant events for every day of the year! In On This Day in Black History, kids who love facts and trivia will spend hours poring over nearly 300 pages of milestones in Black sports, music, art, history, politics, and more, all neatly arranged by day of the year.

Inspiring and empowering as it is informative, On This Day in Black History covers both achievements and setbacks in the lives and Black men and women as they fought for the world's respect.

Discover the day Matthew Henson discovered the North Pole (April 6, 1909), the day England officially banned the African slave trade (March 25, 1807), the day Aretha Franklin released her first song to enter Billboard's Top 100 (February 27, 1961), the day George Washington Carver first advised Mahatma Gandhi on the virtues of a plant-based diet to help boycott British goods (February 24, 1929), and much, much more!

This powerful graphic novel follows the courageous life of Rosa Parks, who was arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. With comic book-style illustrations and engaging, easy-to-read text, this biography will inspire, entertain, and inform young readers about an individual who made a significant contribution to society. A must-have in any home, classroom, or library seeking a historical understanding of contemporary racial issues.

Winner of the Booker Prize

Liverpool, 1752. William Kemp has lost a fortune in cotton speculation, and must recoup his losses if his son is to marry the wealthy woman whom he loves. His last resort is a slave ship, one that will take him to the Guinea coast, where he will trade for human cargo, then embark on the infamous Middle Passage. When disease ravages the ship and the African prisoners mutiny, William's profit-seeking venture falls apart. Slaves and sailors alike will join together to found a utopian community on the coast of Florida--not knowing that the vengeful, younger Kemp is in pursuit. Unsworth's tour de force is a profound meditation on the sacred hunger--the greed--couched within human nature, animating the slave trade. It is a novel that transcends its setting, illuminating larger truths that resonate to this day.

Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History Prize

"Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time . . . An extraordinarily gripping read." --David A. Bell, The Guardian

A new interpretation of the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture

Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary's image has multiplied across the globe--appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film--the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a "cannibal." A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule, while his supporters also believed he communicated with vodou spirits. And for a leader who once summed up his modus operandi with the phrase "Say little but do as much as possible," he was a prolific and indefatigable correspondent, famous for exhausting the five secretaries he maintained, simultaneously, at the height of his power in the 1790s.

Employing groundbreaking archival research and a keen interpretive lens, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores Toussaint to his full complexity in Black Spartacus. At a time when his subject has, variously, been reduced to little more than a one-dimensional icon of liberation or criticized for his personal failings--his white mistresses, his early ownership of slaves, his authoritarianism --Hazareesingh proposes a new conception of Toussaint's understanding of himself and his role in the Atlantic world of the late eighteenth century. Black Spartacus is a work of both biography and intellectual history, rich with insights into Toussaint's fundamental hybridity--his ability to unite European, African, and Caribbean traditions in the service of his revolutionary aims. Hazareesingh offers a new and resonant interpretation of Toussaint's racial politics, showing how he used Enlightenment ideas to argue for the equal dignity of all human beings while simultaneously insisting on his own world-historical importance and the universal pertinence of blackness--a message which chimed particularly powerfully among African Americans.

Ultimately, Black Spartacus offers a vigorous argument in favor of "getting back to Toussaint"--a call to take Haiti's founding father seriously on his own terms, and to honor his role in shaping the postcolonial world to come.

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize Finalist for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Named a best book of the year by the The Economist Times Literary Supplement New Statesman

In this follow-up to President of the Whole Fifth Grade, Brianna navigates her toughest challenge yet: middle school!

Brianna Justice is determined to raise enough money for the big class trip to Washington, D.C., but she's up against a lot: classmates who all pretend to be something they're not, a new nemesis determined to run her out of office, and the sinking feeling she's about to lose her two best friends for good. But just when she begins to lose hope, she comes to realize that sometimes surprises can turn out even better than the best-laid plans.

Sherri Winston tells a story brimming with humor and heart as Brianna navigates the ins and outs of middle school, discovering that inspiration can come when you least expect it.

The lives and writings of six leading Black Buddhist women--Jan Willis, bell hooks, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, angel Kyodo williams, Spring Washam, and Faith Adiele--reveal new expressions of Buddhism rooted in ancestry, love, and collective liberation.

Lifting as They Climb is a love letter of freedom and self-expression from six Black women Buddhist teachers, conveyed through the voice of author Toni Pressley-Sanon, one of the innumerable people who have benefitted from their wisdom. She explores their remarkable lives and undertakes deep readings of their work, weaving them into the broader tapestry of the African diaspora and the historical struggle for Black liberation.

Black women in the U.S. have adapted Buddhist practice to meet challenges ranging from the injustices of the Jim Crow South to sexual violence, social discrimination, and bias within their Buddhist communities. Using their voices through the practice of memoir and other forms of writing, they have not only realized their own liberation but carried forward the Black tradition of leading others on the path toward collective awakening.

"Knowledge is what's important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it." -- TONI MORRISON

In this wide-ranging collection of thought-provoking interviews -- including her first and last -- Toni Morrison (whom President Barrack Obama called a "national treasure") details not only her writing life, but also her other careers as a teacher, and as a publisher, as well as the gripping story of her family. In fact, Morrison reveals here that her Nobel Prize-winning novels, such as Beloved and Song of Solomon, were born out of her family's stories -- such as those of her great-grandmother, born a slave, or her father, escaping the lynch mobs of the South. With an introduction by her close friend, poet Nikki Giovani, Morrison hereby weaves yet another fascinating and inspiring narrative -- that of herself.