Collection: Shop Black

A recently discovered collection of folktales celebrating African American oral tradition, community, and faith..."splendidly vivid and true."--New York Times

Every Tongue Got to Confess is an extensive volume of African American folklore that Zora Neale Hurston collected on her travels through the Gulf States in the late 1920s.

The bittersweet and often hilarious taleswhich range from longer narratives about God, the Devil, White Folk, and Mistaken Identity to witty one-linersreveal attitudes about faith, love, family, slavery, race, and community. Together, this collection of nearly 500 folktales weaves a vibrant tapestry that celebrates the African American life in the rural South and represent a major part of Zora Neale Hurstons literary legacy.

Who are Black Creoles? Saloy's new poems address ancestral connections to contemporary life, traditions celebrated, New Orleans Black life today, Louisiana Black life today, enduring and surviving hurricanes, romance, #BlackLivesMatter, #wematter, as well as poems of the pandemic lockdown from New Orleans. Saloy's new collection of verse advances and updates narratives of Black life to now, including day-to-day Black speech, the lives of culture keepers, and family tales. These poems detail cultural and historical memory of enslavement not taught and offer healing and hope for tomorrow.

A "powerful and indispensable" look at the devastating consequences of environmental racism (Gerald Markowitz) and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities -- featuring a new preface on COVID-19 risk factors. Did you know...

• Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes below $10,000.

• When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no larger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma -- one-tenth of that amount will lower his IQ.

• Nearly two of every five African American homes in Baltimore are plagued by lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American.

From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional negligence causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people across the country-cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening our health care system. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power. The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. She takes apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, using copious data that instead point to a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ gap: environmental racism - a confluence of racism and other institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and insufficient sanitation services. She investigates heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as chief agents influencing intelligence to explain why communities of color are disproportionately affected -- and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem. Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.

National Book Critics Circle 2021 Biography Finalist

53rd NAACP Image Award Nominee: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography

"[A] riveting and timely exploration of Hamer's life. . . . Brilliantly constructed to be both forward and backward looking, Blain's book functions simultaneously as a much needed history lesson and an indispensable guide for modern activists."--New York Times Book Review

Ms. Magazine "Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us - 2021" - KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW - BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW - Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of Fall 2021

Explores the Black activist's ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality.

"We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free."
--Fannie Lou Hamer

A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice.

Award-winning historian and New York Times best-selling author Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe.

Despite her limited material resources and the myriad challenges she endured as a Black woman living in poverty in Mississippi, Hamer committed herself to making a difference in the lives of others. She refused to be sidelined in the movement and refused to be intimidated by those of higher social status and with better jobs and education. In these pages, Hamer's words and ideas take center stage, allowing us all to hear the activist's voice and deeply engage her words, as though we had the privilege to sit right beside her.

More than 40 years since Hamer's death in 1977, her words still speak truth to power, laying bare the faults in American society and offering valuable insights on how we might yet continue the fight to help the nation live up to its core ideals of "equality and justice for all."

Includes a photo insert featuring Hamer at civil rights marches, participating in the Democratic National Convention, testifying before Congress, and more.

The wife of Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King was a civil rights leader in her own right, playing a prominent role in the African American struggle for racial equality in the 1960s.

Here's a gripping portrait of a smart, remarkable woman. Growing up in Alabama, Coretta Scott King graduated valedictorian from her high school before becoming one of the first African American students at Antioch College in Ohio. It was there that she became politically active, joining the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). After her marriage to Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta took part in the Civil Rights Movement. Following her husband's assassination in 1968, she assumed leadership of the movement. Later in life she was an advocate for the Women's Rights Movement, LGBT rights, and she worked to end apartheid in South Africa.

Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro's writing blends research and fiction to summon voices silenced in archival records. The protagonists actively dissent from their condition as slaves and, more importantly, from their condition as negras--an identity constructed by and under Eurocentric epistemology. It doesn't matter whether the slave owners' initials inscribed on their flesh with blazing iron ever disappear; there won't be a way to identify them if they don't have a say. No wonder it's "the historians, for leaving us out," to whom Arroyo Pizarro dedicates Negras, aware that the stories of Wanwe, Ndizi, Tshanwe, and Petra burst into and fill historical lacunae that have been deliberately ignored. This bilingual edition also includes an anthology of Arroyo Pizarro's poetry.

Travel through time with National Book Award Finalist Kekla Magoon in a page-turning fantasy adventure about family secrets and finding the courage to plot your own life story.

Since Grandpa died, Dally's days are dull and restricted. She's eleven and a half years old, and her exacting single mother is already preparing her to take over the family business. Starved for adventure and release, Dally rescues a mysterious envelope from her mother's clutches, an envelope Grandpa had earmarked for her. The map she finds inside leads straight to an ancient vault, a library of secrets where each book is a portal to a precise moment in time. As Dally "checks out" adventure after adventure--including an exhilarating outing with pirates--she begins to dive deep into her family's hidden history. Soon she's visiting every day to escape the demands of the present. But the library has secrets of its own, intentions that would shape her life as surely as her mother's meticulous plans. What will Dally choose? Equal parts mystery and adventure--with a biracial child puzzling out her identity alongside the legacy of the past--this masterful middle-grade fantasy rivets with crackling prose, playful plot twists, and timeless themes. A satisfying choice for fans of Kindred and When You Reach Me.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A powerful, inventive collection from one of America's most critically admired poets

"What has restlessness been for?"

In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is named--love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the past's capacity both to teach and to mislead us--also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, love's fallout. How "to say no to despair"? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in Phillips's remarkable work, stand as further proof that "if Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craft" (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).

The first novel in USA Today Bestselling Author Beverly Jenkins's compelling new series follows a Northern woman south in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War . . .

Valinda Lacy's mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life--and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq.

As an architect from an old New Orleans family, Drake has a deeply personal interest in rebuilding the city. Raised by strong women, he recognizes Valinda's determination. And he can't stop admiring--or wanting--her. But when Valinda's father demands she return home to marry a man she doesn't love, her daring rebellion draws Drake into an irresistible intrigue.

In her dedication Safia Elhillo writes, "The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth date January 1." What follows is a deeply personal collection of poems that describe the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one's own land.

The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The poems mythologize family histories until they break open, using them to explore aspects of Sudan's history of colonial occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed many of his songs to the asmarani--an Arabic term of endearment for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in those two worlds.

No longer content to accept manmade borders, Elhillo navigates a new and reimagined world. Maintaining a sense of wonder in multiple landscapes and mindscapes of perpetually shifting values, she leads the reader through a postcolonial narrative that is equally terrifying and tender, melancholy and defiant.

Safia Elhillo is a Cave Canem fellow and poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. She is the author of The Life and Times of Susie Knuckles.

An emotionally charged psychological thriller that will leave fans breathless as they bear witness to the lengths a wife will go to honor her vows. An addictive page turner for fans of twisty plots in the same vein of Colleen Hoover's Verity.

Perfect wife... Perfect life... until you can't remember either.

The moment Dante Williams wakes up on the side of the road, unsure of where he is or who he is, his life changes for the worse. After a brief stay in the hospital, Dante is released to the care of his loving wife, Sade. Sade is beautiful, successful, and loyal. So loyal, she devotes herself to Dante indefinitely, hoping this will help him appreciate what he has--his life and his wife.

While seemingly having it all, their perfect marriage isn't enough to keep Dante from digging up the past in hopes of recovering his memory. It isn't long before he begins questioning Sade's behavior and intentions. Once secrets start to unravel, Dante is left more confused than the day following the accident.

When Dante discovers evidence of something more sinister at play, he prepares to end his marriage but learns quickly that Sade meant every word in her vows and plans to honor them, until death.

In the follow-up to One-Shot Harry, fearless crime photographer and occasional private eye Harry Ingram finds himself im the LAPD's crosshairs after capturing damning evidence of police brutality.

An atmospheric dive into a city on the brink that's brimming with remarkable historical detail, Ash Dark as Night is perfect for fans of Walter Mosley and James Ellroy.

Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene, including images of the police as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on civilians. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost--until Ingram's girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. The photo makes front-page news.

A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita's mother, who wants Ingram's help tracking down her business associate Moses "Mose" Tolbert, last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash, and clandestine agendas--all the while grappling with his newfound fame, which puts him in the sightlines of LAPD's secretive intelligence division.

Ash Dark as Night is a nail-biting ride-along through midcentury Los Angeles with a crime fiction legend in the driver's seat.

Palestine as Metaphor consists of a series of interviews with Mahmoud Darwish, which have never appeared in English before. The interviews are a wealth of information on the poet's personal life, his relationships, his numerous works, and his tragedy. They illuminate Darwish's conception of poetry as a supreme art that transcends time and place.

Several writers and journalists conducted the interviews, including a Lebanese poet, a Syrian literary critic, three Palestinian writers, and an Israeli journalist. Each encounter took place in a different city from Nicosia to London, Paris, and Amman.

These vivid dialogues unravel the threads of a rich life haunted by the loss of Palestine and illuminate the genius and the distress of a major world poet.

From its origins in early eighteenth century slave communities to the end of the twentieth century, African-American art has made a vital contribution to the art of the United States. African-American Art provides a major reassessment of the subject, setting the art in the context of the African-American experience. Here, Patton discusses folk and decorative arts such as ceramics, furniture, and quilts alongside fine art, sculptures, paintings, and photography during the 1800s. She also examines the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, the era of Civil Rights and Black Nationalism during the 1960s and 70s, and the emergence of new black artists and theorists in the 1980s and 90s.

New evidence suggests different ways of looking at African-American art, confirming that it represents the culture and society from which it emerges. Here, Patton explores significant issues such as the relationship of art and politics, the influence of galleries and museums, the growth of black universities, critical theory, the impact of artists collectives, and the assortment of art practices since the 1960s. African-American Art shows that in its cultural diversity and synthesis of cultures it mirrors those in American society as a whole.

A lyrical picture book biography of Simone Biles, gymnastics champion and Olympic superstar.

Before she was a record-breaking gymnast competing on the world stage, Simone Biles spent time in foster care as a young child. Nimble and boundlessly energetic, she cherished every playground and each new backyard.

When she was six years old, Simone's family took shape in a different way. Her grandparents Ron and Nellie Biles adopted Simone and her sister Adria. Ron and Nellie became their parents. Simone was also introduced to gymnastics that same year, launching a lifelong passion fueled by remarkable talent, sacrifice, and the undying support of her family.

From her athletic early childhood to the height of her success as an Olympic champion, Flying High is the story of the world's greatest gymnast from author Michelle Meadows and illustrator Ebony Glenn.