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African American Fiction & Nonfiction November 2018
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An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie ObiomaA heart-breaking and mythic story about a Nigerian poultry farmer who sacrifices everything to win the woman he loves, by Man Booker Finalist and author of The Fishermen, Chigozie Obioma.
A contemporary twist on the Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is narrated by the chi, or spirit of a young poultry farmer named Chinonso. His life is set off course when he sees a woman who is about to jump off a bridge. Horrified by her recklessness, he hurls two of his prized chickens off the bridge. The woman, Ndali, is stopped in her tracks.
Chinonso and Ndali fall in love but she is from an educated and wealthy family. When her family objects to the union on the grounds that he is not her social equal, he sells most of his possessions to attend college in Cyprus. But when he arrives in Cyprus, he discovers that he has been utterly duped by the young Nigerian who has made the arrangements for him. Penniless, homeless, we watch as he gets further and further away from his dream and from home.
An Orchestra of Minorities is a heart-wrenching epic about destiny and determination.
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Hugs from Obama : A Photographic Look Back at the Warmth and Wisdom of President Barack Obama by M. SweeneyA photographic celebration of Obama’s warmth and compassion.
America needs a hug from Obama now more than ever, and this beautiful collection of photographs and quotations showcases President Obama’s wit, grace, wisdom, and warmth. As you pore over these pages, you'll be transported back to an era when leadership and dignity went hand in hand. Alongside touching images of our 44th president embracing his fellow citizens are some of his most inspirational and timely quotes, such as, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America” and “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
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Murder on Shades Mountain : the legal lynching of Willie Peterson and the struggle for justice in Jim Crow Birmingham by Melanie MorrisonOne August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, 18, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on Birmingham's black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jenny Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death.
In Murder on Shades Mountain, Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.
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Cleveland Sellers Jr. was the scapegoat for one of the bloodiest civil rights events of the 1960s. In 1968 state troopers gunned down black students protesting the segregation of a South Carolina bowling alley, killing three and injuring 28. The Orangeburg Massacre was one of the most violent moments of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, and only one person served prison time in its aftermath: a young black man by the name of Cleveland Sellers Jr. Many years later, the state would recognize that Sellers was a scapegoat in that college campus tragedy and would issue a full pardon. Outside Agitator is the story of a Sellers’ early activism: organizing a lunch counter sit-in as a 15-year-old in the tiny South Carolina town of Denmark, registering voters in Alabama and Mississippi, refusing the Vietnam War draft, serving as national program director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and working alongside 1960s civil rights icons Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King Jr., H. Rap Brown and Malcolm X. It's also the story of his lifelong struggle to overcome the Orangeburg incident and his slow crawl to justice. That journey takes him to Harvard University, then to a hard-fought position in civil service in Greensboro, North Carolina. And in a triumphant end to his career, a major Southern university elevates Sellers to chair its African-American Studies program, and the historically black college in his hometown respectfully calls him to be its president.
Adam Parker’s incisive biography is about a proud black man who refuses to be defeated, whose tumultuous life story personifies America’s continuing civil rights struggle.
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Let the people see : the story of Emmett Till by Elliott J. GornEveryone knows the story of the murder of young Emmett Till. In August 1955, the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy was murdered in Mississippi for having--supposedly--flirted with a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, who was working behind the counter of a store. Emmett was taken from the home of a relative later that night by white men; three days later, his naked body was recovered in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a cotton-gin fan. Till's killers were acquitted, but details of what had happened to him became public; the story gripped the country and sparked outrage. It continues to turn. The murder has been the subject of books and documentaries, rising and falling in number with anniversaries and tie-ins, and shows no sign of letting up. The Till murder continues to haunt the American conscience. Fifty years later, in 2005, the FBI reopened the case. New papers and testimony have come to light, and several participants, including Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, have published autobiographies. Using this new evidence and a broadened historical context, Elliott Gorn delves into facets of the case never before studied and considers how and why the story of Emmett Till still resonates, and likely always will. Even as it marked a turning point, Gornshows, hauntingly, it reveals how old patterns of thought and behavior linger in new faces, and how deeply embedded racism in America remains. Gorn does full justice to both Emmett and the Till Case--the boy and the symbol--and shows how and why their intersection illuminates a number of crossroads: of north and south, black and white, city and country, industrialization and agriculture, rich and poor, childhood and adulthood.
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The new Negro : the life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. StewartA biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance describes him becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD at Harvard University and promoting the work of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Jacob Lawrence.
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The Warner Boys : Our Family's Story of Autism and Hope by Curt Warner An emotional, revealing memoir of one family’s life in seclusion—and the love, strength, and faith it took to save it. Seahawks star running back Curt Warner and his wife, Ana, were prominent figures in Seattle in the early 1990s. When they dropped from the public eye after Curt’s retirement, everyone assumed it was for a simpler life. But the reality behind their seclusion was a secret they hid from even their closest friends: their twins, Austin and Christian, had been diagnosed with severe autism. What followed was a painful struggle to hold their family and their marriage together in a home filled with chaos, emotional exhaustion, and constant fear for the safety of their unpredictable but beloved boys. Now, after years of silence, the Warners share their inspiring journey from stardom and success to heartbreaking self-imposed isolation. Above all, it’s a story of the life-changing truth that love for family and each other—no matter how challenged—is the path to healing and peace. The Warner Boys is the true story of a family who fought for their children and how they grew stronger against all odds.
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New Hanover County Library201 Chestnut Street Wilmington, North Carolina 28401 910-798-6301www.nhclibrary.org/ |
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