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African American Fiction & Non-Fiction September/October 2018
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The Accidental Mistress
by Aya De Leon
Sisters from Trinidad, Violet and Lily have never had much in common. Stunning Lily arrives undocumented in New York and makes her way as a stripper. But Harvard-educated Violet is this close to the perfect assimilated life, thanks to a prestigious job, and her rich bougie fiance... Until she aids a woman in trouble, and is mistaken for a notorious strip-club mogul's mistress. When she's wrongly accused of helping him embezzle millions, Violet loses everything. As Violet and Lily struggle to finally understand each other, they have only one shot to get justice for those who need it most. ~Book Jacket
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Bad Men and Wicked Women
by Eric Jerome Dickey
When his pregnant and bitter daughter blackmails him for $50,000, Los Angeles enforcer Ken Swift embarks on a clash of wills that is complicated by a contract that spirals out of control, revealing the vengeful nature of a dangerous adversary.
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Buffalo Soldier
by Maurice Broaddus
"Having stumbled onto a plot within his homeland of Jamaica, former espionage agent Desmond Coke finds himself caught between warring religious and political factions all vying for control of a mysterious boy named Lij Tafari. Wanting the boy to have a chance to live a free life, Desmond assumes responsibility for him and they flee. But a dogged enemy agent remains ever on their heels, desperate to obtain the secrets held within Lij for her employer alone. Assassins, intrigue, and steammen stand between Desmond and Lij as they search for a place to call home in a North America that could have been"--Back cover
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Collusion
by De'nesha Diamond
Framed for a high-profile murder, Abrianna Parker finds herself hurtling down a conspiracy rabbit hole in a desperate attempt to clear her name. Her only way out is to go after the most powerful man in the country. By her side is ex-con turned private investigator Kadir Kahlifa, a man as seductive as he is dangerous. While battling a fiery passion, they team up with their band of street rebels and digital revolutionaries to burn through deception and spin to uncover the truth before it costs more innocent lives - mainly their own. ~ Book Jacket
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Dallas
by Treasure Hernandez
Young and naive, Tiara Rogers learns the hard way what happens when you are green in the game. She has everything a girl could ever want, except a normal life. Not understanding that being the daughter of Dallas, Texas kingpin makes her a walking target, she does everything she can to defy her father, including losing her virginity when she falls hard for the charm of a boy she barely knows. ~Horizon
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Dead on Arrival
by Kiki Swinson
Because of her husband Reese's gambling debts, Dawn Spencer and Reese get drawn into a lucrative illegal-immigrant-smuggling ring, but after several immigrants turn up dead on arrival and Reese bets more than he can ever repay, the Feds and cold-blooded loan sharks begin closing in.
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Full Figured 12: Carl Weber Presents
by La Jill Hunt
After many years of misery, Zen Brooks is finally free. Free from her cheating husband, free from a dead-end job, and free from more than one hundred pounds of weight that she worked hard to lose. Now, she is enjoying life and determined not to ever go back to being the person she was. Josh Miller had the world in the palm of his hands. Once one of the top players in the NBA with millions of dollars in his bank account, there was nothing in this world that he wanted and couldn't have. But his fame and fortune was short-lived, and his world and career came crashing down because of bad habits. ~Book Jacket
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Girls from Da Hood 13
by Michel Moore
Three Urban Books authors have teamed up to bring the drama in this latest installment of the popular Girls From da Hood anthology series.
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Heads of the Colored People: Stories
by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original characters. Some are darkly humorous--from two mothers exchanging snide remarks through notes in their kids' backpacks, to the young girl contemplating how best to notify her Facebook friends of her impending suicide--while others are devastatingly poignant--a new mother and funeral singer who is driven tomadness with grief for the young black boys who have fallen victim to gun violence, or the teen who struggles between her upper middle class upbringing and her desire to fully connect with black culture. Thompson-Spires fearlessly shines a light on the simmering tensions and precariousness of black citizenship. Her stories are exquisitely rendered, satirical, and captivating in turn, engaging in the ongoing conversations about race and identity politics, as well as the vulnerability of the black body. Boldly resisting categorization and easy answers, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is an original and necessary voice in contemporary fiction."
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Home Across the Road: a Novel
by Nancy Peacock
China Redd, the great-granddaughter of a slave, tells the story of her life living on Roseberry Plantation.
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Jezebel's Redemption
by Jacquelin Thomas
Eight years in prison has given Jessica Ricks the will to go from cold-hearted killer to a minister of the gospel. She's prepared to start life anew with her drug dealer turned preacher husband, Clayton. With the unwavering support of her family Jessica is well on her way to living the life she has always desired and felt she deserved. Not everyone is willing to grant Jessica the redemption she eagerly claims as her own. Natalia Anderson can't fathom the reasoning behind Jessica's release after only serving eight of the sixteen years in which she was sentenced. Natalia is determined to make Jessica pay for the crimes she committed one way or another. A life of peace is the last thing Jessica will enjoy once Natalia puts her plan into action. Will Jessica be able to finally put her past behind her, or will Natalia, who was once her victim, become her assailant? ~Book Jacket
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King of the Dancehall
by Nick Cannon
In order to pay for his mother's medical bills, ex-con Tarzan Brixton flees Brooklyn to Kingston, Jamaica, where he creates a drug-running empire and becomes captivated by the music, dance, and lifestyle of Jamaican dancehall culture.
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A Lucky Man: Stories
by Jamel Brinkley
In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man , fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J'Ouvert can't help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. A pair of college boys on the prowl follow two girls home from a party and have to own the uncomfortable truth of their desires. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history. Jamel Brinkley's stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class--where luck may be the greatest fiction of all. ~Book Jacket
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Luke Cage: Sins of the Father
by David Walker
After arriving in New Orleans for Dr. Noah Burstein's funeral, Luke discovers there is more to his mentor's death than appears and sets out to get answers at any cost.
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Luke Cage 2: Caged!
by David F. Walker
Carl Lucas went to jail for a crime that he didn't commit, and came out a new man: the unbreakable hero named Luke Cage! But now, he finds himself on the wrong side of the law and thrown in prison once again. What dark power has caged Luke once more? And when the entire world is threatened, how can he save everyone from the inside of a prison cell? With his mind mangled, Luke grasps for any foothold he can find. Which will be difficult, since this is no ordinary prison...and the chain gang he's on isn't doing road work. What horrors await in the dreaded mine? ~ Book Jacket
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Passion of the Streets
by A'zayler
Jamil Rock is the hood's most successful drug dealer and never thinks too far aheaduntil Gia Ellis walks into his life. She's a sheltered girl from a wealthy family with a bright future. Suddenly, ruling the streets is nothing compared to the instant heat, and alluringly innocent aura from Gia. Jamil can't resist. -~Book Jacket
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Praise Song for the Butterflies
by Bernice L McFadden
Sacrificed into ritual servitude at a brutal religious shrine where she endures unspeakable acts, a once-privileged daughter is rescued after 15 years and navigates trauma and scrutiny in order to heal.
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Strategic Seduction
by Cheris Hodges
Alicia Michaels needs a major career reboot, so she’s got no time for romance. But starting over in Atlanta is an uphill battle for the cautious PR rep—especially after she teams up with wealthy Richmond Crawford on a make-or-break project. For one thing, the risk-taking entrepreneur is nothing like the staid businessman he used to be. For another, she and Richmond can’t see eye-to-eye on anything—except that the reckless attraction between them is sizzling, off-the-charts trouble . . . ~Book Jacket
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Temper
by Nicky Drayden
An underprivledged twin, marked by tattoos of his vices, worsens his strained relationship with his brother when he begins hearing voices and experiences an inexplicable craving for blood.
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When I'm With You
by Donna Hill
Longtime New Orleans bachelor Rafe Lawson is finally ready to tie the knot. His heart has been captured by gorgeous senator’s daughter Avery Richards. Then the media descends, jeopardizing her Secret Service career—and their imminent wedding. But it’s the unexpected return of Rafe’s first love that could cost the tycoon everything. ~Book Jacket
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Air Traffic: a Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America
by Gregory Pardlo
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, his first work of prose: a deeply felt memoir of a family's bonds and a meditation on race, addiction, fatherhood, ambition, and American culture The Pardlos were an average, middle-class African American family living in a New Jersey Levittown: charismatic Gregory Sr., an air traffic controller, his wife, and their two sons, bookish Greg Jr. and musical-talent Robbie. But when "Big Greg" loses his job after participating in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Strike of 1981, he becomes a disillusioned, toxic, looming presence in the household--and a powerful rival for young Greg. While Big Greg succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money, Greg Jr. rebels--he joins a boot camp for prospective Marines,follows a woman to Denmark, drops out of college again and again, and yields to alcoholism. Years later, he falls for a beautiful, no-nonsense woman named Ginger and becomes a parent himself. Then, he finally grapples with the irresistible yet ruinous legacy of masculinity he inherited from his father. In chronicling his path to recovery and adulthood--Gregory Pardlo gives us a compassionate, loving ode to his father, to fatherhood, and to the frustrating-yet-redemptive ties of family, as well as a scrupulous, searing examination of how African American manhood is shaped by contemporary American life."
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The Away Game: the Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstars
by Sebastian Abbot
Traces the audacious scouting program known as Football Dreams that for the past decade has strategically recruited young African boys to become the sport's future elites, describing the experiences of a group of talented hopefuls who train, compete and pursue their fortunes at Europe's top clubs.
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Blossoming Hope: the Black Christian Woman's Guide to Mental Health and Wellness
by Tonya D. Armstrong
Black Christian women are sisters: We are connected through our identity in Christ and a common history forged by the African Diaspora. These cultural and spiritual legacies not only strengthen us, but also present us with unique challenges to our health and wholeness. As daughters of the Diaspora, we encounter negative stereotypes and denigrating images imposed upon us by others. As Christians, we can be tempted to overspiritualize our lives to the detriment of our wholeness. These realities can leave us merely surviving our fragmented lives, when in reality, we want to blossom! Well, Blossoming Hope: The Black Christian Woman's Guide to Mental Health and Wellness was written to help do just that.. ~Book Jacket
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Brown: Poems
by Kevin Young
"James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed.: the recently National Book Award-longlisted author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black, Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "History"--a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students"the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"--to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These twenty-eight taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time."
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The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
"The Idea of Black Criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America. Khalil Gibran Muhammad chronicles how, when, and why modern notions of black people as an exceptionally dangerous race of criminals first emerged. Well known are the lynch mobs and racist criminal justice practices in the South that stoked white fears of black crime and shaped the contours of the New South. In this illuminating book, Muhammad shifts our attention to the urban North as a crucial but overlooked site for the production and dissemination of those ideas and practices." "Following the 1890 census - the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery - crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society. Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in northern prisons were seen by many whites - liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners - as indisputable proof of blacks' inferiority. What else but pathology could explain black failure in the land of opportunity? Social scientists and reformers used crime statistics to mask and excuse anti-black racism, violence, and discrimination across the nation, especially in the urban North." "The Condemnation of Blackness is the most thorough historical account of the enduring link between blackness and criminality in the making of modern urban America. It is a startling examination of why the echoes of America's Jim Crow past continue to resonate in "color-blind" crime rhetoric today."~Book Jacket
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Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of Confederacy
by Ethan J Kytle
A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey s Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the U.S. slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822. ~Book Jacket
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The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism
by Wayne A. Wiegand
In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens. ~Book Jacket
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Eisenhower vs. Warren: the Battle for Civil Rights and Liberties
by James F Simon
Traces the bitter 1950s rivalry between President Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren and how it framed the tumultuous future of the modern civil rights movement, sharing insights into their respective beliefs about gradual versus immediate change and how their complicated political and personal differences continue to reverberate today.
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Feel Free: Essays
by Zadie Smith
In a collection of essays arranged into five sections—In the World, In the Audience, In the Gallery, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free—the best-selling author of Swing Time discusses important questions about our world that readers will immediately recognize.
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For Everyone
by Jason Reynolds
"Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds's rallying cry to the dreamers of the world. Jump Anyway is for kids who dream. Kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Kids who are like Jason, a self-professed dreamer. In it, Jason does not claim to know how to make dreams come true; he has, in fact, been fighting on the front line of his own battle to make his own dreams a reality. He expected to make it when he was sixteen. He inched that number up to eighteen, then twenty-five years old..Now, some of those expectations have been realized. But others, the most important ones, lay ahead, and a lot of them involve kids, how to inspire them. All the kids who are scared to dream, or don't know how to dream, or don't dare to dream because they've NEVER seen a dream come true. Jason wants kids to know that dreams take time. They involve countless struggles. But no matter how many times a dreamer gets beat down, the drive and the passion and the hope never fully extinguish--because just having the dream is the start you need, or you won't get anywhere anyway, and that is when you have to take a leap of faith and...jump anyway."
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Get Over It!: Thought Therapy for Healing the Hard Stuff
by Iyanla Vanzant
"When individuals are suffering through unpleasant or undesirable situations and circumstances, they are often unaware of how they participate in creating or re-creating their experience. In severe cases, there is addiction or suffering. Frequently, my first attempt at offering suffering individuals another way of seeing their experience is met with fierce resistance, which I call "the fight to be right." Often people unwittingly fight to maintain ownership of the very limitations that cause their suffering. Unfortunately, while fighting for their limitations, most fail to realize this is not a fight they want to win. Rather than engage them in a mental or emotional sparring match, I ask one simple question: "What is your prayer?" When an individual seriously contemplates this question, stories about how pain and suffering should or can be tolerated begin to recede. The ego has very few arguments that can survive the power of an earnest and heartfelt prayer." ~Book Jacket
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Hang Time: My Life in Basketball
by Elgin Baylor
The 11-time NBA All-Star and 2006 NBA Executive of the Year traces his career in professional basketball, touching on such subjects as the vertical-versus-horizontal strategies that shaped him as both a player and a general manager, his battles against racism and his relationship with the notorious Donald Sterling.
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How Not to Get Shot: and Other Advice from White People
by D. L. Hughley
The comedian host of the nationally syndicated radio program, The Original Kings of Comedy, builds on conversations he had with his children in a cutting satire of race relations in the era of Trump and Black Lives Matter.
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Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
by Catherine Kerrison
A portrait of the divergent lives of Thomas Jefferson's three daughters shares insights into how, in spite of privilege and education, his white daughters struggled with the realities of lives they were ill-prepared to manage, while the daughter he fathered with a slave did not achieve freedom until adulthood and endured a mysterious and highly ironic existence.
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Lighting the Fires of Freedom : African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement
by Janet Dewart Bell
During the Civil Rights Movement, African American women were generally not in the headlines; they simply did the work that needed to be done. Yet despite their significant contributions at all levels of the movement, they remain mostly invisible to the larger public. Beyond Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, and Dorothy Height, most Americans, black and white alike, would be hard-pressed to name other leaders at the community, local, and national levels. In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women's all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. ~Book Jacket
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A Little Piece of Light : A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound
by Donna Hylton
Like so many women before her and so many women yet to come, Donna Hylton's early life was a nightmare of abuse that left her feeling alone and convinced of her worthlessness. In 1986, she took part in a horrific act and was sentenced to 25 years to life for kidnapping and second-degree murder. It seemed that Donna had reached the end--at age 19, due to her own mistakes and bad choices, her life was over. A Little Piece of Light tells the heartfelt, often harrowing tale of Donna's journey back to life as she faced the truth about the crime that locked her away for 27 years...and celebrated the family she found inside prison that ultimately saved her. ~Book Jacket
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Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change
by Stacey Abrams
A guide to harnessing the strengths of being an outsider by the political activist slated to become America's first black-woman governor shares the story of her own humble origins and rise through educational and political arenas, counseling women of color on how to overcome self-sabotaging beliefs while highlighting the strengths of their differences to gain a competitive edge in the real world.
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My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Midst of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South
by Issac J. Bailey
My Brother Moochie provides a wide-ranging yet intensely intimate view of crime and incarceration in the United States, and the devastating effects on the incarcerated, their loved ones, their victims, and society as a whole. It also offers hope for families caught in the incarceration trap: though the Bailey family’s lows have included prison and bearing the responsibility for multiple deaths, their highs have included Harvard University, the White House, and a renewed sense of pride and understanding that presents a path forward. ~Book Jacket
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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 Morrison
One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, 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 this volume, the author 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 - the author scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Community Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. This volume 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. ~Book Jacket
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A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law
by Sherrilyn A Ifill
A no-holds-barred, red-hot discussion of race in America today from some of the leading names in the field, including the bestselling author of Just Mercy. This blisteringly candid discussion of the American dilemma in the age of Trump brings together the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the former attorney general of the United States, a bestselling author and death penalty lawyer, and a star professor for an honest conversation the country desperately needs to hear. Drawing on their collective decades of work on civil rights issues as well as personal histories of rising from poverty and oppression, these leading lights of the legal profession and the fight for racial justice talk about the importance of reclaiming the racial narrative and keeping our eyes on the horizon as we work for justice in an unjust time.~Book Jacket
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No Place to Call Home
by J. J. Bola
A tale of love, loss, identity, and belonging, No Place to Call Home tells the story of a family who fled to the United Kingdom from their native Congo to escape the political violence under the dictator, Le Maréchal. The young son Jean starts at a new school and struggles to fit in. An unlikely friendship gets him into a string of sticky situations, eventually leading to a suspension. At home, his parents pressure him to focus on school and get his act together, to behave more like his star-student little sister. As the family tries to integrate in and navigate modern British society while holding on to their roots and culture, they meet Tonton, a womanizer who loves alcohol and parties. Much to Jean's father's dismay, after losing his job, Tonton moves in with them. He introduces the family―via his church where colorful characters congregate―to a familiar community of fellow country-people, making them feel slightly less alone. The family begins to settle, but their current situation unravels and a threat to their future appears, while the fear of uncertainty remains. ~Book Jacket
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Real American: a Memoir
by Julie Lythcott-Haims
The author of the best-selling How to Raise an Adult shares the story of her biracial upbringing in an America where ubiquitous and socially accepted racist norms constantly challenged her self-esteem, prompting her award-winning career in education and her perspectives on wisdom and the healing power of community.
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The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War
by Jared Brock
"The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson, a slave who spent forty-two years in pre-Civil War bondage in the American South and eventually escaped with his wife and four young children, travelling 600 miles and eventually settling with his family as a free man across the border in Canada. Once there, Henson rescued 118 more slaves and purchased land to build what would become one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, a 500-person freeman settlement called Dawn. He was immortalized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin."- Provided by the Publisher
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The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age
by Patrick Parr
Martin Luther King Jr. was a cautious nineteen-year-old rookie preacher when he left Atlanta, Georgia, to attend divinity school up north. At Crozer Theological Seminary, King, or "ML" back then, immediately found himself surrounded by a white staff and white professors. Even his dorm room had once been used by wounded Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. In addition, his fellow seminarians were almost all older; some were soldiers who had fought in World War II, others pacifists who had chosen jail instead of enlisting. ML was facing challenges he'd barely dreamed of. A prankster and a late-night, chain-smoking pool player, ML soon fell in love with a white woman, all the while adjusting to life in an integrated student body and facing discrimination from locals in the surrounding town of Chester, Pennsylvania. In class, ML performed well, though he demonstrated a habit of plagiarizing that continued throughout his academic career. But he was helped by friendships with fellow seminarians and the mentorship of the Reverend J. Pius Barbour. In his three years at Crozer between 1948 and 1951, King delivered dozens of sermons around the Philadelphia area, had a gun pointed at him (twice), played on the basketball team, and eventually became student body president. These experiences shaped him into a man ready to take on even greater challenges. Based on dozens of revealing interviews with the men and women who knew him then, The Seminarian is the first definitive, full-length account of King's years as a divinity student at Crozer Theological Seminary. Long passed over by biographers and historians, this period in King's life is vital to understanding the historical figure he soon became. ~Book Jacket
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Ruthless Tide: The Tragic Epic of the Johnstown Flood
by Al Roker
Central Pennsylvania, May 31, 1889: After a deluge of rain--nearly a foot in less than twenty-four hours--swelled the Little Conemaugh River, panicked engineers watched helplessly as swiftly rising waters threatened to breach the South Fork dam, built to create a private lake for a fishing and hunting club that counted among its members Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie. Though the engineers telegraphed neighboring towns on this last morning in May warning of the impending danger, residents--factory workers and their families--remained in their homes, having grown used to false alarms... In Ruthless Tide, Al Roker follows an unforgettable cast of characters whose fates converged because of that tragic day, including John Parke, the engineer whose heroic efforts failed to save the dam; the robber barons whose fancy sport fishing resort was responsible for modifications that weakened the dam; and Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, who spent five months in Johnstown leading one of the first organized disaster relief efforts in the United States. Weaving together their stories and those of many ordinary citizens whose lives were forever altered by the event, Ruthless Tideis testament to the power of the human spirit in times of tragedy and also a timely warning about the dangers of greed, inequality, neglected infrastructure, and the ferocious, uncontrollable power of nature. ~Book Jacket
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Soul: a Chef's Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes
by Todd Richards
Black American chefs and cooks are often typecast as the experts of only one cuisine—soul food, but Todd Richards’ food is anything but stereotypical. Taste his Hot-Chicken-Style Country-Fried Lamb Steak or Blueberry-Sweet Tea-Brined Chicken Thighs as evidence. While his dishes are rooted in family and the American cuisine known as soul food, he doesn’t let his heritage restrain him. The message of Soul is that cooks can honor tradition yet be liberated to explore. Todd Richards celebrates the restorative wonders of a classic pot of Collard Greens with Ham Hocks, yet doesn’t shy away from building upon that foundational recipe with his Collard Green Ramen, a reinterpretation that incorporates far-flung flavors of cultural influences and exemplifies culinary evolution. Page after page, in more than 150 recipes and stunning photos, Todd shares his creativity and passion to highlight what soul food can be for a new generation of cooks. Whether you’re new to Southern and soul food or call the South your home, Soul will encourage you to not only step outside of the box, but to boldly walk away from it. ~Book Jacket
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Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America
by Stacey Patton
Spare the Kids examines the cultural tradition of corporal punishment in Black homes and its connections to racial violence in America. “The impact on child rearing among so many black families of Stacey Patton’s Spare the Kids may well prove as powerfully corrective as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was upon the acceptance of chattel slavery.”—David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner for biographies on W. E. B. Du Bois
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Things That Make White People Uncomfortable
by Michael Bennett
Michael Bennett is a Super Bowl Champion, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, a fearless activist, a feminist, a grassroots philanthropist, an organizer, and a change maker. He's also one of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable. Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field. Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things that Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our turbulent times, a memoir, and a manifesto as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating. ~Book Jacket
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To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Tommie Shelby
Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join the editors in careful, critical engagement with Martin Luther King Jr’s writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism and much more.
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You Bet Your Life: How I Survived Jim Crow Racism, Hurricane Chasing, and Gambling
by Spencer Christian
The inspiring true story of a popular national broadcaster who thought he had it all—until he lost it. Growing up poor and black in the rigidly segregated South, Spencer Christian relied on his family’s solid work ethic, commitment to education, and Christian faith to carve a path to success and national visibility. As weatherman and co-host for ABC’s Good Morning America, he thought he had everything—a loving wife and children, a beautiful home, and a rewarding and remarkable career. Yet, he was living a double life. For nearly 30 years, he was a compulsive gambler. By the time he found the courage to confront his dependence, he had lost millions, his home, his job—and most important—his family. You Bet Your Life tells the roller-coaster story of Christian’s rise to success and crash to rock bottom. It also details his rebounding, rebuilding, and recovering of hope and happiness. This gripping and transparent tale will amuse, shock, and inspire. ~Book Jacket
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