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OverDrive eBooks February 2019
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"Never be afraid to sit awhile and think." -- Lorraine Hansberry
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Black History Month: Biographies and Memoirs
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Chester B. Himes : a biography
by Lawrence Patrick Jackson
An account of the improbable life of the controversial writer explores Himes' middle-class origins, imprisonment, creative experiences during World War II and eventual escape to Europe, where he became famous for his Harlem detective series and its themes of sexuality, racism and social injustice.
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My soul looks back : a memoir
by Jessica B Harris
The author describes her life in 1970s New York as part of the Black intelligentsia, including listening to James Baldwin's early drafts of his work, cooking with Maya Angelou, and a chance encounter with Nina Simone.
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Stand up straight and sing!
by Jessye Norman
The Grammy Award-winning opera star describes her childhood in the segregated South, the community values and role models that shaped her ambitions, her meteoric rise at the Berlin Opera and the accomplishments that have established her as one of America's most decorated singing artists.
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Lanterns : a memoir of mentors
by Marian Wright Edelman
The African American lawyer and president of the Children's Defense Fund describes the positive influences of family, church members, teachers, colleagues, and other social reformers in her life
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The Beautiful struggle
by Ta-nehisi Coates
An evocative memoir of family and growing up in the tough, violent world of Baltimore in the 1980s chronicles the relationship between the author and his father, a Vietnam vet and Black Panther affiliate, and his steadfast, if sometimes eccentric, campaign to keep his sons from falling victim to the seductive temptations of the streets.
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Black History Month: Fiction
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Parable of the sower
by Octavia E Butler
"Parable of the Sower is the Butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman with the hereditary train of "hyperempathy"--which causes her to feel others' pain as her own--sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown."
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Sing, unburied, sing : a novel
by Jesmyn Ward
Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the release of his father from prison prompts a road trip of danger and hope.
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Another Brooklyn : a novel
by Jacqueline Woodson
Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile her past and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly.
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The Turner house
by Angela Flournoy
Learning after a half-century of family life that their house on Detroit's East Side is worth only a fraction of its mortgage, the members of the Turner family gather to reckon with their pasts and decide the house's fate.
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The twelve tribes of Hattie
by Ayana Mathis
Traces the story of Great Migration-era mother Hattie Shepherd, who in spite of poverty and a dysfunctional husband uses love and Southern remedies to raise nine children and prepare them for the realities of a harsh world. A first novel.
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