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Books to Celebrate Juneteenth |
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Digital Books in AXIS 360
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On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon-Reed
In this intricately woven tapestry of American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, recounts the origins of Juneteenth and explores the legacies of the holiday that remain with us.
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Juneteenth
by Ralph Ellison
Shot on the Senate floor by a young black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them.
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You Are Your Best Thing : Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
by Tarana Burke
"It started as a text between two friends. Tarana Burke, founder of the 'me too.' Movement, texted researcher and writer, Brené Brown, to see if she was free to jump on a call. Brené assumed that Tarana wanted to talk about wallpaper. They had been trading home decorating inspiration boards in their last text conversation so Brené started scrolling to find her latest Pinterest pictures when the phone rang. But it was immediately clear to Brené that the conversation wasn't going to be about wallpaper.Tarana's hello was serious and she hesitated for a bit before saying, "Brené, you know your work affected me so deeply. It's been a huge gift in my life. But as a Black woman, I've sometimes had to feel like I have to contort myself to fit into some of your words. The core of it rings so true for me, but the application has been harder." Brené replied, "I'm so glad we're talking about this. It makes sense to me. Especially in terms of vulnerability. How do you take the armor off in a country where you're not physically or emotionally safe?" Long pause. "That's why I'm calling," said Tarana. "What do you think about a working together on a book about the Black experience with vulnerability and shame resilience?" There was no hesitation. Burke and Brown are the perfect pair to usher in this stark, potent collection of essays on Black shame and healing (and contribute their own introductions to the work). Along with the anthology contributors, they create a space to recognize and process the trauma of white supremacy, a space to be vulnerable and affirm the fullness of Black love and Black life"
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Black Magic : What Black Leaders Learned from Trauma and Triumph
by Chad Sanders
An evocative tribute to Black achievement in a discriminating world draws on interviews with Black leaders, scientists, artists, activists and champions while exploring the author’s own experiences of being forced to emulate white culture.
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The Hill We Climb : An Inaugural Poem for the Country
by Amanda Gorman
"On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope toviewers around the globe. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry"
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Barracoon : The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
by Zora Neale Hurston
Presents a previously unpublished work that illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery in the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade, Cudjo Lewis, who was abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States
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Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Two half sisters, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana and experience profoundly different lives and legacies throughout subsequent generations.
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The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
After Cora, a pre-Civil War Georgia slave, escapes with another slave, Caesar, they seek the help of the Underground Railroad as they flee from state to state and try to evade a slave catcher, Ridgeway, who is determined to return them to the South.
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Jubilee : Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking
by Toni Tipton-Martin
Drawing from historical texts and rare African-American cookbooks, a collection of 125 recipes takes readers into the world of African-American cuisine made by enslaved master chefs, free caterers and black entrepreneurs and culinary stars that goes far beyond soul food. Illustrations.
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Conjure Women
by Afia Atakora
A midwife and conjurer of curses reflects on her life before and after the Civil War, her relationships with the families she serves and the secrets she has learned about a plantation owner’s daughter.
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The Water Dancer
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A Virginia slave narrowly escapes a drowning death through the intervention of a mysterious force that compels his escape and personal underground war against slavery. By the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me. Read by the author.
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Washington Black
by Esi Edugyan
Unexpectedly chosen to be a family manservant, an eleven-year-old Barbados sugar-plantation slave is initiated into a world of scientific inquiry and dignity before a devastating betrayal propels him throughout the world in search of his true self.
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Policing the Black Man : Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment
by Angela J. Davis
A comprehensive, thought-provoking analysis of the key issues behind the BlackLivesMatter movement features 12 essays by some of America's most influential criminal justice experts and legal scholars, including Equal Justice Institute Director Bryan Stevenson, NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Sherrrilyn Ifill and John Jay College of Criminal Justice President Jeremy Travis.
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The Black Church : This is Our Story, This is Our Song
by Henry Louis Gates
The Harvard University professor, NAACP Image Award recipient and Emmy Award-winning creator of The African Americans presents a history of the Black church in America that illuminates its essential role in culture, politics and resistance to white supremacy. Illustrations.
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Hallelujah! the Welcome Table : A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes
by Maya Angelou
Combining reminiscences with more than sixty of her personal recipes, the acclaimed author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings reflects on important moments of her life that centered around the dinner table and presents Minnesota wild rice, biscuits, potato salad, smoked pork chops, fried meat pies, pot roast, and other favorite dishes.
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Democracy in Black : How Race Still Enslaves the American soul
by Eddie S. Glaude
In a book that is part-manifesto, part-history, part -memoir, a professor at Princeton University, in the tradition of Cornel West's Race Matters, makes the case that multiple forces have conspired to deepen the impoverishment of black communities, crystallizing the untenable position of Black America and offering thoughts on a better way forward.
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Kindred
by Octavia E. Butler
Dana, a black woman, finds herself repeatedly transported to the antebellum South, where she must make sure that Rufus, the plantation owner's son, survives to father Dana's ancestor.
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The Book of Night Women
by Marlon James
Feared from birth for her vivid green eyes, which her fellow slaves believe to be evidence of her dark powers, young slave Lilith is both revered and avoided throughout her childhood and becomes a key to the success of a long-planned slave revolt.
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Just Mercy : A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson
The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.
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Here for It : or, How to Save Your Soul in America ; Essays
by R. Eric Thomas
"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents' house was an anomalous bright spot, and the verdant school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, about the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election as well as the seismic change that came thereafter. Ultimately, Eric seeks the answer to the ever more relevant question: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother wheneverything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Eric finds the answers to these questions by re-envisioning what "normal" means, and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story"
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The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl
by Issa Rae
Essays on the challenges of being black and introverted in a world that glorifies "cool" behavior, drawn from the author's award-winning social media series, share self-deprecating perspectives on such topics as cybersexing, weight, and self-acceptance.
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Jubilee
by Margaret Walker
A novel based on the life of the author's great-grandmother follows the story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and one of his slaves, through the years of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
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The Cooking Gene : A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South
by Michael Twitty
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
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Afrofuturism : the World of Black Sci-fi and Fantasy Culture
by Ytasha Womack
Comprising elements of the avant-garde, science fiction, cutting-edge hip-hop, black comix, and graphic novels, Afrofuturism spans both underground and mainstream pop culture. With a two fold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and all social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves. This book introduces readers to the burgeoning artists creating Afrofuturist works, the history of innovators in the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and NK Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, topics range from the alien experience of blacks in America to the wake up cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. Interviews with rappers, composers, musicians, singers, authors, comic illustrators, painters, and DJs, as well as Afrofuturist professors, provide a firsthand look at this fascinating movement.
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
by Frederick Douglass
In addition to the classic African American autobiography and American slave narrative, this edition also includes Frederick Douglass’s speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July” and his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave.
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Narrative of Sojourner Truth
by Sojourner Truth
Hailed as an inspiring memoir during a time of slavery, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is not just about the emancipation of an African American woman, but also the strength of her faith. Truth provides the narrative of her life, from her early years as a slave to her liberation and life as a freed woman. A staunch activist, Truth also gives her readers insight on gender equality issues faced by women of her time and discusses the abolitionist movement. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.
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Pushout : The Criminalization of Black girls in Schools
by Monique W. Morris
The author of Black Stats chronicles the experiences of school age black girls across the United States and discusses how to address policies, practices and a cultural illiteracy that push these students out of school and into unsafe and unstable futures.
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Small Doses
by Amanda Seales
The rising comedy star shares her advice for life with essays, illustrations and photos in her trademark “self-help from the hip” style that combines humor with intellectualism and pop culture fanaticism.
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What doesn't kill you makes you blacker : a memoir in essays
by Damon Young
The co-founder of VerySmartBrothas.com presents a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the direct impact of racism on his life, the shifting definition of black-male identity and the ongoing realities of white supremacy.
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Black Utopia : The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism
by Alex Zamalin
"Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W.E.B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra's cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice"
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Black : A Celebration of a Culture
by Deborah Willis
Tucked away in the dusty halls of the Smithsonian archives and nearly forgotten by most historians, black culture is a vast, complex, interconnected web of different people, trends, and lifestyles. Although absent from our collective memory, Deborah Willis has dug through the archives and hunted down the remnants that tell the wonderful and tragic history of a people. Tackling all subjects with bravery and frankness, Deborah Willis's work is a true treasure to behold.
Black, A Celebration of a Culture, presents the vibrant panorama of 20th-century black culture in America and around the world. The photos tell one story that resonates throughout the world. Broken up into segments that examine in detail such subjects as children, work, art, beauty, Saturday night and Sunday morning, the photos detail the history and the evolution of a culture. Each photograph, hand-picked by Deborah Willis, America's leading historian of African-American photography, celebrates the world of music, art, fashion, sports, family, worship or play. With over 500 photographs from every time period from the birth of photography to the birth of hip hop, this book is a truly joyous exhibition of black culture. From Jessie Owens to Barry Bonds, Ella Fitzgerald to Halle Berry, Black: A Celebration of a Culture is joyous and inspiring.Photographs from the birth of photography to the birth of hip-hop depict the history and evolution of Black culture in America, celebrating the worlds of family, worship, music, fashion, and sports.
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