Through images and texts both historical and contemporary, this book looks at the Great Migration and its profound and ongoing impactThis thoughtful interweaving of text and imagery presents a variety of perspectives on the Great Migration (1915–70), the mass exodus and dispersion of millions of African Americans out of the South. Through archival photography, newspaper clippings, maps, journal articles, book excerpts, and ephemera such as family recipes, the book immerses readers in Black history, the Great Migration, and its legacy. The book includes texts by authors ranging from W. E. B. Du Bois and Jean Toomer to Toni Tipton-Martin and culminates in a candid roundtable discussion about familial migration stories among some of the most respected Black artists, writers, and scholars working today: Theaster Gates, Kiese Laymon, Carrie Mae Weems, and others. The material is presented in three unique, thematic sections that explore the Great Migration’s impact on the American city, Black Southern foodways, and cultural expression. Taken as a whole, this important volume provides powerful testimony to the systemic challenges such as social segregation, racism, and discrimination that Black communities have faced from the post-Emancipation period to the present moment. BIO Jessica Bell Brown is curator and department head of contemporary art at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Ryan N. Dennis is chief curator and artistic director of the Center for Art & Public Exchange at the Mississippi Museum of Art. [H] Yale University Press / June 21, 2022 ﻿1.5" H x 10.5" L x 8.2" W (3.45 lbs) 320 pages

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A Movement in Every Direction: A Great Migration Critical Reader /// edited by Jessica Bell Brown and Ryan N. Dennis

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From a highly lauded modern voice in feminism and racial justice comes a deeply personal and insightful testament to the power of reimagining to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do.There are breaking points in all our lives when we realize that the way things have been done before just don’t work for us anymore, be it the way we approach our relationships, our belief systems, our work, our education, even our rest. For activist, philanthropist, and CEO Rachel E. Cargle, reimagining—the act of creating in our minds that which does not exist but that we believe can and should—has been a lifelong process. Reimagining served as the most powerful catalyst for Cargle’s personal transformation from a small-town Christian wife to an incisive queer feminist voice of a generation.In A Renaissance of Our Own, we witness the sometimes painful but always inspiring breaking points in Cargle’s life that fostered a truer identity. These defining moments offer a blueprint for how we must all use our imagination—the space that sees beyond limits—to live in alignment with our highest values and to craft a world independent of oppressive structures, both personal and societal. Cargle now invites you to acknowledge ways of being that stem from societal expectations instead of your personal truth, and to embark on a renaissance of your own. She provides the very tools and prompts that she used to unearth her own truth, tools that opened her up to being a more authentic feminist and purpose-driven matriarchal leader. A Renaissance of Our Own gives us the courage to look at the world and say “I want something different.” It serves as a reminder of the power and possibility of reimagining a life that feels right, all the way down to the marrow of your bones. BIO Rachel E. Cargle is an activist, entrepreneur, and philanthropic innovator. She is the founder of The Loveland Group, a family of companies including Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre, a literary space that celebrates marginalized voices, and The Great Unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded The Loveland Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for Black women and girls. Cargle is a regular contributor to Cultured magazine, Atmos, and The Cut, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. REVIEWS “Dazzling—a loving, bold tale of imagination, bravery, and radical action in the face of injustice . . . Through an account of Cargle’s own complicated life journey, she provides a framework for our own acts of courage as brutality threatens to strip us of humanity.” -- Elle“I loved and admired this book as much as I have always loved and admired its author. Rachel Cargle is that rare sort of phoenix who rises from the ashes of her life not only reborn on the personal level but also fully ready to change the world. A Renaissance of Our Own is an elegant, thoughtful, vulnerable, and inspiring memoir. May this book land in a million hands, all over the world.” -- Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic“Magical. Shape-shifting. Cargle recounts how she spun silk out of the threadbare yarns of patriarchy and white supremacy while reminding readers that such alchemy is possible for them, too. Such wonder is inevitable if we give ourselves permission to reimagine our existence and re-create ourselves in our own divine image.” -- Sonya Renee Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of The Body Is Not an Apology“What a beautiful offering and gentle invitation Rachel Cargle has extended with A Renaissance of Our Own. I felt the pull to really slow down and sit with both her stories and my own. This book is not meant to be simply consumed but explored.” -- Joy Harden Bradford, PhD, founder of the award-winning Therapy for Black Girls and author of Sisterhood Heals“A profoundly moving and powerful story of how one woman transformed both herself and her community while giving us the tools to do the same . . . Rachel shows that the closer we get to our own true light, the brighter we may shine for the world. You will celebrate, you will mourn, but ultimately you will leave these pages changed for the better.” -- Gabrielle Union, New York Times bestselling author of We’re Going to Need More Wine [H] Ballantine Books / May 16, 2023 1.2" H x 8.4" L x 5.9" W (0.85 lbs) 256 pages

A Renaissance of Our Own /// Rachel E. Cargle /// new

The past as a building block of a more affirming and hopeful future As early as the eighteenth century, white Americans and Europeans believed that people of African descent could not experience nostalgia. As a result, black lives have been predominately narrated through historical scenes of slavery and oppression. This phenomenon created a missing archive of romantic historical memories. Badia Ahad-Legardy mines literature, visual culture, performance, and culinary arts to form an archive of black historical joy for use by the African-descended. Her analysis reveals how contemporary black artists find more than trauma and subjugation within the historical past. Drawing on contemporary African American culture and recent psychological studies, Ahad-Legardy reveals nostalgia's capacity to produce positive emotions. Afro-nostalgia emerges as an expression of black romantic recollection that creates and inspires good feelings even within our darkest moments. Original and provocative, Afro-Nostalgia offers black historical pleasure as a remedy to contend with the disillusionment of the present and the traumas of the past. BIO Badia Ahad-Legardy is an associate professor in the Department of English and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Freud Upside Down: African American Literature and Psychoanalytic Culture. REVIEWS "If you've been waiting for a book that steps out of trauma-time and the perpetual present of slavery clear-eyed and with its critical faculties alight, you've found it. Badia Ahad-Legardy breathes gentle and sweet smelling fresh air into stale corners in her book on Afro-Nostalgia, which cogently analyzes and affectively affirms Black cultural producers and chefs who treat the past less as an ongoing traumatic wound and more as a surrealistic space of black historical regenerative possibility and happiness. A gem." --Avery Gordon, author of Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination "This thoroughly researched book seeks and sheds light on the spaces where Black joy can live and flourish. Though its tone is academic, its insights reach far beyond the classroom.... a worthy addition to any multicultural studies library and to readers interested in American culture." --Museum of Americana "An important dissection of looking beyond the traumas of the past to find the happiness that existed (and exists) within the Black community. " --Library Journal [P] University of Illinois Press / April 12, 2021 ﻿0.7" H x 8.9" L x 6.0" W (0.75 lbs) 240 pages

Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture /// Badia Ahad-Legardy

Paperback

Discover the untold story of African surf culture in this glorious and colorful collection of profiles, essays, photographs, and illustrations. AFROSURF is the first book to capture and celebrate the surfing culture of Africa. This unprecedented collection is compiled by Mami Wata, a Cape Town surf company that fiercely believes in the power of African surf. Mami Wata brings together its co-founder Selema Masekela and some of Africa's finest photographers, thinkers, writers, and surfers to explore the unique culture of eighteen coastal countries, from Morocco to Somalia, Mozambique, South Africa, and beyond. Packed with over fifty essays, AFROSURF features surfer and skater profiles, thought pieces, poems, photos, illustrations, ephemera, recipes, and a mini comic, all wrapped in an astounding design that captures the diversity and character of Africa. A creative force of good in their continent, Mami Wata sources and manufactures all their wares in Africa and works with communities to strengthen local economies through surf tourism. With this mission in mind, Mami Wata is donating 100% of their proceeds to support two African surf therapy organizations, Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children. BIO Mami Wata is an African surf brand whose mission is to be a creative force for good in Africa. They manufacture their products in Africa to create jobs and build skills, support the African surf therapy organization Waves for Change, and help strengthen African surf tourism to grow local economies. They are located in Cape Town. Selema Masekela is a beloved commentator, journalist, host, activist, and Emmy-nominated producer best known for his work across VICE, E!, ESPN/ABC, National Geographic, Red Bull Media House, and beyond. He is a co-founder of Mami Wata and lives in Los Angeles, California. Ten Speed Press / June 15, 2021 1.3" H x 11.1" L x 8.6" W (3.7 lbs) 320 pages

Afrosurf /// Mami Wata with foreword by Selema Masekela

In the tradition of The Glass Castle, this "gorgeous" (The New York Times, Editors' Choice) and deeply felt memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu tells the "incredible story" (Malala Yousafzai) about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through. "In Aftershocks, Nadia Owusu tells the incredible story of her young life. How does a girl--abandoned by her mother at age two and orphaned at thirteen when her beloved father dies--find her place in the world? This memoir is the story of Nadia creating her own solid ground across countries and continents. I know the struggle of rebuilding your life in an unfamiliar place. While some of you might be familiar with that and some might not, I hope you'll take as much inspiration and hope from her story as I did." --MALALA YOUSAFZAI ​ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 SELECTED BY VULTURE AND TIME MAGAZINE! Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia's nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was thirteen. After his passing, Nadia's stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo. With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together. "A magnificent, complex assessment of selfhood and why it matters" ( Elle), Aftershocks depicts the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life's perpetual quaking, the means by which she has finally come to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand. "Full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism" (The Washington Post), Aftershocks joins the likes of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron's Darkness Visible, and does for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts. BIO Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urban planner. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Guardian, Bon Appétit, Electric Literature, The Paris Review Daily, and Catapult. Aftershocks is her first book. REVIEWS "'I have lived in disaster, and disaster has lived in me, ' writes one of the literary world's most promising new voices, Nadia Owusu, in this astonishing memoir. After her mother left and her father died, Owusu became a woman of many homelands and identities: she grew up in many countries including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Italy, and the UK. [ Aftershocks] is Owusu's account of hauling herself out of the wreckage; an intimate look behind the division of today's world." --RED (UK) "Aftershocks is more than just a book--it is delicate, intricate choreography. This memoir is a testimony to how certain books and writers can tell you their story in a way that mirrors your own. Even if the facts of that story are different, the emotion is familiar. Owusu is that writer. She has created a book full of shared emotional memories and I wanted to sit in those memories with her for as long as I could. Nadia Owusu is powerful, beautiful, poetic, and Aftershocks is a testimony to her commitment to constructing towering, lovingly-rendered sentences. Quite simply, Aftershocks is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read." --BASSEY IKPI, New York Times bestselling author of I'm Lying but I'm telling the Truth "Nadia Owusu's Aftershocks bleeds honesty. It is a majestically rendered telling of all the history, hurt and love a body can contain. A wonderful work of art made of so many stories and histories it is bursting with both harshness and perseverance. An incredible debut."-- NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH, author of New York Times bestseller Friday Black [H] Simon & Schuster / January 12, 2021 1.1" H x 8.5" L x 5.5" W (1.01 lbs) 320 pages

Aftershocks: A Memoir /// Nadia Owusu

The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' Love Song to the Nation," All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. "The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better. BIO bell hooks is an influential cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer. Celebrated as one of America's leading public intellectuals, she is a charismatic speaker and writer who teaches and lectures around the world. Previously a professor in the English departments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is the author of more than 17 books, including All About Love: New Visions; Salvation: Black People and Love; Communion: the Female Search for Love, as well as the landmark memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood. REVIEWS "Each offering from bell hooks is a major event, as she has so much to give us." --Maya Angelou "She provides a refreshing spiritual treatise that steps outside the confines of the intellect and into the wilds of the heart." --Seattle Weekly "Like love, this book is worth the commitment." --Toronto Sun [P] William Morrow & Company / January 30, 2018 0.7" H x 8.0" L x 5.3" W (0.52 lbs) 272 pages

All About Love: New Visions /// bell hooks

A New York Times Bestseller! Optioned for television by Gabrielle Union Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, and MSNBC feature stories Velshi Banned Book Club Amazon Best Book of the Year Indie Bestseller Teen Vogue Recommended Read Buzzfeed Recommended Read People Magazine Best Book of the Summer A New York Library Best Book of 2020 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2020 ... and more!In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. BIO George M. Johnson is a writer and activist based in New York. They have written on race, gender, sex, and culture for Essence, the Advocate, BuzzFeed News, Teen Vogue, and more than forty other national publications. George has appeared on BuzzFeed’s AM2DM as well as on MSNBC. All Boys Aren’t Blue is their debut, and was an Amazon Best Book of the Year, an Indie Bestseller, a People Magazine Best Book of the Year, and optioned for television by Gabrielle Union. The New York Times called it "an exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but cleareyed love for its subjects." At the time of publication, George used he/him pronouns. Speak with them on Twitter: @IamGMJohnson. iamgmjohnson.com REVIEWS "An exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but cleareyed love for its subjects." --The New York Times"This title opens new doors, as the author insists that we don't have to anchor stories such as his to tragic ends: 'Many of us are still here. Still living and waiting for our stories to be told—to tell them ourselves.' A critical, captivating, merciful mirror for growing up black and queer today." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review"An absolute necessity . . . the personal stories and the healing and reconciliation of self in this title are all undeniably honest and relatable—a reminder of our shared imperfection and humanity." --Booklist"The conversational tone will leave readers feeling like they are sitting with an insightful friend . . . This young adult memoir is a contemporary hallmark of the blossoming genre. Johnson anchors the text with encouragement and realistic guidance for queer Black youth." --School Library Journal"Johnson’s debut is a collection of heartfelt personal essays revolving around themes of identity and family . . . In a publishing landscape in need of queer black voices, readers who are sorting through similar concepts will be grateful to join him on the journey." --Publishers Weekly [H] Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Byr) / April 28, 2022 1.2" H x 8.3" L x 5.7" W (0.85 lbs) 320 pages

All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto /// George M. Johnson

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives. KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST - ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR "Deeply layered and insightful . . . [a] bold reflection on American history, African American resilience, and the human capacity for love and perseverance in the face of soul-crushing madness."--The Washington Post "A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness."--Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few precious items as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley's survival. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language--including Rose's wish that "It be filled with my Love always." Ruth's sewn words, the reason we remember Ashley's sack today, evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving book inspired by Rose's gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully unearths these women's faint presence in archival records to follow the paths of their lives--and the lives of so many women like them--to write a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. The search to uncover this history is part of the story itself. For where the historical record falls short of capturing Rose's, Ashley's, and Ruth's full lives, Miles turns to objects and to art as equally important sources, assembling a chorus of women's and families' stories and critiquing the scant archives that for decades have overlooked so many. The contents of Ashley's sack--a tattered dress, handfuls of pecans, a braid of hair, "my Love always"--are eloquent evidence of the lives these women lived. As she follows Ashley's journey, Miles metaphorically unpacks the bag, deepening its emotional resonance and exploring the meanings and significance of everything it contained. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women against steep odds. It honors the creativity and fierce resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties even when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today. BIO Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Miles is the author of The Dawn of Detroit, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, among other honors, as well as the acclaimed books Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, and Tales from the Haunted South, a published lecture series. REVIEWS "Tiya Miles is a gentle genius . . . All That She Carried is a gorgeous book and a model for how to read as well as feel the precious artifacts of Black women's lives." --Imani Perry, author of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons "A brilliant exercise in historical excavation and recovery . . . With creativity, determination, and great insight, Miles illuminates the lives of women who suffered much, but never forgot the importance of love and family." --Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello "Tiya Miles uses the tools of her trade to tend to Black people, to Black mothers and daughters, to our wounds, to collective Black love and loss. This book demonstrates Miles's signature genius in its rare balance of both rigor and care." --Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower [H] Random House / June 08, 2021 ﻿1.5" H x 8.35" L x 5.91" W (1.32 lbs) 416 pages

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft an extraordinary testament to people who are left out of the archives.
KIRKUS PRIZE FINALIST - ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly - ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR 
"Deeply layered and insightful . . . [a] bold reflection on American history, African American resilience, and the human capacity for love and perseverance in the face of soul-crushing madness."--The Washington Post  
"A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness."--Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States 
In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis, the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few precious items as a token of love and to try to ensure Ashley's survival. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. 
Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the bag in spare yet haunting language--including Rose's wish that "It be filled with my Love always." Ruth's sewn words, the reason we remember Ashley's sack today, evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. Now, in this illuminating, deeply moving book inspired by Rose's gift to Ashley, historian Tiya Miles carefully unearths these women's faint presence in archival records to follow the paths of their lives--and the lives of so many women like them--to write a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.
The search to uncover this history is part of the story itself. For where the historical record falls short of capturing Rose's, Ashley's, and Ruth's full lives, Miles turns to objects and to art as equally important sources, assembling a chorus of women's and families' stories and critiquing the scant archives that for decades have overlooked so many. The contents of Ashley's sack--a tattered dress, handfuls of pecans, a braid of hair, "my Love always"--are eloquent evidence of the lives these women lived. As she follows Ashley's journey, Miles metaphorically unpacks the bag, deepening its emotional resonance and exploring the meanings and significance of everything it contained.
All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women against steep odds. It honors the creativity and fierce resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties even when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today.
BIO
<meta charset="UTF-8">Tiya Miles is professor of history and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Miles is the author of The Dawn of Detroit, which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, among other honors, as well as the acclaimed books Ties That Bind, The House on Diamond Hill, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, and Tales from the Haunted South, a published lecture series.
REVIEWS
<meta charset="UTF-8">"Tiya Miles is a gentle genius . . . All That She Carried is a gorgeous book and a model for how to read as well as feel the precious artifacts of Black women's lives." --Imani Perry, author of Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
"A brilliant exercise in historical excavation and recovery . . . With creativity, determination, and great insight, Miles illuminates the lives of women who suffered much, but never forgot the importance of love and family." --Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello
<meta charset="UTF-8">"Tiya Miles uses the tools of her trade to tend to Black people, to Black mothers and daughters, to our wounds, to collective Black love and loss. This book demonstrates Miles's signature genius in its rare balance of both rigor and care." --Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
[H] Random House  /  June 08, 2021
﻿1.5" H x 8.35" L x 5.91" W (1.32 lbs) 416 pages

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake /// Tiya Miles

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. "A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?" --The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society. Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: Emily Atkin - Xiye Bastida - Ellen Bass - Colette Pichon Battle - Jainey K. Bavishi - Janine Benyus - adrienne maree brown - Régine Clément - Abigail Dillen - Camille T. Dungy - Rhiana Gunn-Wright - Joy Harjo - Katharine Hayhoe - Mary Annaïse Heglar - Jane Hirshfield - Mary Anne Hitt - Ailish Hopper - Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe - Emily N. Johnston - Joan Naviyuk Kane - Naomi Klein - Kate Knuth - Ada Limón - Louise Maher-Johnson - Kate Marvel - Gina McCarthy - Anne Haven McDonnell - Sarah Miller - Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset - Susanne C. Moser - Lynna Odel - Sharon Olds - Mary Oliver - Kate Orff - Jacqui Patterson - Leah Penniman - Catherine Pierce - Marge Piercy - Kendra Pierre-Louis - Varshini - Prakash - Janisse Ray - Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez - Favianna Rodriguez - Cameron Russell - Ash Sanders - Judith D. Schwartz - Patricia Smith - Emily Stengel - Sarah Stillman - Leah Cardamore Stokes - Amanda Sturgeon - Maggie Thomas - Heather McTeer Toney - Alexandria Villaseñor - Alice Walker - Amy Westervelt - Jane Zelikova BIO Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Lab, co-founder of the climate initiative The All We Can Save Project, and co-creator of the podcast How to Save a Planet. In 2021, she was named to the Time 100 Next list. Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is an author, strategist, teacher, and homegrown Atlantan, named one of fifteen "Women Who Will Save the World" by Time. Her writing has been featured in The Drawdown Review and the New York Times bestseller Drawdown, and she is the author of Between God & Green. REVIEWS "A fiery, hopeful manifesto on how to make sense of the staggering loss posed by climate change--and take justice-oriented action in spite of it." --Mashable "Hopeful and illuminating, All We Can Save is an anthology of essays by women at the forefront of the climate crisis. So often climate writing can make us feel doomed and anxious, but this collection is a comfort because of its honesty and courage . . . a reminder that we can work with hope towards a better future." --BuzzFeed [H] One World / September 22, 2020 1.5" H x 9.2" L x 6.5" W (1.74 lbs) 448 pages [P] One World / July 20, 2021 1.02" H x 8.05" L x 5.28" W (1.0 lbs) 448 pages

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
"A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?" --The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. With essays and poems by: 
Emily Atkin - Xiye Bastida - Ellen Bass - Colette Pichon Battle - Jainey K. Bavishi - Janine Benyus - adrienne maree brown - Régine Clément - Abigail Dillen - Camille T. Dungy - Rhiana Gunn-Wright - Joy Harjo - Katharine Hayhoe - Mary Annaïse Heglar - Jane Hirshfield - Mary Anne Hitt - Ailish Hopper - Tara Houska, Zhaabowekwe - Emily N. Johnston - Joan Naviyuk Kane - Naomi Klein - Kate Knuth - Ada Limón - Louise Maher-Johnson - Kate Marvel - Gina McCarthy - Anne Haven McDonnell - Sarah Miller - Sherri Mitchell, Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset - Susanne C. Moser - Lynna Odel - Sharon Olds - Mary Oliver - Kate Orff - Jacqui Patterson - Leah Penniman - Catherine Pierce - Marge Piercy - Kendra Pierre-Louis - Varshini - Prakash - Janisse Ray - Christine E. Nieves Rodriguez - Favianna Rodriguez - Cameron Russell - Ash Sanders - Judith D. Schwartz - Patricia Smith - Emily Stengel - Sarah Stillman - Leah Cardamore Stokes - Amanda Sturgeon - Maggie Thomas - Heather McTeer Toney - Alexandria Villaseñor - Alice Walker - Amy Westervelt - Jane Zelikova 
BIO 
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Lab, co-founder of the climate initiative The All We Can Save Project, and co-creator of the podcast How to Save a Planet. In 2021, she was named to the Time 100 Next list.
Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is an author, strategist, teacher, and homegrown Atlantan, named one of fifteen "Women Who Will Save the World" by Time. Her writing has been featured in The Drawdown Review and the New York Times bestseller Drawdown, and she is the author of Between God &amp; Green.
REVIEWS
"A fiery, hopeful manifesto on how to make sense of the staggering loss posed by climate change--and take justice-oriented action in spite of it." --Mashable
"Hopeful and illuminating, All We Can Save is an anthology of essays by women at the forefront of the climate crisis. So often climate writing can make us feel doomed and anxious, but this collection is a comfort because of its honesty and courage . . . a reminder that we can work with hope towards a better future." --BuzzFeed
[H] One World  /  September 22, 2020
1.5" H x 9.2" L x 6.5" W (1.74 lbs) 448 pages
<meta charset="utf-8">[P] One World  /  July 20, 2021
<meta charset="utf-8">1.02" H x 8.05" L x 5.28" W (1.0 lbs) 448 pages

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis /// edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

At the Table of Power is both a cookbook and a culinary history that intertwines social issues, personal stories, and political commentary. Renowned culinary historian Diane M. Spivey offers a unique insight into the historical experience and cultural values of African America and America in general by way of the kitchen. From the rural country kitchen and steamboat floating palaces to marketplace street vendors and restaurants in urban hubs of business and finance, Africans in America cooked their way to positions of distinct superiority, and thereby indispensability. Despite their many culinary accomplishments, most Black culinary artists have been made invisible—until now. Within these pages, Spivey tells a powerful story beckoning and daring the reader to witness this culinary, cultural, and political journey taken hand in hand with the fight of Africans in America during the foundation years, from colonial slavery through the Reconstruction era. These narratives, together with the recipes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, expose the politics of the day and offer insight on the politics of today. African American culinary artists, Spivey concludes, have more than earned a rightful place at the table of culinary contribution and power. BIO Diane M. Spivey is a culinary historian who has devoted more than forty years to the study and recording of African American food traditions and cooking. She is the author of the much heralded The Peppers, Cracklings, and Knots of Wool Cookbook: The Global Migration of African Cuisine and has written articles for The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, the Black Scholar, Blackpast.org, South Florida Gourmet, the Black Book Review, Newsday, and Scribner’s Encyclopedia of World Food and Culture. Born and reared in Chicago, she and her family now reside in Palmetto Bay, Florida. REVIEWS "Diane M. Spivey has written a book that intersects African American cooks and cuisine with freedom, justice, law, and oppression. We now have a history of the professionalism of Black cuisine and the forces that have historically removed Black cooks from the center of their culinary creativity. Spivey presents an historical gentrification of African American culinary traditions that overtime has relegated cooks to the periphery of their history and traditions. This book documents and illustrates the presence of race in determining the status of African American culinary artists overtime limiting their growth and command of their culture." --Samuel W. Black, director of the African American Program at the Senator John Heinz History Center "Diane M. Spivey has compellingly moved Black cooks, chefs, caterers, and cuisine from the shadows into the floodlights of foodways in the United States and the Caribbean. With an amalgam of African, Native American, and European sources, she has put to rest the traditional narrative with sound scholarship and illustrative recipes. This book is a must to understand the African American story in its full dimensions." --Robert L. Harris, Jr., professor emeritus of African American history and American studies at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University "This singularly original, meticulously researched and wonderfully written work seamlessly integrates the extensive experience of Diane Spivey as insightful historian and international cookbook writer. It skillfully weaves together the important although neglected account of the essential contribution of African cuisine in the entire history of the United States. At the Table of Power can be rewardingly enjoyed as a marvelous cookbook, as an excellent general history, or as a powerful biographical dictionary. It excels in all three categories." --Franklin W. Knight, coeditor of the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American Biography [H] University of Pittsburgh Press / October 18, 2022 1.42" H x 9.06" L x 6.06" W (1.65 lbs) 377 pages

At the Table of Power: Food and Cuisine in the African American Struggle for Freedom, Justice, and Equality /// Diane Spivey

New York Times Bestseller - TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 - New York Public Library's Best Book of 2018 - NPR's Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 - Economist Book of the Year - SELF.com's Best Books of 2018 - Audible's Best of the Year - BookRiot's Best Audio Books of 2018 - The Atlantic's Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered - Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 - The Christian Science Monitor's Best Books 2018 - "A profound impact on Hurston's literary legacy."--New York Times "One of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison "Zora Neale Hurston's genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece."--Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade--abducted from Africa on the last Black Cargo ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture. BIO Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. An author of four novels (Jonah's Gourd Vine, 1934; Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937; Moses, Man of the Mountain, 1939; and Seraph on the Suwanee, 1948); two books of folklore (Mules and Men, 1935, and Tell My Horse, 1938); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road, 1942); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She attended Howard University, Barnard College and Columbia University, and was a graduate of Barnard College in 1928. She was born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, and grew up in Eatonville, Florida. She died in Fort Pierce, in 1960. In 1973, Alice Walker had a headstone placed at her gravesite with this epitaph: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South." REVIEWS "[ Barracoon's] belated publication of her phonetic transcription offers spine-chilling access to one of modernity's great crimes, an atrocity that, when described by a victim, suddenly becomes far less distant."-- The Guardian "Zora Neale Hurston's recovered masterpiece, Barracoon, is a stunning addition to several overlapping canons of American literature."-- Tayari Jones, Washington Post "Short enough to be read in a single sitting, this book is one of those gorgeous, much too fleeting things...Brimming with observational detail from a man whose life spanned continents and eras, the story is at times devastating, but Hurston's success in bringing it to light is a marvel."-- NPR [H] Amistad Press / May 08, 2018 0.8" H x 8.3" L x 5.8" W (0.7 lbs) 208 pages [P] Amistad Press / January 07, 2020 0.7" H x 8.0" L x 5.3" W (0.44 lbs) 256 pages

Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo /// Zora Neale Hurston, introduction by Alice Walker

Climate change. Two words that are quickly becoming the clarion call to action in the twenty-first century. It is a voter issue, an economy driver, and a defining dynamic for the foreseeable future. Yet, in Black communities, climate change is seen as less urgent when compared to other pressing issues, including police brutality, gun violence, job security, food insecurity, and the blatant racism faced daily around the country. However, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change--making up 13 percent of the US population but breathing 40 percent dirtier air and being twice as likely to be hospitalized or die from climate-related health problems than white counterparts--climate change is a central issue of racial justice and affects every aspect of life for Black communities. In Before the Streetlights Come On, climate activist Heather McTeer Toney insists that those most affected by climate change are best suited to lead the movement for climate justice. McTeer Toney brings her background in politics, community advocacy, and leadership in environmental justice to this revolutionary exploration of why and how Black Americans are uniquely qualified to lead national and global conversations around systems of racial disparity and solutions to the climate crisis. As our country delves deeper into solutions for systemic racism and past injustices, she argues, the environmental movement must shift direction and leadership toward those most affected and most affecting change: Black communities. BIO Heather McTeer Toney is an attorney, environmentalist, speaker, and writer. She was the first Black, first female, and youngest mayor elected in Greenville, Mississippi, at age twenty-seven. In 2014, she was appointed by President Barack Obama as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency's Southeast Region. Formerly the senior director for Moms Clean Air Force, Toney is now vice president of community engagement for the Environmental Defense Fund. She is a frequent guest on numerous shows and networks including CNN, Apple's The Problem with Jon Stewart, MSNBC, Democracy Now!, and Fox News. Heather lives with her husband and three children in Oxford, Mississippi. REVIEWS "A persuasive case for why Black activists should be at the forefront of the environmental movement." -- Publishers Weekly "Heather McTeer Toney gives us a practical, accessible, essential book that directly responds to Mother Earth's call: 'Say my name; you gonna respect me,"' as she dishes out some 'Do Right' to make sure we all know she's pissed about how we have disrespected the gift and how she expects us to do better moving forward." -- Mustafa Santiago Ali, EVP, National Wildlife Association "This book is so important. Heather McTeer Toney brings to life the intersection of climate change and the social justice issues faced by Black Americans daily through her stories and lived experience. ...This is the urgent solution we need in order to effectuate equitable climate policy. Heather's book will help people of all backgrounds see clearly the effects of unjust and unbalanced actions on Black America as well as understand why it is critical to our collective survival." -- from the foreword by Dr. Robert D. Bullard and Dr. Beverly Wright, authors of The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities [H] Broadleaf Books / April 18, 2023 1.5" H x 8.1" L x 5.9" W (0.95 lbs) 198 pages

Before the Streetlights Come On: Black America's Urgent Call for Climate Solutions /// Heather McTeer Toney /// new

Beginning to End Hunger presents the story of Belo Horizonte, home to 2.5 million people and the site of one of the world's most successful city food security programs. Since its Municipal Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security was founded in 1993, malnutrition in Belo Horizonte has declined dramatically, leading it to serve as an inspiration for Brazil's renowned Zero Hunger programs. The Municipal Secretariat's work with local family farmers also offers a glimpse of how food security, rural livelihoods, and healthy ecosystems can be supported together. While inevitably imperfect, Belo Horizonte offers a vision of the path away from food system dysfunction, unsustainability, and hunger. This case study by M. Jahi Chappell shows the vital importance of holistic approaches to food security, offers ideas on how to design successful policies to end hunger, and lays out strategies for making policy change happen. With these tools, we can take the next steps toward achieving similar reductions in hunger and food insecurity elsewhere in the developed and developing worlds. BIO M. Jahi Chappell is a political agroecologist with training in ecology and evolutionary biology, science and technology studies, and chemical engineering. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) at Coventry University, a Fellow of FoodFirst/the Institute for Food and Development Policy, and an Adjunct Faculty member of the School of the Environment at Washington State University. REVIEWS "M. Jahi Chappell's exceptional scholarship in the food system finally gets the audience it deserves in this deeply researched and engaging work. Moving from the seats of Belo Horizonte's state-run restaurants to the annals of world history, Chappell demonstrates a keen eye for local detail and global relevance. This book is a provocation to new thought and better action to end hunger permanently." --Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World's Food System "Chappell illuminates how a city in Brazil, Belo Horizonte, has achieved the unthinkable--dramatic decreases in hunger and malnutrition--and skewers popular myths with logical, systematic analysis and brilliant analogies. Should be read by every person committed to ending hunger!" --Molly Anderson, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Food Studies, Middlebury College and member of International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems "In this remarkable book, Chappell uses the case of Belo Horizonte to challenge us to be 'active optimists.' Pairing hope with evidence, and recognizing that the course to universal food security will never run smooth, Chappell proposes we take responsibility for a vision of a world without hunger. Beginning to End Hunger is a passionate plea against a fatalistic acceptance of poverty and in favor of promoting meaningful democracy. This is a very fine, honorable book." --Cecilia Rocha, Professor and Associate Researcher, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University University of California Press / January 19, 2018 0.7" H x 8.9" L x 5.9" W (0.8 lbs) 272 pages

Beginning to End Hunger: Food and the Environment in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Beyond /// M. Jahi Chapell with foreword by Frances Moore Lappé

Born of a desire to bring together the voices of those most harshly affected by the intersecting pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism, Bigger Than Bravery explores comfort and compromise, challenge and resilience, throughout the Great Pause that became the Great Call. Award-winning author and scholar of the Black archive Valerie Boyd curates this anthology of original essays and poems, alongside some of the most influential nonfiction published on the subject, inviting readers into a conversation of restorative joy and enduring wisdom. Bigger Than Bravery captures what Boyd calls the “first draft of history,” with poems serving as deep breaths between narrative essays to form a loose chronology of this unprecedented time. Karen Good Marable cranks “Whip My Hair” from the car windows during quarantine joyrides with her daughter. Deesha Philyaw ponders loneliness as she sorts Zoom meetings into those that require a bra and those that don’t. Writing in the moment though not of it, Pearl Cleage reflects on what has and hasn’t changed since the AIDS epidemic. Jason Reynolds harnesses heat and flavor to carry on his father’s legacy. Sorrow and outrage have their say, but the stories in these pages are bright with family, music, food, and home, teaching us how to nourish ourselves and our communities. Looking ahead as much as it looks back, Bigger Than Bravery offers a window into a hopeful, complex present, establishing an essential record of how Black people in America insist on joy as an act of resistance. BIO Valerie Boyd was an American writer and academic. She was best known for her biography of Zora Neale Hurston entitled Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. She was an associate professor and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, where she taught narrative nonfiction writing, as well as arts and literary journalism. REVIEWS “Eloquent and riveting, Boyd’s collection delivers not only, as she promises in her introduction, ‘a long exhalation, a silent prayer, a solace and a comfort’ but also, in the words of Imani Perry, a celebration of Blackness as ‘an immense and defiant joy.’ This one’s not to be missed.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review, Big Indie Books of Fall 2022 “A map of ancestral knowledge, revelatory insight, and feelings laid bare . . . These pages share poems of hope, narratives of loss, anger, fear, loneliness, togetherness, death, and most potently, life, to paint a portrait . . . resonant to all.” -- Library Journal, Editors’ Pick “Valerie Boyd’s Bigger Than Bravery isn’t just an anthology; it is a survival guide.” -- Courtney B. Vance, Tony and Emmy-winning actor [P] Lookout Books / November 15, 2022 1.0" H x 8.4" L x 5.5" W (0.71 lbs) 256 pages

Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic /// edited by Valerie Boyd, featuring Tayari Jones, Kiese Laymon, Imani Perry, Deesha Philyaw, Jason Reynolds & Alice Walker

The first major career survey of work by renowned fiber and textile artist Billie Zangewa Published to accompany the exhibition presented by the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, Billie Zangewa: Thread for a Web Begun explores Zangewa’s creation of literal and figurative tapestries of the everyday lives and contemporary intersectional identities of Black women. Through her hand-sewn silk collages, which primarily depict Black women in the domestic sphere, Zangewa reclaims a medium that was once relegated as “women’s work” and delves into the familiarity, beauty, and sociopolitical drivers of the seemingly mundane. Beginning her career in the fashion and advertising industries, Zangewa employs her understanding of textiles to portray personal and universal experiences through domestic interiors, urban landscapes, and portraiture. Through the method of their making and their narrative content, Zangewa’s silk paintings illustrate gendered labor in a sociopolitical context, where the domestic sphere becomes a pretext for a deeper understanding of the construction of identity, questions around gender stereotypes, and racial prejudice.This volume, packaged in a beautiful slipcase, showcases the past 15 years of Zangewa’s work as well as new pieces made for this exhibition, and although many of these decontextualized pieces are autobiographical, all of them portray a sense of intimacy and exploration of identity—connecting the pieces to each other through a larger narrative about Black femininity and tugging on the thread of the viewer’s own lived experience. BIO Dexter Wimberly is an American entrepreneur and curator based in Hayama, Japan. He’s the co-founder and CEO of the online education platform CreativeStudy. Wimberly has organized exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, The Green Family Art Foundation in Dallas, The Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, KOKI Arts in Tokyo, and The Third Line in Dubai. His exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in publications including The New York Times and Artforum, and have received support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The Kinkade Family Foundation. Wimberly is a Senior Critic at New York Academy of Art, and the founder and director of the Hayama Artist Residency in Japan. Prior to his curatorial career, Wimberly was the managing partner of the New York-based advertising and marketing agency August Bishop, representing a diverse array of clients including Adidas, The Coca-Cola Company, and HBO. The Museum of the African Diaspora opened to the public in 2005 and is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization. MoAD is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and plays a vital role in the local arts community. MoAD is uniquely positioned as one of the few museums in the world focused exclusively on African Diaspora culture and on presenting the rich cultural heritage of the people of Africa and of African descendant cultures all across the globe. [H] Cameron Books / May 16, 2023 112 pages

Billie Zangewa: Thread for a Web Begun /// edited by Dexter Wimberly, produced by Museum of the Africa Diaspora /// new

Black Appetite. White Food. invites educators to explore the nuanced manifestations of white privilege as it exists within and beyond the classroom. Renowned speaker and author Jamila Lyiscott provides ideas and tools that teachers, school leaders, and professors can use for awareness, inspiration, and action around racial injustice and inequity. Part I of the book helps you ask the hard questions, such as whether your pedagogy is more aligned with colonialism than you realize and whether you are really giving students of color a voice. Part II offers a variety of helpful strategies for analysis and reflection. Each chapter includes personal stories, frank discussions of the barriers you may face, and practical ideas that will guide you as you work to confront privilege in your classroom, campus, and beyond. BIO Jamila Lyiscott is an author, a community-engaged scholar, and a nationally acclaimed speaker. She serves as an assistant professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is the founding co-director of the forthcoming Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research. Her scholarship and activism work together to explore, assert, and defend the value of Black life throughout and beyond the field of education. Jamila’s current research focuses on the power of youth-led social research and activism to foster racial healing across schools and communities. She is most well-known for being featured on Ted.com where her video, "3 Ways to Speak English," was viewed over 4.6 million times. Learn more about Jamila at jamilalyiscott.com and @jamila_lyiscott on Twitter and Instagram. [P] Routledge / May 21, 2019 0.3" H x 8.7" L x 5.9" W (0.35 lbs) 90 pages

Black Appetite. White Food.: Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom /// Jamila Lyiscott

A photographic celebration and exploration of Black identity and experience through the twentieth century from the founder and curator of the hit multimedia platform Black Archives.“A spell-binding visual narrativization of family, culture, and history.”—Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in HarlemRenata Cherlise’s family loved capturing their lives in photographs and home movies, sparking her love of archival photography. Following in her family’s footsteps, Cherlise established Black Archives, which presents a nuanced representation of Black people across time living vibrant, ordinary lives. Through the platform, many have discovered and shared images of themselves and their loved ones experiencing daily life, forming multidimensional portraits of people, places, and the Black community. These photographs not only tell captivating stories, they hold space for collective memory and kinship. Black Archives is a stunning collection of timeless images that tell powerful, joyful stories of everyday life and shed light on Black culture’s dynamic, enduring influence through the generations. The images showcase reunions, nights out on the town, parents and children, church and school functions, holidays, big life events, family vacations, moments at home, and many more occasions of leisure, excitement, reflection, and pride. Featuring more than three hundred images that spotlight the iconic and the candid, Black Archives offers a nuanced compendium of Black memory and imagination. BIO Renata Cherlise is a multidisciplinary, research-based visual artist who uses various mediums to explore themes of identity, family, and culture. Cherlise’s work seamlessly bridges her Southern upbringing with contemporary methodologies in digital and physical spaces while reimagining notions of the Black experience. Her archival project, Black Archives, has evolved from a photo-based website of visual narratives into a collaborative platform featuring archival histories and modern-day stories from across the African diaspora. REVIEWS “Black Archives excels in cultivating an intimate and accessible experience—one that animates the multidimensional realities of Black existence with the power of community and acknowledgement of heritage. It is a triumph of community—one that denies us the ability to forget the ways that we celebrate our families, fight for our legacies, and support each other throughout the diaspora, from the mundane to the most significant milestones, despite consistently being socialized via white supremacist pathology to believe otherwise.” -- Harper’s Bazaar“In her new book, Black Archives: A Photographic Celebration of Black Life, Renata Cherlise makes the case for celebrating everyday Black joy.” -- Vox“The Black Archives book—out this month—is the embodiment of one of the core ideals of the platform: honoring the Black past by making it accessible.” -- The Cut“Black Archives is a testament to the potency of Black collective memory held through photography. Using her own expansive, familial collection of photographs, Renata Cherlise sets forth a spell-binding visual narrativization of family, culture, and history.” -- Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem“This book is a refuge as it shows how photographs have been consumed and shared by family members, churches, libraries, archives, and photographers. In viewing this book, we see interwoven stories about self-fashioning, representation, beauty, politics, and community memorialized through the camera. The photographs presented here create some of the most compelling visual responses to racialized images that objectified Black people and circulated through the history of the photographic medium. This amazing book with its dazzlingly-designed pages reflects the pride and determination of the people who created their own archives.” -- Dr. Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty in Black American Culture“The collection of personal photographs in this visual time capsule showcases the daily lives of African Americans. Thanks to Renata Cherlise, they are now a part of an important historic document giving new life and meaning to each image, while providing future generations with a greater source of stories that are told through photographs.” -- Jamel Shabazz, documentary photographer and author [H] Ten Speed Press / February 14, 2023 0.97" H x 10.22" L x 8.82" W (2.91 lbs) 288 pages

Black Archives: A Photographic Celebration of Black Life /// Renata Cherlise

A soulful collection of illuminating essays and interviews that explore Black people’s spiritual and scientific connection to the land, waters, and climate, curated by the acclaimed author of Farming While Black Author of Farming While Black and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman reminds us that ecological humility is an intrinsic part of Black cultural heritage. While racial capitalism has attempted to sever our connection to the sacred earth for 400 years, Black people have long seen the land and water as family and understood the intrinsic value of nature. This thought-provoking anthology brings together today’s most respected and influential Black environmentalist voices —leaders who have cultivated the skill of listening to the Earth —to share the lessons they have learned. These varied and distinguished experts include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Alice Walker; the first Queen Mother and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, Queen Quet; marine biologist, policy expert, and founder and president of Ocean Collectiv, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson; and the Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, Land Loss Prevention Project, Savi Horne. In Black Earth Wisdom, they address the essential connection between nature and our survival and how runaway consumption and corporate insatiability are harming the earth and every facet of American society, engendering racial violence, food apartheid, and climate injustice. Those whose skin is the color of soil are reviving their ancestral and ancient practice of listening to the earth for guidance. Penniman makes clear that the fight for racial and environmental justice demands that people put our planet first and defer to nature as our ultimate teacher. Contributors include: Alice Walker • adrienne maree brown • Dr. Ross Gay • Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson • Rue Mapp • Dr. Carolyn Finney • Audrey Peterman • Awise Agbaye Wande Abimbola • Ibrahim Abdul-Matin • Kendra Pierre-Louis • Latria Graham • Dr. Lauret Savoy •Ira Wallace • Savi Horne • Dr. Claudia Ford • Dr. J. Drew Lanham • Dr. Leni Sorensen • Queen Quet • Toshi Reagon • Yeye Luisah Teish • Yonnette Fleming • Naima Penniman • Angelou Ezeilo • James Edward Mills • Teresa Baker • Pandora Thomas • Toi Scott • Aleya Fraser • Chris Bolden-Newsome • Dr. Joshua Bennett • B. Anderson • Chris Hill • Greg Watson • T. Morgan Dixon • Dr. Dorceta Taylor • Colette Pichon Battle • Dillon Bernard • Sharon Lavigne • Steve Curwood • and Babalawo Enroue Halfkenny BIO Leah Penniman (li/she/ya/elle) is a Black Kreyol farmer/peyizan, mother, soil nerd, author, food justice activist, and cofounder of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. She has been farming for more than twenty-five years, holds an MA in Science Education and a BA in Environmental Science and International Development from Clark University, and is a member of clergy in West African Indigenous Orisa tradition. Her first book, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land, is a love song for the land and her people. REVIEWS In this uplifting compendium, Penniman (Farming While Black), cofounder of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, N.Y., brings together pieces linking racial justice with environmental stewardship. In interviews with 16 Black environmental activists—including Ifa priest Awise Agbaye Wande Abimbola and novelist Alice Walker—Penniman discusses acidifying oceans, environmental racism, and the unsustainable consumption of nonrenewable resources, while also touching on more positive considerations of the beauty of the natural world and what it means to live in “right relationship” with the Earth. Culinary historian Leni Sorensen notes that the legacy of chattel slavery complicates many Black Americans’ relationship with land, a theme Penniman takes up in her conversation with Greg Watson, director of policy at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, about deepening Black involvement in agriculture through urban farming. The need for activism is highlighted throughout: Penniman emphasizes the importance of boosting the voices of young eco-warriors, while Aleya Fraser, cofounder of Black Dirt Farm in Maryland, opines on the “Afroecology” movement, which promotes kinship and living in harmony with nature. Soulful, spirited, and often joyful, this is sustained by a deep reverence for the Earth and its “symbiotic living ecosystems.” The result is a potent look at the overlap between the environmental and racial justice movements. -- Publishers Weekly [H] Amistad Press / February 28, 2023 1.05" H x 9.0" L x 6.0" W (1.42 lbs) 352 pages

Black Earth Wisdom /// Leah Penniman

Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the "great outdoors" and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces. Drawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America. Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns. BIO Carolyn Finney, is a storyteller, author, artist, educator, and currently a scholar-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College. Finney's work reveals how nature and the environment are racialized in America REVIEWS “Makes a clear case for the dominant culture’s habitual (though, sometimes unwitting) rejection of African Americans.” -- Library Journal, starred review “Weaving scholarly analysis with interviews of leading black environmentalists and ordinary Americans, Finney traces the environmental legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, which mapped the wilderness as a terrain of extreme terror and struggle for generations of blacks—as well as a place of refuge.” -- Boston Globe "A must-read for those who hope to make the parks matter to diverse populations." -- Sierra “Finney’s exemplary work moves beyond a critique of the movement and popular culture. It carves through multiple layers of meaning to excavate unique moments of African American environmental history that demand retelling.” -- CHOICE "Offers an engaging interdisciplinary analysis of the historical conditions that shape the whiteness of 'Nature' in the United States." -- American Book Review [P] University of North Carolina Press / June 01, 2014 0.6" H x 9.1" L x 6.1" W (0.65 lbs) 194 pages

Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors /// Carolyn Finney

A New York Times Notable Book A Book Riot Best Book of 2022A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies and in small journals, revealing countless facets of Kenan’s life and work. Flying under the radar, these writings were his most personal and autobiographical: memories of the three women who raised him—a grandmother, a schoolteacher great-aunt, and the great-aunt’s best friend; recollections of his boyhood fear of snakes and his rapturous discoveries in books; sensual evocations of the land, seasons, and crops—the labor of tobacco picking and hog killing—of the eastern North Carolina lowlands where he grew up; and the food (oh the deliriously delectable Southern foods!) that sustained him. Here too is his intellectual coming of age; his passionate appreciations of kindred spirits as far-flung as Eartha Kitt, Gordon Parks, Ingmar Bergman, and James Baldwin. This powerful collection is a testament to a great mind, a great soul, and a great writer from whom readers will always wish to have more to read. BIO Randall Kenan grew up in Chinquapin, North Carolina, and was graduated from the University of North Carolina. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia University, Duke, and the University of Mississippi, and is now at the University of Memphis. He is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits, and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993. Among his awards are the Mary Francis Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writer's Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Prix de Rome REVIEWS [Kenan] dreams a path forward using resources that lie deep in the past. This applies to the whole of Black Folk Could Fly, a collection of essays that, while less known than his celebrated fiction — many appeared as introductions or in small magazines — provide rare insight into Kenan’s life and mind, while retaining the humor, humanity and elegant power for which he is loved. In a sense, the collected pieces function as memoir, or as a series of love letters to the forces that shaped the writer. -- Kinohi Nishikawa, New York Times Stirring, deeply thought-through essays and letters on topics ranging from sexuality and racism to foodways and the sense of place... A superb introduction to a writer deserving much greater recognition. -- Kirkus (starred review) In these wonderfully far-ranging essays Randall Kenan writes with wit, warmth, and humility about Baldwin and Bergman and Blackness and the great Eartha Kitt. Best of all, he writes about himself: his fascinating childhood, his relationship with the South, his thoughts on Star Wars and Race and writing and pop culture and barbecue. He understood we live in perilous times; he understood the necessity of joy. -- Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field Almost everything in the inimitable sound of Randall Kenan’s baritone voice is contained in this collection of beautiful thinking and feeling. The warm, mercurial intelligence of Kenan’s smile, especially, is made word in this collection of beautiful thinking and feeling, thank goodness. -- Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassins [H] August 09, 2022 / W.W. Norton Company 1.03" H x 9.21" L x 6.29" W (1.15 lbs) 288 pages

Black Folk Could Fly: Selected Writings /// Randall Kenan

NEW YORK TIMES • 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2021New York Times • Times Critics Top Books of 2021New York Times BestsellerBest Books of the Year • Washington Post, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Independent, Los Angeles Public Library, Washington Independent Review of Books, Spy, Audile, Biblioracle, AbeBooks The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth’s integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Texas native. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. Reworking the traditional “Alamo” framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself. In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing. BIO Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. The author of Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello, she lives in New York and Cambridge. REVIEWS "Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed renders a perfectly quilted work of history seen through the eyes of an African American family in Texas." -- Christian Science Monitor, 'Best Books of May' "Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed renders a perfectly quilted work of history seen through the eyes of an African American family in Texas." -- Christian Science Monitor, 'Best Books of May' "Gordon-Reed is the textbook definition of public intellectual; and yet she gets personal in this slender, evocative memoir, blending gorgeous details from her small-town Texas girlhood with the unofficial celebration of slavery’s demise and the broader canvas of race in America." -- Oprah Daily, 'Best Books to Pick Up This May' "Gordon-Reed offers a book that is both profound and personal in its exploration of the ways history shapes our lives and becomes distorted and reinvigorated over time." -- TIME, 'The Best Books of 2021 So Far' [H] Liveright Publishing Corporation / May 04, 2021 0.6" H x 7.6" L x 4.7" W (0.5 lbs) 152 pages

On Juneteenth /// Annette Gordon-Reed

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR • A hilarious new essay collection from #1 New York Times bestselling unabashed fan-favorite Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, all that festers behind the glitter and glam.“In case you haven’t wet yourself laughing recently…. One of our culture’s greatest humorists is back with another collection.” —Glamour“Has anyone else written so movingly about Trader Joes?” —The New York TimesSamantha Irby’s career has taken her to new heights. She dodges calls from Hollywood and flop sweats on the red carpet at premieres (well, one premiere). But nothing is ever as it seems online, where she can crop out all the ugly parts.Irby got a lot of weird emails about Carrie Bradshaw, and not only is there diarrhea to avoid, but now—anaphylactic shock. She is turned away from restaurants for being inappropriately dressed and looks for the best ways to cope, i.e., reveling in the offerings of QVC and adopting a deranged pandemic dog. Quietly Hostile makes light as Irby takes us on another outrageously funny tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of a life behind the screenshotted depression memes. Relatable, poignant, and uproarious, once again, Irby is the tonic we all need to get by. BIO Samantha McKiver Irby is an American comedian, essayist, blogger, and television writer. She is the creator and author of the blog bitches gotta eat, where she writes humorous observations about her own life and modern society more broadly. REVIEWS “Reading Irby’s work is like you’re belly up at a bar, shooting the s–t and peeling off the layers of your humanity with a hilarious confidant in a judgment-free zone.” -- Shondaland “In true Irby fashion, as you work your way through the collection, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll begin to think about popular culture in a new and exciting way.” -- Elle “Uproariously funny. . . . To read Irby . . . is to discover a secret chronicler of our private humiliations and small joys. . . . No line is overwrought; each unflinching thought unravels like a gift in your favorite group chat. -- Mother Jones “Deeply funny and consistently self-deprecating, Irby explores familiar and fantasy-based subjects with a confessional directness that’s the textual equivalent of a breath of fresh air.” -- Houston Chronicle “Nonchalant yet authoritative. . . . [Irby] races back and forth between self-deprecation and scalding humor, never once missing a stroke. . . . Quietly hostile, sure, but also loudly irresistible.” -- NPR [P] Vintage / May 16, 2023 0.8" H x 7.9" L x 5.1" W (0.5 lbs) 304 pages

Quietly Hostile: Essays /// Samantha Irby /// new

In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity. There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent’s body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of “high self-esteem” seemed oxymoronic. Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is a humorous, at times tragic, memoir that follows Kent on her journey to realizing that her body is a gift to be grown into, that sometimes family doesn’t always mean home, and how even ill-fated bisexual romances could free her from gender essentialism. Perfect for readers of Keah Brown’s The Pretty One, Alida Nugent’s You Don’t Have to Like Me, and Stephanie Yeboah’s Fattily Ever After, Kent’s debut explores her own lived experiences to illuminate how fatphobia intertwines with other oppressions. It stresses the importance of addressing the violence scored upon our minds and our bodies, and how we might begin the difficult—but joyful—work of setting ourselves free. BIO Clarkisha Kent is a Nigerian American writer and critic. Her writing has been featured in outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Essence, The Root, BET, Paper, HuffPost, MTV News, Refinery29, and more. She is also the creator of #TheKentTest, a media litmus test designed to evaluate the quality of representation that exists for Black women and other women of color in film and other media. REVIEWS “A frank, fierce, and funny memoir and social critique.” -- Kirkus “I’ll read anything pop culture critic Clarkisha Kent writes, and now I have the pleasure of reading a whole damn book.” -- The Mary Sue “In her inspiring, no-holds-barred memoir, Clarkisha Kent puts her story out there for all to witness. Her writing is hilarious and intimate, like you’re talking to your best friend over drinks at the bar. Kent’s debut is a celebration of intersectional identity, heralding a bright, essential new voice.” -- Gabrielle Union, actress and author of You Got Anything Stronger? “Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is funny and smart as hell. Kent’s personal story is steeped in an incisive analysis of fatphobia, misogynoir, colorism, racism, sexism, and ableism. As always, listen to Black women, especially Clarkisha Kent.” -- Alice Wong, author of Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life “Heartbreaking, honest, and still somehow wryly hilarious, Clarkisha Kent challenges readers in Fat Off, Fat On to not only read about her life but to think about their own. Whether you relate to the pop culture, the family dynamics, or the awkwardness of sex and dating, Kent reaches deep into herself to show her audience a mirror, and in many ways a lifeline, to find the words for their own stories. This is a book you will read and reread as you come to terms with your history and your future.” -- Mikki Kendall, author of Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot “Screaming, crying, and cackling are just a few of the words I can use to describe what reading Fat Off, Fat On was like. Clarkisha Kent artfully weaves together years of love, loss, joy, and sorrow into a tear-jerking, smile-inducing memoir that perfectly chronicles all the things that make life worth living and leaves you wanting more even as you reach the last page.” -- Keshav Kant, executive director of Off Colour [P] Feminist Press / March 07, 2023 0.9" H x 8.4" L x 5.4" W (0.8 lbs) 264 pages

Fat Off, Fat On /// Clarkisha Kent

An examination of African Americans' historical relationship with the natural world With a basis in environmental history, this groundbreaking study challenges the idea that a meaningful attachment to nature and the outdoors is contrary to the black experience. The discussion shows that contemporary African American culture is usually seen as an urban culture, one that arose out of the Great Migration and has contributed to international trends in fashion, music, and the arts ever since. But because of this urban focus, many African Americans are not at peace with their rich but tangled agrarian legacy. On one hand, the book shows, nature and violence are connected in black memory, especially in disturbing images such as slave ships on the ocean, exhaustion in the fields, dogs in the woods, and dead bodies hanging from trees. In contrast, though, there is also a competing tradition of African American stewardship of the land that should be better known. Emphasizing the tradition of black environmentalism and using storytelling techniques to dramatize the work of black naturalists, this account corrects the record and urges interested urban dwellers to get back to the land. BIO Dianne D. Glave teaches in the department of history at Morehouse College. She is the coeditor of To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. REVIEWS "This will interest young readers studying environmental history; an important addition for all library collections." -- Library Journal"Draws on personal perspectives and oral and recorded histories to detail the ways that the history of Africans in America is rooted in the earth." -- Booklist"I love it! Especially the juicy first-person accounts from enslaved and free black people that convey the depth of the relationship between them and the land . . . [The author] has done our country and the world an incredible service." -- Audrey Peterman, coauthor, with Frank Peterman, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care"In reclaiming the black heritage of the American landscape, Rooted in the Earth takes us beyond the hurt and struggle of people and nature and leaves us clean for the continuing journey like bare feet in the soil, fresh fruit, and sassafras leaf stems chewed like gum as a kid." -- Jarid Manos, author, Ghetto Plainsman; founder/CEO, Great Plains Restoration Council"This book is a compelling look at American history and its impact on African Americans and their relationship to the natural world. As part of the up and coming majority it is their influence and political power that will determine the sustainability of America's environmental protection policies, which influence an entire planet." -- Dudley Edmondson, author, Black & Brown Faces in America's Wild Places"For those who have felt that Blacks are unduly disconnected from the land, this book is both a roadmap and a welcome home sign." -- Majora, urban revitalization strategist and host, Eco-Heroes and The Promised Land [P] Lawrence Hill Books / August 01, 2010 0.5" H x 9.0" L x 6.0" W (0.63 lbs) 178 pages

Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage /// Diane D. Glave

In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating presence. For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena. Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, hopelessness, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people. BIO Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate people’s spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation. An award-winning researcher and. A former professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, Christena’s work has appeared in magazines ranging from Essence to Christianity Today. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. REVIEWS “The Black Madonna chose well when she picked Christena Cleveland to tell her story. This page-turner of a book will prove to be a classic on this often-ignored spiritual archetype. Thanks to Cleveland, the Black Madonna stands up and sings in these pages and comes to life anew.” -- Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessing and The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine “I really believe this book is going to save lives.” -- Cole Arthur Riley, author of This Here Flesh “I read this book with my heart beating fast, my breath coming quickly, inhaling the fragrant liberation that Dr. Christena Cleveland delivers with picturesque narrative, psychological insight and theological imagination. She’s offering liberation to Black women like me and to all who would be free, delivering us to our better selves.” -- Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, author of Fierce Love “Cleveland pens a book that is a soul-satisfying read that surprised me with its candor and deft research. This book had me turning pages.” -- Dr. Moya Bailey, author of Misogynoir Transformed “God Is a Black Woman is at once challenging, revelatory and nourishing. It is akin to having a conversation with your smartest friend, the person who can make you think about something that seemed mundane in a whole new light.” -- National Catholic Reporter [H] HarperOne / February 08, 2022 1.1" H x 8.3" L x 5.4" W (0.8 lbs) 272 pages [P] Amistad Press / February 14, 2023 0.7" H x 8.1" L x 5.4" W (0.45 lbs) 272 pages

God is a Black Woman /// Christena Cleveland

An autobiography of one of the towering figures of contemporary American music and a powerful meditation on history, race, capitalism, and art.Henry Threadgill has had a singular life in music. At 79, the saxophonist, flautist, and celebrated composer is one of three jazz artists (along with Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis) to have won a Pulitzer Prize. In Easily Slip into Another World, Threadgill recalls his childhood and upbringing in Chicago, his family life and education, and his brilliant career in music.Here are riveting recollections of the music scene in Chicago in the early 1960s, when Threadgill developed his craft among friends and schoolmates who would go on to form the core of the highly influential Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the year and a half he spent touring with an evangelical preacher in the mid-1960s; his military service in Vietnam—a riveting tale in itself, but also representative of an under-recognized aspect of jazz history, given the number of musicians in Threadgill’s generation who served in the armed forces.We appreciate his genius as he travels to the Netherlands, Venezuela, Trinidad, Sicily, and Goa enriching his art; immerses himself in the volatile downtown scene in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s; collaborates with choreographers, writers, and theater directors as well as an astonishing range of musicians, from AACM stalwarts (Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Leroy Jenkins), to Chicago bluesmen, downtown luminaries, and world music innovators; shares his impressions of the recording industry his perspectives on music education and the history of Black music in the United States; and, of course, accounts for his work with the various ensembles he has directed over the past five decades. BIO Henry Threadgill was born in Chicago in 1944. In 2016, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for In For a Penny, In for a Pound, an album he composed for his sextet, Zooid. He lives in New York. Brent Hayes Edwards is a Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University and the Director of the Scholars-in-Residence Program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. REVIEWS “Vividly told, alternately uproarious and devastating, Easily Slip into Another World serves up astonishing tales of Threadgill’s life in Chicago, Vietnam, New York, and on the road, punctuated by deep revelations about the Black experience, American empire, an artist’s life, and the entire history of music. Threadgill and Edwards have crafted an invaluable literary experience: a real-life Bildungsroman, plainspoken, erudite, and searingly honest. This book will be savored and cherished for generations.” -- Vijay Iyer, Composer and Pianist; Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts, Harvard University“The personal, the political, the musical, the spiritual: all merge in this brilliant, beguiling memoir by one of the major musical minds of our time. Easily Slip into Another World not only documents a radically inventive individual talent but also celebrates a singularly vital collaborative community — that of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. It shows the indivisibility of what comes from within and what comes from without: making music as a way of being in the world.” -- Alex Ross, music critic, The New Yorker, and author of The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century“Easily Slip into Another World is the vibrant autobiography of Henry Threadgill, a fearless explorer whose music and performance transcends categories and genres. His encompassing vision and adventurous spirit of inquiry have influenced generations of composers and musicians. This book is an affirmation of the power of creativity to change our world and discover new ones.” -- Meredith Monk, Composer, Singer, Director/Choreographer [H] Knopf Publishing Group / May 16, 2023 1.45" H x 9.55" L x 6.65" W (1.54 lbs) 416 pages

Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music /// Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards /// new

Take charge of your family’s food security by learning how to grow your own fruits, vegetables, and herbs—and right along with them, you’ll nurture your own inner strength, too.Food insecurity affects millions of people worldwide. Without access to well-stocked stores or nutritious, fresh foods, those living in “food deserts” face more hunger and health issues than communities where a diversity of food is plentiful. With the inspiration and knowledge found in How to Become a Gardener, self-reliance and food autonomy are within reach for anyone willing to get a little dirt under their nails and dig in. Author, health coach, and food security advocate Ashlie Thomas of The Mocha Gardener (@the.mocha.gardener) serves as an experienced and encouraging guide on your journey toward self-empowerment through the cultivation of your own homegrown harvests. With a spirit of respect for others, for nature, and for community, Ashlie walks you step by step through not only the practical ins and outs of gardening—from seed starting to making the harvest—but also through the personal challenges and lessons found within the act of gardening itself. Regardless of whether you only have space to grow in a few pots or you have enough room for multiple raised beds or an in-ground garden, you’ll find freedom and wellnessthrough the food you grow, along with patience, compassion, and perspective. How to Become a Gardener focuses on: What makes a space a garden and how to get one started How gardens can be a symbol of resilience in challenging times Finding what motivates you to grow and using it to cultivate nutrient-dense, homegrown harvests Why reclaiming your food authority is one of the most empowering things you can do for you and your family The importance of finding personal freedom by growing your own garden-to-table food How the garden grows you just as much as you grow the garden How to Become a Gardener is about growing food, yes. But it’s also about finding your strength through gardening, reclaiming your food authority, discovering your motivation, and learning that no matter what your garden yields,it’s always worth the wait. BIO Ashlie Thomas is a food security and home gardening advocate known on social media as The Mocha Gardener. Several years ago, Ashlie began her gardening journey with her husband on their one-acre North Carolina homestead. Through gardening, she has become more conscientious of local food systems and the health of the environment. Ashlie’s love for wellness and the environment fueled her passion to grow food and bring awareness through practice to growing issues of food insecurity in vulnerable communities around the country. After spending her childhood in a rural community that lacked sufficient access to nutritious foods, she understood that one way to address this barrier is through learning how to grow food and educating others on what quality foods consists of and from where it originates. Ashlie not only believes that her garden may serve as a spiritually enlightening place to ground and regenerate, but also as an opportunity to deeply connect and give reverence to what she feeds herself, her family, and her friends. It is her hope and mission to empower others to take control of their well-being through growing the very thing that sustains them…good, nutritious food. REVIEWS Ashlie's book speaks to the exact philosophy I myself adhere to – becoming a gardener, rather than simply learning how to grow plants. This is a small but crucial distinction that she carries throughout her book, laying out a step-by-step process to reclaim ownership over the food you consume – by growing it yourself! A must-read for those looking to walk the path of a gardener.” -- Kevin Espiritu, Epic Gardening, author of Field Guide to Urban Gardening and Grow Bag Gardening“This is book we need right NOW. There are many books that answer the question of how to garden, but few that show us how to become a gardener! It’s more than just growing things; it is also honoring our symbiotic relationship with all of nature, down to the tiniest bug. Ashlie serves as our knowledgeable guide in exploring both, in this beautifully written and illustrated book.” -- Kamili Bell Hill, @plantblerd“Bursting with encouragement, information, and heart, woven together through colorful photography, Ashlie has written an inspiring roadmap that will guide you to become a conscious and grateful steward of your burgeoning garden, both inside and out.” -- Meg Cowden, @seedtofork, author of Plant Grow Harvest Repeat“How to Become a Gardener covers the basics of how to start a garden from scratch for the first-time gardener, provides advice and emotional support to help through the challenges, and dives into the philosophy behind why gardening can transform our lives in the most beautiful of ways. With this book we can not only transform our lives and take control of our health, but also overcome food insecurity and create resilient communities. Unlike many gardening books, Ashlie is inclusive of our most vulnerable communities, making this book a true solution for many who are often left out of the conversation. To grow our own food is to begin the transformation of ourselves and our communities. How to Become a Gardener is the tool of empowerment that is needed by so many to begin this transformation.” -- Rob Greenfield, environmental activist and author of Food Freedom "...is a beautiful encapsulation of Thomas's love and appreciation for gardening that has everything you need to grow your own food and become the gardener you want to be." -- Washington Gardener Magazine [P] Cool Springs Press / November 01, 2022 0.8" H x 9.7" L x 8.3" W (1.45 lbs) 208 pages

How to Become a Gardener: Find Empowerment in Creating Your Own Food Security /// Ashlie Thomas

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture.Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas grew up feeling he was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests for food were often met with indifference if not open hostility. Deemed too unlike the other boys to ever gain the acceptance he so desperately desired, he began to escape into fantasy and virtual worlds, wells of happiness in a childhood assailed on all sides.In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the unceasing cruelty that defined his circumstances, laying bare the depths of his loneliness and illuminating the vital reprieve geek culture offered him. With remarkable tenderness and devastating clarity, he explores how lessons of toxic masculinity were drilled into his body and the way the cycle of violence permeated the very fabric of his environment. Even in the depths of isolation, there were unexpected moments of joy carved out, from summers where he was freed from the injurious structures of his surroundings to the first glimpses of kinship he caught on his journey to becoming a Pokémon master. SINK follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in—with his immediate peers, turbulent family, or the world—and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms. BIO Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Frankford whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, N+1, Gulf Coast, The Offing, and The Kenyon Review. He has an MFA in prose from The University of Notre Dame and is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania. An excerpt of his memoir, Sink, won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize and he has received fellowships from Fulbright, VONA, Tin House, and Bread Loaf. He’s writing the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, and a collection of stories: Leviathan Beach, among other oddities. He is an associate faculty member at The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, as well as the Director of Programs at Blue Stoop in Philadelphia. REVIEWS “Thomas really does accomplish the extraordinary…[He] has constructed a sort of alchemy on the page, but one born of experience, from skill and from a trust about what will end up on the other side…perhaps one of the biggest boons of Sink is its insistence that care is, above all, shared. It is everyone’s prerogative. In this way, Thomas has earned a deep bow.” -- New York Times Book Review "For the reader, third-person narration creates a buffer to a brutal coming of age, and perhaps allows Thomas enough distance from his trauma to bravely expose the vulnerability and resilience of his youth." -- Washington Post “Thomas is a skilled prose stylist, and Sink is loaded with arresting imagery and insights into the eerie space between claustrophobia and freedom unique to childhood.” -- Vulture [H] Grand Central Publishing / February 21, 2023 1.1" H x 8.4" L x 5.3" W (0.8 lbs) 256 pages

Sink: A Memoir /// Joseph Earl Thomas

A historical graphic novel inspired by the life of Harlem's legendary mobster, Stephanie Saint-Clair Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents. Authors Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy's meticulous details—in both story and art—bring Saint-Clair’s story to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history. BIO From Martinique descent, born and raised in France, Elizabeth Colomba is a representational artist living in New York City. Her previous years as a storyboard artist for Hollywood came in handy to transition from figurative painting to imagining a graphic novel with a cinematic quality. Specialized in postcolonial art, dedicated to reinstalling and liberating the Black body from traditionally restrictive storylines, Colomba analyzes the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between past and present in our collective identity today. Her works have been exhibited in institutions such as the Met and the LACMA and are part of the permanent collection of the Studio museum in Harlem, the Park Armory Avenue, Yale, PAFA, and JP Morgan. Aurelie Levy is a screenwriter, novelist, and documentary filmmaker. Born and raised in France, she pursued her higher education in Japan at the prestigious ICU in Tokyo where she studied history. She then extended her film and history studies at UCLA where she met Elizabeth Colomba. She then went on to write and direct six feature length documentaries. For the past 20 years she has traveled around the globe unveiling relevant stories and addressing current issues. Among the subjects she tackled are: celebrity culture, international adoption, and men in the #metoo era. Recently she has explored the hurdles of overlooked historical figures such as Stephanie Saint-Clair, the heroine of Levy and Elizabeth Colomba's debut graphic novel Queenie: Godmother of Harlem. Levy currently writes screenplays and TV series for French and US productions and hosts a podcast on writing with the largest literary media company in France. Other books by the author include the novel And the Oscar Goes To (2012) and The 21st Man (2021). REVIEWS “I’ve been an admirer of Elizabeth Colomba’s work for a while now. Her work is a vision of history and in particular herstory, which is often left out and left behind for being too clear, too beautiful, too interesting, too horrific . . . I’m excited to see she poured her talent into a new form of storytelling. Queenie: Godmother of Harlem is her new graphic novel where she brings back to life a powerful Black woman erased by history. It’s original, entertaining, riveting, moving. A beautiful piece of art, a must read!” -- Whoopi Goldberg “A dazzling, gripping, masterfully illustrated graphic novel that commands your attention from the first page! It’s a remarkable true story about a character who’s larger than life.” --Regina King "This smart, sure-footed biography belongs on every history aficionado’s shelf." --Publishers Weekly [H] Harry N. Abrams / January 17, 2023 0.8" H x 8.6" L x 7.1" W (1.37 lbs) 160 pages

Queenie: Godmother of Harlem /// Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy, illustrations by Elizabeth Colomba /// new

In this brilliant two-part memoir, the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Hilton Als distills into one cocktail the deep and potent complexities of love and of loss, of Prince and of power, of desire and of race. It’s delicious and it’s got the kick of a mule, especially as Als swirls into his mix the downtown queer nightclub scene, the AIDS crisis, Prince’s ass in his tight little pants, an ill-fated peach pie, Dorothy Parker, and his desire for true love. Always surprising and stealthily—even painfully—moving, Als plumbs longing: “I inched closer to him as he danced to you, Prince. But already he was you, Prince, in my mind. He had the same coloring, and the same loneliness I wanted to fill with my admiration. I couldn’t love him enough. We were colored boys together. There is not enough of that in the world, Prince—but you know that. Still, when other people see that kind of fraternity they want to kill it. But we were so committed to each other, we never could work out what that violence meant. There was so much love between us. Why didn’t anyone want us to share it?” BIO The Pulitzer Prize–winner Hilton Als has been hailed as “exhilarating and audacious” (San Francisco Chronicle), “spectacular” (Bookforum), and “thoroughly wise” (Library Journal). He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. He lives in New York City. REVIEWS If we don’t know what love is until we look Prince in the eye and need him forever after, then maybe we’re his pinups and puppets and he’s translating for us an emotion we’ve kept so remote from our conscious minds that he has to go beneath his soul to dig it up. That is the solace of Als’s close encounters, his flash of a songbook—that it honors Prince’s commitment to being untranslatable, unsampleable. -- Harmony Holiday, Bookforum Als has perfected the difficult art of being a discerning fan. -- Tiana Ried, Bomb Who could be a better guide to Prince—to his polymorphous sexuality, his gleeful dismantling of the racial compartmentalization of American popular music, his seemingly effortless sprezzatura as a performer—than Hilton Als? -- Paul Scott Stanfield, Ploughshares A triumph of loving erudition. -- Raúl Niño, Booklist [A] world of difficult loves and lovers…What Prince had—and, by comparison, no one else has ever had—was style, by which I mean insolence, which offers its own kind of protection. He could show his ass (a high compliment). This was something Als learned to do “through language.” It was defiance through prowess. -- Blair McClendon, 4Columns [P] New Directions Publishing Corporation / November 01, 2022 0.3" H x 7.0" L x 4.4" W (0.12 lbs) 48 pages

My Pinup /// Hilton Als

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 The first book to explore the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, a travel guide for black motorists used for decades when traveling through segregated America. Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” At that time, it was both dangerous and difficult for African Americans to travel, because black travelers couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem. Candacy Taylor writes in her introduction, “The Green Book was published during a time when car travel symbolized freedom in America, but since racial segregation was in full force throughout the country, the open road wasn’t open to all. When black motorists picked up a copy of the Green Book, they were greeted by the words ‘Just What You Have Been Looking For!! NOW WE CAN TRAVEL WITHOUT EMBARRASSMENT.’” Chapters in her book Overground Railroad include: Driving While Black The Business of the Green Book Vacation Music Venues The Roots of Route 66 Women and the Green Book And more! It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and Overground Railroad celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation. It shows the history of the Green Book, how we arrived at our present historical moment, and how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America. BIO "With passion, conviction, and clarity, [Candacy] Taylor’s book unearths a fascinating and true—if not willfully obscured—history of African American activism and entrepreneurship in the United States. This remarkable study broadens our understanding of black life, leisure, and struggles for equality in twentieth-century America, presents the Green Book as a social movement in response to a crisis in black travel, and makes a compelling case for the need to protect more diverse African American sites that have been heretofore underappreciated." -- Executive Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Brent Leggs “…a fascinating history of black travel.. telling the sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades.” -- The New York Times Book Review “In scope and tone, “Overground Railroad” recalls Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns…At its center, the book is a nuanced commentary of how black bodies have been monitored, censured or violated, and it compellingly pulls readers into the current news cycle.” -- The Los Angeles Times “Taylor, previously a Harvard fellow, gives the topic the context and meticulous research it deserves, while keeping an eye on current race relations.” -- National Geographic “The strength of this book about a book lies in the street-level views through which the American road unspools in all its compromised glory.” -- The Economist [H] Amulet Books / January 25, 2022

Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America /// Candacy Taylor

A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013 with her husband and daughter, the community held restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens. In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home. BIO Camille T. Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has edited three anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an and an American Book Award. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. REVIEWS Camille Dungy's SOIL is an instant classic. Provocative, beautifully written, and also wildly informative, this memoir cum manifesto asks us to contemplate our responsibility to our land – and each other. I felt transformed by this graceful and generous book.” --Jami Attenberg, author of I Came All This Way to Meet You“In SOIL, Camille Dungy welcomes us into an abundant, intimate, unfurling space — the exterior landscape of her garden and the interior landscape of her sapience. To dig in the dirt, we learn, is also to dig up and into history, identity, ecology, hope. Dungy shows, by example, how to honor the pain and the possibility of whatever fraught, holy ground we each call home. A deeply life-giving book.” -- Katherine Wilkinson, Executive Director of The All We Can Save Project"With this book Dungy shows, by comparison, how unrooted so many of us are – ecologically, historically, and socially – and makes a poetic case that home is where you know the plants. This poignant, lovely work will make you want to nurture a garden, and all life." -- Ayana Johnson, Co-founder, Urban Ocean Lab [H] Simon & Schuster / May 02, 2023 0.83" H x 9.0" L x 6.0" W (1.13 lbs) 336 pages

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden /// Camille Dungy /// new

Join award-winning broadcaster Alvin Hall on a journey through America’s haunted racial past, with the legendary Green Book as your guide. For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers encountered locked doors, hostile police, and potentially violent encounters almost everywhere, in both the South and the North. From 1936 to 1967, millions relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book, the definitive guide to businesses where they could safely rest, eat, or sleep. Most Americans only know of the guide from the 2018 Green Book movie or the 2020 Lovecraft Country TV show. Alvin Hall set out to revisit the world of the Green Book to instruct us all on the real history of the guide that saved many lives. With his friend Janée Woods Weber, he drove from New York to Detroit to New Orleans, visiting motels, restaurants, shops, and stores where Black Americans once found a friendly welcome. They explored historical and cultural landmarks, from the theatres and clubs where stars like Duke Ellington and Lena Horne performed to the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Along the way, they gathered memories from some of the last living witnesses for whom the Green Book meant survival—remarkable people who not only endured but rose above the hate, building vibrant Black communities against incredible odds. Driving the Green Book is a vital work of national history as well as a hopeful chronicle of Black resilience and resistance. The book contains 25 outstanding black and white photos and ephemera. BIO Alvin Hall is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, author, political activist and renowned financial educator. His numerous radio programs include The Tulsa Tragedy that Shamed America, The Green Book, and Jay-Z: From Brooklyn to the Board Room, all on BBC. For five years he hosted the highly rated and award-winning BBC series Your Money or Your Life. He lives in New York City. REVIEWS '...illuminating…Hall pays moving tribute to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Black Americans who hit the road, despite the dangers. This historical travelogue inspires and educates.” -- Publishers Weekly “Alvin Hall’s thrilling, deeply researched and illuminating exploration of the world of the Green Book – revealing, enraging and inspiring in equal measure – is a journey all Americans must take. Nothing tells us more about the country we have been, the country we remain in so many ways, and the country we should aspire to be.” -- Ric Burns, filmmaker A hard-charging resurrection of Black lives in Jim Crow America. -- Kirkus Reviews “Alvin Hall’s Driving the Green Book is a tour-de-force blending exhaustive research, exquisite writing, and emotionally resonant visuals. The book is also a testament to Black resilience during the Jim Crow era, the strategic thinking that helped Black families not only endure but to prevail over tyrannical anti-Black laws, and the ingenuity that held Black communities together from east to west, north to south. This is a must-read.” -- Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country “Driving The Green Book is an extraordinary journey through history exploring Black Americans’ 400 year tradition of providing safety, shelter, survival, and sanctuary for our community in our quest to live the American dream. The book is beautifully written, educational and inspiring." -- Emil Wilbekin, Founder of Native Son “This smart, lively, and timely book is a testament to friendship and self-discovery and a reminder that the road to racial progress has been marked by dead ends and wrong turns. And yet there are so many beautiful and brilliant stories in these pages of family joy, courage, defiance, and triumph over the many racist indignities along the North/South highways of Jim Crow America, I couldn’t put the book down. Driving the Green Book is a terrific place to start your own journey to understanding the nation’s recent past and to chart a course for a better future.” 00632719660063271966-- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, former Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. [H] HarperOne / January 31, 2023 1.3" H x 9.1" L x 6.1" W (1.6 lbs) 288 pages

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