Biography

Langston Hughes is widely remembered as a celebrated star of the Harlem Renaissance -- a writer whose bluesy, lyrical poems and novels still have broad appeal. What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship...

A strong, funny, heartbreaking memoir (Elizabeth Gilbert) about a grandmother's ferocious love and redefining what it means to be family "Painfully good. I loved it." --Jenny Lawson, bestselling author of Furiously Happy The Ugly Cry is the funniest...

In My Debt to You, Elvage G. Murphy shares his personal, and honest story about how his father and mother, who endured the harsh realities of Jim Crow, prepared him and his brother to navigate a world they knew would not be colorblind. From the...

'Michael Jackson: The Man behind the Mask' is the INSIDE STORY of the truth behind the rumors, ugliness and mystery surrounding Michael Jackson.Is Jackson just a confused person who got too much fame too soon or is he a cold and calculating villain who...

In her "eminently readable memoir about turning darkness back into light" (People), the nationally bestselling author of Good Hair candidly shares her journey from having it all to plunging into a deep depression after her beloved mother's death--and...

I take Liberties--poetic--and take License to relate her story In her voice, to tell History Who she was--as I hear her say Or sing. [...] But still you will come face-to-face With a Portia, whose life outshines All brilliance this black ink...

The story of bluesman Robert Johnson and his deal with the Devil at the crossroads is one of the core myths at the heart of both blues and rock 'n' roll. In A Meeting At The Crossroads, Matt Frederick explores the history and meaning of the myth, from...

Tracing the careers of hip-hop's three most dynamic stars, this deeply reported history brilliantly examines the entrepreneurial genius of the first musician tycoons: Diddy, Dr. Dre, and Jay-ZBeing successful musicians was simply never enough for the...

A compelling autobiography from one of Detroit's favorite sons At 15, Willie Horton received his first contract offer to become a professional baseball player. At 20, he smacked his first major-league home run. At 24, Horton stood in full uniform on the...

Fearful of prison time--or lynching--for violating Indiana's anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's black father and white mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police...

An emotional, page-turning account of unhealed trauma and personal transformation that will break your heart and change your mind, in the tradition of Somebody's Daughter, A Piece of Cake, and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped Riveting, honest, and raw, I Can...

When you come from a mixed race background as Paisley Rekdal does -- her mother is Chinese American and her father is Norwegian- thorny issues of identity politics, and interracial desire are never far from the surface. Here in this hypnotic blend of...

This new edition gives an insight into Ken Saro-Wiwa's ideology, his own record of arrest in July 1993 and imprisonment, the story of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the struggle against the multinational Shell, the Nigerian...

This 10th anniversary edition of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller includes a new introduction and afterword by the author. Chronicling the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy that began with one small...

More than nine million black American families migrated from the southern United States to parts of the north and west during the early to mid-1960s to escape the terror of Jim Crowism, a Southern strategy designed to strip away the dignity of Black...

Bedroom Rapper is a book for obsessive music fans who are looking for the definitive take on what's happened in the last two decades of hip hop, from Cadence Weapon, aka Rollie Pemberton: Pitchfork critic, award-winning musician, producer, DJ, and poet...