Biography

DISCOVER ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ACCOUNTS OF SLAVERY IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA One of history's greatest crimes, the American slave trade led to the suffering of untold numbers of men and women. But how can we better understand the lives and...

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume. Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass...

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his...

In this captivating new memoir, award-winning writer Jessica B. Harris recalls her youth "surrounded by some of the most famous creative minds of the seventies and eighties...James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Nina Simone" (New York...

A Hole in One!To think, I almost did not participate in this tournament. Someone dropped out at the last minute and I subbed as a replacement for him in the competition. I never imagined that I would walk away that day with a new 1986 Dodge Dakota Truck...

Acclaimed historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the remarkable story of ex-slave Callie House who, seventy years before the civil-rights movement, demanded reparations for ex-slaves. A widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five, House (1861-1928)...

An Instant New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles...

Four-time mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, Jr. tells his shocking and courageous life story, beginning in the cotton fields in Mississippi to the executive offices of one of the most powerful cities in the world. Marion Barry fought relentlessly...

Powerful narrative and graphics tell the story of Malcolm X's life, his journey of self-discovery, his far-reaching ideas, his martyrdom, and his impact on an era. Embraced as a righteous prophet of Black power and pride, damned as the voice of violence,...

The classic story of life in Apartheid South Africa.   Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of...

When a class-action lawsuit against the US government results in a billion dollar settlement for the aggrieved parties, you'd expect the story to be headline news . . .to be posted on social media everywhere . . . to be adapted to film or even to a...

The loving yet brutally honest memoir of the daughter of comedy legend Richard PryorRain Pryor was born in the idealistic, free-love 1960s. Her mother was a Jewish go-go dancer who wanted a tribe of rainbow children, and her father was Richard Pryor,...

The life and influence of Jimmy in Saint-Paul de Vence. Composed of more than 70 interviews with some of the many people who encountered James Baldwin in the last 17 years of his life, this revealing retrospective provides an intimate look into one of...

"One of the major autobiographies of the African-American tradition."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not...

An expanded edition of a celebrated book that travels throughout the African diaspora to savor the timeless joy of black cuisine and culture. A hidden gem by the author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Some Sing,...

From the streets of Baltimore to the halls of the New Mexico Philharmonic, a musician shares his remarkable story in I'm Possible, an inspiring memoir of perseverance and possibility. Young Richard Antoine White and his mother don't have a key to a room...