Cultural Literature

REGIONAL BESTSELLER Now a documentary narrated by Common, produced by Grant Hill, Dwyane Wade, and 9th Wonder, from filmmaker Mary Mazzio The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-Black high...

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set...

How Exceptional Black Women Lead brings together compelling research, hard data, and generously shared personal advice to unlock the secrets to exceptional success for today’s Black woman. Shared in these pages are perspectives gathered from 70...

One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, "Roots" opened up the minds of Americans to one of the darkest and most painful parts of its past. This anniversary edition reminds the generation that originally read it that there...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama "guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race"...

This new entry in the innovative Story line of chapter-book biographies focuses on John Lewis, a leader in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and a revered Congressman today. The son of an Alabama sharecropper, John Lewis experienced the injustice of...

The New York Times bestseller, these groundbreaking essays and poems about race--collected by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and written by the most important voices of her generation--are "thoughtful, searing, and at times, hopeful. The Fire...

Winner of the 2014 Anna Julia Cooper-CLR James Book Award presented by the National Council of Black Studies In We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement, Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues that armed resistance was critical to...

Randall Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence--with a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial. It's "the nuclear...

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an eye-opening and galvanizing look at the current state of anti-racist activism across America. In the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About...

On the heels of Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Prize, as the world begins to recognize the creative side of Hip-Hop, comes a writing guide from a musician and The greatest MC of all time, Rakim. The musician and Hip Hop legend--hailed as "the greatest MC of...

The #1 New York Times bestseller The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race,...

James Beard Foundation Leadership Award 2019: Leah Penniman Choice Reviews, Outstanding Academic Title An extraordinary book...part agricultural guide, part revolutionary manifesto--VOGUE In 1920, 14 percent of all land-owning US farmers were black...

In Art on My Mind, bell hooks, a leading cultural critic, responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting, and criticizing art and aesthetics in an art world increasingly concerned with identity politics. Always concerned with the...

AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER and NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE From the New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop, a passionate call to America to finally reckon with race and start the journey to redemption."Powerfully illuminating,...

The story every mother in America needs to read. As featured on NPR and the TODAY Show. All moms have to deal with choosing baby names, potty training, finding your village, and answering your kid's tough questions, but if you are raising a Black child,...