Cultural Literature

"I was fortunate to grow up in a community in which it was apparent that our lives mattered. This memory is the antidote to the despair that seizes one of my generation when we hear the words 'Black Lives Matter.' We want to shout: Of course they do! To...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, rapper, and activist--Sister Souljah uses her passionate voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any Black woman determined to keep her heart open and her...

"A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style."--Maya Angelou "In America, we have a tradition of black writers whose autobiographies and memoirs come to define an era. . . . Buck may be this generation's story."--NPR A...

One of our most visceral and important memoirs on race in America, this is the story of Nathan McCall, who began life as a smart kid in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighborhood. Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Barack Obama's lucid vision of America's place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate "In our lowdown, dispiriting era,...

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...

"Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my...

In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history--Harriet Tubman--a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonates today. Harriet...

365 DAYS OF BLACK AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY WITH ART FROM THE COOPER COLLECTION. 2019 CALENDAR, MARCUS GARVEY, BLACK SORORITIES, BARACK OBAMA, MICHELLE OBAMA, OPRAH WINFREY, NAACP, DREAMGIRLS, LL COOL J, RAP, SUPREMES, PATENTS, WHITNEY HOUSTON, MICHAEL...

"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the...

From Charlamagne Tha God, multi-hyphenate mogul, host of the morning radio phenomenon The Breakfast Club, and founder and CEO of iHeartRadio's Black Effect Podcast Network, a rundown on how small talk from small minds have taken over our world, and the...

An award-winning journalist, TV political analyst, and creator of theGrio documentary, Afro-Latinx Revolution: Puerto Rico, recounts her experiences as an African American and Puerto Rican woman, reflecting on her improbable journey from Syracuse to...

A fun and thoughtful dictionary of Black language you didn't know you needed, Historically Black Phrases is a love letter to the Black community and the ways it drives culture.   "This perfect blend of explanation, definition and social commentary...

A rousing abolitionist speech with themes that still resonate today, from equality under the Constitution and God to a vision of America that defends freedom for all.One of the most memorable speeches in American history, Frederick Douglass's "What to...

WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTIONINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South--and thus of America--by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our...

Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible...