Cultural Literature

Two years ago, Newsweek named Farai Chideya to its Century Club of a hundred people to watch as we approached the year 2000. Beautiful, savvy, and wired for sound, she's an ideal guide to the new, multiracial America that's emerging as the next...

A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious, and politically urgent. A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative and artistically ambitious, In the Black...

From New York Times bestselling author Helen Rappaport comes a superb and revealing biography of Mary Seacole that is testament to her remarkable achievements and corrective to the myths that have grown around her. Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first...

Detroit 67 is the story of Motor City in the year that changed everything. Twelve chapters take you on a turbulent year-long journey through the drama and chaos that ripped through the city in 1967 and tore it apart in personal, political and interracial...

A gripping, all-access biography of Joe Frazier, whose rivalry with Muhammad Ali riveted boxing fans and whose legacy as a figure in American sports and society enduresHistory will remember the rivalry of Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali as one for the ages,...

A group of former gang members come together to help one another answer the question "How can I be a good father when I've never had one?" In 2010, former gang leader turned community activist Big Mike Cummings asked UCLA gang expert Jorja Leap to...

In 1973 young artist and filmmaker Lee Jaffe met Bob Marley in New York City and within hours cemented a friendship that would see Jaffe becoming a Wailer right down (or up) to his dreadlocks. While Marley was well known in Jamaica, he was little known...

Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales is an extraordinary audiobook featuring Gillian Anderson, Benjamin Bratt, LeVar Burton, Ricardo Chavira, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Whoopi Goldberg, Sean Hayes, Hugh Jackman, Samuel L. Jackson, LaTanya Richardson...

The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa. King Peggy chronicles the astonishing journey of American secretary, Peggielene Bartels, who...

A SPECTACULAR COLLECTION OF IMAGES AND WORDS THAT OFFER A DETAILED GLIMPSE INTO THE UNIQUE BEAUTY AND RHYTHM OF AFRICA'S NATURAL WONDER. Mount Kilimanjaro is the African continent's highest mountain and the world's tallest freestanding mountain. It is a...

Building on the success and popularity of Volume 1: Jazz Guitar and Volume 2: Nothin' but Blues, Corey Christiansen has adapted another classic, Volume 3: The ii-V7-I Progression for Guitar. As with the previously mentioned adaptations, this one uses...

The untold story of Sammy Davis, Jr.: This incisive biography and sweeping cultural history conjures the many worlds [Davis, Jr.] traversed, and shows how the issue of race, in his own mind and in the minds of his fans and detractors, shaped his career...

Whether adored or abhorred, graffiti and street art provoke passionate debate. This is the first comprehensive popular survey of the art movement around the world. Organized thematically, it explores the origins of the movement and its evolution, the...

Chester B. Himes has been called "one of the towering figures of the black literary tradition" (Henry Louis Gates Jr.), "the best writer of mayhem yarns since Raymond Chandler" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "a quirky American genius" (Walter Mosely). He...

[These contributions] touch on so many different facets of the immigrant experience that readers will find much to ponder... [and] experience how creative writing enriches our understanding of each other and our lives. -BooklistIntroduction by Pulitzer...

As a member of the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, I have never forgotten how much that organization advanced my intellectual understanding of the dynamics of America and the world. Poetry and the Black Panther Party: from Ancestral...