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Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays everyday for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity--Publisher....
Author
Series
Cowboys of California volume 3
Description
When she discovers that big-headed rancher Jesse Pleasant has a softer side during a painfully awkward showing at a community date auction, former tech consultant Lily-Grace Leroux warms to the sparks flying between them, never dreaming that she could have her own happily ever after.
Author
Description
"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original...
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"In her most famous spoken-word poem, award -winning author and poet Elizabeth Acevedo celebrates the beauty and meaning of natural Black hair, her words vibrantly illustrated by artist Andrea Pippins. This powerful book embraces all the complexities of Afro-Latinidad-the history, pain, pride, and powerful love of that inheritance."--
Author
Description
The basis for the Academy Award®-winning movie!
"A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation." — Saturday ReviewBorn a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, DC, in 1841. He spent the next 12 harrowing years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and...
"A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation." — Saturday ReviewBorn a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, DC, in 1841. He spent the next 12 harrowing years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and...
Author
Description
""It is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States." -Annette Gordon-Reed. The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth's integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native. Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, recounts...
Author
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An official Oprah Winfrey’s “The Books That Help Me Through” selection • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner transfigures the coming-of-age story with this brilliantly imagined novel. Includes a new foreword by the author.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric...
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric...
Author
Series
Description
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple weaves a “glorious and iridescent” tapestry of interrelated lives in this New York Times bestseller (Library Journal).
Includes a new letter written by the author
In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy...
Includes a new letter written by the author
In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy...
Author
Description
Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature.
10) The intuitionist
Author
Description
An elevator inspector becomes the center of controversy when an elevator crashes. The inspector, Lila Mae Watson, is a black woman who inspects by intuition, as opposed to visual observation, and now she must prove her method was not at fault. A study of society's attitude to technology and a debut in fiction.
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
"Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to display the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories - heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved,...
Author
Description
"B is for Beautiful, Brave, and Bright! And for a Book that takes a Bold journey through the alphabet of Black history and culture. Letter by letter, The ABCs of Black History celebrates a story that spans continents and centuries, triumph and heartbreak, creativity and joy. It's a story of big ideas--P is for Power, S is for Science and Soul. Of significant moments--G is for Great Migration. Of iconic figures--H is for Zora Neale Hurston, X is for...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Johnson's characters traverse Virginia's landscapes, still stained by some of America's most heinous acts, in pursuit of a place to call home. In each story, she reveals intimate moments within the nation's multitudes, featuring unforgettable characters who struggle beneath burdened inheritances yet manage to persist and love. -- adapted from jacket
Author
Description
This book brings together 52 iconic talents from the past and present and celebrates their inspirational achievements. Meet figureheads, leaders and pioneers such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parks, as well as cultural trailblazers and sporting heroes, including Stevie Wonder, Oprah Winfrey and Serena Williams.
15) Monster
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Series
Description
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
Author
Description
"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ... In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth...
17) The crossover
Author
Series
Crossover (Kwame Alexander) volume 1
Description
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Description
Twelve-year-old Lotus Blossom, normally a peace-loving free spirit, must summon the courage to fight against a racist dress code and stand up for herself.
A talented violinist, Lotus Bloom just switched from her inner-city school to a fancy arts academy. Boys think it is hilarious to throw wads of paper into Lotus's hair. It starts as a prank, but escalates after she reports it to the administration-- and finds herself facing suspension. Now Lotus...
Author
Series
Maya and the rising dark volume 1
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
"A twelve-year-old girl discovers her father is the keeper of the gateway between our world and The Dark, and when he goes missing she'll need to unlock her own powers and fight a horde of spooky creatures set on starting a war"--
20) P.S. Be eleven
Author
Series
Description
"Eleven-year-old Brooklyn girl Delphine feels overwhelmed with worries and responsibilities. She's just started sixth grade and is self-conscious about being the tallest girl in the class, and nervous about her first school dance. She's supposed to be watching her sisters, but Fern and Vonetta are hard to control. Her uncle Darnell is home from Vietnam and seems different. And her pa has a girlfriend. At least Delphine can write to her mother in Oakland,...
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