Bøger om African American people

"A powerful, heart-wrenching debut novel about ambition, survival, and our responsibility toward one another. Dixon was once an Olympic-level runner. But he missed the team by two-tenths of a second, and ever since that pain decades ago, he hasn't allowed a goal to consume him. But when his charming older brother, Nate, suggests that they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, Dixon can't refuse. The brothers are determined to prove something--to themselves and to each other. Dixon interrupts his orderly life as a school psychologist, leaving behind disapproving friends, family, and one particularly fragile student, Marcus. Once on the mountain, they are met with extreme weather conditions, oxygen deprivation, and precarious terrain. But as much as they've prepared for this, Mt. Everest is always fickle. And in one devastating moment, Dixon's world is upended. Dixon returns home and attempts to resume his job, but things have shifted: for him and for the students he left behind when he chose Mt. Everest. Ultimately, Dixon must confront the truth of what happened on the mountain and come to terms with who can and cannot be saved. DIXON, DESCENDING offers us a captivating, shattering portrait of the ways we're reshaped by our decisions--and what it takes to angle ourselves, once again, toward hope"--

In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past.

Robert A. Wortham shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois¿s role in shaping the scientific scope of the sociological perspective through his pioneering contributions in the areas of demography, urban and rural sociology, Southern Black Belt studies, and religion and society.

Winner of the 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths In her virtuosic debut, Courtney Faye Taylor explores the under-told history of the murder of Latasha Harlins-a fifteen-year-old Black girl killed by a Korean shop owner, Soon Ja Du, after being falsely accused of shoplifting a bottle of orange juice. Harlins's murder and the following trial, which resulted in no prison time for Du, were inciting incidents of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and came to exemplify the long-fraught relationship between Black and Asian American communities in the United States. Through a collage-like approach to collective history and storytelling, Taylor's poems present a profound look into the insidious points at which violence originates against-and between-women of color.Concentrate displays an astounding breadth of form and experimentation in found texts, micro-essays, and visual poems, merging worlds and bending time in order to interrogate inexorable encounters with American patriarchy and White supremacy manifested as sexual and racially charged violence. These poems demand absolute focus on Black womanhood's relentless refusal to be unseen, even and especially when such luminosity exposes an exceptional vulnerability to harm and erasure. Taylor's inventive, intimate book radically reconsiders the cost of memory, forging a path to a future rooted in solidarity and possibility. "Concentrate," she writes. "We have decisions to make. Fire is that decision to make."

Hold You Down is an edgy novel from rising star Tracy Brown about the perils of love and the ties that bind...New York City. Late 1980s to early 1990s.Mercy and Lenox Howard have always only had each other. Growing up on the mean streets of Harlem with an absentee mother meant that they had to have each other's backs. Now young, smart mothers they are determined to survive in New York City while raising their two sons, who have bright futures ahead of them.Mercy is the quiet, straight laced hospital administrator, struggling to make ends meet. At night and on weekends, she pours her heart into her cooking and her dream of owning her own restaurant. Lenox is the diva, the wild child, looking for excitement and her big come up in life and love. Their boys, Deon and Judah, have been raised more like brothers than cousins, forging a bond that is unbreakable.When Lenox heads down a path that she believes will bring success and power, it changes the entire course of her life and her family's life forever. As a result of their mother's choices, cousins Deon and Judah soon find themselves in uncharted territory.

"This Collection of poems by poet and social activist Martha Afetse' provides a vivid look into heart, minds, and soul of an extraordinary Black woman. It will take you to that place where poetic genius transforms personal relationships and social issues into a mesmerizing art." Wayne Moore, (Wilmington Ten Foundation and author of "Triumphant Warrior"."Joy, love, pain, grief, strength, courage, heartbreak, hope, friendship, exhortation...Poet, educator, and community organizer, Martha Afetse' offers a look into the bearings of the soul, and an affirmation to its elasticity and resilience. Her expressions of her experiences: comfort the comforter, motivate you to fight for what is right, and encourage you to stand up for what is right. James Joiner, Educator.

Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a prominent African American poet and journalist in the 1930s and 1940s. Although not as familiar a name as his contemporaries Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes, Davis was a significant figure during the Depression and the Second World War. Born in Arkansas City. Kansas, and educated at Kansas State College, he spent much of his career in Chicago and Atlanta. He wrote and published four important collections of poetry: Black Man's Verse (1935), I Am The American Negro (1937), Through Sepia Eyes (1938), and 47th Street: Poems (1948), which brought him high esteem and visibility in the literary world. Davis turned his back on a sustained literary career by moving to Hawaii in 1948. There he cut himself off from the busy world of Chicago writers and virtually disappeared from literary history until interest in his work was revived in the 1960s Black Arts Movement, which hailed him as a pioneer of black poetry and established him as a member of its canon. Because of his early self-removal from the literary limelight, Davis' life and work have been shrouded in mystery. Livin' the Blues offers us a chance to rediscover this talented poet and writer and stands as an important example of black autobiography, similar in form, style, and message to those of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. In addition to his literary achievements, Davis was an editor for several African American newspapers in the 1930s: the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Whip, the Chicago Star, and the Atlanta World. In the early 1940s he began teaching what he believed to be the first history of jazz course, at the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago, and in 1945he began broadcasting his own radio jazz show, "Bronzeville Brevities", on WJJD in Chicago. Active in the civil rights movement, Davis served as vice chairman of the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee from 1944 to 1947 and was a member of the national board of the Civil Rights Congress from 1947 to 1948. His autobiography, Livin' the Blues, chronicles Davis' battle to overcome a negative self-image and to construct a healthy, self-assured life. Realizing early on that the white world aimed to silence black men, Davis devoted his life to self-empowerment through the written and spoken word and to vigorous promotion of black expression through art and activism. The common thread connecting the disparate events of Davis' life is the blues. By rooting itself in a blues sensibility, Davis' life story is one of triumph over economic hardship and racial discrimination. Davis was a powerful, dramatic writer, and his autobiography vividly captures what it was to grow up black and poor, and what it was like to struggle toward both economic and emotional self-sufficiency.

"Sixteen-year-old Kellan DuCuivre is the descendant of traitors. She never knew her family members or which one of them betrayed the isle of Nanseau. But like all Du orphaned after the war, Kellan is forbidden by law from practicing makecraft, the trade of carving magic into metal that was perfected by the Guild of Engineers and their maker apprentices. No one can know that Kellan has been using makecraft in secret and that, in the wake of a tragic miscarve, she's been helping her adoptive father, Edgar, run his celebrated makeshop. But Edgar's condition is worsening, and his shop is on the brink of ruin. On the eve of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Makers' Exposition in Nanseau's sparkling city of Riz, Kellan is thrust into the Guild's twisted web of political intrigue and ancient secrets when she strikes a dangerous deal with one of its members to save Edgar and his shop. Now Kellan must compete in a rigorous gauntlet against the nation's elite for a coveted spot as a maker's apprentice. But danger lurks at every turn. And as Kellan falls into a budding relationship with the illegitimate son from one of Nanseau's most revered families, she's put into the limelight when something sinister begins targeting the Gauntlet's competitors and wreaking havoc on Riz. Amid a crumbling city and a ticking clock, winning the Gauntlet won't just be a test of survival--it will mean pulling back the veil of secrets behind the Guild and uncovering the shrouded legacies of Nanseau itself"--

"From television writer and producer Sarah LaBrie, comes a poignant memoir about the love and resilience of a mother and daughter in the midst of mental illness"--

"Orisanmi Burton takes narrative and analysis to another level. His scholarship comprehends resistance with a nuance that I have not seen delivered by most academics."--Joy James, author of In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love and New Bones Abolition "Tip of the Spear transforms our understanding of prison rebellion. In so doing, the book offers a stunning contribution to Black radical thought and abolitionist scholarship and politics. Exquisitely researched and argued, this is a must-read."--Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity "In this meticulously researched and beautifully written book, Burton presents one of the most dynamic accounts of Black revolutionary struggle against the prison industrial complex to date. Burton centers Black radical action as the hub of knowledge production to explain the function, implementation, and logic of the carceral apparatus over the past fifty years. Powerfully arguing against the ill-conceived notion of Black revolt as spontaneous and state violence as the happenstance of misguided policy, Burton carefully takes the reader through a rigorously developed source map to understand the breadth and depth of prisons within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With a brilliant array of methodological, conceptual, and theoretical interventions, Tip of the Spear is a must-read and is fundamental to the study of prisons and movements against prisons."--Damien Sojoyner, author of Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

To the naked eye, Club Liquor is an average bar with decent drinks, beautiful people and a bomb DJ; but on Wednesday nights, the back door opens, and an entirely different party begins. ~WELCOME TO LADIES NIGHT~ Liyan knows a lot about business and how to please women. In his mind, pleasure equals dollars and so far, he's right. He treats women like investments and nothing more. However, that choice may finally blow-up in his face. Nothing is as it seems at Club Liquor. BY INVITATION ONLY

Having overcome the clutches of one of Houston's undisputed heavyweights, Young Mack finds himself at war once again with enemies he could never stand a chance against alone. But, the blood of his parents runs deep in his veins and even against all odds he is determined to conquer his newest foe, Gurdo, the inheritor of his father's murderous drug empire.After a decade and a half in federal max custody, Mackentosh 'Mr. Mackmillions' Miller breathes oxygen as a free man again, but will it only last for a short time. The crooked players of a game once ran by Young Mack himself are determined to take him down but this time for good. Being a PRODUCT OF THE STREETS, Young Mack only knows one way to avenge what was done to him. Will Young Mack extract revenge? Or will he run into more trouble than he's prepared to handle?

Denai Powell is a woman who knows exactly what she wants, even if she doesn't always know how she'll get it. So, when her boyfriend of three years reneged on his promise to support her as she pursued her dream of becoming a chef, Denai abruptly ended their relationship. Now newly single, unemployed and living out of her mother's guest room with no real "Plan B" for the future, and officially sick of drowning her sorrows in booze and bubble baths, Denai teams up with her best friend, Treena, for one epic night on the town to forget about her problems for a while. She had only planned to enjoy bottomless drinks and dance all night until her feet hurt, but then she saw Him...Dell Hewitt breezed into town on Friday night for a quick one-day trip to celebrate his favorite cousin, Emmanuel's "Dirty Thirty," and then hop on a red eye back home. Just bottle service, a few rounds of shots and celebrating the life of someone who's like a brother to him. Simple and straightforward with no surprises. Dell rarely did anything without pinpointing every single detail, and knowing every potential outcome. However, all his planning and forward thinking could not have prepared him for this night. Especially not once he saw Her... CONTENT WARNING: Explicit sexual content, Depictions of domestic violence and/or violence against women, Torrential mother/daughter relationships, Profanity, Infidelity

For a young gay black man like Devon Washington, Manhattan in the 1980s presents exciting possibilities but also grave threats. Since coming to the city from a rough neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Devon has failed at one gay relationship and lost a second lover to AIDS. Settling into the dynamic West Village art scene, he's trying to figure out how to live and love in the midst of a gay pandemic. Racism and street violence pose further complications. After failing at yet a third relationship, Devon is drawn to the mysterious Charles Bedford. In some ways, though, the elusive Charles represents the very life he had hoped to escape by coming to New York.

The focus of this memoir revolves around the author's journey as a quilter and the connections of that journey to her spirituality and that of her African Canadian and American sisters. Intermingled with these themes are their connections to important aspects of the African experience in the diaspora and the concomitant connections to the history of quilting in North America. The information in the book is composed with text boxes of prose and poetry, photographs and artwork - piecework for the ""patches' of this metaphoric "quilt".

This is a true story of the life of Mingo Sanders. Freed from slavery during the Civil War, he rises to become the First Sergeant of the U.S. Army Bicycle Corps and leads his company through two deployments in the Spanish American war, first Cuba and later the Philippine Islands. In the shadow of the Buffalo Soldiers legacy, his honor was crushed into the ground of Brownsville, Texas by the Rough Riders Colonel. Time rights the wrongs done to him when President Theodore Roosevelt's actions are overturned by the first U.S. Army Equal Opportunity Office. Why haven't you ever heard of him? No longer living, and no with living relatives, his legacy has never been fully restored. Can it be when government institutions, corrupted by baked in racism, have worked for so long to keep his story from blemishing the Medal of Honor recipient and face of Mount Rushmore?

A story about Jace,whose interaction with a family friend, Morris, causes him to question his method of helping others to the point of calling him Scrooge, but when he falls asleep and has a dream, Morris tells him in his dream the hard road he took why he became tight with money despite his wealth.

National bestselling author K'wan presents a story of four women fighting to survive in the urban jungle in Hood Rat.Yoshi is young, fine, and larcenous. She lives her life playing on men's hearts as well as their pockets. She learns the hard way that all that glitters isn't gold. Billy, a former high school basketball star, has been looking for love. Then she meets someone new and her whole world is turned upside down and she will never be the same.Reese is an around-the-way chick, trying to keep up with the Joneses. There's a revolving door on her bedroom as she tries to find the love she always felt was missing. Her promiscuity leaves her pregnant from a one-night stand and Reese is faced with the task of breaking an age-old cycle, passed down from mother to daughter in her family, and standing on her own. Rhonda is twenty-something with three kids, by three men, and riding the system all the way to the bank. To her, work is a dirty word; between the multiple checks she gets from the government, and the games she plays with men, she's living the life of a ghetto superstar. The game soon turns ugly when one of her "sponsors" snaps and decides to get some payback.Harlem has never seen four friends as scandalous as these. The neighborhood will never be the same again.

An exuberant return to the four unforgettable heroines of Waiting to Exhale-the novel that changed African American fiction forever.Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale was more than just a bestselling novel-its publication was a watershed moment in literary history. McMillan's sassy and vibrant story about four African American women struggling to find love and their place in the world touched a cultural nerve, inspired a blockbuster film, and generated a devoted audience.Now, McMillan revisits Savannah, Gloria, Bernadine, and Robin fifteen years later. Each is at her own midlife crossroads: Savannah has awakened to the fact that she's made too many concessions in her marriage, and decides to face life single again-at fifty-one. Bernadine has watched her megadivorce settlement dwindle, been swindled by her husband number two, and conned herself into thinking that a few pills will help distract her from her pain. Robin has an all-American case of shopaholism, while the big dream of her life-to wear a wedding dress-has gone unrealized. And for years, Gloria has taken happiness and security for granted. But being at the wrong place at the wrong time can change everything. All four are learning to heal past hurts and to reclaim their joy and their dreams; but they return to us full of spirit, sass, and faith in one another. They've exhaled: now they are learning to breathe.

A provocative and enchanting debut about a Black woman doing whatever it takes to protect all she loves at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama.It's 1957, and after leaving the only home she has ever known, Alice Young steps off the bus into the all-Black town of New Jessup, Alabama, where residents have largely rejected integration as the means for Black social advancement. Instead, they seek to maintain, and fortify, the community they cherish on their "side of the woods."In this place, Alice falls in love with Raymond Campbell, whose clandestine organizing activities challenge New Jessup's longstanding status quo and could lead to the young couple's expulsion--or worse--from the home they both hold dear. But Raymond continues to push alternatives for enhancing New Jessup's political power. So Alice must find a way to balance her undying support for his underground work with her desire to protect New Jessup from the rising pressure of upheaval from inside, and outside, their side of town.This novel is both a celebration of Black joy and a timely examination of the opposing viewpoints that attended desegregation in America. Readers of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Robert Jones, Jr.'s The Prophets will love Moonrise Over New Jessup.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

"Dope Fiction" is a gripping tale set in the volatile East Side of Indy, where a vengeful ex-convict, Cheyenne, returns home with a thirst for revenge against her former crew. As she targets them one by one, the streets turn into a war zone, and the question arises - will she succeed in settling the score, or will her quest lead to her own demise?Amidst the chaos, we meet Danesha, a self-centered cop with enemies on all sides - Cheyenne is out to kill her, an overzealous detective is hot on her trail, and a dangerous drug kingpin also seeks her life. Can Danesha take on all these threats and emerge victorious, or will she fall victim to someone's deadly plans?Niome, once a good girl, transforms into a woman seeking vengeance for her mother's murder. Alone and determined, she forms an unlikely alliance to accomplish her goal. As the lives of these three women collide, friendships become distorted, and killers lurk in the shadows. Unraveling the truth from the web of lies will test their strength and determination, making them question everything they thought they knew.Set against the backdrop of Indianapolis, "Dope Fiction" delivers a riveting narrative filled with betrayal, courage, and the struggle between right and wrong. As these distinct paths intertwine, the characters must confront their demons and make life-altering choices, shaping their destinies forever. Brace yourself for a thrilling and intense journey through a world where the line between fact and fiction is dangerously blurred.

"So deliciously uncomfortable there were moments where I had to put the book down, take a deep breath, and like Mira, its protagonist, urge myself to go further. This is a novel, like Octavia Butler's Kindred, that reminds its readers that as long as people don't acknowledge how much of the past still shapes the present, it will bring its whips, its hatchets, and fists to make us learn."--Megan Giddings, author of LakewoodA haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind now available as a Harper Perennial Olive Edition.More than a decade ago, Mira fled her small, segregated hometown in the south to forget. With every mile she traveled, she distanced herself from her past: from her best friend Celine, mocked by their town as the only white girl with black friends; from her old neighborhood; from the eerie Woodsman plantation rumored to be haunted by the spirits of slaves; from the terrifying memory of a ghost she saw that terrible day when a dare-gone-wrong almost got Jesse--the boy she secretly loved--arrested for murder.But now Mira is back in Kipsen to attend Celine's wedding at the plantation, which has been transformed into a lush vacation resort. Mira hopes to reconnect with her friends, and especially, Jesse, to finally tell him the truth about her feelings and the events of that devastating long-ago day.But for all its fancy renovations, the Woodsman remains a monument to its oppressive racist history. The bar serves antebellum drinks, entertainment includes horrifying reenactments, and the service staff is nearly all black. Yet the darkest elements of the plantation's past have been carefully erased--rumors that slaves were tortured mercilessly and that ghosts roam the lands, seeking vengeance on the descendants of those who tormented them, which includes most of the wedding guests. As the weekend unfolds, Mira, Jesse, and Celine are forced to acknowledge their history together, and to save themselves from what is to come.

Love, Betrayal and Loyalty on the Streets of HarlemDaruis, a.k.a. Rio, the only child of a singer turned alcoholic, feels he has nothing to hold on to except the idea of escaping the ghetto. Years ago, he took a gun charge for a friend and did some prison time. Unable to find a job when he gets out, Rio turns to hustling as a way out. In the meantime, Rio finds escape in the arms of his soulmate, Trinity.When Trinity's mother died, her abusive father looks to her to play the role of house wife and bedmate. Trinity finds strength to endure in Rio's arms. Together they vow to do whatever it takes to make it out of the ghetto. But soon they find their backs against the wall when the streets come to claim their due.