African American English

Jealousy, greed, and violent revenge are all at the forefront in this addictive listen by Brenda Hampton, the queen of girlfriends' drama. Kayla, Evelyn, and Trina have been on-and-off-again girlfriends for many years, but the lines of true friendship have been crossed, the knives that went into another friend's back cut deep, and trust no longer applies when one woman has an affair with another's man. Will this trio ever be able to regain the bond of loyalty they once shared?

Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.

From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.

Here in his own words are the revolutionary ideas that made Malcolm X one of the most charismatic and influential African-American leaders of the 1960s. These speeches document Malcolm's progression from Black nationalism to internationalism, and are key to both understanding his extraordinary life and illuminating his angry yet uplifting cause.

Motherhood isn’t easy, especially when you’re a mother of a Black son. Ten years ago, Cheryl jumped at the chance to send her son, Javonte, to an exclusive boarding school in New England - far away from Atlanta and the violence of the city streets. It was the American dream, or was it? Now settled in Vermont, Javonte is married and well-employed, but Cheryl hardly ever sees him, and when she does, her own son seems like someone she only used to know.

All he ever wanted to be was a good son. Shai Clark was an all-American basketball player with aspirations of one day making it to the NBA, but that all changed when his father was viciously murdered and he found himself thrust into the role of the new head of his family's criminal enterprise.

Persia Chandler doesn't know the meaning of the world struggle. After the arrest of her notorious father, she is whisked away from Harlem, the only place she has ever called home, to be raised in an affluent neighborhood in Long Island City. Her mother and stepfather shower her with the best that life has to offer. During her senior year in high school, she convinces her parents to let her transfer from Catholic school to attend public school. That is the start of her problems - but it's hardly the end.

Honey Williams doesn’t trust men. Between her father and last lover, a part of her struggles with resenting the entire species. She’s spent the past six months hidden in the safety of her parents’s home hoping her kind heart will never be the cause of pain and misfortune again. That seems possible until a cranky client causes chaos … which leads to her meeting Mr. Librarian.

In the previous installment, Owen was faced with her haunting past, and with nowhere to run. Having let her guard down due to being with the handsome and protective Conquer, will she be able to get away unlike the last time? Or will the perpetrator strike again, ruining the progress Owen has made personally and romantically? If so, Owen will quickly realize that Conquer loves very hard and is extremely zealous when it comes to his La Bella. Now that Conquer has decided to go against the grain and make Owen his official girl, he is forced to deal with the many people that don't agree.

Disaya Morgan, a character first introduced in Girls from Da Hood 4, returns in this gritty tale of a money-hungry woman who finds her life spinning out of control. When Disaya meets Indie and falls hopelessly in love, she is determined to keep her lifestyle a secret - but everything done in the dark eventually comes to light. When she loses control of her own hustle, things go horribly wrong, and she learns the hard way that, in the game she’s playing, there are no winners.

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of black British women. Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and short-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.

In the business of high-end, no-limits desire, Desdemona Dean is the best there is. She fiercely protects the women who work for her and helps them attain the lives they deserve - especially when it comes to her beautiful, troubled new protege, Portia. But for Desi, having it all is no longer enough. She wants everything her shattered childhood denied her. And as she pursues an education and a normal life, she's falling hard for her handsome tutor - and can't resist schooling him in ways that are turning into more than just passion.

How far would you go to see justice done? How far is too far? For Madisun, the answer is simple. There are people in this world who need killing, and she's just the woman for the job!

In 1948 most White people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous White journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel Black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic Black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local Black leaders, and families of lynching victims.

Savannah has awakened to the fact that she's made too many concessions in her marriage. Bernadine has watched her megadivorce settlement dwindle. Robin has an all-American case of shopaholism. 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.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how Black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging Black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.

One of America's most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States.

Jaylin and Nokea Rogers have been married for almost four years. Jaylin has finally tamed his womanizing ways, and they're happily raising their children together. Things couldn't be more perfect, until an unforgettable kiss from Nokea's past has her wondering what could - or should - have been. The tender kiss was placed on her lips by Jaylin's best friend, Shane, and when Nokea is forced to spend a night alone with him, the unthinkable happens.