African American English

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality: the black Chinese restaurant.

In Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, Dionne Brand's first major book of non-fiction since her classic A Map to the Door of No Return, the acclaimed poet and novelist offers a bracing look at the intersections of reading and life, and of what remains in the wreck of empire. Blending literary criticism and autobiography-as artifact, Brand reads Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, among other still-widely studied works, to explore encounters with colonial, imperialist and racist tropes from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

There is an unaddressed Black mental health crisis in our world today. In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist Reeda Walker offers a comprehensive guide to help African Americans combat stigma, increase awareness around mental illness, practice emotional wellness, and get the best care possible for Black people in an unequal system.

From the best-selling author of Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade - and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856 - a battleground between anti - and pro-slavery forces - when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town.

At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life—between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she’s happy in love and in friendship—until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world.

In the hood, every day is about struggle and survival, and no one understands that daily grind more than 22-year-old Kaeyla “Goldie” Dennis. She’s been the “wifey” of an older, wealthy man since she was 15, but the discovery of their longtime affair by his real wife brings to a crushing end her hood-fabulous lifestyle in their low-rise project in Newark.

Alexis Griggs has worked hard to get where she is in life. She owns several clinics that service people in need and is a pillar of her community, but looks can be deceiving. Alexis and her brother, Jace, are both leading double lives, which are both illegal and deadly. It leaves little time for Alexis to have a personal life; that is until she has a chance encounter with single father Kevell Farrell.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

Buck O'Neil once described him as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one". Among experts, he is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba and one of Black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today.

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction, Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni.

Born and raised in Atlanta, Lucinda, LaMeka, Charice, and Trinity are best friends who all have suffered the perils of teen pregnancy. With their dreams and ambitions on hold, they struggle to find themselves and survive this game called life. Despite their efforts, the decisions they make create more trouble, and the consequences prove to be costlier than they ever could have imagined.

Renee is queen of the city and runs it with an iron fist, but everything changes when people from her past resurface to seek revenge. They will stop at nothing until she's dead. Molested by her stepfather and verbally abused by her mother, Renee channeled her pain into passion and became the most ruthless queen-pin New York has ever seen. Haunted by her past and unable to let go of what was, she struggles to achieve inner peace while inflicting mayhem on the streets of New York.

Ra'Keeyah has million-dollar dreams. She's determined to come up, and she won't stop until she does. Nothing is going to stop her from getting the hottest clothes, the finest men, and money to burn. Easily influenced by her conniving girls Shayna and Quiana, Ra'Keeyah resorts to shoplifting, stealing married men's credit cards, and passing bad checks to get what she wants. Ra'Keeyah is struggling and has sunk to an all-time low when she meets Brick. He's a savvy, street-smart hustler who will surely take her young heart for a ride and make her want to change.

Tiffany and Kory are settling into their happily-ever-after and enjoying matrimonial bliss, but they are missing the one thing that would make their family complete - a baby. After several months of trying to conceive, with no success, Tiffany shifts her focus on her career and her new role as CEO at TiMax. Eager and ready to move up the corporate ladder, Tiffany convinces her best friend, Rose, to move to L.A., offering her a new start. It's something Rose simply can't refuse, an opportunity not only for success, but also for love.

Patricia Haley’s inspirational series following the drama-filled Mitchell family shot her to the number-one spot on the Essence best-seller list. Anointed transports listeners back to the saga’s beginning, when Dave and Madeline Mitchell were still married, raising a family, and building a million-dollar business. Then Dave hires a pretty young assistant named Sherry Henderson, and temptation gives way to desire - setting events in motion that will haunt the Mitchell clan for decades to come.

For three years of the War Between the States, Marlie Lynch has helped the cause in peace: with coded letters about anti-Rebel uprisings in her Carolina woods, tisanes and poultices for Union prisoners, and silent aid to fleeing slave and Freeman alike. Her formerly enslaved mother's traditions and the name of a white father she never knew have protected her - until the vicious Confederate Home Guard claims Marlie's home for their new base of operations in the guerilla war against Southern resistors of the Rebel cause.

Jonas, the only boy in a family of four children, has always been a fighter. From the neighborhood bullies to the stepfather who uses him and his siblings as punching bags, his life has always been one battle after another. When he crosses paths with rogue homicide detective Louis "Lou" Ceavers, he's offered a bargain that will change the course of his life. Detective Ceavers becomes like a guardian angel and surrogate father to Jonas, teaching him the game and guiding him in his quest for power.

In this classic work—a blend of memoir, social criticism, and political analysis that remains relevant today—the first Black Congresswoman to serve in American history, New York’s dynamic representative Shirley Chisholm, traces her extensive political struggle and examines the problems that have long plagued the American system of government.