African American English

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.

From Richard Wright comes a compelling story of one man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself—a man of superior intellect who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes. The Outsider is an important work of fiction that depicts American racism and its devastating consequences in raw and unflinching terms. Brilliantly imagined and frighteningly prescient, it is an epic exploration of the tragic roots of criminal behavior.

Racquel and Marcella are sisters with very little in common, except that each wants what the other has. Racquel has a beautiful house, a fulfilling career and a loving husband. But driven by her desperate longing for a child, she is alienating her husband and family. Marcella is a single mom, trying to support her two children with a low paying job, food stamps, and occasional child support from a deadbeat ex-husband. She won't allow anyone to interfere with her dream for a better lifestyle, not even her own children.

In God Ain’t Through Yet, Annette Goode Davis is thankful that her husband, Pee Wee, has decided to give her a second chance after discovering she’s having an affair. But post-betrayal Pee Wee seems a million miles away, and with true forgiveness the bitterest of pills, they may need a miracle to keep their marriage together.

Starrshima Fields, aka Starr, is a young, bodacious, and bold beauty. She is also the leader of the Double G's, a powerful and ruthless social club of plus-sized women. Starr is guided by Queen Fem, the founder of the Double G's. Queen Fem set up the group of professionals-by-day, gangster-biker-chicks-by-night to prove that this isn't just a man's world. The Double G's put the squeeze on their primary targets: men of power and privilege. Blackmail and manipulation are their choice of weapons, and they are skillful in both.

In this sexy page-turning tale of unexpected love, Zuri Day introduces the Morgan men, three fine brothers who have it all - except what their mama wants most for them: wives. As the eldest, it’s up to Michael to pave the way. If only he’d stop running from love.… In the world of sports management, Michael Morgan is a superstar. But his newest client, Shayna Washington, may be his most lucrative catch yet. The record-breaking sprinter with the tight chocolate body has a talent and inner light Michael knows he can get the world to sit up and notice. She’s definitely got his attention....

When it comes to love, hate, trust, honesty, lying, cheating, deceit, betrayal, drama, money, power, respect, and backbreaking, limitless, raw, and uncut sex, this monthly urban soap, Single Ladies, takes you to a whole nother level of play. There will be no holding back, no biting of the tongue, and best believe the gloves are coming off when five childhood friends take you through the everyday life of living as a female in the hood. Expect everything...but boredom!

Gorgeous Nicole is about to get everything she's hustled for. She's having her rich, married lover Rashad's baby. And a lucky break has made her a media heroine - and the perfect new wife material. With one more deception here, a couple more little seductions there, she'll finally push Rashad's wife, Kiara, completely out of his life. With her formidable competition gone, Nicole will lock down Rashad's ever-wandering interest and be the next Mrs. Eason for sure.

Scarred by poverty and life with a crackhead mother, Onika Lewis had a rough start. Still, thanks to her sharp mind, and hard work, she graduated with honors from a prestigious college. But her achievements weren't enough to earn her the elite status she craved. So she leveraged her gorgeous looks to become a rich man's trophy. And was eventually dumped for a younger model. Now Onika is unemployed, broke - and homeless.

Philadelphia's South Street is a world of contradiction. The hardscrabble neighborhood is filled with prostitutes and gangsters; Working stiffs mingle with winos at Lightnin' Ed's bar. But the streetwalkers are nearing retirement, the gangsters are unemployed, and a community is thriving in and around a place written off by officials and politicians as blighted. Black poet Adlai Stevenson Brown makes his way to South Street in search of authenticity in the form of a neighborhood to save.

New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe continues the adventures of lifelong friends Annette Goode Davis and Rhoda O'Toole in this riveting novel.

Sensing her husband drifting away, Annette gets a full makeover to recapture his attention. But instead, she catches the eye of another man. Soon Annette is in a full-blown affair - and even Rhoda may not be able to fix things this time.

The Burden, edited by award-winning Detroit newspaper columnist Rochelle Riley, is a powerful collection of essays that create a chorus of evidence that the burden is real. The Burden expresses the voices of well-known Americans, such as actor/director Tim Reid who compares slavery to a cancer diagnosis, and former Detroit News columnist Betty DeRamus who recounts the discrimination she encountered as a young Black Detroiter in the south.

The consensus view of the Civil War - that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory - dies here. James Oakes’s groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle. In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines.

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.

In Jezebel Unhinged Tamura Lomax traces the use of the jezebel trope in the Black church and in Black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men's cultural and institutional power to discipline and define Black girlhood and womanhood. Drawing on writing by medieval thinkers and travelers, Enlightenment theories of race, the commodification of women's bodies under slavery, and the work of Tyler Perry and Bishop T. D. Jakes, Lomax shows how Black women are written into religious and cultural history as sites of sexual deviation.

As a young man, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence, he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.

Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.”

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home - a brutal dictatorship that produces the world's fastest marathoners - to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy Western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita - who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland - goes underground.

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 this first scholarly biography of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), the author of A Raisin in the Sun, theater professor Soyica Diggs Colbert considers the playwright's life at the intersection of art and politics, with the theater operating as a "rehearsal room for [her] political and intellectual work". Colbert argues that the success of Raisin overshadows Hansberry's other contributions, including the writer's innovative journalism and lesser-known plays touching on controversial issues such as slavery, interracial communities, and Black freedom movements.