African American Families

Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything - until it wasn't. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant - a part of a future that belonged to them.

When the future of Grandeur nears the brink of collapse in the face of band rivalry, Tess finds to her chagrin that she must team up with Brandon in a desperate attempt to revive the company. As Tess and Brandon spend more time together, Tess begins to wonder if everything she thought she knew might not be so certain after all….

A collection of Christmas stories written by African American journalists, activists, and writers from the late 19th century to the modern civil rights movement. This landmark collection features writings from well-known black writers, activists, and visionaries such as Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, and John Henrik Clark along with literary gems from rediscovered writers. Originally published in African American newspapers, periodicals, and journals between 1880 and 1953, these enchanting Christmas tales are part of the black literary tradition that flourished after the Civil War.

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them—everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes.

Dr. Cade Mathis learned early that he was not the son of the man who raised him. His adoptive father, a cruel, bitter man, had always been quick to tell him that he was a bastard and an embarrassment to the rich society family whose daughter got pregnant with him. So when Cade received a full scholarship to college, he was only too happy to leave the only home he had ever known behind and never looked back. Now a successful doctor and one of the best neurosurgeons in the state, the only thing he still wants are answers about where he came from.

This stirring coming-of-age tale unfolds in 1930s rural Kansas. A poignant portrait of African-American family life in the early twentieth century, it follows the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a man. We meet Sandy's mother, Annjee, who works as a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his strong-willed grandmother, Hager; Jimboy, Sandy's father, who travels the country looking for work; Aunt Tempy, the social climber; and Aunt Harriet, the blues singer who has turned away from her faith.

Jakari Bolton: protector and provider… He takes on those roles when his father gets incarcerated for hideous crimes that are still bothering him ten years later. Jakari is so busy taking care of those he loves he forgot that he needed care too. Anger, guilt, and hurt have guided his life’s trajectory, and he doesn’t know any other way to be. So when he has to pick up his cousins from school and runs into librarian, Yendi Odom, he doesn’t know how to handle her.

African-American police officer and family man Carson Blake pulls over a young black man for speeding. When the man reaches for his cell phone, Carson thinks he's going for a weapon and shoots to kill. Now a promising life has been snuffed out, and Carson must begin a painful journey toward redemption.

In How to Read the Air, Mengestu crafts a moving tale about one man’s search for identity. After his estranged Ethiopian immigrant father dies, Jonas hopes to answer questions about his heritage and culture. So he leaves his wife and home in New York and sets out across the trail his own parents took when they first arrived in America.

Caregiving is a core value in the African American culture. And African American women of faith often fill that role—for elderly parents, sick children, and other members of their community. Yet no one is fully prepared for the reality of disrupted schedules, unpredictable needs, and many sleepless nights that come with caregiving. Jeanne Porter King shares 90 devotions written from her own experience as a caregiver for her mother to encourage you to take time to care for your whole self.

It was a long, hard-fought battle for Judge Kristen Catherine Bryant to be appointed by the President of the United States to a judgeship on the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. She endured Congressional interrogations, press and news media interviews, speaking engagements, and grips and grins with intestinal fortitude and no little amount of patience and guile. That was all now behind her. She had a month to decompress before she had to move from Chicago, Illinois, to Washington, DC, to assume her new post.

In this powerful, edgy, and funny debut novel about making right and wrong choices, Bump gives us an unforgettable and lovable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude is a young black man in search of a place where he can fit; born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. After a riot consumes his neighborhood, Claude decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new life and identity. But he discovers, there's no escaping the people and places that made him.

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace.

Nominated for a National Book Award in 1971, His Own Where is the story of Buddy, a fifteen-year-old boy whose world is spinning out of control. He meets Angela, whose angry parents accuse her of being "wild." When life falls apart for Buddy and his father, and when Angela is attacked at home, they take action to create their own way of staying alive in Brooklyn. In the process, the two find refuge in one another and learn that love is real and necessary.

In the finale, everyone is battling their own demons. Messiah may have done something that could end her relationship with her daughter and husband. Has she gone too far, or like usual Messiah, did she know what she was doing? Staten is stuck on trying to handle loving Liberty, even after she ended things, be a father to he and Chanel’s daughter, and be there for a pregnant Maliah as well. Can he juggle it all, while trying to be there for his big brother too?

It’s a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother waves as Oz heads back to his office after having lunch together. But he won’t make it to the party or even to his briefcase back at his desk. He's about to disappear.

When Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males appeared in 1998, it was hailed as "a crucial book" (Baltimore Sun) and "undoubtedly one of the most important tools the African American parent can possess" (Kweisi Mfume, President NAACP). Now, in response to enormous demand, the authors turn their attention to African American young women. Statistics indicate that African American females, as a group, fare poorly in the United States.

After a long Labor Day weekend, 73-year-old Eugene Washington is found dead in his Leimert Park home. At first blush, his death seems unremarkable- heat wave combined with food poisoning from a holiday barbecue. But something in the way Washington died doesn’t make sense. LAPD Homicide Detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called to investigate the death and learns that the only family Washington had was the 6,000-member congregation of Blessed Mission Ministries, led by Bishop Solomon Tate. But something wicked is lurking among the congregants of this church.

In her first book, The Presidency in Black and White, journalist April Ryan examined race in America through her experience as a White House reporter. In this book, she shifts the conversation from the White House to every home in America. At Mama's Knee looks at race and race relations through the lessons that mothers transmit to their children.

When Nate suggests that they attempt to be the first Black American men to summit Mount Everest, his younger brother Dixon can’t refuse. The two 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. Once on the mountain, Nate and Dixon 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.