African American Families

Isaiah ""Ice"" Abernathy has always worshiped his older brother, Seth. For years they’ve been not just brothers but best friends—and as Seth starts his senior year, Ice is eager to spend as much time with his brother as he can, making memories before Seth goes to college.

Almost a decade ago, Willie Revel gave up her burgeoning journalism career in New York to help run her father’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia. An ambitious single mother, Willie has reluctantly put family first without being able to forget who she might have become. Now, as the president of the United States prepares to pass the Forgiveness Act, a bill that would allow Black families to claim reparations if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves, Willie delves deeper into her family’s history, while also trying to keep the family from going into bankruptcy.

In this season of giving, love is in the air for the Rose and Valentine families. Because of the addition of in-laws, they both are in pursuit of new land and developments to build lasting memories with the ones they hold dear. So when they submit bids against one another, their rivalry heats to a level that will bring them to a head; until they both become outbid by a new competitor. On the heels of a love affair brewing, the need for a partnership arises that may shut down the foundation of their feud permanently, or possibly, extend it.

After Winna's little sister breaks her glasses, her grandfather gives her an old-timey pair of spectacles that belonged to her great-aunt Estelle. The specs are silver and perfectly circular, with tiny stars on the bridge and earpieces that curl all the way around her ears. Best of all, they're magic. Because when Winna makes a wish beginning with the words "What if"—that is, when she speculates—the spectacles grant it.

Courtney Cooper and Jupiter Sanchez (Coop & Jupe!) have been next-door neighbors and best friends since they were seven years old. She's his partner in crime and other half. But lately, Cooper can't ignore he might want something more than friendship from Jupiter. When Rae Chin moves to town she can't believe how lucky she is to find Coop and Jupe. Being the new kid is usually synonymous with pariah, but around these two, she finally feels like she belongs. She's so grateful she wants to kiss him...and her.

The most any one of us can hope for is a good death, but what is a good death? It’s going in peace. Going without pain. Going without being a burden to the ones we love. Leaving some good behind. Many in the African American community don't like to think or talk about the end, good or otherwise. So we die and leave a mess or someone we love dies and leaves us a mess. This book is a guide to help African Americans deal with what we in the culture call “transitioning” or “homegoing”.

It’s a brave new world as Dr. Loretta Collins lectures her eager class in Sociology 201: An Examination of the Black New World Order. She details three case studies that demonstrate the Black/white dynamics of society, where we are, and how we got there. The case studies involve submissive white male sissy maids, hot wives, chastity, cuckolding, wicked Mothers-in-Law, cuck Queens, and more.

In this deeply researched, movingly narrated portrait of the extended Townsend family, R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama.

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the segregated South of 1957 with Drunetta Brown, a woman determined to rewrite her story of struggle and heartbreak. Fleeing her shattered dreams and an alcoholic husband, Drunetta takes her children to New York City for a fresh start. There, she finds unexpected allies in Raycie, a talented bar singer, and Rose, a devoted church secretary. As Drunetta navigates the challenges of her new life, her friendships become her lifeline, offering the strength she needs to carve her own path in a changing world.

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.

In 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests sold 272 enslaved people to save their largest mission project, what is now Georgetown University. In this groundbreaking account, journalist, author, and professor Rachel L. Swarns follows one family through nearly two centuries of indentured servitude and enslavement to uncover the harrowing origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States. Through the saga of the Mahoney family, Swarns illustrates how the Church relied on slave labor and slave sales to sustain its operations and to help finance its expansion.

Being more than a Daddy’s girl has always been the goal. Finding herself outside of being the baby proved itself to be the hardest thing. He seemed familiar. Something safe, someone she knew she could let her guard down around. A man that wasn’t just around because of what her last name could offer. The car she drove wasn’t the only thing that moved fast.

In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative.

As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre.

In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children.

Secrets are revealed in more ways than one. The truth always has a way of revealing itself. What happens when everyone is hiding something from the other? When relationships and bonds are tested in more ways than one. Will these relationships end before they could fully start?

Jamison Jareau has suffered a terrible loss. His wife of eighteen years passed away the day she gave birth to their son. Consumed with grief and guilt over her death, Jamison has thrown himself into work and raising his four children without her. Two and a half years have passed since he lost his soulmate. The kids are growing up and Jamison realized he needs a little more help with them than he wants to admit. At the urging of his mother-in-law, he seeks a live-in nanny to alleviate some of the stress of being a single parent.

Red Tails, George Lucas’s celebration of America’s first Black flying squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, should have been a moment of victory for Doug Melville. He expected to see his great-uncle Benjamin O. Davis Jr.—the squadron’s commander—immortalized on-screen for his selfless contributions to America. But as the film rolled, Doug was shocked when he realized that Ben Jr.’s name had been omitted and replaced by the fictional Colonel A. J. Bullard. And Ben’s father, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., America’s first Black general who helped integrate the military, was left out completely.

Savannah Graham thought she had the perfect marriage...until grief drove her husband into the arms of his best friend’s wife. Now, she believes revenge is the only way her heart can heal from the betrayal. For 52 years, Ollie Moss lived side by side with the love of his life, his wife Elizabeth. But now that she’s gone, so is his desire to live, despite the love from his children, and his beloved grandson Samuel. Can anything save Ollie’s life?

According to the 2010 US census, more than 70 percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis. Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north.