African Art

Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., won the world heavyweight championship at the age of 22, the same year he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. He would go on to become the first and only three-time (in succession) world heavyweight champion. Nicknamed "The Greatest", Ali was as well known for his unique boxing style, consisting of the Ali Shuffle and the rope-a-dope, as he was for the catchphrase "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee".

A tale from the best-selling African Fable series, a handsome creature named Rhino, with tightly fitting, glossy skin and perfectly symmetrical horns on the sides of his head, takes pleasure in making fun of all the other African animals. His never-ending hurtful remarks finally get the better of the other creatures, who decide to teach him a lesson. What happens next leaves Rhino very sorry for being so rude and vain.

A tale from the best-selling African Fable Series, a young Hippo greedily guzzles all the food she can find on the land, leaving the other African animals very hungry. Getting fatter and fatter, and uncomfortable in the heat, Hippo finds a new source of food in the water. But the Crocodile and the Eagle are not at all happy with her eating their fish.

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work - essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more - to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The audiobook presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Listeners will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to insightful infographics.

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, this passionate and provocative book tells the complete story of Black music in the last 50 years, and in doing so, outlines the perilous position of Black culture within white American society. In a fast-paced narrative, Nelson George’s book chronicles the rise and fall of “race music” and its transformation into the R&B that eventually dominated the airwaves, only to find itself diluted and submerged as crossover music.

The short-nosed elephants go down to the river to get a drink. But lurking in the depths is a crafty crocodile, who would love to eat one of these big animals. He chooses a young elephant and grabs a hold of his stubby nose. A lengthy struggle ensues. Eventually the young elephant breaks free, but his nose has taken on a long winding shape.

A magnificent leopard discovers that his life is in danger when a wise advisor to the king suggests that only the biggest, most beautiful leopard skin will solve the king’s terrible insomnia. Chased by the king’s warriors, the leopard seeks the advice of the cunning hyena. The very clever plan works for everyone, and the lucky leopard is safe again.

A beautiful water creature with silky golden skin is the envy of all the animals. The admiration and compliments from all who see him go to his head, and the vain crocodile spends far too much time out of the protection of the water, just so he can get more admiring glances. What happens next changes the crocodile’s looks forever.

John Edgar Wideman’s “slaveroad” is a palimpsest of physical, social, and psychological terrain, the great expanse to which he writes in this groundbreaking work that unsettles the boundaries of memoir, history, and fiction. The slaveroad begins with the Atlantic Ocean, across which enslaved Africans were carried, but the term comes to encompass the journeys and experiences of Black Americans since then and the many insidious ways that slavery separates, wounds, and persists.

Best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture, and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer, and the Rolling Stones.

Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented.

In the early '80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island.

If you want to understand the Black experience in the US, you must understand hip-hop, and Psalms of My People is your guide. Treating hip-hop like sacred scripture, lenny duncan traces its history—the artists, their lyrics, and the cultural context—to reveal its role as a conduit to tell the modern story of Black liberation in this country, following the bloody trail from the end of the Civil Rights Era through the day George Floyd was sacrificed on the streets of america.

Gregory Pardlo's father was a brilliant and charismatic man - a leading labor organizer who presided over a happy suburban family of four. But when he loses his job following the famous air traffic controllers' strike of 1981, he succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money on more and more ostentatious whims. In the face of this troubling model and disillusioned presence in the household, young Gregory rebels.

Anna Cameron is disheartened. With her usually peaceful world under attack, the 14-year-old is anxious about fighting against invisible enemies. When an African chief takes his place as a new Quentin Academy professor, bringing with him a new science, she hopes all is not lost.

After Baz Luhrmann’s movie, Elvis, hit theaters in the summer of 2022, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley’s music and style, reigniting a debate that has been circling for decades. In Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King​, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them.

At the peak of the civil rights movement, Lydia Abarca was the first ballerina in a Black ballet company to grace the cover of Dance magazine. Alongside founding members Shelia Rohan and Gayle McKinney-Griffith and first-generation dancers Karlya Shelton and Marcia Sells, Abarca invited a bright light to shine on Black professional classical dancers. Grit, determination, and exquisite artistry propelled these swans of Harlem to dizzying heights as they performed around the world for audiences that included celebrities, dignitaries, and royalty.

Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is one of the design field's most respected figures. She is legendary for her decades of scholarship and activism and is known as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. This long-awaited book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: Where did they originate? Where have they been? Why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons?

Listen to the sound of survival, courage, and democracy—the soundtrack of America. Hear Billie Holiday's raspy, mournful voice, and tap your foot to Louis Armstrong's trumpet. Scream with James Brown and bop your head to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. Can you spot the 80+ references to artists like Robert Johnson, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, and Beyonce?

How nature came to be is the basis of African folklore. From a greedy baboon, a vain crocodile, and a clever jackal, African animals are often the characters used to convey the message of human characteristics, their pitfalls, and their triumphs. And unlike stories in other parts of the world, the ending is not always happy. In fact, some African fables are downright gruesome! It was from this point that I wanted to adapt some of Africa’s best-loved stories into tales that could delight a very young audience.