Black by Popular Demand
Celebrate all parents and guardians this month and the next! Find the perfect book at The Noir Bookshop of St. Louis, Missouri.
Happy reading!
Jackie Ormes Draws the Future: The Remarkable Life of a Pioneering Cartoonist
Liz Montague
Zelda Jackson--or Jackie--was born in Pittsburgh on August 1, 1911, and discovered early on that she could draw any adventure. A field she could run through as far as her hand could draw. An ocean she could color as blue as she liked. As she grew, Jackie put her artistic talents to use, doodling and chronicling daily life for her high school yearbook. But she was already dreaming of bigger things.
Jackie would go on to create bold and witty cartoon characters--Torchy Brown, Candy, Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger--who entertained readers of African American newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender. She tackled racism, pollution, and social justice--and made the world listen. Jackie was the first Black female American cartoonist, but she would not be the last.
The Noisy Classroom Goes to the Museum
Angela Shanté
Ms. Johnson is a bit, well, odd. So when she announces she's taking the class on a field trip to the natural history museum, one young girl can't help but worry. Everyone at school already knows Ms. Johnson, but what will strangers think of her? As the day of the field trip draws nearer, the girl and her friends decide to hatch a plan for their teacher's sake.
Quietly Hostile: Essays
Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby's career has taken her to new heights. She dodges calls from Hollywood and flop sweats on the red carpet at premieres (well, one premiere). But nothing is ever as it seems online, where she can crop out all the ugly parts.
Irby got a lot of weird emails about Carrie Bradshaw, and not only is there diarrhea to avoid, but now--anaphylactic shock. She is turned away from restaurants for being inappropriately dressed and looks for the best ways to cope, i.e., reveling in the offerings of QVC and adopting a deranged pandemic dog. Quietly Hostile makes light as Irby takes us on another outrageously funny tour of all the gory details that make up the true portrait of a life behind the screenshotted depression memes. Relatable, poignant, and uproarious, once again, Irby is the tonic we all need to get by.
Homebodies
Tembe Denton-Hurst
Mickey Hayward dreams of writing stories that matter. She has a flashy media job that makes her feel successful and a devoted girlfriend who takes care of her when she comes home exhausted and demoralized. It's not all A-list parties and steamy romance, but Mickey's on her way, and it's far from the messy life she left behind in Maryland. Despite being overlooked and mistreated at work, it seems like she might finally get the chance to prove herself--until she finds out she's being replaced.
Distraught and enraged, Mickey fires back with a detailed letter outlining the racism and sexism she's endured as a Black woman in media, certain it will change the world for the better. But when her letter is met with overwhelming silence, Mickey is sent into a tailspin of self-doubt. Forced to reckon with just how fragile her life is--including the uncertainty of her relationship--she flees to the last place she ever dreamed she would run to, her hometown, desperate for a break from her troubles.
Back home, Mickey is seduced by the simplicity of her old life--and the flirtation of a former flame--but her life in New York refuses to be forgotten. When a media scandal catapults Mickey's forgotten letter into the public zeitgeist, suddenly everyone wants to hear what Mickey has to say. It's what she's always wanted--isn't it?
Intimate, witty, and deeply sexy, Homebodies is a testament to those trying to be heard and loved in a world that refuses to make space, and introduces a standout new writer.
The Good Ally
Nova Reid
The Good Ally is an urgent call to arms to become better allies against racism and provides a thoughtful approach, centering collective healing, to do so.
It is a book for those against persistent racial injustice, hungry to expand their knowledge and understanding of systemic racism in Britain and beyond. It uncovers the roots of racism and its birthplace, anti-Blackness.
It is for those who not only want to be able to better recognise both subtle and overt forms of racism in action, to examine their powerful role in it, but who want to know what to do about it. The answer often lies within.
The Good Ally is the answer to 'what next?'
The Three of Us
Ore Agbaje-Williams
The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all else--even his distaste for Temi.
On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband's shortcomings. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made, the wife's two confidantes are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions, throwing everyone's integrity into question--and their long-drawn-out territorial dance, carefully constructed over years, into utter chaos.
Told in three taut, mesmerizing parts--the wife, the husband, the best friend--over the course of one day, The Three of Us is a subversively comical, wildly astute, and painfully compulsive triptych of domestic life that explores cultural truths, what it means to defy them, and the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to ourselves and the people we're meant to love.
