We are sending you to a recently opened Black-owned bookstore (as they always are), Black English Books of Tampa, FL.
Hope your BHM is fantastic and Happy Lunar New Year to our siblings! For those in the mood for love this Fourteenth of February, there are plenty of Black romance books right here.
Keep Reading!
Black Girl You Are Atlas
In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes
about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender.
Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections of her childhood in Portland, tender odes to the Black women in her life, and urgent calls for Black girls to step into their power.
Black Girl You Are Atlas encourages young readers to embrace their future with a strong sense of sisterhood and celebration. With full-color art by celebrated fine artist Ekua Holmes throughout, this collection offers guidance and is a gift for anyone who reads it.
(Young Adult)
Nina Simone in Comics!
This is the story of an emancipation, that of a young black and poor woman living in an America marked by segregation. This is the story of a fierce battle, that of a musician involved in the civil rights movement. This is the story of a long career, that of a pianist and singer as talented as determined. This is the story of Nina Simone, a unique artist, role model, and inspiration for generations to come. Genius pianist, fabulous singer and committed artist, Nina Simone remains an inspiration for generations.
(Nonfiction)
The Rise of Rage: Harnessing the Most Misunderstood Emotion
Rage through the centuries--revolutions, wars, civil rights, independence from colonial rule, political unrest, Black Lives Matter, storming the US Capitol--has shown that anger can be a catalyst for change; it can also be a tool employed in fear by those resisting reform or trying to quell protests or advancements by other people. Perhaps you too have experienced the rise of rage within yourself. You might be fed up with feeling angry and not having any way to express it. You don't want to hold it all inside anymore, and you are done being everybody's doormat. But counselor and psychotherapist Julie Christiansen says that if we take time to examine the belief systems that fuel our anger, we can free ourselves from the bondage that anger puts us in, learning how to make it work for us instead.
(Nonfiction)
Neighbors and Other Stories
A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver's insightful stories reverberate into the present day.
There's the nightmarish "The Closet on the Top Floor" in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; "Mint Juleps not Served Here" where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; "Spiders Cry without Tears," in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school.
These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.
(Fiction)
Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy
Dancing the Afrofuture is the story of a dancer with a long career of artistry and activism who transitioned from performing Black dance to writing it into history as a Black studies scholar. Following the personal journey of her artistic development told in Dancing in Blackness, Halifu Osumare now reflects on how that first career--which began during the 1960s Black Arts Movement--has influenced her growth as an academic, tracing her teaching and research against a political and cultural backdrop that extends to the twenty-first century with Black Lives Matter and a potent speculative Afrofuture.
(Nonfiction)
Hello, Friends!: Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs
Dulcé Sloan's first memoir is organized into essays from her life. From a childhood moving between cities, starting her own business selling toys at a Miami flea market, to being a Black kid in a predominately white school, she's always used her masterful wit to challenge the status quo. Her purpose in comedy unfolded while navigating clubs and the set of The Daily Show. Have you ever dated an adult who roller skated, or went out with a mechanic just to get free auto service? Yup, she's got that story for you. Her stories are both wildly entertaining and culturally resonant.
(Memoir)
The Blueprint
Solenne Bonet lives in Texas where choice no longer exists. An algorithm determines a Black woman's occupation, spouse, and residence. Solenne finds solace in penning the biography of Henriette, an ancestor who'd been an enslaved concubine to a wealthy planter in 1800s Louisiana. But history repeats itself when Solenne, lonely and naïve, finds herself entangled with Bastien Martin, a high-ranking government official. Solenne finds the psychological bond unbearable, so she considers alternatives. With Henriette as her guide, she must decide whether and how to leave behind all she knows.
(Fiction)
Thick with Trouble
In Thick with Trouble, award-winning poet Amber McBride interrogates if being "trouble"--difficult, unruly, powerful, defiant--is ultimately a weakness or an incomparable source of strength. Steeped in the Hoodoo spiritual tradition and organized via reimagined tarot cards, this collection becomes a chorus of unapologetic women who laugh, cry, mesmerize, and bring outsiders to their knees. Summoning the supernatural to examine death, rebirth, and life outside the male gaze, Amber McBride has crafted a haunting, spellbinding, and strikingly original collection of poems that reckon with the force and complexity of Black womanhood.
(Poetry)
Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation
For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American community far exceed what a plot of land or a check could repair.
While reparations are being widely debated once again, current petitions to redress the lasting and collateral consequences of slavery have not moved past economic solutions, even though we know that monetary redress alone is not enough. Not only would many wounds be left unhealed, but relying solely on economics would continue a legacy of neglect for African Americans. In this thoughtful and sure-to-be controversial book, Marcus Anthony Hunter argues that a radical shift in our outlook is necessary; we need more comprehensive solutions such as those currently sought by today's educators, historians, activists, organizers, Afrofuturists, and socially conscious citizens.
(Nonfiction)
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir
When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they're suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don't use their correct pronouns, and hordes of "well-meaning" but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online.
But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela's diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression intersect: Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.
In Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir, the author details a galvanizing account of their survival despite the U.S. medical system, and of the struggle to face death unafraid.
(Young Adult)