Biography

In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a vital poor people's environmental movement, focused...

By twenty-one, Jeff Henderson was making up to $35,000 a week cooking and selling crack cocaine. By twenty-four, he had been sentenced to nineteen and a half years in prison on federal drug trafficking charges. It was an all-too-familiar story for a...

Throughout Maya Angelou's life, from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, to her world travels as a bestselling writer, good food has played a central role. Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and...

In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of Revolutionist Returnees inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her...

The Second Emancipation, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring...

A revealing personal life story like no other--enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering--and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood "You are Celestine," she said. She squatted to push the hair off my face and pull leaves off...

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "powerful" (The Guardian) reflection on basketball, life, and home--from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America "Mesmerizing . . . not only the most...

Part tell-all, part cautionary tale, this emotionally charged memoir from a former video vixen nicknamed 'Superhead' goes beyond the glamour of celebrity to reveal the inner workings of the hip-hop dancer industry--from the physical and emotional abuse...

"We who have been colonized can never forget" Andr?e Blouin--once called the most dangerous woman in Africa--played a leading role in the struggles for decolonization that shook the continent in the 1950s and '60s, advising the postcolonial leaders of...

A comprehensive, authoritative biography of Civil Rights icon John Lewis, "the conscience of the Congress," drawing on interviews with Lewis and approximately 275 others who knew him at various stages of his life, as well as never-before-used FBI files...

One of Literary Hub's most anticipated books of 2024A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia--and sought to transform their lives. How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand...