Cultural Literature

A raw, heartfelt memoir of perseverance, redemption, and triumph from Tamika D. Mallory, trailblazing social justice leader, activist, and cofounder of the Women's March. In I Lived to Tell the Story, Tamika Mallory takes us beyond the headlines...

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous...

The long-awaited autobiography from Georgetown University's legendary coach, whose life on and off the basketball court threw America's unresolved struggle with racial justice into sharp relief. John Thompson was never just a basketball coach and I Came...

Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s. Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent...

New York Times Best Seller A Skimm Reads Pick From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago,...

Dr. Ben critically examines the history, beliefs, and myths that are the foundation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. African Origins of the Major "Western Religions" first published in 1970, continues to be one of Dr. Ben's most thought-provoking...

Tenderly, joyously, sometimes in sadness, sometimes in pain, Maya Angelou writes from the heart and celebrates life as only she has discovered it. In this moving volume of poetry, we hear the multi-faceted voice of one of the most powerful and vibrant...

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X--all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates,...

Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his...

Heralded as a landmark achievement upon publication, Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching a practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and women,...

The host of MSNBC's The ReidOut and New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Sold America traces the extraordinary lives and legacy of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers, situating Medgar Evers's assassination as a catalyzing moment in...

An empowering, unabashedly bold memoir by The Atlantic journalist and former ESPN SportsCenter co-anchor about overcoming a legacy of pain and forging a new path, no matter how uphill life’s battles might beJemele Hill’s...

African American traditional medicine is an American classic that emerged out of the necessity of its people to survive. It began with the healing knowledge brought with the African captives on the slave ships and later merged with Native American,...

Of the books authored by Martin R. Delany (1812-1885), "The Origin of Races and Color" is perhaps the most obscure. Out-of-print until now, it has been available to the public only through select libraries. At the time of its publication in 1879, this...

A revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the "star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful" (NPR). Brilliant...

White fear has shaped our democracy and society from the beginning--and today, it's more intense and visible than ever. To neutralize it, we must first understand it. White fear is not new. It enabled the rise of Donald Trump. It's behind the recent...