Cultural Literature

From convicted felon to Olympic representative, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., better known as Snoop Dogg, has navigated a life of extraordinary highs and lows. From co-hosting "Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party" to becoming a pop culture icon, Snoop's...

After the Civil War, Black landownership in Fairfax County increased by leaps and bounds. By the 1870s, retired Union officers were purchasing land that they sold to African Americans like Joshua Ball, Joshua Pearson, Robert Bradley and John Coates...

Explore the remarkable life and heartfelt verse of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the first Black senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City, one of the largest multicultural congregations in the US. As the first Black senior minister at...

The Art of Afrofuturism explores the groundbreaking artwork of dozens of artists from multiple continents and across the African Diaspora who are contributing to a new vision of the future and their place in it. Whether from the continent of Africa, the...

Black Earth Rising presents works by artists of African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American identity that address vital questions of land, presence, climate crisis, and social and environmental justice against the historical backdrop of...

What is beauty, and what is its political function? In what ways might it help undermine white supremacy and cultivate a more democratic political culture? Democracy and Beauty shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois's attempts to answer these questions...

These striking studio portraits, curated and brought together following ten years of research championed by Autograph, constitute the most comprehensive collection of nineteenth-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era,...

A military memoir by a biracial child of refugees and survivors, Roadside is about life and death, about family lost and gained, and about America, as a dream and a reality. It's about the roads one takes to leave home and find it again. As a...

As seen on Humans of New York, Jonathan Conyers introduces us to the teachers, his debate coach, a homeless man, and a boy named Diego who changed his life. Booklist calls it "a moving story about finding your supporters and building your future." ...

A gorgeous, authoritative, and image-filled celebration of pageantry and community created by ballroom culture for Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ people. The subculture of Ballroom emerged in Harlem in the '60s out of a need for safe and inclusive spaces for...

A sweeping history of one of the nation's most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice--from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack Few people beyond South Carolina's...

A celebration of the joyful power of African American quilts, featuring images of over 100 quilts, new research and essaysThe first publication dedicated to historical African American quilts in California, Routed West traces the flow and flourishing of...

In this controversial national bestseller, former NBA star and author of I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It Charles Barkley takes on the major issue of our time. Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man is a series of charged, in-your-face conversations about race...

The astonishing little-known history of Harlem racketeer Madame Stephanie St. Clair, one of the only female crime bosses and a Black, self-made businesswoman in early twentieth-century New York. In her heyday, Stephanie St. Clair went by many names, but...

Black Surrealist. Poet. Collage artist. Jazz trumpeter. Painter. Member of the Beat Generation. Life-long wanderer. Pan-Africanist. Black Power agitator. Author of his own "poem-life." Ted Joans (1928-2003) was all of these things, and yet none of these...

Revealing a history that is deep, broad, and infuriating, The Black Tax casts a bold light on the racist practices long hidden in the shadows of America's tax regimes. American taxation is unfair, and it is most unfair to the very people who critically...