Cultural Literature

Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as "a spare, elegant jewel of a work" and "a love letter to Gibson's childhood."Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a...

A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa's Greenwood district, known as "Black Wall Street," that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification"Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of...

A major monograph chronicling Thomas' vibrant, rhinestone-adorned paintingsNew York-based artist Mickalene Thomas' critically acclaimed and extensive body of work spans painting, collage, print, photography, video and immersive installations. With...

"I'm sitting on the floor in my mother's house, surrounded by stuff." So begins Jennifer Howard's Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out...

Autism is rising across the United States but disproportionately affects Black children and their families. While White middle-class families tend to be the focus of autism research and services, A Thousand Worries tells the stories of fifteen Black...

Includes Revised Broadway version of AppropriateA double-volume containing two astonishing breakout plays from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers.In Appropriate, strained familial dynamics collide with a tense undercurrent...

In this biting, lyrical memoir, Camara Lundestad Joof, born in Bod to Norwegian and Gambian parents, shares her experiences as a queer Black Norwegian woman. Joof's daily encounters belie the myth of a colorblind contemporary Scandinavia. She wrestles...

An ambitious, honest portrait of the Black experience in flyover country. One of The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Best Books of 2020.Black Americans have been among the hardest hit by the rapid deindustrialization and accompanying economic decline that have...

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent...

With over a hundred photos collected by G. Faye Dant, and with an introduction by renowned Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, into one of the most famous...

Martha's Vineyard has always been a unique island and vacation destination, made even more diverse with the arrival of Black homeowners in the 19 th century. Early landowners included the formerly enslaved Charles Shearer, who along with his wife...

"An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society."--Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of...

The story every mother in America needs to read. As featured on NPR and the TODAY Show. All moms have to deal with choosing baby names, potty training, finding your village, and answering your kid's tough questions, but if you are raising a Black child,...

Randy Cunningham, founding member of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, details one of the greatest examples of mass civic and democratic education in Cleveland's history.Democratizing Cleveland: The Rise and Fall of Community Organizing in...

More than 500 years of history are brought to life in this illustrated encyclopedia, whose panoramic scope offers a vivid, definitive chronology of the African-American experience. Black Saga is a remarkably comprehensive reference book that highlights...