Cultural Literature

With a poet's precision and an intellectually adventurous spirit, Elizabeth Alexander explores a wide spectrum of contemporary African American artistic life through literature, paintings, popular media, and films, and discusses its place in current...

Legendary wordsmith Raekwon the Chef opens up about his journey from the staircases of Park Hill in Staten Island to sold-out stadiums around the world with Wu-Tang Clan in this revealing memoir--perfect for fans of The Autobiography of Gucci Mane and...

Memphis has been an important city for African Americans in the South since the Civil War. They migrated from within Tennessee and from surrounding states to the urban crossroads in large numbers after emancipation, seeking freedom from the oppressive...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For millennia, Carthage's triumph over Rome at Cannae in 216 B.C. has inspired reverence and awe. No general since has matched Hannibal's most unexpected, innovative, and brutal military victory. Now Robert L. O'Connell, one of the...

Swing Street was the name given to 52nd Street in midtown Manhattan in New York City, where there were more jazz clubs and bars per square block than anywhere else in the world, all showcasing the finest jazz musicians of the era. This illustrated book...

In a part of Egypt so parched that decades might pass between rainstorms, amid a sea of sand, is a green island--Dakhleh, the "everlasting oasis"--that may contain the whole of human history. In this extraordinary book, an acclaimed science writer and...

In its last decades, the apartheid regime was confronted with an existential threat. While internal resistance to the last whites-only government grew, mandatory international sanctions prohibited sales of strategic goods and arms to South Africa. To...

A page-turning story of perseverance, A Season of Disruption, follows a family's journey to overcome a devastating loss.A twist of faith leaves Murna Moreland, a young, Caribbean homemaker widowed with five children. Without the means to provide for her...

The anticipated debut by a biracial community leader and citizen activist, exploring his lived experience of systemic racism in North America and the paths. My race duality has given me a unique perspective on both the Black and white experience in...

Over the last half century, sub-Saharan Africa has not had one history, but many - histories that have intertwined, converged and diverged. They have involved a continuing saga of decolonization and state-building, conflict, economic problems, but also...

As seen on The Today Show When she was fifteen years old, Leslie King ran away from an abusive home, looking for a better life and longing for real love. What she found instead was a man who wooed her just long enough to trap her in a life of...

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings' family explores America's racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors--both the enslaver and the enslaved.Gayle Jessup White had long heard the stories passed down from her father's...