This remarkable primer gives depth and breadth to a simple word with a complex meaning. People who mean well, but don’t really know what they mean will find context, grounding, and pointers for future action–and this is a book all about the importance of informed action. People with more robust knowledge will find a succinct overview, and a clear framework for engaging the racist structures of American society.
Chocolate Cities
An amazingly evocative way of understanding African American culture across time, and across the country. By drawing on biographical sketches, Hunter and Robinson evoke the network of places, the Chocolate Cities, that black people have created. The authors carefully balance the regional distinctions (many Souths in USA, a concept worth exploring on its own) against the cultural and historic similarities shared by these places.
The people we meet, from Afeni Shakur to W.E.B. Du Bois, from Ida B. Wells Keegan Michael Key, and from Marsha P. Johnson to James Baldwin, are–before all else–people. Every life happens somewhere, often several somewheres, and with other people, and it is these connections to place and lives which allow the authors to illuminate the importance of Chocolate Cities by demonstrating that their existence is the flip side and outgrowth of the human lives they contain.
But you should see this amazing cover.
Children of Blood and Bone: Book Club’s Magic
Up your book club’s game with a challenging selection of magic, Africa, and women’s power.
They killed my mother.They took our magic.They tried to bury us.Now we rise.
This young adult novel is sure to find a passionate audience in any reader who loves a compelling story and new voices. Author Tomi Adeyemi is a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing coach based in San Diego, California. After graduating Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature, she studied West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil. She is the author of Children of Blood and Bone.
The Merry Spinster–Get Unsettled In
When you need a quick… pick-me-up, you can hardly do better than some updated fairy tales. Ortberg drags classic tales out of the shadows, through the clear light of the modern day, and deposits them back in the shadows of the reader’s shuddering mind. Totally recommended for the person who can’t get unsettled enough.
Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Master
A gorgeous book, full of lush imagery. A collection which sings across the centuries to speak to us even in the 21st Century. Love, God, and spiritual solace uplift the reader on the powerful twin wings of hope and awe.
Timekeepers
Garfield brings the reader on a journey across time, mainly in the Western tradition, with stops at calendars, clocks, trains, personal injury, the Beatles, and much more. Each chapter unpacks a bit more of what it means to be a time-bound being, with stories, reminiscences, science, sociology, and just enough end notes to give the interested reader more to go on. A great book for gift-giving, or for high-school students ready to adult non-fiction.
James Baldwin and the 1980s
A vital contribution to contemporary understanding of a period bridging the end of the civil rights era and our current understanding of intersectional identities. Literature and political life come together uniquely in the life of James Baldwin, and his American experience illuminates our own lives and thoughts.
