California Cooper has an uncanny ability to reach out to readers like an old and dear friend.  Her characters are plain-spoken and direct: simple people for whom life, despite its ever-present struggles, is always worth the journey.In Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime, Cooper's characteristic themes of romance, heartbreak, struggle and faith resonate.  We meet Darlin, a self-proclaimed femme fatale who uses her wiles to try to find a husband; MLee, whose life seems to be coming to an end at the age of forty until she decides to set out and see if she can make a new life for herself; Kissy and Buddy, both trying and failing to find them until they finally meet each other; and Aberdeen, whose daughter Uniqua shows her how to educate herself and move up in the world.These characters and others offer inspiration, laughter, instruction and pure enjoyment in what is one of J. California Cooper's finest story collections.

    When she is offered the chance to set up a practice in the small all Black community of Grayson Grove, Michigan she leaves her California home and heads east. The very determined Viveca is one of the few nineteenth century Black women to graduate from the prestigious Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania but she needs more than determination to face down handsome Nate Grayson, the Grove's bull-headed mayor.Nate Grayson goes to the train station expecting Dr. V. Lancaster to be a man. When the lovely dark-skinned Viveca introduces herself he is speechless, then wants her back on the train and out of his town. It's 1876 and women aren't supposed to be doctors, men are. However he isn't prepared for her stubbornness and fire, nor for the vivid way she heals, then steals his heart.

    Butterfield follows the Bosket family of Edgefield County, South Carolina, from the days of slavery to the present. Photos.

    The Middle Passage focuses attention on the torturous journey which brought slaves from Africa to the Americas, allowing readers to bear witness to the sufferings of an entire people.

    Each story focuses on the role of women--both real and fantastic--and their particular strengths, joys and sorrows. Full-color illustrations.

    A landmark gathering of short fiction, spanning the career of Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and "one of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison

    There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one around except kneesock-wearing, Jesus-praising cousin Cookie. Then Gayle meets Great, the family matriarch-and her stories of the past begin to change how Gayle sees her future.

    Celebrated are the courageous achievements of men and women whose defiant rejection of inequality and subjugation put their own lives at risk.

    The book’s contributors—including bell hooks, E. Ethelbert Miller, Angela Davis, and others—examine the personal and public issues embedded in family portraits and news photographs, movie stills and mug shots.

    Through her adventures she realizes that she is also an amazing creation of God as she affirms "God made me a beautiful brown!"

    A distinguished addition to black studies."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)The purpose of this extraordinary anthology is made abundantly clear by the editors' stated intention: "to create a living mosaic of essays and stories in which Black men can view themselves, and be viewed without distortion." In this, they have succeeded brilliantly. Brotherman contains more than one hundred and fifty selections, some never before published--from slave narratives, memoirs, social histories, novels, poems, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, position papers, and essays.Brotherman books us passage to the world that Black men experience as adolescents, lovers, husbands, fathers, workers, warriors, and elders. On this journey they encounter pain, confusion, anger, and love while confronting the life-threatening issues of race, sex, and politics--often as strangers in a strange land. The first collection of its kind, Brotherman gathers together a multitude of voices that add a new, unforgettable chapter to American cultural identity.