The Collection Plate: Poems


Kendra Allen - 2021
    Most of all, The Collection Plate explores both how we collect and erase the voices, lives, and innocence of underrepresented bodies—and behold their pleasure, pain, and possibilityBoth formally exciting and a delight to read, The Collection Plate is a testament to Allen’s place as the voice of a generation—and a witness to how we come into being in the twenty-first century.

Infinity Gauntlet #1


Gerry Duggan - 2015
    Mom left years ago to join the Nova force and never came back. So it's just Anwen, her dad, her sister and her grandpa against the huge insects. That is, until she finds a mysterious stone that may or may not hold incredible cosmic power. Don't miss this incredible new series by Deadpool writer Gerry Duggan and Edge of Spider-Verse writer/artist Dustin Weaver. The series that will set the cosmic table for the Marvel Universe for years to come!

Whites: On Race and Other Falsehoods


Otegha Uwagba - 2020
    In this powerful and timely personal essay, best-selling author Otegha Uwagba reflects on racism, whiteness, and the mental labour required of Black people to navigate the two.Presented as a record of Uwagba’s observations on this era-defining moment in history – that is, George Floyd’s brutal murder and the subsequent protests and scrutiny of institutional racism – Whites explores the colossal burden of whiteness, as told by someone who is in her own words, ‘a reluctant expert’.What is it like to endure both racism and white efforts at anti-racism, sometimes from the very same people? How do Black people navigate the gap between what they know to be true, and the version of events that white society can bring itself to tolerate? What does true allyship actually look like – and is it even possible?Addressing complex interracial dynamics and longstanding tensions with characteristically unflinching honesty, Uwagba deftly interrogates the status quo, and in doing so provides an intimate and deeply compelling portrayal of an unavoidable facet of the Black experience.‘An important, timely personal essay’ OBSERVER BEST BOOKS OF 2020 ‘Not taking any bullshit…sharp and stylish…brutal’ GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

Space Struck


Paige Lewis - 2019
    Space Struck explores the wonders and cruelties occurring within the realms of nature, science, and religion, with the acuity of a sage, the deftness of a hunter, and a hilarious sensibility for the absurd. The universe is seen as an endless arrow “. . . and it asks only one question: How dare you?”The poems are physically and psychologically tied to the animal world, replete with ivory-billed woodpeckers, pelicans, and constellations-as-organisms. They are also devastatingly human, well anchored in emotion and self-awareness, like art framed in a glass that also holds one’s reflection. Silky and gruesome, the poems of Space Struck pulse like starlight.

Inspired By...the Bible Experience: Old Testament


Anonymous - 2005
    Here is the entire Bible in a historic, masterfully engineered production. Unabridged. 60 CDs.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois


Honorée Fanonne Jeffers - 2021
    The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.

Speak No Evil


Uzodinma Iweala - 2018
    Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine.

The Half-God of Rainfall


Inua Ellams - 2019
    When he is angry, clouds darken. When he cries, rivers burst their banks. And when he touches a basketball, deities want courtside seats. Half Nigerian mortal, half Grecian God: Demi is the Half-God of Rainfall.His mother, Modupe, looks on with a mixture of pride and worry. From close encounters, she knows that Gods are just like men: the same fragile egos, the same subsequent fury, the same sense of entitlement to the bodies of mortals. The Gods will one day tire of sports fans, their fickle allegiances and their prayers to Demi.And when that moment comes, it won’t matter how special he is. Only the women in Demi’s life, the mothers, the Goddesses, will stand between him and a lightning bolt.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration


Isabel Wilkerson - 2010
    Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism


Steve Kornacki - 2018
    For Clinton, that meant contorting himself around the various factions of the Democratic party to win the presidency. Gingrich employed a scorched-earth strategy to upend the permanent Republican minority in the House, making him Speaker. The Clinton/Gingrich battles were bare-knuckled brawls that brought about massive policy shifts and high-stakes showdowns—their collisions had far-reaching political consequences. But the ’90s were not just about them.  Kornacki writes about Mario Cuomo’s stubborn presence around Clinton’s 1992 campaign; Hillary Clinton’s star turn during the 1998 midterms, seeding the idea for her own candidacy; Ross Perot’s wild run in 1992 that inspired him to launch the Reform Party, giving Donald Trump his first taste of electoral politics in 1999; and many others. With novelistic prose and a clear sense of history, Steve Kornacki masterfully weaves together the various elements of this rambunctious and hugely impactful era in American history, whose effects set the stage for our current political landscape.

We Rise: Speeches by Inspirational Black Women


Amanda MeadowsShirley Chisholm - 2010
    Spanning decades and elucidating the fight for equality, it not only captures important pieces of black history, but reveals the struggle from a female perspective. The live recordings in this captivating collection are preceded by a short biography to introduce each speaker. SPEECHES INCLUDE:◆ Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention (2008)◆ Shirley Chisholm on Equal Rights for Women (1969)◆ Barbara Jordan, "Who Will Speak for the Common Good? (1976)◆ Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention (1964)◆ Rosa Parks at the Million Man March (1995)◆ Myrlie Evers (widow of Medgar Evers, Chairman of NAACP, 1995-98)◆ Dorothy Height (Chairperson/Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and longtime social activist)◆ Anita Hill at Simmons College (2008)◆ Dorothy Cotton at Cornell, MLK Commemorative Lecture (2007)◆ Angela Davis, How Does Change Happen? at UC Davis (2006)RUNNING TIME ⇒ 2hrs. and 8mins.©2010 Phoenix (P)2010 Phoenix

The Atlantis Trilogy; Boxset


A.G. Riddle - 2016
    This box set is almost 1,200 pages in print. About The Atlantis Trilogy Since the publication of the first volume in March of 2013, the Atlantis trilogy has become a global phenomenon, selling over three million copies worldwide in twenty-three languages. Together, the three books have received 26,000 reviews on Amazon and well over 100,000 ratings on GoodReads. The series has been optioned for film, and the first book in the trilogy, The Atlantis Gene, made the list of the most sold books of the year on Amazon an unprecedented five years in a row (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017). The Trilogy Boxset contains: The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery #1) The Greatest Mystery Of All Time…The History Of Human Origins…Will Be Revealed.... 70,000 years ago, the human race almost went extinct!We survived, but no one knows how?Until now...The countdown to the next stage of human evolution is about to begin, and humanity may not survive this time... The Immari are good at keeping secrets. For 2,000 years, they have hidden the truth about human evolution. And they’ve searched for an ancient enemy - a threat that could wipe out the human race. Now the search is over. Off the coast of Antarctica, a research vessel has discovered a mysterious structure buried deep in an iceberg. It’s been there for thousands of years, and it isn’t man made. The Immari think they know what it is, but they aren’t taking any chances. The time has come to execute their master plan: humanity must evolve or perish. In a lab in Indonesia, a brilliant geneticist may have just discovered the key to their plan. Four years ago, Dr. Kate Warner left California for Jakarta, Indonesia to escape her past. She hasn’t recovered from what happened to her, but she has made an incredible discovery: a cure for autism. Or so she thinks. What she’s found is actually far more dangerous. Her research could rewrite human history and unleash the next stage of human evolution. In the hands of the Immari, it would mean the end of humanity as we know it. One man has seen pieces of the Immari conspiracy: Agent David Vale. But he’s out of time to stop it. His informant is dead. His organization has been infiltrated. His enemy is hunting him. But when he receives a cryptic code from an anonymous source, he risks everything to save the only person that can solve it: Dr. Kate Warner. Now Kate and David must race to unravel a global conspiracy and learn the truth about the Atlantis Gene… and human origins. Their journey takes them to the far corners of the globe and into the secrets of their pasts. The Immari are close on their heels and will stop at nothing to find the Atlantis Gene and force the next stage of human evolution - even if it means killing 99.9% of the world’s population. David and Kate can stop them… if they can trust each other. And stay alive. The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery #2) A Pandemic 70,000 Years In The Making...Will Change Humanity...Forever! In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead - and those the Atlantis Plague doesn't kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve. As the world slips into chaos, radical solutions emerge. Industrialized nations offer a miracle drug, Orchid, which they mass produce and distribute to refugee camps around the world. However, Orchid is merely a way to buy time. It treats the symptoms of the plague but never actually cures the disease. Immari International offers a different approach: do nothing. Let the plague run its course. The Immari envision a world populated by the genetically superior survivors - a new human race, ready to fulfil its destiny. With control of the world population hanging in the balance, the Orchid Alliance and the Immari descend into open warfare. Now humanity's last hope is to find a cure, and Kate alone holds the key to unravelling the mystery surrounding the Atlantis Plague. The answer may lie in understanding pivotal events in human history - events when the human genome mysteriously changed. Kate's journey takes her across the barren wastelands of Europe and northern Africa, but it's her research into the past that takes her where she never expected to go. She soon discovers that the history of human evolution is not what it seems - and setting it right may require a sacrifice she never imagined. The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery #3) With Humanity's Back Against The Wall...A Signal From Space Could Be The Key To Saving The Human Race...As The Clock Ticks Down, A Team Of Scientists Will Risk It All To Unravel The Secrets Of The Atlantis World... Northern Morocco: Dr. Kate Warner cured a global pandemic, and she thought she could cure herself. She was wrong. And she was wrong about the scope of the Atlantis conspiracy. Humanity faces a new threat, an enemy beyond imagination. With her own time running out and the utter collapse of human civilization looming, a new hope arrives: a signal from a potential ally. Arecibo Observatory: Mary Caldwell has spent her life waiting, watching the stars, looking for signs of intelligent life beyond our world. When that day comes, Mary finds herself in the middle of a struggle older than the human race, with far greater stakes. She must decide who to trust, because there's nowhere to hide. Antarctica: In the wake of the Atlantis Plague, Dorian Sloane finds himself a puppet to Ares' mysterious agenda. As Dorian prepares to take control of the situation, Ares unleashes a cataclysm that changes everything. As the catastrophe circles the globe, Ares reveals the true nature of the threat to humanity, and Dorian agrees to one last mission: find and kill David Vale and Kate Warner. There will be no prisoners this time. The orders are seek and destroy, and Dorian has been promised that his own answers and salvation lie on the other side. With Dorian in pursuit, Kate, David, and their team race through the ruins of the Atlantean ship left on Earth, across Atlantean science stations throughout the galaxy, and into the past of a mysterious culture whose secrets could save humanity in its darkest hour. With their own lives on the line and time slipping away, Kate, David and Dorian are put to the ultimate test.

Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology


Barbara SmithMichelle Cliff - 1983
    Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated lists of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed- or not- since the book was first published.Includes:For a godchild, Regina, on the occasion of her first love by Toi DerricotteThe damned by Toi DerricotteHester's song by Toi DerricotteThe sisters by Alexis De VeauxDebra by Michelle T. ClintonIf I could write this in fire, I would write this in fire by Michelle CliffThe blood - yes, the blood: a conversation by Cenen and Barbara SmithSomething Latino was up with us by Spring ReddI used to think by Chirlane McCrayThe black back-ups by Kate RushinHome by Barbara SmithUnder the days: the buried life and poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké by Akasha (Gloria) HullThe black lesbian in American literature: an overview by Ann Allen ShockleyArtists without art form by Renita WeemsI've been thinking of Diana Sands by Patricia JonesA cultural legacy denied and discovered : black lesbians in fiction by women by Jewelle L. GomezWhat it is I think she's doing anyhow: a reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The salt eaters by Akasha (Gloria) HullTar beach by Audre LordeBefore I dress and soar again by Donna AllegraLeRoy's birthday by Raymina Y. MaysThe wedding by Beverly SmithMaria de las Rosas by Becky BirthaMiss Esther's land by Barbara A. BanksThe failure to transform: homophobia in the black community by Cheryl ClarkeWhere will you be? by Pat ParkerAmong the things that use to be by Willie M. ColemanFrom sea to shining sea by June JordanWomen of summer by Cheryl ClarkeThe tired poem: last letter from a typical unemployed black professional woman by Kate RushinShoes are made for walking by Shirley O. SteeleBilly de Lye by Deidre McCallaThe Combahee River Collective statement by Combahee River CollectiveBlack macho and black feminism by Linda C. PowellBlack lesbianbyfeminist organizing: a conversation by Tania Abdulahad ... [et al.]For strong women by Michelle T. ClintonThe black goddess by Kate RushinWomen's spirituality: a household act by Luisah TeishOnly justice can stop a curse by Alice WalkerCoalition politics: turning the century by Bernice Johnson Reagon

Sing for Your Life: A Story of Race, Music, and Family


Daniel Bergner - 2016
     Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in southeastern Virginia: his family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive.At the age of twelve, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile facility of last resort. He was placed in solitary confinement. He was uncontrollable, uncontainable, with little hope for the future. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan won a nationwide competition hosted by New York's Metropolitan Opera, beating out 1,200 other talented singers. Today, he is a rising star performing major roles at the Met and Europe's most prestigious opera houses.SING FOR YOUR LIFE chronicles Ryan's suspenseful, racially charged and artistically intricate journey from solitary confinement to stardom. Daniel Bergner takes readers on Ryan's path toward redemption, introducing us to a cast of memorable characters--including the two teachers from his childhood who redirect his rage into music, and his long-lost father who finally reappears to hear Ryan sing. Bergner illuminates all that it takes--technically, creatively--to find and foster the beauty of the human voice. And Sing for Your Life sheds unique light on the enduring and complex realities of race in America.

Mother's Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother


Rachel Hunt Steenblik - 2017
    Lovingly illustrated by Ashley Mae Hoiland (One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly). Praise for Mother's Milk"In these brief and moving poems, Rachel Hunt Steenblik recalls and reimagines the relationship between the daughters of God and their hidden and distant mother. Using her own experience and revelation as well as her wide research, Rachel recreates the Heavenly Mother many dream of knowing, a woman not unlike our own mothers, one who shares our own experience of motherhood." -Claudia L. Bushman, author of Contemporary Mormonism"The warm, delicious, delicate and strong poems in Mother's Milk moved and delighted me. Without doubt this book is a major step toward filling the Mother-sized hole in our hearts. Boldly pulling back the curtain of patriarchy to show that "God" is not a boy's name and that we have never lived in a one-parent family, Rachel reminds us that our Mother has never ceased to nourish and love us." -Carol Lynn Pearson, author of Mother Wove the Morning, and The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy"Rachel Hunt Steenblik is Mormonism's most essential and necessary poet since Carol Lynn Pearson. Out of her hunger for a mother God, she has made food for us all. Out of her losses, she has made milk. It's what women's bodies know how to do, of course. But Rachel, oh honey, few of us do it so openly, so truthfully, so plainly, so well. Come, come, everyone-Mormon or not, brothers, sisters, kindred-and take these words. I am so proud that this book will teach the world what Mormon women know-perhaps uniquely-about God."-Joanna Brooks, author of Book of Mormon Girl.