Cannibal by
Colliding with and confronting The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal explore Jamaican childhood and history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke, creating a multitextured collage of beautiful and explosive poems.
Take This Stallion by
Poetry. "I have never before read a book like Anaïs Duplan's TAKE THIS STALLION. Her major talent is recognizing the self in the other, making for poems that flow forward in a tone of oneness -is oneness a tone? poems that make evident an ever-expanding world by opening themselves up into that world. This debut does what poets in their fifth or sixth collections are still trying to figure: it balances the intellect, image, music, and emotion in ways so unfamiliar that a blurb couldn't possible characterize the work." -Jericho Brown
Conversion by
"With this book Remica Bingham joins the list of poets we have hoped for. She sees with a brave eye and hears the music of all our languages, validating each. Her story is the human story; her sharing it an act of great generosity." --Lucille Clifton
What We Ask of Flesh: Poems by 
Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts by
Blending poetry and memoir, conversation and performance theory, Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts enlivens a personal archive of visual and verbal offerings written and organized by jaamil olawale kosoko. Inspired by Audre Lorde’s concept of biomythography, kosoko mixes personal history, biography, and mythology to tell a complex narrative rooted within a queer, Black, self-defined imagination.
Some Are Drowning by
Winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs' Award Series in Poetry, selected by Carolyn Forche.
Cape Verdean Blues by
The speaker in Cape Verdean Blues is an oracle walking down the street. Barbosa interrogates encounters and the weight of their space. Grounded in bodily experience and the phenomenology of femininity, this collection provides a sense of Cape Verdean identity. It uniquely captures the essence of “Sodade,” as it refers to the Cape Verdean American experience, and also the nostalgia and self-reflection one navigates through relationships lived, lost, and imagined.
The Selected Shepherd by
Drawing from all six of his collections, The Selected Shepherd offers a new retrospective on the work of an important and sometimes controversial Black, gay poet. Although well known for his erotic poems about white men, Shepherd also wrote consistently about the natural world and its endangerment and his grief over his mother's death. Presented in both publication order and the order in which they originally appeared within each collection, these poems highlight the most important themes of Shepherd's work, along with both his predictability and unpredictability as a poet. Jericho Brown's introduction provides additional context and insight on the life and work of this complex, groundbreaking figure in American poetry.
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by
This stunning story of the author's struggle to break free of her strict Rastafarian upbringing ruled by a father whose rigid beliefs, rage and paranoia led to violence shows how found her own power and provides a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we know little about.
Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression by
Danquah, a black single mother and Ghanian-born immigrant, who moved to the U.S. at age six in 1973, has battled melancholy and despair, culminating in episodes of overwhelming depression. A performance artist and poet who has worked as a creative writing instructor, she discusses movingly how she overcame clinical depression in this candid memoir. Addressing the special circumstances of being both depressive and an African American woman, she notes, for example, that talking about one's parents is frowned on in African as well as African American culture.
Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up by
Intertwining personal essays and interviews with distinguished poets, such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith and Natasha Trethewey, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions that Grew Me Up, explores the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on writing and the artistic process in the latter half of the twentieth century
This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America by
In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.
The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoir by
The author, a gifted poet, tells of why she married Rashid, a man serving twenty to life for murder, and of how "the love of a man with an ugly past but a firm belief in redemption is what heals her broken spirit and grants her the courage and confidence to embrace life again.
Spell Breaking: Remembered Ways of Being by
Eighteen members of an international Women's Mysteries community write about the way we experience the potency of Yoruba ritual, the deepest grief of loss, the awakening of creativity and life purpose,the renewal of resolve and the transcendence of life threatening illness.
In these pages, feelings, dreams, memories emerge illuminating the often harrowing process of "Spell Breaking" that can lead to a special kind of satisfaction, the remembering of deep and essential "ways of being".
The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity by
In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the élan vital, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also appealed to intuition, which focused on experience rather than discursive thought and scientific cognition. Particularly influential for the literary and political Négritude movement of the 1930s, which opposed French colonialism, Bergson's life philosophy formed an appealing alternative to Western modernity, decried as 'mechanical,' and set the stage for later developments in postcolonial theory and vitalist discourse.
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by
Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country―and the world―that Black Lives Matter. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable.
Almost Midnight by
The incredible life of Daddy Poole, once a millionaire preacher now facing death in his dilapidated Newark home, is told by the four women upon whose lives he continues to have a profound effect.
Caul Baby: A Novel by
Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.
When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn’t know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family—by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student—and delivered to the Melancons to raise as one of their own. Hallow is special: she’s born with a caul, and their matriarch, Maman, predicts the girl will restore the family’s prosperity.
Growing up, Hallow feels that something in her life is not right. Did Josephine, the woman she calls mother, really bring her into the world? Why does her cousin Helena get to go to school and roam the streets of New York freely while she’s confined to the family’s decrepit brownstone?
As the Melancons’ thirst to maintain their status grows, Amara, now a successful lawyer running for district attorney, looks for a way to avenge her longstanding grudge against the family. When mother and daughter cross paths, Hallow will be forced to decide where she truly belongs.
Engrossing, unique, and page-turning, Caul Baby illuminates the search for familial connection, the enduring power of tradition, and the dark corners of the human heart.
Victoria's Family by
To the outside world, the African-American family of Bob and Catherine Pittman seems to be a loving, successful couple with two children. Christopher is a budding architect and fiercely protective of his little sister, Victoria. She is a charming, precocious twelve-year-old, unusually smart, and not at all what she appears. Victoria has a carefully guarded secret, about who and what she is that changes the lives of everyone around her, a secret that leaves her father dead, her Uncle David astounded, and her mother, clinging to her sanity. "Aunt" Sidney is the only one perfectly at ease with all this.
An elegant, mysterious man appears, Charles Solomon. He knows Victoria's secret and the resistance she faces at home. He vows to remove anyone standing in the way of Victoria's wish to attend his school and make them pay dearly, killing them if necessary. With the assistance of a special stuffed rabbit, a stuffed owl, and several beings from another planet who've watched over Victoria's life since its inception, we see her claim her destiny.
From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle-class Performances by
Examines the generational shift in the perception of the black middle class, from the serious moniker of “bourgeois” to the more playful, sardonic “boojie.” Including such senior cultural workers as Amiri Baraka and Houston Baker, as well as younger scholars like Damion Waymer and Candice Jenkins, this significant collection contains essays, poems, visual art, and short stories that examine the complex web of representations that define the contemporary black middle class.
Odili Donald Odita 1991-2021 by