Black Studies: Literature

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson For August, running into an old friend transports her to a time and a place she thought she had mislaid: 1970s Brooklyn, where friendship was everything. August and friends shared confidences as they ambled their neighborhood streets. But beneath the hopeful promise there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls, where mothers disappeared, where fathers found religion, and where madness was a mere sunset away.

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin; Edward P. Jones (Introduction by) In the moving title essay, his father's funeral, set in the wreckage of a race riot, forces young Baldwin to examine the hostile relationship that existed between father and son. Finding America intolerable, Baldwin exiled himself in Europe for nearly ten years. He tells of the meeting of the American black with the African; of a harrowing Christmas sojourn in a Paris jail because of a friend's stolen bedsheet; and finally, the poignant and haunting essay of the first visit of a black person to a remote Swiss village, where he is treated as a living wonder and never becomes more than a stranger in the village.

White Girls by Hilton Als Weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them--an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

Push by Sapphire Relentless, remorseless, and inspirational, this "horrific, hope-filled story" ("Newsday") is certain to haunt a generation of readers. Precious Jones, 16 years old and pregnant by her father with her second child, meets a determined and highly radical teacher who takes her on a journey of transformation and redemption.

Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris In his senior year at the university, Raymond meets Kelvin, who leads him into a homosexual relationship that brings major confusion with it.

Les Blancs: the Collected Last Plays of Lorraine Hansberry by Lorraine Hansberry; Robert Nemiroff (Editor) Les blancs -- The drinking gourd -- What use are flowers?

The Color Purple by Alice Walker Set in the period between the world wars, this novel tells of two sisters, their trials, and their survival.

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler Laura Olamina's daughter, Larkin, describes the broken and alienated world of 2032, as war racks the North American continent and an ultra-conservative religious crusader becomes president.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community

The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman; Charles R. Larson (Editor); Thurman B. O'Daniel (Illustrator) Emma Lou -- Harlem -- Alva -- Rent party -- Pyrrhie victory.

Trouble the Water by Melvin Dixon Twenty years after running away from home in Pee Dee, North Carolina, Jordan Henry believed he had found success, as a young college professor of history, a married man, and a resident of New England, whose colonial past he knew so well. When Jordan finds his career stymied by local prejudices, his world crumbles. Word of his grandmother's death reaches him, and he returns home to claim the ambiguous legacy of her farmland and face the consequences of his long absence.

Meaty: Essays by Samantha Irby Samantha Irby's debut collection of essays about trying to laugh her way through failed relationships, taco feasts, bouts with Crohn's disease, and more.

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.

The Body Is Not an Apology: the Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor) The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles.

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton The story of Christine Jorgensen, Americas first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives-ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects.

Say Jesus and Come to Me by Ann A. Shockley The physical and emotional attraction a charismatic black female evangelist feels for a beautiful but damaged blues singer grows into a powerful, sensual love in a southern city rocked by racism, intolerance, and sexual violence.

Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair; A. Sinclair Coming of age during the 1960s, Stevie Stevenson's struggles with her parent's traditional values and her own awakening sexuality are further complicated by her high school's increasing political awareness and demonstrations for civil rights.

Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney Jed--young, gay, black, out of rehab and out of prospects in his hometown--flees to the city of his fantasies, Berlin. The paradise that tyranny created, the subsidized city isolated behind the Berlin Wall, is where he's chosen to become the figure that he so admires, the black American expatriate. Newly sober and nostalgic for the Weimar days of Isherwood and Auden, Jed arrives to chase boys and to escape from what it means to be a black male in America.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan Clarence and the dead -- Things of this world; or Angels unawares -- The foundations of the earth -- The origin of whales -- Cornsilk -- The strange and tragic ballad of Mabel Pearsall -- This far; or A body in motion -- Run, mourner, run -- What are days? -- Ragnarök! The day the gods die -- Tell me, tell me -- Let the dead bury their dead.

Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell Since I Laid My Burden Down has a fearless (sometimes reckless) humor as Brontez Purnell interrogates what it means to be black, male, queer; a son, an uncle, a lover; Southern, punk, and human. An emotional tightrope walk of a book and an important American story rarely, if ever, told.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde; Cheryl Clarke (Foreword by) Notes from a trip to Russia -- Poetry is not a luxury -- The transformation of silence into language and action -- Scratching the surface : some notes on barriers to women and loving -- Uses of the erotic : the erotic as power -- Sexism : an American disease in blackface -- An open letter to Mary Daly -- Man child : a black lesbian feminist's response -- An interview : Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich -- The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house -- Age, race, class, and sex : women redefining difference

Delicious Foods by James Hannaham Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs, and quickly forms an addiction. One day she disappears without a trace. Unbeknownst to eleven-year-old Eddie, now left behind in a panic-stricken search for her, Darlene has been lured away with false promises of a good job and a rosy life.

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson A fantasy novel of urban decay whose heroine turns to Afro-Caribbean magic to help a boyfriend escape gangs. The gangs are enforcing a contract to produce a human heart for transplant, even if the boyfriend has to kill for it. The setting is a futuristic Toronto.

Best Lesbian Erotica 2013 by Jewelle Gomez (Selected and Introduced by); Kathleen Warnock (Editor)

The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen by Nella Larsen; Marita Golden (Foreword by); Charles Larson (Editor); Charles R. Larson (Editor) The gifted Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen wrote compelling dramas about the black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged.

A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging by Dionne Brand A Map to the Door of No Return explores identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and rapidly changing world. Drawing on cartography, travels, politics and history Brand sketches the shifting borders of home and nation. The title, A Map to the Door of No Return, refers to both a place in imagination and a point in history -- the Middle Passage. The quest for identity and place has profound meaning and resonance in an age of heterogenous identities.

Black Gay Man: Essays by Robert F. Reid-Pharr t turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, Black Gay Man will spoil our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity.

The Queen of Harlem by Brian Keith Jackson Mason Randolph, a Southern black preppie on his way to Stanford Law School, changes his name to Malik and moves to Harlem.

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks bell hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of experience. Hers is a vision of a beloved community that appeals to all those committed to equality, mutual respect, and justice. hooks applies her critical analysis to the most contentious and challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work.

In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology by Joseph Beam (Editor) In this anthology, black gay men describe their lives and their hopes through essays, short fiction, poetry, and artwork.

Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance by A. B. Christa Schwarz; Claude A. Clegg (Editor); Darlene Clark Hine (Editor); John McCluskey (Editor) Gay Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance -- Writing in the Harlem Renaissance: the burden of representation and sexual dissidence -- Countée Cullen: "his virtues are many; his vices unheard of" -- Langston Hughes: a "true 'people's poet'" -- Claude McKay "enfant terrible of the Negro Renaissance" -- Richard Bruce Nugent: the quest for beauty.

Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles by Thomas Glave (Editor) Our Caribbean is an anthology of lesbian and gay writing from across the Antilles. The author and activist Thomas Glave has gathered outstanding fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry by little-known writers together with selections by internationally celebrated figures such as José Alcántara Almánzar, Reinaldo Arenas, Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, Achy Obejas, and Assotto Saint.

Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual by Robert Reid-Pharr Reid-Pharr asserts that these and other post-World War II intellectuals announced the very themes of race, gender, and sexuality with which so many contemporary critics are now engaged. While at its most elemental Once You Go Black is an homage to these thinkers, it is at the same time a reconsideration of black Americans as agents, and not simply products, of history.

Ezili's Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders by Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley From the dagger mistress Ezili Je Wouj and the gender-bending mermaid Lasiren to the beautiful femme queen Ezili Freda, the Ezili pantheon of Vodoun spirits represents the divine forces of love, sexuality, prosperity, pleasure, maternity, creativity, and fertility. Drawing on her background as a literary critic Tinsley theorizes black Atlantic sexuality by tracing how contemporary queer Caribbean and African American writers and performers evoke Ezili.

Mutha' Is Half a Word: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture by L. H. Stallings Mutha' is Half a Word: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture explores the importance of sexual desire in the formation of radical Black females' subjectivities in Black women's culture through the trope of the indefinable trickster figure.

On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility by Ernesto Javier Martínez On Making Sense juxtaposes texts produced by black, Latino, and Asian queer writers and artists to understand how knowledge is acquired and produced in contexts of racial and gender oppression. From James Baldwin's 1960s novel Another Country to Margaret Cho's turn-of-the-century stand-up comedy, these works all exhibit a preoccupation with intelligibility, or the labor of making sense of oneself and of making sense to others.

Queer in Black and White: Interraciality, Same Sex Desire, and Contemporary African American Culture by Stefanie K. Dunning Dunning explores the ways in which the interracial intersects with queerness, blackness, whiteness, class, and black national identity. She shows that representations of interracial desire do not follow the logic of racial exclusion. Instead they are metaphorical and anti-biological. Rather than diluting race, interracial desire makes race visible. By invoking the interracial, black gay and lesbian artists can remake our conception of blackness.

In the Life and in the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African American Literature by Marlon Rachquel Moore Examines a range of fiction that challenges widespread assumptions about what it means to be a black person of faith.

Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination by Darieck Scott Challenging the conception of empowerment associated with the Black Power Movement and its political and intellectual legacies in the present, Darieck Scott contends that power can be found not only in martial resistance, but, surprisingly, where the black body has been inflicted with harm or humiliation.Theorizing the relation between blackness and abjection by foregrounding often neglected depictions of the sexual exploitation and humiliation of men in works by James Weldon Johnson, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and Samuel R. Delany

Toni Morrison and the Queer Pleasure of Ghosts by Juda Bennett Offers the first queer reading of all ten of Morrison's novels.

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde Collected here for the first time are more than three hundred poems from one of this country's major and most influential poets, representing the complete oeuvre of Audre Lorde's poetry. Lorde published nine volumes of poetry which, in her words, detail "a linguistic and emotional tour through the conflicts, fears, and hopes of the world I have inhabited." Included here are Lorde's early, previously unavailable works.

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes The poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death in 1967 and represent work from his entire career, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

The New Testament by Jericho Brown The world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing-and the truth is coming on fast.

Thief in the Interior by Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one's ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.

Living As a Lesbian by Cheryl Clarke Nothing lukewarm here. Cheryl Clarke writes variations on the themes of blackness, anger, violence, loss, loneliness, lesbianism, and sex. Her form is elegant, her language direct, her images strong. The impact is stunning.

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni by Nikki Giovanni Partial contents: Black feeling black talk/black judgement -- Re: creation -- Broadside: poem of Angela Yvonne Davis -- My house -- The women and the men -- Cotton candy on a rainy day -- Those who ride the night winds -- Occasional poem: a poem for langston hughes -- Occasional poem: but since you finally asked.

Good Stock Strange Blood by Dawn Lundy Martin From Good Stock Strange Blood: And, yet, each morning a fireheart grief in the body coming out of sleep. The listening to the smoke as if fills and weeps inside the chest, choking strength out hands weighted, dangling. We wonder where else it lives before it fills the body up. We assume it comes inside through the hole that promises invasion.

Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones A dark night of the soul presented as the finest of evening gowns, these poems pulse with an elemental sensuality that recalls Rimbaud's Venus Anadyomene and the best of Southern Gothic writing. Using a personal symbology of femininity, violence, and the history of black America, Jones weaves a coming-of-age tale that is both terrible and revelatory.

Bend to It by Kevin Simmonds Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician originally from New Orleans. His books include Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry) and Ota Benga Under my Mother's Roof (University of South Carolina). He edited Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press). He has composed numerous musical works for voice and chamber ensemble, as well as for stage productions such as Emmett Till, and the documentary HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica.

Patient by Bettina Judd Bettina Judd's phenomenal debut poetry collection, PATIENT., is about recovery in many senses: recovery of the subjectivity of several historical figures, through the recovery, reconstitution, and telling of their stories--among them Anarcha Westcott, Betsey Harris, Lucy Zimmerman, Joice Heth, Saartjie Baartman, and Henrietta Lacks, who were infamously 'patients' or subjects of inspection and 'plunder' .

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith Smith's unflinching poetry addresses race, class, sexuality, faith, social justice, mortality, and the challenges of living HIV positive at the intersection of black and queer identity. The collection opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved on earth.

Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing by Charif Shanahan Shanahan explores what it means to be fully human in our wounded and divided world. In poised yet unrelenting lyric poems, Shanahan—queer and mixed-race—confronts the challenges of a complex cultural inheritance, informed by colonialism and his mother's immigration to the United States from Morocco, navigating racial constructs, sexuality, family, and the globe in search of “who we are to each other... who we are to ourselves.”

Directed by Desire: the Collected Poems of June Jordan by June Jordan; Jan Heller Levi (Editor); Sara Miles (Editor); Adrienne Rich (Introduction by) Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan gathers the work from Jordan's ten books of poetry and includes many never-before-published poems - including a tender, fierce, and innovative collection of poems written before her death, in 2002, from breast cancer

Boy with Thorn by Rickey Laurentiis In a landscape at once the brutal American South as it is the brutal mind, Boy with Thorn interrogates the genesis of all poetic creation—the imagination itself, questioning what role it plays in both our fascinations with and repulsion from a national history of racial and sexual violence. The personal and political crash into one language here, gothic as it is supple, meditating on visual art and myth, to desire, the practice of lynching and Hurricane Katrina.

Black Body Amnesia: Poems and Other Speech Acts by jaamil olawale kosoko '05 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.

Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry by Essex Hemphill Ceremonies offers provocative commentary on highly charged topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of African-American men, feminism among men, and AIDS in the black community.

Silverchest by Carl Phillips In Silverchest, his twelfth book, Carl Phillips considers how our fears and excesses, the damage we cause both to others and to ourselves, intentional and not, can lead not only to a kind of wisdom but also to renewal, maybe even joy, if we're willing to commit fully to a life in which "I love you / means what, exactly?"

Rock/Salt/Stone by Rosamond King Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Poetry. ROCK | SALT | STONE sprays life–preserving salt through the hard realities of rocks, stones, and rockstones used as anchors, game pieces, or weapons. The manuscript travels through Africa, the Caribbean, and the USA, including cultures and varieties of English from all of those places.

Countee Cullen by Countee Cullen; Major Jackson (Editor) A major and sometimes controversial figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen fused a mastery of the formal lyric with a passionate engagement with themes social, religious, racial, and personal in such books as Color, Copper Sun, and The Black Christ.

Bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward; Kiese Laymon (Foreword by) A poignant collection of autobiographical poems about the heart, life, and the inner self. Bone. Visceral. Close to. Stark. The poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's collection bone are exactly that: reflections on a particular life honed to their essence--so clear and pared-down, they become universal.

Some Are Drowning by Reginald Shepherd, '88 Winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs' Award Series in Poetry, selected by Carolyn Forche.

Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus by Anaïs Duplan, '14 Mount Carmel & The Blood of Parnassus thrusts us into the inquisitive, placing us into a state of lost and losing. Into darkness. In grasping what is, the work investigates what is not, what is unknown, coming to grips with absence to make space for new; “If you say no, then you exist as an oppositional idea, you become the ‘no.’

Beautiful Signor: Poems by Cyrus Cassells

M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Following the innovative collection Spill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archive--the second book in a planned experimental triptych--is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and following the trajectory of Gumbs's acclaimed visionary fiction short story "Evidence," M Archive is told from the perspective of a future researcher who uncovers evidence of the conditions of late capitalism, antiblackness, and environmental crisis while examining possibilities of being that exceed the human.

Give Us Each Day: the Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson by Gloria T. Hull (editor)

The Black Back-Ups by Kate Rushin This book is a collection of Kate Rushin's poetry. The author attempts to capture the faces, voices, feelings, words, and stories of her African-American family, people in the neighborhood and town where she grew up.

Sleeping with the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen The abecedarian offspring of her collaboration with two of the poet's most seductive writing partners, Roget's thesaurus and the American Heritage dictionary. The poet is aware that while Roget's seems obsessed with categories and hierarchies, American Heritage, whatever its faults, was compiled with the assistance of a democratic panel that included black poets Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, as well as feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem.

Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual by Robert Reid-Pharr Reid-Pharr asserts that these and other post-World War II intellectuals announced the very themes of race, gender, and sexuality with which so many contemporary critics are now engaged. While at its most elemental Once You Go Black is an homage to these thinkers, it is at the same time a reconsideration of black Americans as agents, and not simply products, of history.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay Roxane Gay addresses the experience of living in a body that she calls 'wildly undisciplined.' She casts an insightful and critical eye over her childhood, teens, and twenties -- including the devastating act of violence that was a turning point at age 12 -- and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor) The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today’s struggles.

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton The story of Christine Jorgensen, Americas first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives-ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects.

Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life by Dawn Lundy Martin Dawn Lundy Martin's Life in a Box is a Pretty Life investigates the ways in which language claims absolute knowledge and draws a box around lived experience.

Thief in the Interior by Phillip B. Williams Phillip B. Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one's ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.

[insert] Boy by Danez Smith In [insert] boy, Smith writes intimately about his complex relationship to multiple forms of violence. He discusses domestic abuse in his family, the physical and emotional effects of rape, and being the target of racist and homophobic language. All of these experiences are based on his interactions with other men. He also includes a series of poems about his many attempts at healing, a constant process which unfolds throughout the book.

Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith by Barbara Smith: Alethia Jones (Editor); Virginia Eubanks (Editor); Reveals a remarkable woman's life and her contributions to social justice movements related to Civil Rights, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, anti-racism, and Black feminism.

White Girls by Hilton Als Weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them--an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles by Thomas Glave (Editor) Our Caribbean is an anthology of lesbian and gay writing from across the Antilles. The author and activist Thomas Glave has gathered outstanding fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry by little-known writers together with selections by internationally celebrated figures such as José Alcántara Almánzar, Reinaldo Arenas, Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, Audre Lorde, Achy Obejas, and Assotto Saint.

Directed by Desire: the Collected Poems of June Jordan by June Jordan; Jan Heller Levi (Editor); Sara Miles (Editor); Adrienne Rich (Introduction by) Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan gathers the work from Jordan's ten books of poetry and includes many never-before-published poems - including a tender, fierce, and innovative collection of poems written before her death, in 2002, from breast cancer

Best Lesbian Erotica 2003 by Tristan Taormino (Editor); Cheryl Clarke (Compiled by)

Pastoral: Poems by Carl Phillips In this new collection, Carl Phillips presents a tightly coherent, emotionally nuanced interrogation of the concept of pastoral. He creates a shadowy inner landscape where the field is the heart, and the heart itself has a beautifully, often treacherously flawed darkness that each of us seeks to penetrate, believing in the possibility of light.

The Marvelous Arithmetic of Distance by Audre Lorde " "Beyond the penchant for easy definitions, false exactitudes, we share a hunger for enduring value, relationship beyond hierarchy and outside reproach, a hunger for life measures, complex, direct, and flexible ... I want this book to be filled with shards of light thrown off from the shifting tensions between the dissimilar, for that is the real stuff of creation and growth."

Beautiful Signor: Poems by Cyrus Cassells

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan Clarence and the dead -- Things of this world; or Angels unawares -- The foundations of the earth -- The origin of whales -- Cornsilk -- The strange and tragic ballad of Mabel Pearsall -- This far; or A body in motion -- Run, mourner, run -- What are days? -- Ragnarök! The day the gods die -- Tell me, tell me -- Let the dead bury their dead.

A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire by Hiram Pérez In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Pérez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer histories—the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy— Pérez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence.