"The Lonely Letters is a Black queer critique of the normative world, practicing a restlessness of word and phrase that seeks existence otherwise. The book is a work of creative non-fiction, taking the form of a correspondence between characters A and Moth. The letters explore Blackness and queerness through the music and embodied experience of Blackpentecostal spaces. The correspondence is in epistolary form, organized into 5 sections: Breath, Shouting,...

At the First Clear Word -- emcee -- Touch -- The things-no-one-knows blues -- Ars poetica #789 -- Hip logic -- Sonnet -- Mr. T- --Shaft & the enchanted shoe factory or -- Ars poetica: The epic quest for language -- Squawk -- Butter -- Origin of the days -- Gospel of the two sisters / A Gram of &s -- abductor -- although -- ambulance -- apothecary -- beckoned -- bowling -- breathe -- careless -- corporal -- example / Conjure -- Friday poem -- For Paul...

"Slavery's Descendants brings together twenty-five contributors from a variety of racial backgrounds, to tell their personal stories of exhuming and exorcising America's racist past. Together, they help us confront the legacy of slavery and reclaim a more complete picture of U.S. history, one cousin at a time"--

"They called him "pale-faced or mixed race." They called him "light, bright, almost white." But most of the time his family called him "high yella." Steve Majors was the light-skinned youngest son who stood out from the rest of his all Black family. High Yella: A Modern Family Memoir is the poignant account of how he left his family behind in search of a new identity in a world that saw him as white. Eventually he must reconcile his own search for...

Journalist, attorney, and star of Bravo's The Real Housewives of New York reshapes the cultural landscape of achievement by showing why Black unity is crucial to individual and collective success. Eboni K. Williams knew that an important part of her mission as a media personality would be to unabashedly place Blackness on a pedestal. Williams has long known that Blackness is a rich, expansive place that centers resilience, excellence, beauty, panache,...

"A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country's history. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in...

"A Little Devil in America is an urgent project that unravels all modes and methods of black performance, in this moment when black performers are coming to terms with their value, reception, and immense impact on America. With sharp insight, humor, and heart, Abdurraqib examines how black performance happens in specific moments in time and space--midcentury Paris, the moon, or a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. At the outset of this project,...