Poet Ross Gay tasked himself with what sounds like a job for a Hallmark greeting card writer: he spent a year looking for things that gave him joy, be they people, places, or events big or small. Unlike the sentiments usually found on schmaltzy greeting cards, though, the brief prose essays that Gay has written …
Torrey, a Black San Francisco State University student in his first year, is looking for a new start and is happy to be away from his home in LA. He misses terribly his late uncle with whom he operated an apiary, or bee farm. Torrey saw his uncle as one of the few positive forces …
Rediscovered Books, with stores in Boise and Caldwell, ID, asks, What have you been reading for Black History Month? Has it been mostly history, or have you dived into novels as well? On the store’s website, they’ve compiled a great list of recently-published titles by Black authors. There are fantastic selections for a range of …
Published originally in 1932, and said to be the first detective novel by an African-American author, this witty, shrewdly plotted whodunit (recently reissued) was penned by Rudolph Fisher, a New York City radiographer, short-story writer, and musician, active in the Harlem Renaissance. It tosses us onto the hectic scene of a nighttime slaying, the victim …
From Paper Boat Booksellers in Seattle, WA: February is Black History Month, and we are celebrating this year’s theme of Family: Representation, Identity & Diversity by featuring books from wonderful black authors that tell the histories and stories of African Americans in U.S. history. We encourage our customers to ask their bookseller for recommendations as …
Initially skeptical to read a book about a young musician with just a couple albums out (who may not have even hit his creative peak yet), I quickly understood just why, in the year 2020, this book needed to come out. Using the framework of the 4 albums of Kendrick Lamar, Marcus J. Moore writes a …
On the livestreaming event celebrating the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award Winners, an audience member asked the authors for book recommendations. Here are some of the books that came up, some literally pulled from stacks near the authors for show and tell: Entangled Life (recommended by Silvia Morena-Garcia) The Gilded Ones (recommended by Kim Johnson. …
Davis’s second full-length collection is full of tenderness and music. These poems are about family and fatherhood; they consider the lives lived and lost by Black men and boys in America; and the grace of love against fear, anger, and hurt. Night Angler is a moving experience. –Erin Malone, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, WA Enrich your …
This Is My America released at the beginning of a reckoning that’s been long overdue—the untended roots of race in America. These origins draw parallels not only to slavery and mass incarceration but to open wounds festering below the surface. My novel was born from many early lessons on race as a Black girl growing …
Caste is an essential read, a lucid, no-holds-barred examination of race, our nation’s history, and the rigid caste system that has been such a destructive force to individuals, communities, and our democracy. Most people think of caste as a foreign system found in places like India. But Wilkerson, through her research, insight, and immersion, argues …
