The idea of growing up in poverty produces thoughts of lack, loneliness, and low-income housing. Crime is usually the result in this equation. But the ghetto is more than the sum of its drug dealers, gangs, and drive-by shootings. For these young people, it’s home. This is the story of two sisters growing up on “The Avenues,” a …
African American Literature
One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It …
Devil in a Blue Dress, a defining novel in Walter Mosley’s bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series, was adapted into a TriStar Pictures film starring Denzel Washington as Easy Rawlins and Don Cheadle as Mouse.Set in the late 1940s, in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles, Devil in a Blue Dress follows Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran …
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize* A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice ** A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year *New poetry by the award-winning poet Tracy K. Smith, whose “lyric brilliance and political impulses never falter” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)You lie …
One of the most vicious gangsters to ever walk the streets of Newark is free to roam again after serving a 15 year prison sentence. Respected and feared by all, and loved by only a few, the Black Charles Manson was sentenced to death by lethal injection after his conviction for a trail of gruesome murders. The streets …
The House Girl, the historical fiction debut by Tara Conklin, is an unforgettable story of love, history, and a search for justice, set in modern-day New York and 1852 Virginia.Weaving together the story of an escaped slave in the pre–Civil War South and a determined junior lawyer, The House Girl follows Lina Sparrow as she looks for an …
Parallel Realities Kola and Peaches palace lifestyle in Colombia comes crashing down when the Federales kick in Eduardo’s front door. Forced to flee South America with her niece and return to New York, Kola feels lost without her twin sister. Things begin to turn around for Kola when she meets an ambitious hustler named Twin who wants her …