Catalog Search Results
1) Homie: poems
Author
Language
English
Description
"Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to...
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades-a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed. Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.1 - AR Pts: 27
Lexile measure
900L
Language
English
Description
Even Grade, a twenty-eight-year-old African-American man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, the teenage daughter of a promiscuous woman and an unknown father, meet through Even's lover Joody Two Sun, and embark on a quest for family, love, and commitment that takes them to places they never imagined they would go.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In Kingdom County, Vermont, the town's new Presbyterian minister is a black man, an unsettling fact for some of the locals. When a French-Canadian woman takes refuge in his parsonage-and is subsequently murdered-suspicion immediately falls on the clergyman. While his thirteen-year-old son struggles in the shadow of the town's accusations, and his older son, a lawyer, fights to defend him, a father finds himself on trial more for who he is than for...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A father of three in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, estranged from his Boston Brahmin wife and three children, and living in a friend's spare bedroom in Brooklyn. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his family afloat, and four days to make sense of his past and his future in a country where he feels preprogrammed to fail. But he has...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Early in his career, actor Courtney B. Vance lost his father to suicide. Recently, he lost his godson to the same fate. Still, as mental health discourse hits the mainstream, it leaves the most vulnerable out of the conversation: Black men. In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes-- including diagnoses of...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
After 12 years behind bars, Isaac Coleman confronts the pressures of the modern world while attempting to reconcile with the friends and family he left on the outside. With his teenage son heading for trouble, he must learn to be a responsible father before it's too late.
Author
Series
Benjamin January mysteries volume 5
Language
English
Description
In February 1835, the cold New Orleans streets are alight with masked Mardi Gras revelers as the American Theater's impresario, Lorenzo Belaggio, brings a magnificent yet controversial operatic version of Othello to town. But it's pitch-black in the alley where free man of color Benjamin January hears a slurred whisper, spies the flash of a knife, and is himself wounded as he rescues Belaggio from a vicious attack. Could competition for audiences-or...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Tempest Tales, an Essence Book Club Recommended Read, features Tempest Landry, a black man shot down by an over-eager cop. But that's not the end of the line for Tempest. Unwilling to accept St. Peter's judgment that he spend eternity in Hell, Tempest is sent back to Harlem- guardian angel in tow-to make things right.
11) Freedom road
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Newly freed slaves in the days of Reconstruction following the Civil War.
12) Graveyard dust
Author
Series
Benjamin January mysteries volume 3
Language
English
Formats
Description
When Benjamin's sister Olympe is arrested for murder, Benjamin feels someone is trying to frame her, but as he begins to investigate the crime, he discovers someone is willing to go to any length to prevent him from learning the truth.
13) Train: a novel
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Train is an 18-year-old black caddy at an exclusive L.A. country club. He is a golf prodigy, but the year is 1953 and there is no such thing as a black golf prodigy. Nevertheless, Train draws the interest of Miller Packard, a gambler whose smiling, distracted air earned him the nickname "the Mile Away Man." Packard's easy manner hides a proclivity for violence, and he remains an enigma to Train even months later when they are winning high stakes matches...
Author
Series
Benjamin January mysteries volume 1
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.1 - AR Pts: 18
Language
English
Formats
Description
This lush and haunting novel tells of a city steeped in decadent pleasures and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orléans when the evening's festivities are interrupted-by murder.
The ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has been strangled...
15) The outsider
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
[The author] presents a compelling story of a black man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself, a man who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes.
16) Days of the dead
Author
Series
Benjamin January mysteries volume 7
Language
English
Formats
Description
Mexico City in the autumn of 1835 is a lawless place, teeming with bandits and beggars. But an urgent letter from a desperate friend draws Benjamin January and his new bride Rose from New Orleans to this newly free province. Here they pray they'll find Hannibal Sefton alive-and not hanging from the end of a rope. Sefton stands accused of murdering the only son of prominent landowner Don Prospero de Castellón. But when Benjamin and Rose arrive at...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The hip break-out novel from 2016 Man Booker Prize winning author, Paul Beatty, about a disaffected Los Angeles DJ who travels to post-Wall Berlin in search of his transatlantic doppelganger.
Hailed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the best writers of his generation, Paul Beatty turns his creative eye to man's search for meaning and identity in an increasingly chaotic world.
After creating the perfect beat, DJ Darky goes...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Fragments of the Ark follows the exploits of runaway slave Peter Mango, his family, and a band of fellow escaped slaves as they commandeer a Confederate gunboat out of Charleston harbor and deliver it to the Union navy. Mango is made captain of this liberated vessel and commands its crew through the duration of the war. He also travels to Washington to meet President Lincoln, adding his voice to others trying to persuade the president to allow black...
20) Knucklehead
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Black law student, Marcus Hayes has a difficult time controlling his anger until he meets Amalia. But then the rage returns.
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