2023 BLACK HISTORY MONTH | Brooks Memorial Library

1) Rest is resistance: a manifesto

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Formats:

Description

"Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy. In this book, Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, encourages us to connect to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice. What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging,...

2) By her own design: a novel of Ann Lowe, fashion designer to the social register

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Description

The incredible untold story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of slaves, rose above personal struggles and racial prejudice to design and create one of America's most famous wedding dresses of all time for Jackie Kennedy. 1953, New York City. Less than a week before the society wedding of the year where Jacqueline Bouvier will marry John F. Kennedy, a pipe bursts at Ann Lowe's dress shop and ruins eleven dresses, including the expensive...

3) Between the world and me

Author

Coates, Ta-Nehisi

Series

Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction

Formats:

Book, Audio, Book-YA, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ... In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth...

4) Wake: the hidden history of women-led slave revolts

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Book, Graphic Novel, New Book

Description

"An historical and imaginative tour-de-force, WAKE brings to light for the first time the existence of enslaved black women warriors, whose stories can be traced by carefully scrutinizing historical records; and where the historical record goes silent, WAKE reconstructs the likely past of two female rebels, Adono and Alele, on the slave ship The Unity. WAKE is a graphic novel that offers invaluable insight into the struggle to survive whole as a black...

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Book, Audio, eAudiobook, Large Print, New Audio, New Book

Description

This is Viola Davis' story, in her own words, and spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. Hers is a story of overcoming, a true hero's journey. "In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and...

6) You don't know us negroes and other essays

Author

Hurston, Zora Neale

Formats:

Book, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

"One of the most acclaimed artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston was a gifted novelist, playwright, and essayist. Drawn from three decades of her work, this anthology showcases her development as a writer, from her early pieces expounding on the beauty and precision of African American art to some of her final published works, covering the sensational trial of Ruby McCollum, a wealthy Black woman convicted in 1952 for killing a white...

7) The whiskey of our discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as conscience and change agent

8) A little devil in America: notes in praise of Black performance

Author

Abdurraqib, Hanif

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

"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,...

9) A little devil in America: notes in praise of Black performances

Author

Abdurraqib, Hanif

Description

""I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too." Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines--whether it's the twenty-seven seconds...

10) We were eight years in power: an American tragedy

Author

Coates, Ta-Nehisi

Formats:

Book, Audio, eAudiobook, eBook, Music CD

Description

This is a collection of new and selected essays which address the tragic echoes of our time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that elected a white racist. But this book is not just about presidential politics, it also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period--and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history....

11) South to America: a journey below the Mason-Dixon to understand the soul of a nation

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Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, New Audio, New Book

Description

"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America"--

12) All about love: new visions

Author

Series

Love Song to the Nation

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Description

Presenting radical new ways to think about love, the author examines the role of love in our personal and professional lives and how it can be used to end struggles between individuals, communities, and societies.

13) And still I rise

Author

14) And still I rise: black America since MLK : an illustrated chronology

Author

Gates, Henry Louis

Description

"The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS series, And Still I Rise--a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos" -- "Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of...

15) The Trayvon generation

Author

Alexander, Elizabeth

Description

"In the midst of civil unrest in the summer of 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, one of the great literary voices of our time, Elizabeth Alexander, wrote a moving reflection on the psyche of young Black America, turning a mother's eye to her sons' generation. Originally published in the New Yorker, the essay brilliantly and lovingly observed the lives and attitudes of young people who even as children could...

16) His name is George Floyd: one man's life and the struggle for racial justice

Author

Samuels, Robert

Formats:

Book, Large Print

Description

"A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar:...

17) Officer Clemmons: a memoir

Author

Clemmons, François

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18) Miles ahead

Description

In the midst of a dazzling and prolific career at the forefront of modern jazz innovation, Miles Davis disappears from public view for a period of five years in the late 1970s. Alone and holed up in his home, he is beset by chronic pain from a deteriorating hip, his musical voice stifled and numbed by drugs and medications, and his mind haunted by unsettling ghosts from the past.

19) Redemption: Martin Luther King Jr.'s last 31 hours

Author

Rosenbloom, Joseph

Description

Chronicles the last 31 hours of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life as he seeks to revive the non-violent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America.

20) The Black presidency: Barack Obama and the politics of race in America

Author

Dyson, Michael Eric

Description

Michael Eric Dyson delivers a provocative exploration of the politics of race and the Obama presidency. Barack Obama's presidency unfolded against the national traumas of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and Walter Scott. The nation's first African American president was careful to give few major race speeches, yet he faced criticism from all sides, including from African Americans. How has Obama's race affected his presidency and the...