A black woman recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums.

"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and...

"Jesmyn Ward's universally acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from, in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young men dear to her, including her beloved brother--to accidents, murder, and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their lives had been connected, by identity and place, and as Jesmyn dealt with these losses,...

Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning. Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a "lifelong endeavor," or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice--Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women...

"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood:...

Punch Me Up to the Gods introduces a powerful new talent in Brian Broome, whose early years growing up in Ohio as a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys propel forward this gorgeous, aching, and unforgettable debut. Brians recounting of his experiencesin all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking gloryreveal a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to...

An acclaimed journalist and human rights activist shares the harrowing yet deeply hopeful story of her troubled childhood in East St. Louis--a memoir of family, faith and the power of books. Aunt Gerald takes in anyone who asks, but the conditions are harsh. For her young niece Goldie Taylor, abandoned by her mother and coping with trauma of her own, life in Geralds East St. Louis comes with nothing but a threadbare blanket on the living room floor....

"Recipient of the 2010 Kay Sexton Award, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify are the long-awaited collection from local literary figure Carolyn Holbrook. A collection of linked essays, Tell Me Your Names follow Holbrook's transformation from a pregnant 16-year-old incarcerated in the Minnesota juvenile justice system through her years living in Minneapolis, raising a family, and eventually to the founder of an organization that challenges conventional...