Collection: Staff Picks

  Akwaeke Emezi makes their young adult debut with Pet on the inaugural Make Me a World list. An honoree on the National Book Foundation's "5 Under...

This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by LeVar Burton and...

One of the most highly praised novels of the year, the debut from an astonishing young writer, Freshwater tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who...

What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know — A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press Malcolm...

  Maya Angelou's unforgettable poem is matched with the daring art of Jean-Michel Basquiat in this powerful ode to courage Shadows on the wallNoises down...

Black art in the era of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers In the period of radical change that was 1963–83, young black artists at the...

  This is the post-Me Too update to the ahead-of-its-time emotionally charged memoir from a former hip hop music video vixen many women needed to...

  Presenting the essential writings of Black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection...

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the...

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that...

In exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait for young people of the passionate performer and civil...

  "Parker stayed woke to black suffering, violence against Black bodies—especially those of black women—to the suffering engendered by multiple, egregious oppressions. With THE COMPLETE...

For the first time Gucci Mane tells his extraordinary story in his own words. It is “as wild, unpredictable, and fascinating as the man himself”...

  Illustrator Jacqui C. Smith graduated from Columbia College of Chicago with a BA in Film & Video: Traditional Animation. Jacqui currently resides in Burbank,...

From the breakout author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé comes a profound and deceptively funny exploration of Black American womanhood. Magical Negro is an archive...

  Tomi Adeyemi’s West African-inspired fantasy debut, and instant #1 New York Times Bestseller, conjures a world of magic and danger. They killed my mother.They took our...

  The first complete publication of W.E.B. Du Bois's colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition.  Famed sociologist, writer, and black...

James Baldwin was a uniquely prophetic voice in American letters. His brilliant and provocative essays made him the literary voice of the Civil Rights Era, and...

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for...

Remember that moment when you first encountered a character who seemed to be written just for you? That feeling of belonging remains with readers the...

In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful...