Showing results by narrator "Karen Chilton" in All Categories

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.

A 300-year-old tree has plenty to do: repairing the damage to her bark from people who have carved their initials, drinking from her roots, and, lately, tolerating two lonely bookworms who visit separately. Playing matchmaker might solve everyone’s problems. Rebecca Sky is an award-winning writer best known for the Love Curse series with more than 20 million reads online; most recently her work can be found in the Every Body Shines body-positivity anthology with Bloomsbury.

Can an overworked teacher possibly turn an unruly incident with students into an opportunity for learning, growth, and community-building? If restorative justice has been able to salvage lives within the world of criminal behavior, why shouldn't its principles be applied in school classrooms and cafeterias? And if our children learn restorative practices early and daily, won't we be building a healthier, more just society? Two educators answer yes, yes, and yes in this new addition to The Little Books of Justice and Peacebuilding series. Amstutz and Mullet offer applications and models.

Celebrated historian and cultural critic Ronald Sanders offers a compelling and ideology-shattering history of racial prejudice and myth as shaped by political, religious, and economic forces from the 14th Century to the present day. Written with clear-eyed vigor, Sanders draws on a broad history of art, psychology, politics, and religion to inform his striking and soundly reasoned assertions.

Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the United Kingdom, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Lionel Messi.

Don’t Tell a Soul is best-selling author Tiffany L. Warren’s sequel to her fan-favorite novel What a Sista Should Do. Here, a trio of faithful friends face trials in their personal lives. When Pam’s husband, Troy, blows their fortune, his partner starts making moves on Pam. Meanwhile, Taylor must decide whether to forgive her ex, Luke, for the sake of their son. And newly divorced Yvonne finds reprieve from her loneliness by befriending a new church member. But only time will tell if the women can keep their faith and friendship intact.

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.

In 1978, when Jamiyla was two years old, her mother, Ummi, quit her job, converted to Islam with her husband, and moved into an exclusive Muslim society in Brooklyn. Once inside the Community, the family was separated by its powerful and charismatic leader, Dwight York, who was hiding behind the name Imam Isa. Instead of the devotional refuge they’d imagined, the Community was a nightmare of controlled abuse and unspeakable secrets. Forty years later, Jamiyla was ready to excavate and understand a past buried in bad dreams, disturbing memories, and inexplicable rage.

Arden Highmore was living your average postgrad life in Rochester, New York, when someone flipped the “off” switch on the world. No cell phones, no power, no running water - and no one knows why. All she and her roommate, John, know for sure is that they have to get out, stat. His family’s cabin near the Canadian border seemed like the safest choice. It turns out isolation doesn’t necessarily equal safety.

In this stunning debut novel, four generations of complex Black women contend with motherhood and daughterhood, generational trauma and the deeply ingrained tensions and wounds that divide them as they redefine happiness and healing for themselves. In masterful, elegant prose, debut novelist Sarai Johnson has created a rich and moving portrait of Black women’s lives today.

New York City socialite and perpetual hot mess Portia Hobbs is tired of disappointing her family, friends, and - most importantly - herself. An apprenticeship with a struggling swordmaker in Scotland is a chance to use her expertise and discover what she's capable of. And it turns out that she excels at aggravating her gruff silver-fox boss, when she's not having inappropriate fantasies about his sexy Scottish burr.

As the civil rights movement and the fight for voter rights unfold in Selma, Alabama, many things happen inside and outside the Brown family’s home that do not have anything to do with the landmark 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Yet the famous outrages which unfold on that span form an inescapable backdrop in this collection of stories. In one, Willie Mae takes it upon herself to offer summer babysitting services to a glamorous single white mother—a secret she keeps from her parents that unravels with shocking results.

In Punished for Dreaming Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration.

Drawing on a vast amount of new material that has surfaced in the last decade, critically acclaimed jazz writer John Szwed considers how her life inflected her art, her influences, her uncanny voice and rhythmic genius, a number of her signature songs, and her legacy.

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.

Four generations of settler women on a distant world have different perspectives on the return to a natural life after decades in sealed domes. With a final image inspired by the author’s real-life (on Earth!) family history, this short, multi-generational tale explores the tension between the ties to the past and the promises of adventure inherited by each new generation.

Brittany K. Barnett was only a law student when she came across the case that would change her life forever - that of Sharanda Jones, single mother, business owner, and, like Brittany, Black daughter of the rural South. A victim of America’s devastating war on drugs, Sharanda had been torn away from her young daughter and was serving a life sentence without parole - for a first-time drug offense.

Liselle Belmont is having a dinner party. It seems a strange occasion - her husband, Winn, has lost his bid for the state legislature and they're having the key supporters over to thank them for their work. Liselle was never sure about Winn becoming a politician, never sure about the limelight, about the life of fundraising and stump speeches. Now that it's over she is facing new questions: Who are they to each other, after all this? How much of herself has she lost on the way - and was it worth it? Then she hears from an FBI agent, who claims that Winn is corrupt. Is it possible?