Showing results by narrator "Dion Graham" in All Categories

Pages magazine says this collection represents “the absolute best in short literary fiction.” This installment exhibits a fresh batch of immensely talented writers, all of whom exemplify the level of accomplishment that has kept this acclaimed series running strong since 1985. Comprising 20 stories, this rich and varied collection features everything from a fresh take on the classic Southern gothic to a velvet-smooth work of erotic suspense.

Justyce McAllister is top of his class and set for the Ivy League - but none of that matters to the police officer who just put him in handcuffs. And despite leaving his rough neighbourhood behind, he can't escape the scorn of his former peers or the ridicule of his new classmates. Justyce looks to the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for answers. But do they hold up anymore? He starts a journal to Dr. King to find out.

A spirited and striking memoir, The Road South tells the story of a man who struggled to make his place in society. "I hope my story will do nothing if not inspire. If I can overcome the hurdles of poverty, abuse, and racism, then so can anyone." Shelley Stewart's memoir is full of hope and promise, even in the midst of the most dire situations.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers—black, white, Irish and Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.

Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they're alone together, there's an accident, and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered, their mother can't stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt: how do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel? As C grows older, she relives and retells her story, and she sees her brother everywhere: in cafes, airplane aisles, subway cars.

Caryl Phillips has received international acclaim for his works, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and membership in the Royal Society of Literature.

Dancing in the Dark brilliantly re-creates the life of Bert Williams, the first Black entertainer to achieve stardom in America. In 1896, when Bert decides to perform his stage routine in blackface, he is accused of reviling his race even as he becomes a star in Ziegfeld's Follies.

In profound, uplifting verse, beloved author Matt de la Peña explores the endless possibilities each child contains: A young dancer may grow into a computer coder; a basketball player might become a poet; a class clown may one day serve as an inspiring teacher; and today’s quiet empath might be tomorrow’s great leader. Here's a profound and uplifting new classic with an empowering message for listeners of all ages: Your story is still being written.

After surviving a desperate childhood of lawlessness and violence, Alfred Olyontombo makes his way to a refugee camp while Rwanda's genocide rages behind him. His knowledge of local languages catches the attention of an idealistic young doctor who opens the door to a whole new life for Alfred. Seizing the chance, he moves forward, embracing the American dream and becoming a respected physician married to a successful lawyer in Colorado. However, his new life comes to a screeching halt when the transgressions of his youth come back to haunt him.

With his King Lord dad in prison and his mom working two jobs, seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter helps the only way he knows how: slinging drugs. Life's not perfect, but he's got everything under control. Until he finds out he's a father. Suddenly it's not so easy to deal drugs and finish school with a baby dependent on him for everything. So when he's offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. But when King Lord blood runs through your veins, you don't get to just walk away.

Joshua Park never expected to be a widower at the age of thirty. Given his solitary job, small circle of friends and family, and the social awkwardness he's always suffered from, he has no idea how to negotiate this unwanted new phase of life. But Lauren, his wife, had a plan to keep him moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him, giving him a task for every month in the year after her death.

One of the few indisputable geniuses of pop music, Sly Stone is a trailblazer who created a new kind of music, mixing Black and white, male and female, funk and rock; penned some of the most iconic anthems of the 1960s and 70s, from "Everyday People" to "Family Affair"; and electrified audiences with a persona and stage presence that set a lasting standard for pop culture performance. Yet he has also been a cautionary tale, known as much for how he dropped out of sight as for what put him in the spotlight in the first place. As much as people know the music, the man remains a mystery.

More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too-many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one had made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials, but of Vänna, a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain.

The Golden Gate Bridge is the most famous bridge in the world. It is also, not entirely coincidentally, the world's first bright-orange bridge. But it wasn't supposed to be that way. In this book, bridge lover Dave Eggers tells the story of how it happened - how a bridge that some people wanted to be red and white, and some people wanted to be yellow and black, and most people wanted simply to be gray, instead became, thanks to the vision and stick-to-itiveness of a few peculiar architects, one of the most memorable man-made objects ever created.

Jackie is a poor boy from Harlem and the victim of abuse from his widowed, alcoholic father. But everything changes on the day he discovers the power of comedy. When his classmates make fun of his tattered clothes, Jackie turns everything around by freely poking fun at himself and soon has everyone on the floor with laughter. His amazing talent, and raging ambition, take him through the local club circuit to become the most sought after comedic entertainer in opulent, '50s Las Vegas and beyond.

Voting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens―sometimes for decades―and still be denied the voting rights afforded to every other citizen.

Nineteen-year-old refugee Alephonsion Deng, from war-ravaged Sudan, had great expectations when he arrived in America three weeks before two planes crashed into the World Trade Towers. Suburban mom Judy Bernstein assumed the teenaged "Lost Boys of Sudan" needed a little mothering and a change of scenery. Partnered through a mentoring program in San Diego, these two individuals from opposite sides of the world began an eye-opening journey that radically altered each other's vision and life. Disturbed in Their Nests recounts the first year of this heartwarming partnership.

Fifteen-year-old Kermit Sanders knows grief and its all-encompassing shadows. After losing his beloved older sister in a tragic car accident, nothing quite punctures through the feelings of loss. Everywhere Kermit goes, he is reminded of her. But then Kermit finds a mysterious invitation in his locker, signed anonymously with “-1.” He has no idea what he’s in for, but he shows up to find out. Dubbed the “Minus-One Club,” a group of his school-mates has banded together as a form of moral support. The members have just one thing in common—they have all suffered the tragic loss of a loved one.

Baltimore, 2015. Riots are erupting across the city as citizens demand justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who has died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Drug and violent crime are surging and Baltimore will reach its highest murder count in more than two decades: 342 homicides in a single year, in a city of just 600,000 people.

By beginning a conversation that encourages self-examination and compassion, Combined Destinies invites listeners to look at how white Americans have been hurt by the very ideology that their ancestors created. Editors Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell, both experienced psychotherapists skilled at facilitating dialogue about racial issues, are cognizant of the challenges that even the thought of such conversations often presents. Their book is based on the premise that for positive and lasting change to occur, hearts as well as minds must be opened.

Rutherford Calhoun, a puckish rogue and newly freed slave, spends his days loitering around the docks of New Orleans, dodging debt collectors, gangsters and Isadora Bailey, a prim and frugal woman who seeks to marry him and curb his mischievous instincts. When the heat from these respective pursuers becomes too much to bear, he cons his way on to the next ship leaving the dock: the Republic. Upon boarding, to his horror he discovers that he is on an illegal slave ship embarking on the Middle Passage.