Robin Miles
Author
Language
English
Description
In 1958, when Esquire magazine planned an issue saluting the American jazz scene, graphic designer Art Kane pitched a crazy idea: how about gathering a group of beloved jazz musicians and photographing them in front of a Harlem brownstone? He didn't own a good camera and didn't know if any of the musicians would show up-but, in the end, he pulled it off. In this captivating collection of poems, Roxane Orgill steps into that photograph, bringing to...
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English
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""As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not." In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched...
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Language
English
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Description
"One night Mary Pat's teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn't come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched--asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.4 - AR Pts: 3
Language
English
Description
When August, an anthropologist who has studied the funeral traditions of different cultures, revisits her old neighborhood after her father's death, her reunion with a brother and a chance encounter with an old friend bring back a flood of childhood memories. Flashbacks depict the isolation she felt moving from rural Tennessee to New York and show how her later years were influenced by the black power movement, nearby street violence, her father's...
5) Porch lights
Author
Series
Lowcountry tales (Dorothea Benton Frank) volume 10
Language
English
Description
When Jimmy McMullen, a fireman with the NYFD, is killed in the line of duty, his wife, Jackie, and ten-year-old son, Charlie, are devastated. Charlie idolized his dad, and now the outgoing, curious boy has become quiet and reserved. Trusting in the healing power of family, Jackie decides to return to her childhood home on Sullivans Island. Crossing the bridge from the mainland, Jackie and Charlie enter a world full of wonder and magic--lush green...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 9.7 - AR Pts: 18
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...
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English
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Description
When Lisa's favorite patient Kathy loses her battle with cancer, she finds herself drawing closer to Carrie and Suzanne, Kathy's devoted friends. As their lives connect and they powerwalk the beaches of the Isle of Palms, they uncover the truth of Kathy's life-- and discover their own futures in the process.
In this charming, evocative, soul-touching novel, Dorothea Benton Frank once again takes us deep into the heart of the magical Lowcountry where...
Author
Language
English
Description
Worcester County is nestled along the Atlantic Ocean between Delaware and Virginia. Traversed by Capt. John Smith and inhabited by European settlers as early as 1642, Worcester County boasts a rich history and continues to be both a rural paradise and an exciting tourist destination.
Author
Language
English
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Description
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.
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English
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"The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian-who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books,...
13) Stellaluna
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 3.5 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
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Description
After she falls headfirst into a bird's nest, a baby bat is raised like a bird until she is reunited with her mother. Features pop-up illustrations.
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Language
English
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Description
A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters' ambitions for their own lives-set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco. At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they've become a bona fide...
15) Yellow wife
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Language
English
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Born on a plantation but set apart from the others by her mother's position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at eighteen and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail.
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. Instead she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"It's 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family....
17) The first ladies
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Language
English
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Forthcoming Favorites June 2023
New African American Fiction
RCLS Spring 2023 Forthcoming Bestsellers
Strong Female Leads
New African American Fiction
RCLS Spring 2023 Forthcoming Bestsellers
Strong Female Leads
Description
"A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune--an unlikely friendship that changed the world, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist...
Author
Series
Language
English
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"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even...
19) American Street
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.4 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Description
On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie -- a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola's mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit's West Side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own. Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world,...
20) The dew breaker
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.7 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
Description
We meet him late in life: a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”—or torturer—s...