By Kirsten Kasai Fiction. African & African American Studies. THE HOUSE OF ERZULIE tells the eerily intertwined stories of an ill-fated young couple in the 1850s and the troubled historian who discovers their writings in the present day. Emilie St. Ange, the daughter of a Creole slaveowning family in Louisiana, rebels against her parents’ values…
By Lawrence Jackson The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential…
By Lawrence Jackson Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Work Finalist for the PEN America/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The definitive biography of the groundbreaking African American author who had an extraordinary legacy on black writers globally. Chester B. Himes has been called “one of the towering figures of the black literary…
By Lawrence Jackson In 2016, Lawrence Jackson accepted a new job in Baltimore, searched for schools for his sons, and bought a house. It would all be unremarkable but for the fact that he had grown up in West Baltimore and now found himself teaching at Johns Hopkins, whose vexed relationship to its neighborhood, to…
By Marilyn Nelson So first it did a little dance, then it did a little prance, then, as nicely as you please, it waddled off with stiff red knees. Once there was a jaunty ladder, abandoned by a mysterious carpenter, that sprung to life and decided to take a trip through the countryside. As time…
By Marilyn Nelson The true narrative of a slave from Africa, crafted in verse by Marilyn Nelson. Born an African prince, Broteer Furro was captured by slave traders at age six. As he stepped onto a cargo ship, the vessel’s steward purchased the boy and gave him a new name: Venture. He landed in Rhode…
By Marilyn Nelson In The Fields of Praise, Marilyn Nelson claims as subjects the life of the spirit, the vicissitudes of love, and the African American experience since slavery and arranges them as pebbles marking our common journey toward a “monstrous love that wants to make the world right.” Nelson is a poet of stunning power,…
By Marilyn Nelson Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Soaring images, rhythmic language, and wry humor come together in these three narrative poems that explore travel from an African American historical and social perspective. A cab ride turns into an amazing encounter with the driver, an amateur physicist whose ideas about space and…
By Marilyn Nelson “Nelson writes with extraordinary sensitivity. . . . Ering’s brilliantly drafted artwork sweeps. . . . Triumphant.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Abba Jacob is a monk who lives on a faraway island with his loyal terrier, Snook. Every day, from the wee hours of dawn till the sun sets over the sea,…
By Marilyn Nelson Pemba knows she’s not crazy. But who is that looking out at her through her mirror’s eye? And why is the apparition calling her “friend”? Her real friends are back home in Brooklyn, not in the old colonial house in Colchester, Connecticut, where none of this would have happened if Daddy were…
