Durham and Orange Counties have vibrant and active African American communities. Throughout the region's unjust past, generations have shown extraordinary strength and resolve. Floyd McKissick became the first African American student at the University of North Carolina School of Law after Thurgood Marshall argued for his admittance in court. The struggle for civil rights in Durham shaped the poetry of Jaki Shelton Green, one of the state's most esteemed wordsmiths. More recently, local le...

A collection of the most well-known and treasured writings and speeches of Dr. King, available for the first time as an ebookThe Essential Martin Luther King, Jr. is the ultimate collection of Dr. King's most inspirational and transformative speeches and sermons, accessibly available for the first time as an ebook. Here, in Dr. King's own words, are writings that reveal an intellectual struggle and growth as fierce and alive as any chronicle of his politic...

The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelou’s words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning”Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s remarkable life.Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be fo...

Selected for the 2008 National Poetry Series by Kevin YoungThe poems in Adrian Matejka's second collection, Mixology, shapeshift through the myriad meanings of "mixing" to explore and explode ideas of race, skin politics, appropriation, and cultural identity. Whether the focus of the individual poems is musical, digital, or historical, the otherness implicit in being of more than one racial background guides Matejka's work to the inevitable conclusion that...

Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose. Blending stark realism with the fantastical, Ewing takes us from the streets of Chicago to an alien arrival in an unspecified future, deftly navigating boundaries of space, time, and reality with delight and flexibility.

This issue of Granta is about the difference between the world as we see it and the world as it actually is, beyond our faulty memories and tired understanding. It's also about the borderlands of politics and reason, and of reality and transcendence, in contested territories.Ludmila Ulitskaya's diary of cancer treatment in Russia and IsraelRaja Shehadeh on emptying his mother's house in RamallahJanine di Giovanni

Winner • NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Fiction)Winner • Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice AwardHoliday Gift Guide Selection • Indiewire, San Francisco Chronicle, and Minneapolis Star-TribuneThese nearly 150 African American folktales animate our past and reclaim a lost cultural legacy to redefine American literature.Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding Afric...

Whats the most sensitive subject in America today? That would be racism. But for the most part it has always been an issue between those of the black and white race, where whites reigned under false superiority. Though the subject is worldwide, the karma that those of the white race now suffer behind actions taken during their time of false reign has never been brought to the forefront of America and its children. Nor has the fact that it is Gods will that a black plague is now overshadowi...

"[Dawes] is highly original and intelligent, possessing poetic sensibility that is rooted and sound, unshakeable and unstopped, both in its vibrancy and direction. He writes poetry as it ought to be written."-World Literature Today"Dawes asserts himself as man and artist and finally, with grace achieved and grace said, sits down to begin life's tragic feast . . . a writer of major significance."-Brag Book"The notion of a reggae aesthetic-of the language mo...

Sonia Sanchez is a prolific, award-winning poet and one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement. This collection brings her plays together in one volume for the first time. Like her poetry, Sanchez’s plays voice her critique of the racism and sexism that she encountered as a young female writer in the black militant community in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her ongoing concern with the well-being of the black community, and her commitment to social justice. In addition ...

From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, African Americans in the Washington, D.C. area sought leisure destinations where they could relax without the burden of racial oppression. Local picnic parks such as Eureka and Madre's were accessible by streetcars. Black-owned steamboats ferried passengers seeking sun and sand to places like Collingwood Beach, and African American families settled into quiet beach-side communities along the Western Shore of Maryland. Author and public...

An in-depth look at the iconic African American scholar's life in—and his contributions to—our nation's capital.The discipline of black history has its roots firmly planted at 1538 Ninth Street, Northwest, in Washington, DC. The Victorian row house in "Black Broadway" was once the modest office-home of Carter G. Woodson. The home was also the headquarters of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Woodson dedicated his entire lif...