A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to reckon with the corrupting force of a system that trained children to become its willing executionersStrung Up examines how the lynching of Black children became not an aberration, but a normalized feature of American racial violence. Drawing on meticulous archival research and vivid narrative storytel...

A necessary challenge to the cultural tradition of corporeal punishment in Black homes—and its connections to white supremacy.Encourages positive, nonviolent discipline for those rearing, teaching, and caring for children of color.Why do so many African Americans have such a special attachment to whupping children? Studies show that nearly 80 percent of Black parents see spanking, popping, pinching, and beating as reasonable, effective ways...

An astonishing coming-of-age memoir by a young woman who survived the foster care system and went on to become an award-winning journalist.On a rainy night in November 1999, a shoeless Stacey Patton, promising student at NYU, approached her adoptive parents' house with a gun in her hand. She wanted to kill them. Or so she thought.No one would ever imagine that the vibrant, smart, and attractive Stacey had a childhood from hell. After all, with God-fearing, ...

Based on the author’s real experience, this charming and hilarious picture book follows a solitary homeowner who insists she’s much too busy to adopt a stray cat…until the cat adopts her.Staceypants lives in a beautiful yellow house in Charm City where she stays busy fixing things, planting pretty flowers, and keeping her home clean. One day, she finds a scruffy gray cat perched on her fence. But Staceypants definitely does not want a cat. Cats scratch fur...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Stacey Patton penned this moving memoir describing her tumultuous childhood growing up first in a state institution and then in a fractured foster family. She makes a strong case to illustrate how the brutal legacy of slavery continues to affect African-American families today. "... a document ... striking in its endeavor to relate a unique individual experience to broader communal life."-Kirkus Reviews

A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to reckon with the corrupting force of a system that trained children to become its willing executionersStrung Up examines how the lynching of Black children became not an aberration, but a normalized feature of American racial violence. Drawing on meticulous archival research and vivid narrative storytel...

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller—Jaycee Dugard’s raw and powerful memoir, her own story of being kidnapped in 1991 and held captive for more than eighteen years.In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allo...

Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law provides a penetrating, unusually intimate look into Saudi society and the bin Laden family's role within it, as well as the treatment of Saudi women.On September 11th, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin heard the news that the Twin Towers had been struck. She instinctively knew that her ex-brother-in-law was involved in these horrifying acts of terrorism, and her heart went out to America. She also knew that her life and the lives of her ...

This memoir of a young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds, reveals her journey from homelessness to Harvard.Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways ...

In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of "Revolutionist Returnees" inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it ...

A young girl lives in fear of her abusive father....A powerful short tale. Based on a true story.

"Fascinating...adds many interesting details to what we know of the President’s heritage."--David Remnick, TheNewYorker.comOn January 20, 2009, a few hundred men, women, and children gathered under trees in the twilight at K’obama, a village on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. Barack Obama’s rise to the American presidency had captivated people around the world, but members of this gathering took a special pride in the swearing in of Am...