Posted on: May 26, 2023
by Leah Henderson; illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Inspired by a photo of a large group of Black children gathered, as if in preparation for a parade, author Leah Henderson explores the roots of Memorial Day in this fictionalized account. Originally celebrated...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 28, 2023
by Amina Luqman Dawson
This powerful and fast-paced middle-grade work of historical fiction was the 2023 Newbury Award winner, a recognition that is especially impactful considering that this is author Amina Luqman Dawson's debut work for children...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 21, 2023
by David Waldstreicher
The astonishing life of a great American poet and a fresh look at her work. The prodigy was stolen from her African family as a child and purchased by the Wheatley family in Boston in 1761. She was emancipated in 1773 and became a pu...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 14, 2023
by Amber McBride
National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride is back with their second young adult novel in verse. Whimsy and Faerry are our two young protagonists, who reconnect as they remember and journey through their magical realities and some long-bur...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 31, 2023
by Ann Shen
Treat yourself to this celebration of women of color, centering women who have historically been sidelined. This beautifully illustrated volume celebrates the accomplishments of scores of incredible women. From dancers, actors, and singers to s...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 24, 2023
by Dinah Johnson; illustrated by April Harrison
Simultaneously a journey through history and a contemporary stroll through one of the most famous neighborhoods in America, H is For Harlem captures reader's interest by introducing some of the many ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 17, 2023
by Kendrick Perkins
An intimate memoir from the former NBA player (Boston Celtics, 2003-2011) and outspoken cultural critic. At age eighteen, Kendrick Perkins left his grandparents' home in small-town Texas to join the NBA. Both on and off the cou...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 10, 2023
by Evette Dionne
This short-but-thorough YA nonfiction book (170 pages or a 5-hour audiobook) is a worthwhile read this month as we make a special effort to celebrate women's history. Published in 2020, the book starts off by reminding readers how...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 24, 2023
by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Frank Morrison
Carole Boston Weatherford reinterprets this traditional hymn as a rhythmic meditation on Black history. Celebrating grace and dignity in the face of oppression, the lyrical text is accompanied by ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 10, 2023
by Talia Hibbert
This new YA release is by bestselling author Talia Hibbert, known for writing the popular Brown sisters trilogy. Ex-best friends Celine and Bradley must overcome their bruised feelings and academic rivalry to work together on a survival co...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 20, 2023
by Ilyon Woo
Here is a gripping true story in time for Black History Month. The book recounts how Ellen and William Craft escaped slavery in Georgia through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and Willia...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 27, 2023
by Angela Joy; illustrated by Janelle Washington
This moving portrait of Mamie Till-Mobley depicts the courage of an individual whose strength in the face of terrible injustice galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. When her son, Emmett Till, was murdered i...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 20, 2023
by Nathan McClain
Nathan McClain teaches at Hampshire College and is Poetry Editor of the Massachusetts Review. In his second poetry collection, he interrogates his speaker’s American heritage, history, and responsibility. Investigating myth, pop...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 13, 2023
by Femi Fadugba
This YA title is an exciting debut from Togolese British author Femi Fadugba. A physicist by profession, Fadugba wrote this time-travel thriller, set in south London, which adeptly mixes London slang and quantum physics. Told in a dual narr...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 6, 2023
by Kerri K. Greenidge
A stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. Sarah and Angelina Grimke are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 30, 2022
by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason
Savor this interior design book featuring the stunning homes of those who have made significant contributions to Black American culture-from chef Alexander Smalls to Don Cheadle and Bridgid Coulter to Danielle Brooks. From a...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 23, 2022
by Nancy Amanda Redd; illustrated by Charnelle Barlow Pinkney
A young Black boy prepares for Christmas, including his favorite tradition of adding to his collection of brown-skinned Santa Claus figurines. As festive preparations continue, the protagonist b...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 9, 2022
by Rimma Onoseta
This young adult novel explores the connection between two Nigerian sisters as they go down different paths. Sisters Cheta and Zam deal with complicated family circumstances and a strained relationship with a difficult mother. Neither path...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 2, 2022
by Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama offers a series of fresh stories and reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deepe...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 25, 2022
by Zora Neale Hurston; adapted by Ibram X. Kendi; illustrated by Loveis Wise
Antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi has adapted a short story first published by Zora Neale Hurston in 1925 into a picture book folktale. Narrated by The Mighty River, as told to a ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 18, 2022
by Alison Mariella Désir
A searing exposé on the whiteness of running. Running saved Alison Désir's life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 28, 2022
by Eden Royce
Eden Royce's debut novel is a page-turning middle grade horror story set in South Carolina in the 1960s. Beginning with the death of main character, Jezebel's beloved grandmother, readers are introduced to the traditions of the Gullah people ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 21, 2022
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an eminent Dean of American journalism, a vital voice whose work chronicled the civil rights movement and the many years since. Spanning datelines in the American South, South Africa, and points in betwee...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 14, 2022
by Elizabeth Acevedo; illustrated by Andrea Pippins
As we approach the end of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15), let's shine a light on Afro-Dominican author Elizabeth Acevedo. Acevedo is the author of The Poet X, which was the w...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 7, 2022
by Peter R. Eisenstadt
An inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders, Howard Thurman was a crucial figure in the history of African Americans in the twentieth century. This book offers a fascinating exploration of the life of thi...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 30, 2022
by Brandi Collins-Dexter
Who are Black skinheads? Brandi Collins-Dexter, a visiting fellow at the Harvard’s Kennedy School and media commentator, introduces readers to voters who gave up on the Democratic Party after Presidents Barack and Joe Bid...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 23, 2022
by Britt Hawthorne with Natasha Yglesias
This timely guide stands out for its intersectional approach to parenting. Author Britt Hawthorne states in her introduction "Many of the parenting books out there focus on individualism-- in this book, I&a...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 16, 2022
by Caleb Gayle
In this largely forgotten chapter of American history, Gayle offers a fascinating look at racial dynamics within the Creek Nation, where for a long period of time, Blacks could become formally adopted and identified fully as Creeks. “Sharp c...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 9, 2022
by Angie Thomas
This 2017 YA debut from author Angie Thomas depicts a sixteen year old, Starr Carter, dealing with the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend by the police. Starr has to navigate what it means to tell the truth about the incident while...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 2, 2022
by Katherine G. Johnson
The week of the planned launch of NASA’s Artemis I Mission seems an opportune time to promote a memoir by the brilliant mathematician Katherine Johnson. Published shortly after her death in 2020 at age 101, the memoir give...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 26, 2022
by Kacen Callender
Caroline is considered unlucky because she was born during a hurricane. She has lived her whole life on Water Island, and takes a water taxi every day to her school on St. Thomas (part of the US Virgin Islands). As a young child, she onc...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 19, 2022
by Margo Jefferson
In her memoir Negroland, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Margo Jefferson wrote insightfully about her middle-class Black childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s. In this new memoir, she describes how she escaped the p...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 12, 2022
by R. Eric Thomas
Best friends Linus and Harrison are two queer black teens living in Baltimore that are both shook when Linus receives news that his family is moving to South Carolina. Harrison, in turn, plans an epic last day in honor of Linus and their ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 5, 2022
by Laetitia Ky
Filled with beautiful color photographs, this book presents the personal story of artist and activist Laetitia Ky, known for sculpting her own hair to create powerful and joyful artwork that embraces the beauty of Black hair and style, the f...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 29, 2022
by Damien Lewis
Josephine Baker, American-born French dancer, singer, and actress, is well known as the first black woman to start in a major motion picture. This new book uncovers a little-known aspect of her life: working as a spy for the British during ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 22, 2022
by Brandy Colbert
Alberta has been the only Black girl in her small town for years, so when Edie, another Black girl, and her family move in across the street, Alberta is excited to finally have a friend who will understand that important piece of her iden...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 8, 2022
by Tem Blessed; illustrated by Mike Lariccia
Planeta Blu is a graphic novel created by our own local Amherst talent, Tem Blessed. You might know Tem from their work empowering youth or as a socially conscious hip hop artist. Along with the lush creative ta...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 24, 2022
by Trinity and DeShanna Neal; illustrated by Art Twink
My Rainbow is a touching and authentic story which centers a young Black transgender girl named Trinity, who wishes to have longer hair. She expresses to her mother that having longer hair would feel a...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 17, 2022
by Annette Gordon-Reed
Learn about our newest federal holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, grew up both proudly African American and Texan, and her powerful book is a combinati...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 10, 2022
by Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, and Michael G. Long
It's always the right time to learn more about our Queer Black leaders, but as we celebrate Pride this month, it is perhaps the ideal time to shine the light on the accomplishments of Bayar...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 3, 2022
edited by Nemata Amelia Blyden
This illustrated celebration of Black history begins with prehistory and goes to the present. In it, readers will discover the rich and complex history of the peoples of Africa, and the struggles and triumphs of Black culture...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: May 20, 2022
by Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman
In the wake of the massacre of Black Americans in Buffalo, we grieve and seek understanding. This new book offers a valuable place to start. The authors explain that the science on race is clear. Common categorie...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: May 6, 2022
by Dorothy E. Roberts
An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change. Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 29, 2022
by Viola Davis
The first African American actress to achieve an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two Tony Awards, the "triple crown of acting," Viola Davis has written a candid and inspiring memoir. From her coming of age in Rhode Island to her hard-w...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 22, 2022
by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley; art by Regis and Kahran Bethencourt
There is much to admire about this gorgeous, affirming picture book, but the photographic illustrations make it feel truly unique and timely. Regis and Kahran Bethencourt, illustrators of Th...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 15, 2022
by A. J. Baime
A much-needed new biography of an exceptionally courageous civil rights leader who is too little known today. Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 8, 2022
by Amber McBride
This debut YA novel in verse by Amber McBride was just a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, as well as the Morris Award for new authors. Moth is a teenaged girl, broken and grieving the deaths...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 18, 2022
by Elie Mystal
Elie Mystal, lawyer, analyst at MSNBC, and legal editor at The Nation, argues that Republicans are wrong when they tell you the First Amendment allows religious fundamentalists to discriminate against gay people who like cake. They're wrong ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 11, 2022
by Brittney Cooper, Chanel Craft Tanner, and Susana Morris
This is a book I wish had existed when I was a teenager. Written by three Black women who are members of the Crunk Feminist Collective, this guide to crushing girlhood is a fun and relevant way to ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 4, 2022
by Winfred Rembert; foreword by Bryan Stephenson
The art is this stunning book depicts vivid scenes from the cotton fields and chain gangs of the segregated south to the churches and night clubs of the urban north as it tells of a self-taught artist&ap...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 25, 2022
by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson
From the stunning cover art to the accessible length of the pieces included in this anthology, Recognize! draws readers into a rich portrait of what it means to be Black in America. As editors Wade Hudson and Cheryl ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 18, 2022
by Jerald Walker
How does a Black professor at a mostly white liberal arts college in Massachusetts experience and confront racism at work and in the community? Our selection for the 2022 On the Same Page Amherst community reading program - How to Make a S...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 11, 2022
by Jeff Chang and Davey D
Jeff Chang's award-winning 2005 history of hip hop has recently been remixed for a young adult audience. Trimmed down in half from its hefty 600 pages, the history has been updated to include the Black Lives Matter moveme...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 4, 2022
by Angela Davis
Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding a...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 28, 2022
by Nikki Grimes
Nikki Grimes was recently named the recipient of the 2022 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. Author of over 77 books for young people, her works include poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We love so many of h...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 14, 2022
by Brandy Colbert
The Tulsa race massacre, which took place one hundred years ago in 1921, is a part of our American history that has escaped widespread attention until recently. After watching the pilot episode of HBO's Watchmen, which starts out...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 7, 2022
by Edward Bruce Bynum
This third edition demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically - a primordial African unconscious. Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 24, 2021
by Ibi Zoboi; illustrated by Loveis Wise
Poetic text by National Book Award Finalist Ibi Zoboi and expansive art by Loveis Wise bring the seven principles of Kwanzaa to life in The People Remember. Honoring the oral tradition of Black history being passed ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 17, 2021
by Clint Smith
The New York Times has just named this book to their list of the top ten books of 2021. We strongly agree with their choice; Americans urgently need to reckon with the legacy of slavery and with the many monuments to our slave-holding past. ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 10, 2021
by Bethany C. Morrow
Set in Portland, Oregon, this young adult novel centers on 16 year old Tavia and her best friend, Effie. Tavia and Effie are both Black girls and have to deal with normal high school things like exes and classmate rivalries. But Tavia ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 26, 2021
based on a television episode written by Kathy Waugh
This beginner-reader, based on the popular PBS Kids show, features an Alaskan Native kid named Molly. Molly is joined by her best friends Trini and Tooey on many adventures in beautiful Alaska. They are ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 19, 2021
by Patricia Romney
Congratulations to local author Patricia Romney, whose new book has received glowing advance reviews. From 1970 to 1980, the Third World Women’s Alliance was one of the earliest groups advocating for what came to be known as in...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 12, 2021
by Anton Treuer
In our antiracist efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we have to also look at this country's relationship with its Indigenous communities. Both Black and Indigenous people have suffered under white-led systems of power for centur...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 29, 2021
by Safiya Umoja Noble
Safiya Umoja Noble was selected in September as one of this year’s MacArthur (Genius) Award winners for her important work about the harm being done to society by search engines. Google and similar online tools may look neut...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 22, 2021
by Tiffany Jackson
Need a spooky read to get you in the mood for Halloween? Tiffany Jackson's latest young adult novel White Smoke will do the trick. High schooler Mari is not pleased that her family uprooted from California and moved her to some ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 15, 2021
by Nicole Hodges Persley and Monica White Ndounou
Racism is present in all types of employment, including acting. Here is an acting guide specifically for people who are nonwhite. The authors’ practical advice focuses on stage audition skills but...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 8, 2021
by Louisa Jaggar & Shari Becker, illustrated by Floyd Cooper
This engaging picture book biography tells the story of James Herman Banning, the first African American pilot to complete a flight across the country in 1932. Captivated by flight from child...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 24, 2021
by Varian Johnson
Varian Johnson's The Parker Inheritance is a masterpiece of a middle grade novel wrapping mystery, history, friendship, and family into one seamless narrative. Beginning with a simple premise - a summer, two friends, and the trea...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 17, 2021
by Tiya Miles
The story behind this heart-breaking book began when Rose, an enslaved woman in 1850s South Carolina, gave her young daughter, Ashley, a sack containing among other items a braid of hair and a handful of pecans on the eve of Ashley's...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 10, 2021
by Jason Reynolds
Last year, Jason Reynolds adapted his award-winning young adult novel in verse into a graphic novel beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgordoff. This short but powerful story takes you on an elevator ride down filled with ghosts and diff...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 3, 2021
by Natalie Baszile
Harvest season is a good time to explore Black people’s connection to the land, and this beautiful volume does just that, covering the years from Emancipation to the present. In the 1920s, there were over one million black farm...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 27, 2021
by Derrick Barnes illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton
Whether you're feeling excited, anxious, curious (or all three at once!) this empowering first day of school picture book will give readers a boost of confidence. From the moment he wakes up on the f...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 20, 2021
by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is one of the leading physicists of her generation, at work on the origins of spacetime at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics. She is also one of the fewer than one hundred Black w...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 13, 2021
by Dhonielle Clayton, et al.
This YA collection of short stories written by YA superstars such as Angie Thomas, Tiffany Jackson, Nic Stone, and Nicola Yoon is super charming. The stories sweetly entangle during a NYC summer heatwave as 6 pairs of Black tee...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 6, 2021
by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar
This charming and hilarious sister duo take on the challenging topic of racism. Older sister Lacey Lamar lives in Omaha; her younger sibling Amber left their hometown to become a comedy writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 30, 2021
by Yaba Blay
For generations in this country, a black person has been commonly recognized as someone with any known Black ancestry, the “one-drop rule.” This beautiful book explores whether the social and political landscape has changed in recent times. Si...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 23, 2021
by Kwame Mbalia
If you're seeking a page-turning adventure perfect for summer reading, look no further than Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia. From the eye-catching cover to the final page, the story of relatable protagonist...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 16, 2021
by Kwame Onwuachi
In 2019, Kwame Onwuachi received much praise for his food. Food & Wine magazine named him one of its Best New Chefs, the James Beard Awards christened him Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Esquire chose him as Chef of the Year, identi...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: July 2, 2021
by Yusef Salaam
Yusef Salaam was only 15 years old in 1989 when he and four other teens were falsely accused of the brutal rape of a Central Park jogger. He was imprisoned for seven years, but the Central Park Five were not exonerated until 2002 when one o...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 17, 2021
by Saeed Jones
During Pride Month, we celebrate great memoirs like this one by a highly regarded poet who was raised in the South by a single mother. In a home where sexuality was never discussed, Saeed Jones struggled to understand what it meant to be gay...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: June 11, 2021
by George Johnson
This 2020 memoir manifesto is the perfect coming-of-age read to celebrate pride this month. Johnson explores the meaning of blackness, queerness, and toxic masculinity and he does so with honesty and vulnerability. His casual narrative vo...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: May 28, 2021
by Megan Madison & Jessica Ralli; art by Isabel Roxas
Research has shown that children begin recognizing race a few months after birth, and that talking about issues like race and gender from the age of two helps children understand what they see, incr...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: May 14, 2021
by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi
Tell Me Who You Are is a wonderful collection of stories gathered by two teens on their gap year before college. They traveled around the country and asked people how race, culture, and intersectionality had impacted their li...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: May 7, 2021
by Rebecca Carroll
Everyone interested in transracial adoption would be wise to read this new memoir. The author, a black cultural critic, recounts her story of being adopted as a young child by a white family from rural New Hampshire. She was raised in an...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 30, 2021
by James Avery Smith
Once only available to those visiting our Special Collections, this important book, published in 1999 by the New England Genealogical Society, can now be borrowed and read at home. Using tax lists, probate and land records, town record...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 23, 2021
by Trina Greene Brown
Parenting For Liberation was launched as a virtual platform in 2016 by activist-mama Trina Greene Brown. In her introduction to this guidebook she states that the blog and podcast were created to "...connect, inspire, and uplift ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 16, 2021
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
For National Poetry Month, we are pleased to highlight this volume of poetry written about Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Award-winning poet Jeffers spent fifteen years research...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 2, 2021
by Julian Bond
How lucky were the students at Harvard and other American universities who were able to take a class with Julian Bond. Along with being a famed civil rights activist, author, chairman of the NAACP, and Georgia state representative and senato...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 26, 2021
by Ashley Bryan
Based on an original estate-appraisal document from 1828, Ashley Bryan's poetry gives voices to 11 enslaved individuals, imagining not only their daily lives but their hopes for the future. While the document that inspired these po...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 19, 2021
by Breeshia Wade
The author, a Black end-of-life caregiver and chaplain, looks at the significance of grief to Black people. In particular she connects sorrow to the ongoing trauma of systemic racism. She encourages readers to attend to their grief so that...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 12, 2021
by Angie Thomas
Concrete Rose is the prequel to the number one New York Times best-seller, The Hate U Give. Set 17 years in the past, it follows Starr's father, Maverick, as he navigates growing up while raising an infant son and having to make di...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 25, 2021
edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
This bestseller marks a milestone in the study of African American history. It is the result of research conducted for the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 18, 2021
by Rita L. Hubbard; illustrated by Oge Mora
This picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Mary Walker, who learned to read at the age of 116. Born enslaved in 1848, Walker was emancipated as a teenager, and was gifted a Bible that she longed to ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 3, 2021
by Resmaa Menakem
Resmaa Menakem approaches the problem of racism from his perspective as a therapist. He explains that racism is embedded in the bodies of blacks and whites in this country. Blacks experience everyday threats and respond by fighting, fleei...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 26, 2021
by Julius Lester
On what would have been his 82nd birthday, we celebrate a distinguished Amherst author, civil rights activist, professor, musician, and photographer. Julius Lester wrote 31 award-winning children’s books as well as nonfiction and fiction f...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 8, 2021
by J. Drew Lanham
In honor of National Bird Day (January 5), we have chosen a remarkable memoir published in 2016 by an African-American birder and naturalist. The Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, J. Drew Lanham has writte...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 7, 2021
edited by Ibi Zoboi
This 2019 anthology of young adult short stories is a wonderful offering of modern Black voices. Featuring 16 excellent Black authors such as Nic Stone and Jason Reynolds, my favorite part of reading this was the diversity of stories to...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 28, 2020
by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
This highly acclaimed new book is winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 15, 2020
A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor by Adam Smyer
How do you write something humorous about racism in America? If you are Adam Smyer, an attorney, martial artist, and mediocre bass player,...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 15, 2020
by Kacen Callender
This bittersweet middle grade book takes us to the bayous of small town Louisiana where homophobia and racism are very real things that twelve year old Kingston James must deal with. Mourning the sudden death of his older brother, King s...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 1, 2020
by Michele Harper
The author of this eloquent memoir is an ER doctor and a practitioner of yoga and meditation. Here she recounts how she overcame racist colleagues, a background of domestic violence, and the trauma of seeing suffering people every day at ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 20, 2020
by Kamala D. Harris
The results of the presidential election are now acknowledged by most Americans, and for the first time a woman of color was on the winning ticket! Kamala Harris, the daughter of an economist from Jamaica and a cancer researcher from In...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 20, 2020
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; adapted by Jean Mendoza & Debbie Reese
In our antiracist efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we have to also look at this country's relationship with its Indigenous communities. Both Black and Indigenous people have suffered ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 4, 2020
by Ruha Benjamin
An African American Studies scholar turns a bright light on technology, illuminating how racism and inequality underpin its newest creations. From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to unders...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 29, 2020
by William A. Darity, Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen
Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. William Darity, an economist at Duke University and an Amherst native, and folklorist Kirsten Mullen toge...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 14, 2020
by N. K. Jemisin
Congratulations to N. K. Jemisin for being named one of this year’s MacArthur “geniuses!” The MacArthur Foundation describes her as “a speculative fiction writer exploring deeply human questions about structural racism, environmental crise...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 13, 2020
by Justina Ireland
This 2018 young adult historical fiction by Justina Ireland is the perfect spooky October read to get you in the mood for Halloween. Why? Because there are zombies! Zombies! Set just after the Civil War, this is a fun and action-packed s...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 29, 2020
by Leah Penniman
At a time when Americans are closely examining all aspects of our society for racism, those of us interested in food issues would do well to start with this remarkable book. Author Leah Penniman, the 2019 recipient of the James Beard Found...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 25, 2020
by Zetta Elliott; illustrated by Loveis Wise
Turn to the Acknowledgements section in the final pages of this short 100 page collection of poetry-activism and you will see that the author knowingly divines that there will be more black women to mourn and re...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 16, 2020
by Martha S. Jones
According to conventional wisdom, American women’s campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this women’s movement was an overwhelmingly ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 11, 2020
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Fifth grade student Dèja is starting the year at a new school in Brooklyn after her family moves into a shelter. Although the first day is filled with challenges, it is also filled with promise: a teacher who connects to her student...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 11, 2020
by Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She earned her M.F.A. at UMass Amherst. Memorial Drive is her first book that is not poetry. This memoir was written because, in the aut...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 28, 2020
by Rita Garcia Williams
One Crazy Summer follows the three Gaither sisters as they travel from Brooklyn to Oakland in the summer of 1968, where they hope to get to know the mother who left them. Delphine, the oldest sister, takes on many roles in her famil...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach; foreword by Elijah Wald
We are excited to offer this new weekly feature and to share a wide array of books about Black lives in America. It seems appropriate to begin with a new book by a well-known Amherst res...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Jamey Christoph
This picture book biography introduces readers to the life and work of multi-talented artist Gordon Parks. It traces Parks’ path to becoming one of the most important photographers of the 20th ce...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell
The nation is mourning the death of a civil rights hero and “conscience of the Congress,” Representative John Lewis. Adults and young adults wanting to know more about Lewis and the civil rights mo...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Shayla Lawson
Writing in a fierce and humorous voice, Shayla Lawson provides a memoir in essays that is also a celebration of black women’s lives and culture. She knows the richness and resilience of black girl culture (its irony and rebellion!) and the...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Anne Monahan
Horace Pippin, sometimes described as an American Henri Rousseau, was a disabled veteran (WWI) without formal art training who began painting in his 40s and soon became famous in the art world. His works depict WWI, black families, Abraham ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week