Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Appears on these lists
Summary
"When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call and the only one on the property at the time of death. As far as the state is concerned, it's an open and shut case. Jack Lee, born and raised in Freeman County, knows that every man deserves a solid defense and agrees to...
Author
Summary
"In the summer of 1974, a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of Southie, the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart. 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...
Author
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Formats
Summary
"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...
Author
Lexile Measure
910L
Appears on list
Summary
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of...
Author
Summary
When Springville residents--at least the ones still alive--are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it. An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She...
Author
Appears on these lists
Summary
From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. The story that I thought was my life didn't start on the day I was born. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a...
Author
Pub. Date
[2023]
Summary
"In this magisterial, intimate novel, debut writer Lakiesha Carr captures the essence of Black womanhood, richly articulating the private lives of a cast of women from East Texas, illuminating the grief that is carried inside them, as well as the bonds of love that both define them and give them strength. A middle-aged colon hydrotherapist feeds the slots at a secret parlor, fighting memories of gendered violence with plastic cups of Crown Royal....
Author
Appears on list
Summary
"A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar:...
Author
Pub. Date
[2021]
Summary
In Jason Mott's Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott's novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters' stories build and build...
Author
Pub. Date
[2023]
Summary
A lot is up in the air in Naomi Henry's her spot as a varsity cheer flier, her classmates' reaction to the debut of her natural hair, and her crush on the guy who's always been like a brother to her. With so much uncertainty, she feels lucky to have a best friend like Kylie to keep her grounded. After all, they're practically sisters--Naomi's mom took care of Kylie and her twin brother for years. But then a video of Kylie calling the cops on two Black...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Summary
A true story of determination and groundbreaking achievement follows eighth grade African American spelling champion MacNolia Cox, who left Akron, Ohio, in 1936 to compete in the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., only to be met with prejudice and discrimination.
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Summary
'How the Word is Passed' is Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nations collective history, and ourselves.
Author
Pub. Date
2022
Lexile Measure
670L
Summary
"Javari knew that West Virginia would be different from his home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. But his first day at STEM Camp in a little Appalachian town is still a shock. Though run-ins with the police are just the same here. Not good. Javari will learn a lot about science ... And also about rich people, racism, and hidden agendas. But it's Cricket, a local boy, budding activist, and occasional thief, who will show him a different side of the holler--and...