African American Studies

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history....

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present....

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

First time on audio! The timeless Pulitzer Prize winner, the first in an epic two-volume biography that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era, narrated by Emmy and Tony Award winner Courtney B. Vance.

A blueprint. A bible. What Sun Tzu’s Art of War was to ancient China, Pimp is to the streets. As real as you can get without jumping in, this is the story of Iceberg Slim’s life as he saw, felt, tasted, and smelled it.

Dear Black Girls is a necessary and meaningful exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in America today—and a rallying cry to lift up women and girls everywhere....

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be."....

A self-care guidebook full of activities for Black men everywhere pursuing joy, creating connections, confronting racism, and working through intergenerational trauma: This is your guide to wellness and self-discovery.

This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time....

A groundbreaking look at how Black visionaries—from Wall Street to Lagos and beyond—are reimagining capitalism to benefit the needs of Black people and, ultimately, everyone.

This is the first book to define and explore Black fatigue, the intergenerational impact of systemic racism on the physical and psychological health of Black people - and explain why and how society needs to collectively do more to combat its pernicious effects....

An unapologetic exploration of the Black mental health crisis - and a comprehensive road map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system....

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on 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 nation's history.

How Virgil Abloh’s iconic rise to the top of the fashion industry embodied a groundbreaking transformation of the relationship between who we are and what we wear.

The Color of Water touches listeners of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son....

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.

From the governor of Maryland, the true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world....

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy....

Prioritize your well-being with these 150 self-care exercises designed specifically to help Black women revitalize their outlook on life, improve their mental health, eliminate stress, and self-advocate....

An unapologetic look into the factors that have caused so many Blacks to think and act in the negative way they do towards themselves and others....

In Self-Love for Black Women, Nya Love takes you on a transformative journey, offering practical tools and strategies to help you overcome past traumas, improve relationships, and cultivate unshakable self-worth....

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives....

This monumental biography by David Levering Lewis—eight years in the research and writing—treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how W.E.B. Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator.

A groundbreaking look at how Black visionaries—from Wall Street to Lagos and beyond—are reimagining capitalism to benefit the needs of Black people and, ultimately, everyone.

Make It Ours is at once a remarkable biography of a singular creative force and a powerful meditation on fashion and race, taste and exclusivity, genius and luxury. With access to Abloh’s family, friends, collaborators, and contemporaries, and featuring a cast of fascinating characters ranging from visionary Black designers like Ozwald Boateng to Abloh’s mercurial but critical employer and mentor Kanye West, Givhan weaves a spellbinding tale of a young man’s rise amid a cultural moment that would upend a century’s worth of ideas about luxury and taste.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.

"Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly." So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as "rage," and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms.