The Best African American Books Yet etc.!

Discover the best African American books of all time! Explore powerful stories, influential authors, and must-read classics that celebrate Black culture, history, and excellence.

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ID: 0684841436
(Type: books)
The Darkest Child Cover
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The Darkest Child

by Delores Phillips

Fourteen-year-old Tangy Mae tells of the brutal physical and mental abuse that her mother inflicts on her and her ten siblings.
Nervous Cover
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Nervous

 

No summary available.
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ID: 0060842423
(Type: books)
Midwives Cover
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Midwives

by Chris Bohjalian

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • This modern classic from the author of The Flight Attendant is a compulsively readable novel that explores questions of human responsibility that are as fundamental to our society now as they were when the book was first published. A selection of Oprah's original Book Club that has sold more than two million copies. On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of stroke. But what if—as Sibyl's assistant later charges—the patient wasn't already dead? The ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt, forcing Sibyl to face the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience. Exploring the complex and emotional decisions surrounding childbirth, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!
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ID: 1575666073
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ID: 1575669129
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ID: 0525947965
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Push Cover
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Push

by Sapphire

"Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," directed by Lee Daniels and written by Damien Paul GRAND JURY PRIZE and AUDIENCE AWARD winner at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival Relentless, remorseless, and inspirational, this "horrific, hope-filled story" (Newsday) is certain to haunt a generation of readers. Precious Jones, 16 years old and pregnant by her father with her second child, meets a determined and highly radical teacher who takes her on a journey of transformation and redemption.
The Coldest Winter Ever Cover
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The Coldest Winter Ever

by Sister Souljah

The daughter of a Brooklyn drug lord, cocky Winter Santiaga must use all her power and charm to protect her position when war breaks out between rival gangs. Reprint.
No Disrespect Cover
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No Disrespect

by Sister Souljah

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, rapper, and activist—Sister Souljah uses her passionate voice to deliver what is at once a fiercely candid autobiography and a survival manual for any Black woman determined to keep her heart open and her integrity intact in modern America. Each chapter of No Disrespect is devoted to someone who made a difference in Sister Souljah’s life—from the mother who raised her to the men who educated (and mis-educated) her about love—and each bares a controversial truth about the Black condition in America: the disintegration of families; the unremitting combat between the sexes; and the thousand and one ways in which racism continues to circumscribe how Black people see themselves and treat one another. The result is an outspoken and often courageous rejoinder to the pieties of race, class, and gender by a writer who is at once wise, bawdy, brutally funny, and as sensitive a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.
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ID: 1556520743
(Type: books)
Dying in the Dark Cover
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Dying in the Dark

by Valerie Wilson Wesley

Valerie Wilson Wesley’s Tamara Hayle mystery series featuring Newark, New Jersey’s number one private investigator are loved for their smart, sexy protagonist who “has a way with a wisecrack that is positively lethal” (Washington Post). Now in Dying in the Dark, Hayle is entrenched in a sinister investigation that will demand her best detective work yet. Tamara Hayle’s past has come back to haunt her–literally. She’s been plagued by terrifying dreams about Celia Jones, an old friend whose walk on the wild side led her to a horrible death. Celia’s teenage son, Cecil, begs Tamara to find his mother’s killer . . . only to end up dead himself, stabbed through the heart. The search for Celia and her son’s killer pulls Tamara deep into her friend’s troubled love life, where everyone adored her but somebody held a murderous grudge. There’s her bullying thug of an ex-husb∧ a handsome ex-lover who woos Tamara with charm and lies; and an angry, jealous woman who claims that Celia broke her heart. And those were just the obvious people with axes to grind. Despite her better judgment and the admonitions of the police department, Tamara refuses to back away from the mystery surrounding her old friend’s death and the tragedy that met her son. All clues lead to the past Tamara shared with Celia Jones, and Tamara fears that that past will threaten her own son. But she uncovers more than she bargained for–and unearths secrets someone would kill to keep in the shadows.
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ID: 0451204948
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ID: 0399143181
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ID: 0399146172
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ID: 0380729105
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The Wake of the Wind Cover
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The Wake of the Wind

by J. California Cooper

A dramatic and thought-provoking novel of one family's triumph in the face of the hardships and challenges of the post-Civil War South. The Wake of the Wind, J. California Cooper's third novel, is her most penetrating look yet at the challenges that generations of African Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home for themselves and their families. Set in Texas in the waning years of the Civil War, the novel tells the dramatic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When Emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and the extended family they create from other slaves who are also looking for a home and a future, set out in search of a piece of land they can call their own. In the face of constant threats, they manage not only to survive but to succeed--their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. Lifee and Mor pass their intelligence, determination, and talents along to their children, the next generation to surge forward. At once tragic and triumphant, this is an epic story that captures with extraordinary authenticity the most important struggle of the last hundred years.
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ID: 0671735608
(Type: books)
Some People, Some Other Place Cover
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Some People, Some Other Place

by J. California Cooper

A multigenerational saga chronicles the intertwined lives of the multi-ethnic residents of Dream Street in a town called Place, following one family from the Deep South of 1895, to rural Oklahoma and the industrial Midwest.
In Search of Satisfaction Cover
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In Search of Satisfaction

by J. California Cooper

With In Search Of Satisfaction, Cooper gracefully portrays men and women, some good and others wickedly twisted, caught in their individual thickets of want and need on a once-grand plantation. In Yoville, "a legal town-ship founded by the very rich for their own personal use," a freed slave named Josephus fathers two daughters, Ruth and Yinyang, by two different women. His desire to give Yinyang and himself money and opportunities oozes through the family like an elixir. In seeking the legacy left by their father, Ruth and Yinyang pull each other, their families, and their Yoville neighbors into a vortex of ever-powerful emotion.
Whoreson Cover
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Whoreson

by Donald Goines

The gripping story of Whoreson James, the son of a beautiful black prostitute and an unknown john. Corrupted by the violent Ghetto world, at the age of sixteen he is a fully fledged pimp: cold blooded and ruthless. A startling insight into the mean streets of the tough inner city by America's number one author of the genre.
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ID: 0870679953
(Type: books)
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ID: 087067997X
(Type: books)