A Chorus Rises: A Song Below Water Novel by Bethany C. Morrow
A Chorus Rises: A Song Below Water Novel by Bethany C. Morrow
Teen & Young Adult Fiction | Reading age: 13 – 18 years
A Chorus Rises is a timely confrontation of the evolving nature of popularity in a society that chooses “exceptions” and rewards “model minorities.”
Meet Naema Bradshaw: a beautiful Eloko, once Portland-famous, now infamous, as she navigates a personal and public reckoning where confronting the limits of her privilege will show Naema what her magic really is, and who it makes her.
Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw has it all: she’s famous, stylish, gorgeous–and she’s an Eloko, a charismatic person gifted with a melody that people adore. Everyone loves her–until she’s cast as the villain who exposed a Siren to the whole world.
Dragged by the media, and canceled by her fans, no one understands her side: not her boyfriend, not her friends, not even her fellow Eloko. Villified by those closest to her, Naema heads to the Southwest where she is determined to stage a comeback… to her family, her real self, and the truth about her magic. What she finds is a new community in a flourishing group of online fans who support her.
At first, it feels like it used to–the fandom, the adoration, the community that takes her side–but when her online advocates start targeting other Black girls, Naema will realize that–for Black girls like her–even the privilege of fame has its limits. And only Naema can discover the true purpose of her power, and how to use it.
“A watery and melodic crossroads of the real and the mythic, A Chorus Rises lures readers with its seductive and beautifully Black siren song. An enthralling tale of Black girl magic and searing social commentary ready to rattle the bones.” ―Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles series
All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel by S. A. Cosby
The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction.” —Washington Post.
After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county.
Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies.
Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever it leads. But no one expected he would unearth a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon.
Now, Titus must pull off the impossible: stay true to his instincts, prevent outright panic, and investigate a shocking crime in a small town where everyone knows everyone yet secrets flourish. All while also breaking up backroads bar fights and being forced to protect racist Confederate pride marchers.
For a Black man wearing a police uniform in the American South, that’s no easy feat. But Charon is Titus’s home and his heart, and he won’t let the darkness overtake it. Even as it threatens to consume him…
Black Joy by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
With deeply personal and uplifting essays in the vein of Black Girls Rock, You Are Your Best Thing, and I Really Needed This Today, this is “a necessary testimony on the magic and beauty of our capacity to live and love fully and out loud” (Kerry Washington).
When Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts wrote an essay on Black joy for The Washington Post, she had no idea just how deeply it would resonate. But the outpouring of positive responses affirmed her own lived experience: that Black joy is not just a weapon of resistance, it is a tool for resilience.
With this book, Tracey aims to gift her community with a collection of lyrical essays about the way joy has evolved, even in the midst of trauma, in her own life. Detailing these instances of joy in the context of Black culture allows us to recognize the power of Black joy as a resource to draw upon, and to challenge the one-note narratives of Black life as solely comprised of trauma and hardship.
“Lewis-Giggetts etches a stunning personal map that follows in her ancestors’ footsteps and highlights their ability to take control of situational heartbreak and tragedy and make something better out of it….A simultaneously gorgeous and heartbreaking read” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Call Me a Woman: On Our Way to Equality and Peace by Laurie Levin
It’s time to raise the bar. There are more months in the year than countries in the world where women and men have equal rights. This imbalance is the cause of the most pressing challenges we face today.
Angry about sexism and misogyny and what you personally have endured? Afraid the world won’t get its act together in time to save itself?
Call Me A Woman combines Laurie Levin’s personal story, including multiple sexual assaults, years of research, personal interviews, global studies, and activism to ramp up awareness and change perceptions of how we view what happens to girls and women world-wide.
Equality can become our reality when each of us comes to terms with how we uphold inequality. The long-standing domination of men over women is reflected in our language, traditions, choices, votes, and what we do and don’t pay attention to.
Call Me A Woman is a call to action and roadmap that will speed our way to gender equality and a more peaceful world.
After all, women are half of every race, religion, ethnic group, economic class, and nation.
Become part of the solution and create a safer and more just world for girls and women. When women rise, we take the world with us.
Sankofa: A Novel by Chibundu Onuzo
Named a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, and Time • Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Month by Goodreads, PopSugar, PureWow, LitHub, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and Buzzfeed
A woman wondering who she really is goes in search of a father she never knew—only to find something far more complicated than she ever expected—in this “stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong” (Time).
Anna is at a stage of her life when she’s beginning to wonder who she really is. In her 40s, she has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother—the only parent who raised her—is dead.
Searching through her mother’s belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive…
When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family’s hidden roots.
Examining freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place.
Swirl Girl: Coming of Race in the USA by TaRessa Stovall
SWIRL GIRL: Coming of Race in the USA reveals how a hard-headed Mixed-race “Black Power Flower Child” battles society—and sometimes her closest loved ones—to forge her identity on her own terms.
As the USA undergoes its own racial growing pains, from the 1968 riots after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, to the historic 2008 election of the nation’s first Biracially Black president, TaRessa Stovall challenges popular stereotypes and fights nonstop pressures to contort, disguise, or deny her uncomfortable truths.
Early Praise for Swirl Girl: Coming of Race in the USA by TaRessa Stovall
Zjien Relician says:
TaRessa Stovall, thank you for baring your soul, telling your story…and concentrically, the story of so many others…of us. You grabbed our hands and hearts, and with unwavering and unabashed conviction, traversed the turbulent and often unrelenting waters of racial identity, racism, discrimination, self actualization, externalized self loath of others, forgiveness, and transparent self reflection. It was an emotional roller coaster; but it was so worth it! EVERYONE: If you have not read this book as of yet, I strongly suggest you click the link, and get you some. You will not regret it!
Janice Liddell says:
TaRessa Stovall’s SWIRL GIRL: Coming of Race in the USA is a juicy must-read memoir that hits all the touch points of growing up as a mixed-race person in America, especially a mixed-race woman. This work should actually be required reading for interracial parents or prospective parents. It is both a preparatory and cautionary tale that seeks to navigate the potential difficulties and obstacles that unsuspecting parents can’t even envision for the future of their biracial offspring.
While Stovall recognizes that no story will be identical to hers, she nevertheless offers an unbridled examination and expose’ of complexities related to racial and cultural identities; hence, the work can serve as an understanding companion to biracial youth seeking to find their way through the maze of prejudice, biases, confusion and/or plain misunderstanding. But the memoir is also relevant for us “single-race” folks who likely never had a clue what it was REALLY like to be a ”mulatto”, a “half-breed”, a “mongrel”, a “mutt” in such a hyper-bigoted environment as the US of A. Whether we are on the white or the black side of the racial divide, we leave the book with a more sympathetic understanding of what it’s like to straddle that racial fence in a society that is almost as racially polarized in the 21st century as it was in the 19th.
Stovall’s language is lyrical and tight with crisp images of people, places and things that have affected her own development as a politically conscious AND Afrocentric biracial woman. While being laser-specific to the realities of the mixed-race population, Stovall’s messages throughout the book are also applicable to all of us who are forging stronger identity politics in our respective communities, be they racial, ageist, cultural, gender or whatever. This is likely a personal confrontation with these issues that is long over-due.
Howard Weisberg says:
Where do I begin!? I started to do my normal speed-read, but stopped after page 101 an hour later. I had to go back and read every word. Page 101 spoke to me as a white person. It should speak to everyone, no matter their color. Now, after reading the whole 202 pages, one word at a time, I have so much praise for this book and its author, that I cannot write it all here. It would take another book to comment on it all!! So, whether it’s Auntie Ozzie (Rosalyn), Kelly (Dad), Auntie Shirley, Big Ernie, Ms. Gonzalez, Greg, et.al., I was mesmerized! I lived in and out of that world. Of course, I’m TaRessa’s white cousin, but that doesn’t mean I only felt emotions because we’re related. I could not miss the message to all of humanity, and the help this book could bring to people of all skin tones! To summarize, TaRessa nailed it!
S.M. Delacroix says:
One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book was the fact that Ms. Stovall wove information about the census into almost every chapter. But I am getting ahead of myself. First of all, I have to stop calling the book Swirl Girl. The proper name of the book is Swirl Girl: Coming of Race in the USA. This is important because the book is about more than people being “down with the swirl” or being of mixed parentage/heritage.
Ms. Stovall expertly discusses the social, political and sometime economic ramifications of being Black and Jewish (or “Blewish”) as a child, a teenager, and as an adult. She talks about what happens to her as she attempts (and ultimately succeeds) to define herself, for herself.
The information about the U.S. Census intrigued me because I am fascinated by how people’s identity (both outwardly defined and self-described) are altered by societal events. I anticipated seeing how the census changed over time and how those changes connected to the author’s experiences.
I was impressed by the honestly and bluntness of her writing. I appreciated the fact that she called the U.S. and all of us folks (Black, white, Latinx and otherwise) on our MESS tied to being members of the identity police.
The short of it is that I love the book and I will use it in my sociology courses when possible. I will recommend it everyone, but especially to people who have children and grandchildren who are mixed, because whether Ms. Stovall knows it or not, she offers a blueprint for us “outsiders” into the world of the Swirl Girl (and boy) who are Coming of Race in the USA.
Purchase Swirl Girl: Coming of Race in the USA by TaRessa Stovall published by Alchemy Media Publishing Company, is available now at www.taressastovall.com, and on Amazon.
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).
Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson).
Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.
A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.
The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree by Nice Leng’ete
An “elegant and inspiring memoir” by the human rights activist who changed the minds of her elders, reformed traditions from the inside, and is creating a better future for girls and women throughout Africa (Sonia Faleiro, New York Times).
Nice Leng`ete was raised in a Maasai village in Kenya. In 1998, when Nice was six, her parents fell sick and died, and Nice and her sister Soila were taken in by their father’s brother, who had little interest in the girls beyond what their dowries might fetch. Fearing “the cut” (female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes deadly ritualistic surgery), which was the fate of all Maasai women, Nice and Soila climbed a tree to hide.
Nice hoped to find a way to avoid the cut forever, but Soila understood it would be impossible. But maybe if one of the sisters submitted, the other would be spared. After Soila chose to undergo the surgery, sacrificing herself to save Nice, their lives diverged. Soila married, dropped out of school, and had children–all in her teenage years–while Nice postponed receiving the cut, continued her education, and became the first in her family to attend college.
Supported by Amref, Nice used visits home to set an example for what an uncut Maasai woman can achieve. Other women listened, and the elders finally saw the value of intact, educated girls as the way of the future. The village has since ended FGM entirely, and Nice continues the fight to end FGM throughout Africa, and the world.
Nice’s journey from “heartbroken child and community outcast, to leader of the Maasai” is an inspiration and a reminder that one person can change the world–and every girl is worth saving.
The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel of World War II by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.
Could you find the courage to do what’s right in a world on fire?
An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman’s life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war . . . a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion.
Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?
Publishers Weekly Editorial Review for The Last Thing You Surrender
Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, turns again to America’s fraught history of race relations in this unflinching, gritty WWII saga. It centers on a trio of finely drawn characters, two black and one white, all from Alabama, whose worlds collide because of Pearl Harbor.
Marine Private George Simon—wealthy, religious, white—survives the sinking of his ship because Eric Gordy, a black messman, rescues him. Eric dies, and while George recuperates, he pays a condolence call on Eric’s widow, Thelma. She and her brother, Luther Hayes, a bitter alcoholic, are living with the memory of their parents’ lynching 20 years earlier.
George and Thelma begin a correspondence after he returns to active duty; she takes a job in a shipyard. Luther, deciding this is a white man’s war, tries to evade the draft but ends up serving with a tank battalion in Europe. George endures horrific conditions in the Pacific as Thelma faces growing racial hostility at work, culminating in a brutal moment of violence that compels her to make a difficult decision.
While remaining true to his characters, Pitts brings the story lines to realistic conclusions even as he holds out hope for the future, resulting in a polished, affecting novel.
About the Author
Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who pens one of the most popular newspaper columns in America, weighing in twice weekly on controversies of race, gender, politics and popular culture. He is the author of a series of critically-acclaimed novels, including “Freeman,” “Before I Forget” and his latest, “The Last Thing You Surrender.” Website: http://leonardpittsjr.com
The Last Thing You Surrender by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Thing-You-Surrender-Novel/dp/1572842458
Barnes & Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-thing-you-surrender-leonard-pitts-jr/1128941167
The Pride of an African Migrant by Massocki Ma Massocki
The Pride of an African Migrant: In Remembrance of Jimmy Mubenga, a Martyr of Globalisation, Murdered by the UK Border Regime on a British Airways Flight to Angola by Massocki Ma Massocki
Why was this book written and what is the mission behind this project?
The Pride of an African Migrant outlines barbaric acts of torture to which African asylum seekers are being subjected to in the United Kingdom.
The book was written in remembrance of Jimmy Mubenga, an African asylum seeker who was tortured and killed by the UK border regime at London Heathrow Airport on a British Airways flight to Angola on October 12, 2010, after resisting his deportation.
Having peacefully protested against the killing of Mubenga, a fellow asylum seeker, Massocki Ma Massocki, the author, was arrested and detained naked in a cold cell. After some time, even the place he was staying at was set on fire, ready to kill him.
Despite this, each year, the terrifying Mediterranean Sea and the dreadful Sahara desert claim the lives of at least 5,000 African migrants en route to Europe. And those who have conquered the sea and the desert still have to survive, in the land of Europe, the barbarism and inhumanity of immigration officers.
The Pride of an African Migrant aims to fight xenophobia and promote harmonious coexistence between all living beings, in particular, between migrants and Europeans, and heighten people’s compassion and wisdom, which are imperative for world peace. The book’s goal is also to make Africans aspiring to migrate to the European Union or the US be more informed of the issues related to their plans so that they can be better prepared.
The Pride of an African Migrant is a frank expository conversation for today and of all time. It is a book that every immigration player should read—from potential migrants to diplomatic staff, immigration officials, foreign policy advisors… every person with a migrant family member or neighbour.
PUBLISHER’S REVIEW
‘Where is the human in migration? In an age of immigration as political posturing and propaganda, Massocki presents a collage of dreams, journeys, tears, wills… even death. This book is an intimate retelling of lives and stories that strips migrants of convenient agenda-driven labels, baring them stark to the reader. With blood running in their veins, vulnerable to fear, driven by ambition—the emotive human is at the centre of Massocki’s latest work.
The Pride of an African Migrant is a frank expository conversation for today and of all time. It is a book that every immigration player should read—from potential migrants to diplomatic staff, immigration officials, foreign policy advisors… every person with a migrant family member or neighbour.’ —Pierced Rock Press
WHERE TO PURCHASE BOOKS
The Pride of an African Migrant: In Remembrance of Jimmy Mubenga, a Martyr of Globalisation, Murdered by the UK Border Regime on a British Airways Flight to Angola by Massocki Ma Massocki will be published via Ingramspark and will be available and will be available at Ingramspark, Amazon, Kobo, Applebooks, etc…
Purchase books from the Pierced Rock Press publisher’s website: www.piercedrockpress.com
The Pride of an African Migrant: In Remembrance of Jimmy Mubenga, a Martyr of Globalisation, Murdered by the UK Border Regime on a British Airways Flight to Angola by Massocki Ma Massocki is available on Amazon:
Paperback:
https://www.amazon.com/Pride-African-Migrant-Remembrance-Globalisation/dp/995646502X
Hardcover:
https://www.amazon.com/Pride-African-Migrant-Remembrance-Globalisation/dp/9956465011
https://www.amazon.com/Pride-African-Migrant-Remembrance-Globalisation/dp/9956465011/
Then They Came for Mine by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
Then They Came for Mine: Healing from the Trauma of Racial Violence by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts
Black Americans’ resilience during centuries of racially-motivated violence is beyond remarkable. But continuing to endure this harm allows for generations of trauma to fester and grow. Healing has to be the priority going forward.
For decades, Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts clung to her upbringing in the church, believing that racial reconciliation would come through faith and discipline, being respectable, and doing what’s right. But when her cousin became the victim of a white supremacist’s hateful rampage, her body and soul said, “no more.”
The trauma of America’s racial history, wreaking havoc on not only Black and Brown folk but white people too, in its own way, will not be alleviated without the will to face it head-on. We must name the dehumanization that plagues us, practice truth-telling and self-care, and make space for our vulnerability–to do the hard work of healing ourselves and our communities.
This book is written with that healing in mind. It unpacks how American systems and institutions enable the kind of violence we’ve seen connected to white supremacy and nationalism. It examines the way media has created a desensitization to violence against Black bodies.
It outlines what it looks like for a person who claims to follow Jesus to be anti-racist. But more than anything, it offers a blueprint for healing and reconciliation that includes the necessity of white people untangling from an ancestral mandate of colonization and false notions of supremacy, and Black and Brown people reckoning with the impact of trauma and feeling free to grieve in whatever way grief shows up.
They Can’t Take Your Name: A Novel by Robert Justice
Laced with atmospheric poetry and literature and set in the heart of Denver’s black community, this gripping crime novel pits three characters in a race against time to thwart a gross miscarriage of justice—and a crooked detective who wreaks havoc…with deadly consequences.
What happens to a deferred dream—especially when an innocent man’s life hangs in the balance? Langston Brown is running out of time and options for clearing his name and escaping death row.
Wrongfully convicted of the gruesome Mother’s Day Massacre, he prepares to face his death. His final hope for salvation lies with his daughter, Liza, an artist who dreamed of a life of music and song but left the prestigious Juilliard School to pursue a law degree with the intention of clearing her father’s name. Just as she nears success, it’s announced that Langston will be put to death in thirty days.
In a desperate bid to find freedom for her father, Liza enlists the help of Eli Stone, a jazz club owner she met at the classic Five Points venue, The Roz. Devastated by the tragic loss of his wife, Eli is trying to find solace by reviving the club…while also wrestling with the longing to join her in death.
Everyone has a dream that might come true—but as the dark shadows of the past converge, could Langston, Eli, and Liza be facing a danger that could shatter those dreams forever?