INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Searing. Powerful. Needed." —Oprah

“Sometimes a single story can change the world. Unbound is one of those stories. Tarana’s words are a testimony to liberation and love.” —Brené Brown

From the founder and activist behind one of the largest movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the "me too" movement, Tarana Burke debuts a powerful memoir about her own journey to saying those two simple yet infinitely powerful words—me too—and how she brought empathy back to an entire generation in one of the largest cultural events in American history.

Tarana didn’t always have the courage to say "me too." As a child, she reeled from her sexual assault, believing she was responsible. Unable to confess what she thought of as her own sins for fear of shattering her family, her soul split in two. One side was the bright, intellectually curious third generation Bronxite steeped in Black literature and power, and the other was the bad, shame ridden girl who thought of herself as a vile rule breaker, not as a victim. She tucked one away, hidden behind a wall of pain and anger, which seemed to work...until it didn’t.

Tarana fought to reunite her fractured self, through organizing, pursuing justice, and finding community. In her debut memoir she shares her extensive work supporting and empowering Black and brown girls, and the devastating realization that to truly help these girls she needed to help that scared, ashamed child still in her soul. She needed to stop running and confront what had happened to her, for Heaven and Diamond and the countless other young Black women for whom she cared. They gave her the courage to embrace her power. A power which in turn she shared with the entire world. Through these young Black and brown women, Tarana found that we can only offer empathy to others if we first offer it to ourselves.

Unbound is the story of an inimitable woman’s inner strength and perseverance, all in pursuit of bringing healing to her community and the world around her, but it is also a story of possibility, of empathy, of power, and of the leader we all have inside ourselves. In sharing her path toward healing and saying "me too," Tarana reaches out a hand to help us all on our own journeys.

The #1 New York Times bestseller

From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders, comes a book about the core truths that unite us and how best to act upon them.  

"A life story that genuinely entrances." —Los Angeles Times

“An engaging read that provides insights into the influences of [Harris’s] life...Revealing and even endearing.” —San Francisco Chronicle

The daughter of immigrants and civil rights activists, Vice President Kamala Harris was raised in an Oakland, California, community that cared deeply about social justice. As she rose to prominence as one of the political leaders of our time, her experiences would become her guiding light as she grappled with an array of complex issues and learned to bring a voice to the voiceless. 

In The Truths We Hold, she reckons with the big challenges we face together. Drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values as we confront the great work of our day.

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. 

“[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware.”—The New York Times 

In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published. 

These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . ”

From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir.

When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death.

Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive.

No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.

"Katherine Johnson was 97 years old in 2015, when the world caught up to her. That year, President Barack Obama awarded her the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom-the nation's highest civilian honor-for her pioneering work decades earlier as a mathematician on NASA's first flights into space. The next year, a blockbuster movie, Hidden Figures, told the world the story of the West Area Computing unit, where Katherine worked as a human computer among an unheralded cadre of African American female mathematicians. In the days before IBM introduced its first electronic computers and at a time when African Americans were subjected to inferior treatment and status, these brilliant women were among those doing the computations that helped send the United States' first manned spaceflights to the moon. Even among such a talented group, Katherine stood out. Astronaut John Glenn was reluctant to trust her computations of NASA's first electronic computers for the trajectory of his 1962 flight to the moon, until Katherine did the math by hand. "Get the girl," Glenn said then, referring to Katherine. "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go." Now, in her definitive new memoir, Katherine shares her personal journey from a child prodigy growing up in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia to the peaceful centenarian she was in her final days. In A Remarkable Journey: The Wisdom, Grit, and Grace of a Pioneering NASA Mathematician, Katherine wraps her story around some of the basic tenets of her life-the value of knowing that no one is better than you, education is paramount, timing is everything, and asking questions can break barriers. Readers will see this heroine in full dimension-curious "daddy's girl," standout college student, pioneering professional, doting mother, grieving widow, and sage elder. They will hear the wisdom of a woman who handled great fame with genuine humility and great tragedy with enduring hope. They will see the brilliance of a young college student who latched onto a dream, inspired by a college professor who told her she would make a good "research mathematician." She would carry the mantle of that professor, who in 1933 became one of the first African Americans in the country to receive a doctorate in math, only to find his own dreams of becoming a research mathematician crushed by racism. The book moves with Katherine through 100 years of racial history, pausing to show, for example, the influential role that educators at segregated schools and Historically Black Colleges and Universities played in nurturing the dreams of trailblazers. In this uplifting narrative, readers see a woman who navigated tough racial terrain with the soft-spoken grace expected of a woman of her era, and the unrelenting grit required to make history and inspire future generations"--

Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana!

**A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK ** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
A poignant and transporting cross-cultural love story set against the lush backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hour.

It was love at first sight when Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of him marrying a black American woman, an actress no less. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forges on. They build a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopt at birth. Eventually, they reconcile with Saro’s family just as he faces a formidable cancer that will consume all their dreams.

From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family and his origins, now she finds solace and nourishment—literally and spiritually—at her mother in law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s incredible romance—an indelible love story that leaps off the pages.

In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death—in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. Her story is about loss, but it’s really about love found. Her story is about travel, but it’s really about finding a home. It is about food, but it’s really about chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and needed a powerful reminder that life is…delicious.

Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana!

**A REESE WITHERSPOON x HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK ** NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
A poignant and transporting cross-cultural love story set against the lush backdrop of the Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hour.

It was love at first sight when Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of him marrying a black American woman, an actress no less. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forges on. They build a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopt at birth. Eventually, they reconcile with Saro’s family just as he faces a formidable cancer that will consume all their dreams.

From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family and his origins, now she finds solace and nourishment—literally and spiritually—at her mother in law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s incredible romance—an indelible love story that leaps off the pages.

In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death—in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. Her story is about loss, but it’s really about love found. Her story is about travel, but it’s really about finding a home. It is about food, but it’s really about chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and needed a powerful reminder that life is…delicious.

Stitching together girlhood memories with the finest threads of innocence, feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a powerfully intimate account of growing up in the South. 

A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child's journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman's color—worn when earned—daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. hooks finds good company in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is her most vital breath.

"In 1962, boxing writers and fans considered Cassius Clay an obnoxious self-promoter, and few believed that he would become the heavyweight champion of the world. But Malcolm X, the most famous minister in the Nation of Islam--a sect many white Americans deemed a hate cult--saw the potential in Clay, not just for boxing greatness, but as a means of spreading the Nation s message. The two became fast friends, keeping their interactions secret from the press for fear of jeopardizing Clay's career. Clay began living a double life--a patriotic "good Negro" in public, and a radical reformer behind the scenes. Soon, however, their friendship would sour, with disastrous and far-reaching consequences. Based on previously untapped sources, from Malcolm s personal papers to FBI records, "Blood Brothers" is the first book to offer an in-depth portrait of this complex bond. Acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith reconstruct the worlds that shaped Malcolm and Clay, from the boxing arenas and mosques, to postwar New York and civil rights-era Miami. In an impressively detailed account, they reveal how Malcolm molded Cassius Clay into Muhammad Ali, helping him become an international symbol of black pride and black independence. Yet when Malcolm was barred from the Nation for criticizing the philandering of its leader, Elijah Muhammad, Ali turned his back on Malcolm--a choice that tragically contributed to the latter's assassination in February 1965. Malcolm s death marked the end of a critical phase of the civil rights movement, but the legacy of his friendship with Ali has endured. We inhabit a new era where the roles of entertainer and activist, of sports and politics, are more entwined than ever before. "Blood Brothers" is the story of how Ali redefined what it means to be a black athlete in America--after Malcolm first enlightened him. An extraordinary narrative of love and deep affection, as well as deceit, betrayal, and violence, this story is a window into the public and private lives of two of our greatest national icons, and the tumultuous period in American history that they helped to shape."--Provided by publisher

Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a teacher, storyteller, and tactician, whose mission was to carry his sons through the shoals of inner-city adolescence--by any means necessary--and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so that his kids could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, the spacey, overly sensitive nerd who needed to be equipped to survive his environment, and Big Bill, the charming hustler who took all too easily to the temptations in the streets. The Beautiful Struggle tells the story of their divergent paths through a turbulent decade and their father's steadfast--if sometimes eccentric--schemes to keep them from failing. Ta-Nehisi Coates combines a beautifully rendered evocation of the terrors and wonders of growing up in Baltimore in the 1980s--the age of crack, when murder rates hit historic highs, but also an era when the black community improvised the resources with which to save itself--with a humorous and affectionate portrayal of a family led by a maverick patriarch. Like James McBride's The Color of Water, Coates's memoir offers an original take on the eternal but beautiful struggle between parent and child.

On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder.

This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou. Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.

**The New York Times Bestseller**

**Parade magazine must-read books by celebrities 2023**

"I went through so many emotions reading this book. Reconnecting to one's ancestors and truly feeling, not only hearing, their stories are fertile ground for true ecstatic embodiment of the self. We have to know where we've been to see where we're going." -Willow Smith

"[Smith] is candid and honest... For the first time she reveals the truth behind [the] happy images. An incredible read." -Hoda Kotb, The Today Show

A gripping, at times painfully honest, and ultimately inspirational memoir from global superstar and creator of the Red Table Talk series Jada Pinkett Smith.

Jada Pinkett Smith was living what many would view as a fairy-tale of Hollywood success. But appearances can be deceiving, and as she felt more and more separated from her sense of self, emotional turmoil took hold. Sparing no detail, Worthy chronicles her life--from a rebellious youth running the Baltimore streets as an observer and participant in the drug trade, to the deep bond she shared with Tupac Shakur from the moment they met, to her move to Los Angeles and the successful career she built on her own terms, to becoming the wife of superstar Will Smith and mother to Jaden, Willow and bonus-mom to Trey . A rollercoaster from the depths of suicidal depression to the heights of self-acceptance and spiritual healing, Worthy is a woman's journey to finding herself again.

In a media driven landscape that crafts narratives for our celebrities, Smith shares herself in an intimate conversation with readers. She answers questions about her difficult childhood, her marriage, her parenting style, her career choices, and the intense scrutiny that followed "the slap." An impactful and rare memoir that engages and educates, Worthy shows why adhering to the status quo has never been the plan for Jada Pinkett Smith and why labels and stories crafted by others strip women of their authenticity. Worthy teaches us who Jada is, and how to embrace our most lovable qualities. Complete with thought-provoking writing prompts and meditations on how to discover who we really are and nourish our self-worth.

A poignant, humorous, behind-the-scenes memoir  from Kenny “The Jet” Smith—superstar basketball commentator, host of top-rated Inside the NBA, and two-time NBA champion. Smith reveals memorable inside stories of his playing and broadcasting careers, focusing on the star players, coaches, and mentors who inspired him along the way.
 
Kenny Smith was a star at the University of North Carolina before his storied NBA run, in which he won two championships with the Houston Rockets. His tremendous popularity skyrocketed when he joined TNT’s new show, Inside the NBA, which has thrived for twenty-four years and won multiple Emmy awards, receiving enormous acclaim for the insight, humor, social commentary, and unrivaled basketball coverage from Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, and Ernie Johnson, Jr. Kenny is known to fans for his laser-sharp analysis and eloquent observations of the basketball scene and culture.
 
In this honest and deep memoir, Kenny writes chapters about each of the extraordinary people who taught him invaluable life lessons. He illuminates the personalities, affections and quirks of friends such as Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and Kobe Bryant, among others, and what he learned from each of them. He writes about his legendary UNC coach, Dean Smith, and other indelible role models through his career. And he interweaves poignant material about his upbringing in Queens, NY, his parents, his children, and his marriage, explaining the rich knowledge he obtained from the important figures around him. Kenny is also a strong, intelligent voice on race, as his fans and TV viewers will know. Ultimately this is a revealing, humorous, powerful memoir, offering a candid glimpse inside the rarified world of elite sports and broadcasting, with inspiring takeaways.
 

"Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson is about the love one Black woman had for her race, of men and women, and, finally, of herself. Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was a former slave and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering woman who actively addressed racial and gender inequalities as a writer, suffragette, educator, and activist. While in her 20s, she took the national stage from New Orleans as an early Black feminist, active with the Black Club Women's Movement. From there, she built important relationships with leaders in New York, Wilmington, DE, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. She used her fiction, drama, poetry, and journalism to give voice to immigrants, poor people, women, Black people, and Creoles of color. Despite chronic illnesses, financial instability, and other struggles, her diaries reveal the ways she put herself first for the good of her mind and body, practices that became necessary after surviving an abusive relationship with Paul Laurence Dunbar-the first of three husbands. Tara T. Green builds on Black feminist, sexuality, historical and cultural studies to construct a biographical study that examines Dunbar-Nelson's life as a respectable activist-a woman who navigated complex challenges associated with resisting racism and sexism, and who defined her sexual identity and sexual agency within the confines of respectability politics"--

In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world. 
 
There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?
 
Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful 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 deeper truths and new pathways for progress. Drawing from her experiences as a mother, daughter, spouse, friend, and First Lady, she shares the habits and principles she has developed to successfully adapt to change and overcome various obstacles—the earned wisdom that helps her continue to “become.” She details her most valuable practices, like “starting kind,” “going high,” and assembling a “kitchen table” of trusted friends and mentors. With trademark humor, candor, and compassion, she also explores issues connected to race, gender, and visibility, encouraging readers to work through fear, find strength in community, and live with boldness.
 
“When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it,” writes Michelle Obama. A rewarding blend of powerful stories and profound advice that will ignite conversation, The Light We Carry inspires readers to examine their own lives, identify their sources of gladness, and connect meaningfully in a turbulent world.

WINNER OF THE 2024 PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY

A finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award | Named one of the ten best books of 2023 by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Time

A New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2023 | One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023

One of The New Yorker’s essential reads of 2023 | A Christian Science Monitor best book of the year | One of Air Mail’s twelve best books of 2023

A Washington Post and national indie bestseller | One of Publishers Weekly’s best nonfiction books of 2023 | One of Smithsonian magazine’s ten best books of 2023

“Supple, penetrating, heartstring-pulling and compulsively readable . . . Eig’s book is worthy of its subject.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

“[King is] infused with the narrative energy of a thriller . . . The most compelling account of King’s life in a generation.” —Mark Whitaker, The Washington Post

“No book could be more timely than Jonathan Eig’s sweeping and majestic new King . . . Eig has created 2023′s most vital tome.” —Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Hailed by The New York Times as “the new definitive biography,” King mixes revelatory new research with accessible storytelling to offer an MLK for our times.

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. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father—as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.

In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.

Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF 2022 • A PARADE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • A MARIE CLAIRE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK

“It’s clear from the first page that Davis is going to serve a more intimate, unpolished account than is typical of the average (often ghost-written) celebrity memoir; Finding Me reads like Davis is sitting you down for a one-on-one conversation about her life, warts and all.”—USA Today

“[A] fulfilling narrative of struggle and success….Her gorgeous storytelling will inspire anyone wishing to shed old labels.”—Los Angeles Times

In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.

This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award for Best Nonfiction
Nonfiction Finalist for the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards
Named one of The Root's 2023 Best Books by Black Authors 

It's often said that Black women are magic, but what if they really are mythological?

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton yearned for stories she could connect to—true ones, of course, but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. Greek and Roman myths felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins, and tales by Black authors were often rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

Mouton’s memoir is a praise song and an elegy for Black womanhood. She tells her own story while remixing myths and drawing on traditions from all over the world: mothers literally grow eyes in the backs of their heads, children dust the childhood off their bodies, and women come to love the wildness of the hair they once tried to tame. With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America.

Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form.

"An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend."
--Ibram X. Kendi

This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis's classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author.

"I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past." --Angela Y. Davis

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. Davis describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis's autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“A riveting work of literature, destined to take its place in the canon of great African American autobiographies.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Bloomberg, BET

I was born at a crossroads: a crossroads in history, a crossroads in culture, and a geographical crossroad in North Houston County in East Texas.

Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become the first Black president of an Ivy League university. The former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M, Texas’s oldest HBCU, Simmons has inspired generations of students as she herself made history.

In Up Home, Simmons takes us back to Grapeland to show how the people who love us when we are young shape who we become. We meet her caring, tireless mother who managed to feed her large family with an often empty pantry; her father, who refused to let racial and economic injustice crush his youngest daughter’s dreams; the doting brothers and sisters; and the attentive teachers who welcomed Ruth into the classroom, guiding her to a future she could hardly imagine as a child.

From the farmland of East Texas to Houston’s Fifth Ward to New Orleans at the dawn of the civil rights movement, Simmons depicts an era long gone but whose legacies of inequality we still live with today. Written in clear and timeless prose, Up Home is both an origin story set in the segregated South and the uplifting chronicle of a girl whose intellect, grace, and curiosity guide her as she creates a place for herself in the world.

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) possessed one of the twentieth century's most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald's death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist.

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer's difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls' reformatory school--where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald's tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury.

Tick's compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald's complicated career in fresh and original detail, upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre's mainstream. As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop, she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz. Interpreting long-lost setlists, reviews from both white and Black newspapers, and newly released footage and recordings, the book explores how Ella's transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre.

From the singer's first performance at the Apollo Theatre's famous "Amateur Night" to the Savoy Ballroom, where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb's big band in the 1930s, Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail. She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s, as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then-husband, Ray Brown, in the world-touring Jazz at the Philharmonic, one of the first moments of high-culture acceptance for the disreputable art form.

Breaking ground as a female bandleader, Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness, deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations. Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire. This hybridity often confounded critics, yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ella reached audiences around the world, electrifying concert halls, and sold millions of records.

A masterful biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald describes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century.

From the fashion mogul and entrepreneur behind Babes, an empowering memoir about turning what makes you different into the foundation of your success

Ciera Rogers is known for being an “Outsider”—and she likes it that way. As the founder and CEO of a multi-million-dollar brand that caters to curvy women of all shades, worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian and championed by Beyoncé, Ciera has built a business around the radical idea that what makes you different is actually your superpower.

In this bold and inspiring memoir, Ciera opens her heart and shares the moments in her life that left her feeling different —being kidnapped at a young age by her estranged father, running hustles in strip clubs, living in her mom’s red Jeep—and unearths the powerful lessons she took from these moments to fuel her unorthodox rise. From daring to post her first outfit for sale on Instagram, hitting seven-figures, and buying a home, her journey is a testament to resilience and courage, including lessons like:
 

• Harness What You Already Have: Learn how to leverage your existing skills and get savvy about finding free resources—you already have the tools you need to succeed.
   
• Embrace Your Unique Identity: Discover how to turn your differences into strengths and build a path to success based on what makes you unique—embrace who you are, unapologetically.
   
• Turn Setbacks into Stepping Stones: Transform your personal and professional challenges into opportunities for growth—setbacks are just setups for comebacks.
   
• Write Your Own Script for Success: Recognize that the “American Dream” is a trap in a rigged and unequal game—free yourself from societal expectations and feel empowered to define your own success.
   
• Use People Ethically: Learn how to network creatively, and be up front about what you need and want from people to reach your goals quicker—it’s all about honesty and mutual benefit.

Arguing that what the world calls limitations—lack of connections, resources, fancy degrees, or even the “right” look—are actually our biggest competitive advantages, Ciera teaches anyone who has ever been overlooked, ignored, or underestimated how to embrace their Outsider status to find unstoppable success. The Outsider Advantage isn’t just a raw and moving memoir. It's a heartfelt guide to turning your differences into your greatest strengths, inspiring you to forge your own path and succeed on your terms.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her “vulnerable, tender, and infinitely inspirational” (Oprah Daily) memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.

“A billowingly triumphant American tale.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.
 
Named “Ketanji Onyika,” meaning “Lovely One,” based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.
 
Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
 
Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, openhearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.

A moving, politically-charged memoir of surviving trauma and embracing the power of activism from MSNBC legal analyst, professor, civil rights lawyer and former New York City Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley.



Born in a country that has repeatedly traumatized her and her loved ones, Maya Wiley grew up in a household that prioritized activism, hope, and resilience above all else. This attitude landed her father on President Nixon's enemies list as her mother organized third-party political platforms. Still, they modeled hope for their children. In the decades since, she has borne witness as presidents and political figures used racism and fascism to gain power, and as cities have again and again elected white men, effectively shutting out people of color and women from having a political voice. As a result, she has been forced, time after time, to confront death, injustice, and indifference--just as her Civil Rights activist parents did before her.



After a mayoral race that further exposed our country's deep divisions, Maya is ready to share her story and that of her parents: one of passion, possibility, and compassion in the face of fear and injustice. She takes readers through her unconventional upbringing, her father George Wiley's tragic death and the resulting trauma, as well as how her experiences spoke to racial, gender, and class identity. Against this painful backdrop, Maya charts her journey of coming into herself and finding hope in a dire political landscape. She also digs into how her previous struggles informed her platform, driving her to represent those who have similarly felt voiceless or ignored. In facing and sharing her own past, Maya shows readers how they too can remain optimistic in the face of adversity.

A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl.

“A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an expansive and ever-growing love for words and for language.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
 
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
 
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
 
Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.

Named Amazon Editor's Pick and one of the Best Books of the Month for August 2024. 



A riveting true story of an unsuspecting woman who creates an ingeniously clever white-collar scheme that manipulates the Federal banking system out of millions--who eventually loses everything that is most important to her.



In Never Saw Me Coming, Tanya Smith shares her deeply personal and remarkable story of how she went from a precocious young girl to a money-grabbing, computer-savvy wiz. It starts out as a keen interest in technology and innocently acquiring phone numbers to Michael Jackson, as well as other celebrities, and moves to her successfully stealing and depositing $5,000 into her grandmother's banking account. By the time she is 18, the risk taker has confiscated millions in cash.



The FBI is hot on her tail and hauls her in for an interview, demanding Smith let them know who she's working for, "as these are not the kind of crimes Black people are smart enough to commit." Their words, indicating that intelligence was determined by race, severely offended Smith. Up for the challenge, she proves the FBI wrong and over time steals $40 million dollars, while securing diamonds, gold bars, and other commodities. Her lifestyle attracts the wrong kind of people, even those who set out to kill her.



Law enforcement persisted, ultimately dubbing Smith "one of the single biggest threats to the entire United States banking system." She receives an outrageous prison sentence--the longest for a white-collar offense--and is eventually released by mounting her own brilliant defense.



Complete with unexpected twists and turns, Never Saw Me Coming is a gripping caper that reminds never to underestimate a woman.