Showing results by narrator "Janina Edwards" in All Categories

It is 1848. On one side of the Mason-Dixon Line lives fifteen-year-old Willow, her master’s favorite servant. She’s been taught to read and has learned to write. She is permitted to spend much of her time riding her horse to the riverbank, where she writes letters to her dead mother. On the other side of the line is seventeen-year-old Cato, a black man, free born. It’s his personal mission to sneak as many fugitive slaves to freedom as he can. When Willow’s and Cato’s lives intersect, they will discover the true meanings of bondage and freedom, of family and love.

On Sex and Gender focuses on three sequential and consequential questions: What is sex as opposed to gender? How does sex matter in our everyday lives? And how should it be reflected in law and policy? All three have been front-and-center in American life and politics since the rise of the trans rights movement: They are included in both major parties’ political platforms. They are the subject of ongoing litigation in the federal courts and of highly contentious legislation on Capitol Hill.

Sara Bliss (yes, that’s her real name) tracked down more than 65 people who transformed their lives to learn how they did it so you can, too. Take the Leap is packed with inspiring profiles, quotes, and other pieces of creative advice from game changers, rule breakers, and side hustlers, including successful entrepreneurs like Barbara Corcoran, Bobbi Brown, writer turned actress (at 40) Jill Kargman, Black Crowes drummer turned sports radio host Steve Gorman, writer Simon Doonan, and NFL player turned artist/activist Aaron Maybin, and many more. 

For the first time, the edited journals of Alice Walker are gathered together to reflect the complex, passionate, talented and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner of The Color Purple. She intimately explores her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African-American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world. In an unvarnished and singular voice, she explores an astonishing array of events. A powerful blend of Walker's personal life with political events, this revealing collection offers rare insight into a literary legend.

Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the postwar Black Freedom Movement. In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. In doing so, he reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights.

One prisoner’s ninety-year murder conviction becomes another prisoner’s crusade in this ongoing true account of an unlikely friendship forged behind bars and the enduring power of hope. For seventeen years and counting, Robert Chattler has made good on his promise to help exonerate his former cellmate, Lee Harris, who he believes was baited and duped by Chicago PD and buried by the false testimony of a bribed witness. In this emotional story of courage and trust, suspicion and sacrifice, the award-winning journalist Tori Marlan reveals the uncanny friendship powering an impassioned fight for justice.

Veteran White House reporter April Ryan thought she had seen everything in her two decades as a White House correspondent. And then came the Trump administration. In Under Fire, Ryan takes us inside the confusion and chaos of the Trump White House to understand how she and other reporters adjusted to the new normal. She takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story.  

Created by the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio, acclaimed writer and editor Chelene Knight, Let It Go draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share hard-won tools for joy-discovery—tools such as how to say no with love; how to call back activities that feel good; how to reshape communication with those closest to you; how to revise language; and most of all, how to learn to let go in order to redefine what we think joy is.

Layla strives and sacrifices to keep a potted plant alive in a gray, post-climate-change dystopia. For fans of Nina LaCour, this short tale asks: can hope bloom from a single seed? 

Featuring material only recently discovered in the archives of Swedish television, here is the Black Power movement as you've never heard it. Based on the award-winning documentary of the same name, Black Power Mixtape presents powerful interviews with Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and others who shaped the struggle of their day. Mixed with the contemporary reflections of leading activists, musicians, and scholars, this book aims to introduce a new generation to the legacy of Black Power. 

A delightful foray into the world of yoga, unlocking the practice's spiritual, physical, and psychological benefits and exploring the path to becoming a master instructor. This is an insightful, multidimensional portrait of how this Eastern practice became one of the most popular disciplines in America and of the yoga instructors who love it, train for it, and make a living from it. 

In the vein of The Bitch in the House, 15 powerful women offer captivating, intimate, and candid explorations about what it’s really like turning 40 - and life beyond.

In her New York Times best seller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. 

They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded—fervently and intensely in that unique way of little girls—as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South.

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fan-fiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century.

Endometriosis is a physically and mentally debilitating disease that has tortured women for centuries. Symptoms of heavy periods and excruciating pain most often begin in middle school or high school, yet doctors take an average of 12 years to diagnose it in a patient. As a result, these undiagnosed and misdiagnosed women suffer into at least their mid-20s or early 30s, repeatedly told that the pain is in their minds, that it’s simply part of becoming a woman, or that it’s caused by some other disease or condition. That nonsense must stop, and it must stop now! 

Raising Multiracial Children gives caregivers the tools for exploring race with their children, offering practical guidance on how to initiate conversations; consciously foster racial identity development; discuss issues like microaggressions, intersectionality, and privilege; and intentionally cultivate a sense of belonging.

It's the summer of 1955. For Ethan Harper, a biracial kid raised mostly by his White father, race has always been a distant conversation. When he's sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle in small-town Alabama, his blackness is suddenly front and center, and no one is shy about making it known he's not welcome there. Enter Juniper Jones. The town's resident oddball and free spirit, she's everything the townspeople aren't-open, kind, and accepting.

Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners.

Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.