Black Cotton Star


Book Description

A Revolutionary War-era secret sends three soldiers on an epic quest across 1940s Europe to recover a piece of American history. Philadelphia, 1776: George Washington asks Betsy Ross to design the first flag of the future United States of America. Her housemaid, Angela Brown, adds to it a secret tribute to the black community: a black cotton star that she slips under one of the white ones. Dover, 1944: A soldier named Lincoln receives a letter from his sister back home that reveals Angela Brown’s memoirs, and wonders if the star that she mentions truly exists. His superiors seem to think so. In light of this revelation, Lincoln and two other African-American soldiers set out on a dangerous mission, ranging from liberated Paris to the snow-covered Ardennes, seeking answers—and the ultimate prize. Black Cotton Star is a magnificent war drama, unfolding a fictional tale of struggle, resilience, and sacrifice with themes that resonate deeply in a divided modern-day America.




Black Cotton


Book Description

Black Cotton is an ongoing comic book series set in an alternate reality that revolves around an exorbitantly wealthy black family, the Cottons, created by Brian Hawkins and Patrick Foreman, Illustrated by Marco Perugini, and published by Scout Comics. Set in an alternate reality where the social order of “white” and “black” is reversed, when it comes to social standing and class, the Cottons are at the top of the food chain, part of the One Percent, and are seemingly untouchable. However, that all changes when Zion, their police officer son, who decided to not follow in the footsteps of his father and matriculate towards running the family business, is involved in the shooting of a minority white woman. In a reality similar to our own, social tensions are already high, race is a hot topic, and the call for equality between white and black is aggressively being pursued. Thus, Zion Cotton shooting Elizabeth Nightingale, a twenty-something college student on scholarship for track, ignites their city in a fury of protests and a call for action against racial injustice. Led by the family’s patriarch, Elijah Cotton, and matriarch, Jaleesa Cotton, the Cottons are thrusted into the middle of a highly controversial predicament and immediately attempt to use their wealth, prestige, and power to remedy the problem. However, while the youngest Cotton, Xavier, a teenager, actively protests the social injustices with his friends, the middle child, Qia Cotton, the acting CCO of Black Cotton Ventures, a multi-billion dollar manufacturing conglomerate, does damage control for her wayward brother. Ultimately, more division is created between both families as the Nightingales, unwilling to be assuaged, seek justice for Elizabeth, their daughter, who survived. “Black Cotton is a comic, but it’s also a mindset that’s being explored in a comic.”




Blue Star Tattoo


Book Description

Formerly: Misery Express When a fellow lawman falls ill, Sam Burrack—better known as the Ranger—agrees to take the reins of the territory’s infamous jail wagon. Driving straight across the territory, the Ranger must keep tabs on a motley group of prisoners, including the younger brother of JC McLawry, leader of the dreaded Blue Star Tattoo Gang. McLawry’s gang will stop at nothing to free one of their own. And riding among them is Lawrence Shaw, known as the fastest gun alive, whose isolated existence in the desert has affected his mind —but not his trigger finger . . . .




Dark Star


Book Description

Paris, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague, 1937. In the back alleys of nighttime Europe, war is already under way. André Szara, survivor of the Polish pogroms and the Russian civil wars and a foreign correspondent for Pravda, is co-opted by the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and becomes a full-time spymaster in Paris. As deputy director of a Paris network, Szara finds his own star rising when he recruits an agent in Berlin who can supply crucial information. Dark Star captures not only the intrigue and danger of clandestine life but the day-to-day reality of what Soviet operatives call special work.




A Black Woman's Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor


Book Description

A Black Woman's Journey follows Mildred Sirls as a young Black girl in rural east Texas in the 1930s who picked cotton to help her family survive, to her adulthood years as Dr. Mildred Pratt who influenced hundreds of students and empowered a community.




Black Hole


Book Description

“The best graphic novel of the year” (Time) tells the story of a strange plague devastating the lives of teenagers in mid-1970s suburban Seattle, revealing the horrifying nature of high school alienation—the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety, and the ennui. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways—from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable)—but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back. As we inhabit the heads of several key characters—some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it—what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it , or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself. And then the murders start. As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying, Black Hole transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it—back when it wasn’t exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird. To say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin…




Not All Okies are White


Book Description

Celebrates the resilience of people too often ignored by history texts, revealing the challenges faced by a group of migrant workers who formed the multiracial town of Randolph, Arizona. Recaptures the ways of life for Black migrant workers, as well as Hispanics and Native Americans, through detailed interviews with third- and fourth- generation descendants of pre-Emancipation Blacks. Material from news articles, historical society archives, advertisements, and photos gives a historical and cultural context for the oral histories. Includes bandw historical and modern photos. The author teaches English, Black studies, and women's studies at the University of Missouri. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Cotton


Book Description

Born with white skin in segregated Eureka, Mississippi, in 1950, African-American albino Lee Cotton struggles with his identity as a black person capable of gaining entry into white society and experiences in the early years of his life a romance with a Klansmans daughter, a freight train attack, and the womens liberation movement. By the author of Mischief. Reprint.




Empire of Cotton


Book Description

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist. “Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism.




The Black Book of Colors


Book Description

In a story where the text appears in white letters on a black background, as well as in braille, and the illustrations are also raised on a black surface, Thomas describes how he recognizes different colors using various senses.