Hell No! I Am Not Black, and You Are Not White


Book Description

Why call me Black, when it means Nigger and 'like the Devil' ? Black is not a race, but a camouflaged, sugar-coated curse that is just encoded as the word 'evil' in 'Devil'. We need to break, reject and obliterate it.




The History of White People


Book Description

A New York Times Bestseller This terrific new book…[explores] the ‘notion of whiteness,’ an idea as dangerous as it is seductive." —Boston Globe Telling perhaps the most important forgotten story in American history, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, illuminating not only the invention of race but also the frequent praise of “whiteness” for economic, scientific, and political ends. A story filled with towering historical figures, The History of White People closes a huge gap in literature that has long focused on the non-white and forcefully reminds us that the concept of “race” is an all-too-human invention whose meaning, importance, and reality have changed as it has been driven by a long and rich history of events.




Letters to My White Male Friends


Book Description

In Letters to My White Male Friends, Dax-Devlon Ross speaks directly to the millions of middle-aged white men who are suddenly awakening to race and racism. White men are finally realizing that simply not being racist isn’t enough to end racism. These men want deeper insight not only into how racism has harmed Black people, but, for the first time, into how it has harmed them. They are beginning to see that racism warps us all. Letters to My White Male Friends promises to help men who have said they are committed to change and to develop the capacity to see, feel and sustain that commitment so they can help secure racial justice for us all. Ross helps readers understand what it meant to be America’s first generation raised after the civil rights era. He explains how we were all educated with colorblind narratives and symbols that typically, albeit implicitly, privileged whiteness and denigrated Blackness. He provides the context and color of his own experiences in white schools so that white men can revisit moments in their lives where racism was in the room even when they didn’t see it enter. Ross shows how learning to see the harm that racism did to him, and forgiving himself, gave him the empathy to see the harm it does to white people as well. Ultimately, Ross offers white men direction so that they can take just action in their workplace, community, family, and, most importantly, in themselves, especially in the future when race is no longer in the spotlight.




IT'S ONLY HELL IF YOU MAKE IT THAT WAY


Book Description

The book was originally designed to help those looking at doing time in the Federal Prison system, but the author feels it may be read by anyone interested in how life goes on "behind the razor wire." It deals with using your brain and not your muscle to make ones life easier while doing time. It starts from being arrested to the day of release. The legal ways to survive and the not so legal ways are all talked about in this book. The author writes about who really "runs the zoo," and how one can fly under the radar so as to not be targeted by those looking to take advantage of the weak.




The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms


Book Description

After her mother's mysterious death, a young woman is summoned to the floating city of Sky in order to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed in the first book in this award-winning fantasy trilogy from the NYT bestselling author of The Fifth Season. Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate -- and gods and mortals -- are bound inseparably together.




We Are Not Like Them


Book Description

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK Named a Best Book Pick of 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar and Real Simple Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall by People, Essence, New York Post, PopSugar, New York Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Town & Country, Bustle, Fortune, and Book Riot Told from alternating perspectives, this “propulsive, deeply felt tale of race and friendship” (People) follows two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions. Jen married young, and after years of trying, is finally pregnant. Riley pursued her childhood dream of becoming a television journalist and is poised to become one of the first Black female anchors of the top news channel in their hometown of Philadelphia. But the deep bond they share is severely tested when Jen’s husband, a city police officer, is involved in the shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. Six months pregnant, Jen is in freefall as her future, her husband’s freedom, and her friendship with Riley are thrown into uncertainty. Covering this career-making story, Riley wrestles with the implications of this tragic incident for her Black community, her ambitions, and her relationship with her lifelong friend. Like Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage and Jodi Picoult’s Small Great Things, We Are Not Like Them takes “us to uncomfortable places—in the best possible way—while capturing so much of what we are all thinking and feeling about race. A sharp, timely, and soul-satisfying novel” (Emily Giffin, New York Times bestselling author) that is both a powerful conversation starter and a celebration of the enduring power of friendship.




Simple's Uncle Sam


Book Description

Langston Hughes's most beloved character comes back to life in this extraordinary collection Langston Hughes is best known as a poet, but he was also a prolific writer of theater, autobiography, and fiction. None of his creations won the hearts and minds of his readers as did Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple." Simple speaks as an Everyman for African Americans in Uncle Sam's America. With great wit, he expounds on topics as varied as women, Gospel music, and sports heroes--but always keeps one foot planted in the realm of politics and race. In recent years, readers have been able to appreciate Simple's situational humor as well as his poignant questions about social injustice in The Best of Simple and The Return of Simple. Now they can, once again, enjoy the last of Hughes's original Simple books.




Just Around Midnight


Book Description

By the time Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet a mere ten years earlier, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become “white”? Just around Midnight reveals the interplay of popular music and racial thought that was responsible for this shift within the music industry and in the minds of fans. Rooted in rhythm-and-blues pioneered by black musicians, 1950s rock and roll was racially inclusive and attracted listeners and performers across the color line. In the 1960s, however, rock and roll gave way to rock: a new musical ideal regarded as more serious, more artistic—and the province of white musicians. Decoding the racial discourses that have distorted standard histories of rock music, Jack Hamilton underscores how ideas of “authenticity” have blinded us to rock’s inextricably interracial artistic enterprise. According to the standard storyline, the authentic white musician was guided by an individual creative vision, whereas black musicians were deemed authentic only when they stayed true to black tradition. Serious rock became white because only white musicians could be original without being accused of betraying their race. Juxtaposing Sam Cooke and Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and many others, Hamilton challenges the racial categories that oversimplified the sixties revolution and provides a deeper appreciation of the twists and turns that kept the music alive.




What the Hell’s Wrong with America


Book Description

What The Hell’s Wrong With America is a book about, well, what the hell’s wrong with America! It is the author’s contention that the one thing that causes more acrimonious intent, thoughts and acts than anything anyone can point to is race. Are you “black” or “white”? What makes you “black” of “white”? How did you become “Hispanic”? How did you become an “Arab” even if you’ve never been to Saudi Arabia?The answers may not be what you think. According to the author, this is due to the lack of the average man and woman’s understanding of the truth about what race is and what race is not. The author contends that as long as people keep referring to themselves as what they are referring to themselves as this country as well as the world will never experience the peace and prosperity they profess to want. The author states, “ Everyone wants to have a ‘Conversation’ about race but no one wants to consider that both sides will be starting and engaging in dialogue with false premises. In short, lies”. In this book you will be is asked powerful common sense questions about race that, in the author’s words, “you have never been asked before.” The author goes on to examine effective problem solving; the importance of having not just knowledge but correct knowledge; what “evil” is as well as the different forms that it manifests itself in, and how evil relates to the context of race as we have been taught to perceive it; the fictitious cultures both “black” and “white” people have created in an effort to solidify their concepts of these void constructs of “black” and “white”, and a lot more. The author started this book in 2015 at the height of civil unrest following several incidents of unarmed black men who were killed by police. In Chapter Five, the book explains how not to be killed during or at the end of a police interaction. There’s even a LGBTQ+ section dealing with the author’s views and insights on “gay” marriage. While the author states that the instructions given in this chapter may not be feasible for everyone, the chapter is a must read. And even though the author states that there will be secrets left untold it will be impossible for you to leave this book without a commitment to reexamine everything you have been taught. Starting with race. This book is a must read if you have been seeking insights on the truth about an issue that has in one way or another touched us all. Is America divided? Yes. But it doesn’t have to be. Read this book to understand how we got that way and what we can do to stop being that way. This book goes a long way to help one understand “What The Hell’s Wrong With America”. And that’s a good thing.