Rest in Power


Book Description

Trayvon Martin’s parents take readers beyond the news cycle with an account only they could give: the intimate story of a tragically foreshortened life and the rise of a movement. “A reminder—not only of Trayvon’s life and death but of the vulnerability of black lives in a country that still needs to be reminded they matter.”—USA Today Now a docuseries on the Paramount Network produced by Shawn Carter Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade? Rest in Power, told through the compelling alternating narratives of his parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, answers those questions from the most intimate of sources. The book takes us beyond the news cycle and familiar images to give the account that only his parents can offer: the story of the beautiful and complex child they lost, the cruel unresponsiveness of the police and the hostility of the legal system, and an inspiring journey from grief and pain to power, and from tragedy and senselessness to purpose.




If You Come Softly


Book Description

A lyrical story of star-crossed love perfect for readers of The Hate U Give, by National Ambassador for Children’s Literature Jacqueline Woodson--now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and including a new preface by the author Jeremiah feels good inside his own skin. That is, when he's in his own Brooklyn neighborhood. But now he's going to be attending a fancy prep school in Manhattan, and black teenage boys don't exactly fit in there. So it's a surprise when he meets Ellie the first week of school. In one frozen moment their eyes lock, and after that they know they fit together--even though she's Jewish and he's black. Their worlds are so different, but to them that's not what matters. Too bad the rest of the world has to get in their way. Jacqueline Woodson's work has been called “moving and resonant” (Wall Street Journal) and “gorgeous” (Vanity Fair). If You Come Softly is a powerful story of interracial love that leaves readers wondering "why" and "if only . . ."




Pursuing Trayvon Martin


Book Description

Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics explores the historical implications of the fatal shooting of the unarmed black teen, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman, in 2012. The book telescopes various themes that are important to a broad market, including race, masculinity, racial profiling, racist stereotyping, black youth and police violence, and racism.




The Trayvon Martin in US


Book Description

The name of Trayvon Martin has become trope in the 21st century, which crystallizes US racial politics regarding Blackness, specifically the Black male. The works included here imply that Trayvon Martin, as trope, reverberates in the most conscientious of 'US'; and, this epic tragedy is one that has plagued 'US' since Africans and people of African descent first arrived to the Americas.




The Politics of Disgust


Book Description

Hancock argues that beliefs about poor African American mothers were the foundation for the contentious 1996 welfare reform debate that effectively 'ended welfare as we know it.' She shows how stereotypes and misperceptions about race, class and gender were used to instigate a politics of disgust.




The Trayvon Hoax


Book Description

In this stunning work of investigative journalism, filmmaker Joel Gilbert uncovers the true story of the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a tragedy that divided America. By examining Trayvon's 750-page cell phone records, Gilbert discovers that the key witness for the prosecution of George Zimmerman, the plus-sized 18-year-old Rachel Jeantel, was a fraud. It was in fact a different girl who was on the phone with Trayvon just before he was shot. She was the 16-year-old named "Diamond" whose recorded conversation with attorney Benjamin Crump ignited the public, swayed President Obama, and provoked the nation's media to demand Zimmerman's arrest. Gilbert's painstaking research takes him through the high schools of Miami, into the back alleys of Little Haiti, and to finally to Florida State University where he finds Trayvon's real girlfriend, the real phone witness, Diamond Eugene. Gilbert confirms his revelations with forensic handwriting analysis and DNA testing. After obtaining unredacted court documents and reading Diamond's vast social media archives, Gilbert then reconstructs the true story of Trayvon Martin's troubled teenage life and tragic death. In the process, he exposes in detail the most consequential hoax in recent American judicial history, The Trayvon Hoax, that was ground zero for the downward spiral of race relations in America. This incredible book has the potential to correct American history and bring America back together again.




Intermediate Range


Book Description

On the rainy Sunday evening of February 26, 2012, the lives of two individuals collided at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated townhouse community in the Orlando suburb known as Sanford, Florida. George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old insurance underwriter and neighborhood watch volunteer, grew suspicious of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old high schooler who was temporarily staying at the home of his father's fiancee who lived in the small gated subdivision. Martin, unarmed and dressed in a dark-colored hooded sweatshirt, was walking home after going to a nearby 7-11 store to buy a can of Arizona Iced Tea and a bag of Skittles. Martin had committed no crime, but Zimmerman, concerned about recent burglaries and thefts in the neighborhood, called police to report "a real suspicious guy" who Zimmerman said was "up to no good . . . or [was] on drugs or something." Minutes later, Trayvon Martin lay dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest. After Sanford police and prosecutors, unable to refute Zimmerman's claim of self defense, declined to charge him with the killing, Florida's governor appointed a special prosecutor, Jacksonville State Attorney Angela Corey, to investigate the case in the wake of protests and racially-charged anger that spread from coast to coast. Bypassing a grand jury, Corey filed second-degree murder charges against the neighborhood watch volunteer in a case that had become arguably the most controversial event of the decade. Now, forensic expert and crime scene reconstructionist Michael A. Knox tells the story of the forensic evidence in the killing and explains what that evidence really says about the fateful events that February evening in Sanford, Florida. Can the prosecution truly prove beyond a reasonable doubt that George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin? Intermediate Range is a riveting account of the forensic evidence in the killing, much of which has been overlooked, misunderstood, or ignored by the public and the news media.




'If I Had a Son'


Book Description

His friends called George Zimmerman Tugboat, the one who always came to the rescue. An Hispanic-American civil rights activist, he helped a black homeless man find justice. He helped guide two black teens through life. He helped a terrified mother secure her house. He helped his wary neighbors secure their community.




All American Boys


Book Description

A 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor book, and recipient of the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature. In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement? There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before. Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.




Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching


Book Description

An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent -- for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.