Belonging to the Black Crows


Book Description

In 1977, Dorothy Black Crow traded worlds from mainstream America to a foreign country within the United States: the Great Sioux Nation. Though it hardly took any time for her to meet - marry - and move with Selo Black Crow--from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Pine Ridge Res, South Dakota, it took years for her to fit into the vastly different Lakota culture. Out on 800 acres of South Dakota land, Dorothy had to learn, often the hard way:*WE is more important than I.*Tiyoshpaya, the extended family, is most important.*Greed and hoarding is the greatest sin.*Generosity, courage and endurance are the greatest goals.*Reputation is all: Black Crow Honor. *The Land itself is alive, and the Great Mystery watches over all. Faced with living in a log cabin without running water or electricity, Dorothy hauled water, sewed by lamplight, and polished the dirt floor. Under South Dakota skies, she butchered and dried meat, chopped wood, "fixed fence," chased horses, picked chokecherries, plums, buffaloberries, horsemint and sage. She survived blizzards, South Dakota gumbo, and cousins-in-law teasing. Dorothy shares an unforgettable journey into a different American culture that forever altered her point of view and way of life.




Hard to Handle


Book Description

Black Crowes drummer and cofounder Steve Gorman shares the band's inside story in this behind-the-scenes biography, from their supernova stardom in the '90s to exhilarating encounters with industry legends. "This book is literally the Angela's Ashes of rock memoirs. .. I absolutely loved this book." -BILL BURR, comedian "I couldn't put the book down-absolutely unbelievable read!" -JOHN MCENROE, New York Times bestselling author of But Seriously and You Cannot Be Serious "I honestly couldn't put [this book] down. Made me nostalgic, sad, and happy too." -CHRIS SHIFLETT, lead guitarist of Foo Fighters "Essential reading for rock fans everywhere." -BRIAN KOPPELMAN, co-creator and showrunner of Billions For more than two decades, The Black Crowes topped the charts, graced the cover of Rolling Stone, and reigned supreme over MTV and radio waves alike with hits like "Hard to Handle," "She Talks to Angels," and "Remedy." But as the old cliché goes, stardom can be fleeting, and the group's success slowly dwindled as the band members got caught up in the rock star world and lost sight of their musical ambition. On any given night, they could be the best band you ever saw-or the most combative. Then, one last rift in 2013 proved insurmountable for the band to survive. After that, The Black Crowes would fly no more. Founding member Steve Gorman was there for all of it-the coke- and weed-fueled tours; the tumultuous recording sessions; the incessant fighting between brothers Chris and Rich Robinson; the backstage hangs with legends like Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and the Rolling Stones. As the band's drummer and voice of reason, he tried to keep The Black Crowes together musically and emotionally. In Hard ToHandle-the first account of this great American rock band's beginning, middle, and end-Gorman explains just how impossible that job was with great insight, candor, and humor. They don't make bands like The Black Crowes anymore: crazy, brilliant, self-destructive, inspiring, and, ultimately, not built to last. But, man, what a ride it was while it lasted.




Little Black Crow


Book Description

Combining unfussy, gently rhyming language with vibrant, airy illustrations, Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka has created a book that will inspire in young readers the wonder of wondering. A little boy wonders about a crow’s life—from the simple “Where do you go in the cold white snow?” to the not-so-simple “Do you ever worry when you hop and you hurry? Are you ever afraid of mistakes you made? Are you never afraid?” All of life is touched on in simple words and spare, elegant artwork. Little Black Crow is not to be missed.




Jim Crow Also Lived Here


Book Description

Many people believe that racism and discrimination against those of African descent was primarily an American experience. However, this book dispels that myth by recounting Leonard Albert Paris’s first eighteen years (1948–1966), growing up as a Black youth in rural Nova Scotia, Canada, a province that was at the time, home to about 36 percent of Canada’s Black population. Structural racism, community isolation, and generational poverty affected every aspect of his life, creating challenges and misery for him, his family, and the entire Black community—an experience that continues to affect him emotionally many decades later. While not as extreme as it was during the author’s formative years, racism and its effects continue into the present. Leonard wrote Jim Crow Also Lived Here in part to create awareness of this problem and also to inspire change.




Black Crow


Book Description

Explore a story of resilience, self-discovery, and the intricate balance between past and present in Black Crow. Tom Joseph, a young Indigenous airline pilot, skillfully lands a damaged aircraft on a remote frozen mountain lake and wakes up in an intensive care facility facing a frightening new reality. His only memories are of his life as Black Crow, living on the plains before European migration adversely impacted his ancestral lands. Facing profound disorientation and struggling to comprehend the modern world, Tom is visited by spiritual figures from his old life who play a crucial role in helping him come to terms with his surreal situation. They communicate in his native language, narrating the story of his new existence and his mission that has yet to be fulfilled. Supported by friends from both past and present, Tom reluctantly faces challenges and risks to complete the mission given to him in his vision quest two centuries ago. To undertake his quest, Tom now faces dangers as real as the gun-carrying soldiers from his previous life. Realizing he can’t return to the yearned-for past, Tom grapples with the necessity of forging ahead in his current life. Embarking on a quest transcending time and culture, he adjusts to his newfound fame, wrestles with his identity, and strives to fulfill his destiny.




The Black Crow Conspiracy


Book Description

Penelope Tredwell, the pen behind bestselling author, Montgomery Flinch, is cursed with writer's block. She needs a sensational new story or her magazine, the Penny Dreadful, will go under. So when a mysterious letter arrives, confessing to the impossible crime of stealing the Crown Jewels just days before the King's coronation, Penelope thinks she has found a plot to enthrall her readers, until the police charge Montgomery Flinch with the theft of the jewels. Can Penelope solve the mystery, restore the jewels, rescue Monty, save the magazine, and keep the true identity of Montgomery Flinch a secret?




The Negro Motorist Green Book


Book Description

The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.




The Secret of the Seven Crows


Book Description

Five crows means silver, six crows mean gold, seven crows mean a secret that’s never been told. “Shelly asked her brother Jason, ‘Are you scared to go in?’” There was something might spooky about that huge old clapboard structure behind the sand dunes and the sea oats. It was as gray as the stormy twilight sky behind it and the rolling waves of the Gulf in front of it and the Spanish moss that hung on the bent and twisted live oak and cedar trees all around it. Shelley’s family moves into an old mansion on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and discover that there is a mystery to be solved and a treasure to be found before the house can really belong to them. Shelley wants to solve the mystery all by herself...but encounters danger...intriguing clues...a poltergeist...and spooky Gulf Coast legends. “A well-constructed mystery and good reading.” –Library Journal




Black Crow White Lie


Book Description

Carson Calley grew up living in Hollywood motels with his fortune-telling mother, who is full of stories about their former lives together and prophesies about his future. Believing his mother's yarns, Carson becomes a healer, with the people of Hollywood waiting in long lines to see him, but a purpose built on lies and exaggerations can't last...or can it?




Uncontrollable Blackness


Book Description

Early twentieth-century African American men in northern urban centers like New York faced economic isolation, segregation, a biased criminal justice system, and overt racial attacks by police and citizens. In this book, Douglas J. Flowe interrogates the meaning of crime and violence in the lives of these men, whose lawful conduct itself was often surveilled and criminalized, by focusing on what their actions and behaviors represented to them. He narrates the stories of men who sought profits in underground markets, protected themselves when law enforcement failed to do so, and exerted control over public, commercial, and domestic spaces through force in a city that denied their claims to citizenship and manhood. Flowe furthermore traces how the features of urban Jim Crow and the efforts of civic and progressive leaders to restrict their autonomy ultimately produced the circumstances under which illegality became a form of resistance. Drawing from voluminous prison and arrest records, trial transcripts, personal letters and documents, and investigative reports, Flowe opens up new ways of understanding the black struggle for freedom in the twentieth century. By uncovering the relationship between the fight for civil rights, black constructions of masculinity, and lawlessness, he offers a stirring account of how working-class black men employed extralegal methods to address racial injustice.