Cultural & Regional

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home - how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways....

Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Taraji P. Henson reads her inspiring and funny book about family, friends, the hustle required to make it from DC to Hollywood....

With echoes of Educated and The Glass Castle, How to Say Babylon is a “lushly observed and keenly reflective chronicle” (The Washington Post), brilliantly recounting the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid religious upbringing and navigate the world on her own terms.

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be."....

Before she turned 20, Cupcake Brown survived the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, and much more....

The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era....

From the governor of Maryland, the true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.

Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper and proponent of the "do it yourself" idea....

Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party.

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Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning....

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom....

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know....

From New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor comes this riveting chronicle of a critical yet overlooked chapter in American history: the inspiring rise and calculated fall of the Black elite, from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era....

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family....

Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband, Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along the Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline, the cliffs, sky, and chalky earth now feel like their home. Against all medical odds, Moth seems revitalized in nature....

Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the 20th century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic....

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform?

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her....

The Worlds I See is the moving memoir of a scientist coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling at the forefront of the AI revolution.

Raised in the ghetto, abandoned as a child, addicted to drugs and women all his life but still able to produce four consecutive number one hip-hop albums in a row...this is the life and times of the darkest and most dangerously introspective hip-hop artist ever....

A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets....

In late 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, he realized he could no longer walk. He could do nothing without the help of others and required constant care in a hospital. So began a yearlong odyssey through the medical systems of Rome and Italy, with the hope of somehow being able to return home to his house in London.

Sitting beneath a stained glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, preeminent American historian David Levering Lewis was struck by the great lacunae in what he could know about his own ancestors. He vowed to excavate their past and tell their story.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became a social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. One of the most prominent figures in the anti-slavery movement, Douglass emerged as a national leader of the abolitionist movement, speaking and writing widely on behalf of the cause. In this classic work, Douglass gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

In 2018, poverty and domestic violence cast Evelyn and her children into the urban wilderness of Los Angeles, where she avoids the family crisis network that offers no clear pathway for her children to remain together and in a decent school. For the next five years, Evelyn works full time as a waitress yet remains unable to afford legitimate housing or qualify for government aid. All the while she strives to provide stability, education, loving memories, and college aspirations for her children even as they sleep in motels and in her car.

Told with humor and heart through a fairy tale lens, with flashbacks into the author’s not-always-happy childhood, Sit, Cinderella, Sit is a story about what can happen when you take a leap of faith, look and hear beyond people’s differences, and dare to believe in yourself.

Tess Chakkalakal gives listeners the first comprehensive biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. A complex and talented man, Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland to parents who were considered "mixed race." Though light-skinned, Chesnutt remained a member of the black community throughout his life. He studied among students at the State Colored Normal School who were formerly enslaved. He became a teacher in rural North Carolina during Reconstruction. His life in the South of those years, the issue of race, and how he himself identified as Black informed much of his later writing.

After being born into an evangelical religious cult that evolved into an abusive communal life, Deborah and her twin sister Esther experienced vastly different outcomes. Control issues for one, impulsivity for the other. Both attempted to self-heal by healing others. Deb spent thirty-four years in emergency nursing, Esther, sixteen years as an ER Tech. Esther's subsequent death in 2013, led Deb to write The Serpent's Tail, a memoir-in-verse detailing their first fourteen years in the cult and the devastating aftermath. She left the emergency to work with veterans in recovery.

Ila Arun burst into public view with the controversial song from Khal Nayak (1993), Choli Ke Peechhey. But several years before that, she was already well known for her contribution to Rajasthani folk music. Mumbai soon became her home, and it was in this city of glamour that Ila made a name for herself in every genre of the performing arts―film, television, music and playback singing―and also as a composer and lyricist.

Experience personal growth, as you explore the discoveries of a decade-long missional journey. Learn how to live out biblical principles by examining life and death, faith and fear, learning and unlearning, joy and sorrow. Join the author in taking a candid look at personal transformation.

“A joyous glimpse into a childhood we all wish we’d had: fun, carefree, and near the sea.” —JS Hyder Many of us are in dire need of relief, and sometimes we search for something good-natured, random, and joyous to lift our spirits and put a smile on our faces. This is what The Adventures of a Florida Boy is all about. This short and sweet memoir will make you laugh and feel happy in that stomach-warming way that fond memories tend to inspire. Jim Melvin's boyhood was spent in Florida in the 1960s on an island called Coquina Key. His parents’ waterfront home overlooked a large ...