By Imani Perry
Khalil Gibran Muhammad introduces his book, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race Crime and the Making of Modern America, with a contemporary lens. He cites the dire reality that “Nearly half of the more than two million Americans behind bars are African American…” and describes the commonplace of associating blackness with crime in the contemporary United States.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
As we digest and debate the results of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards—including the racial aspects of various wins and nominations—Hollywood insider Valerie Joyner’s debut novel, Hollyhood, has special resonance and relevance.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
In her debut collection of poetry, Arc & Hue, Tara Betts articulates deeply-felt human emotion in a lyrical, beautiful way. Betts is a poet for the people.

By Paula L. Woods
A Wish After Midnight is written with a lyrical grace that many authors of what passes for adult literature would envy as it examines universal themes of finding lost love, belief in one’s dreams and the power of friendship.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
In his introduction to The Black Book, Bill Cosby called it “a scrapbook…a folk journey of Black America…beautiful, haunting, curious, informative, and human,” and it is as intimate, revealing, heartbreaking, and uplifting as any treasured family album can be.

By Graham Hodges
In early September, 1838, the man who would become Frederick Douglass, the foremost black abolitionist of the nineteenth century, arrived in New York City, well aware that he still faced danger from the “slave catchers” who roamed the streets seeking to kidnap unwary blacks. Through fortuitous circumstance, Frederick Bailey, as he was then called, soon met David Ruggles, the city’s leading black abolitionist—and Frederick Douglass’ first and perhaps most influential professor of radical abolitionism.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
The controversial film Precious, released to great acclaim in November, is still making news. With Mo’Nique’s Golden Globe Awards win for Best Supporting Actress (with Oscar nods expected to follow), and eight NAACP Image Award nominations, the story of a teen abused every which way by both her mother and father provides fertile ground for introspection and discussion.

By George E. Curry
I thought I knew Cornel West, the most public of public intellectuals. But it was not until I read his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud that I realized how much I didn’t know about my friend.

By Lee A. Daniels
In 1865, the North’s victory in the Civil War freed black Americans from slavery.

But it did not free them from cotton.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
It is entirely fitting that Jabari Asim’s debut fiction, A Taste of Honey, is published in this, the year after Change. Everything is different now that the President of the United States is a black man. Everything changes in Asim’s collection of connected short stories, too—not because a leader is on the rise, but because one is shot down.