By Lee A. Daniels
Lessons provides the important benefit of understanding, in full measure, the spirit that drove thousands of black Americans from the most ordinary of circumstances to forcefully but nonviolently confront white southerners’ threats and use of physical and economic reprisals

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 Grace Aneiza Ali
“Stories matter. Many stories matter,” said Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie in her speech on “The Danger of the Single Story” at the TEDGlobal 2009 forum last year. She warned against one-dimensional views and singular stories that often depict Africans as “fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved.”

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.