"The groundbreaking Harlem Renaissance novel about prejudice within the black community Emma Lou Morgan's skin is black. So black that it's a source of shame to her not only among the largely white community of her hometown of Boise, Idaho, but also among her lighter-skinned family and friends. Seeking a community where she will be accepted, she leaves home at age eighteen, traveling first to Los Angeles and then to New York City, where in the Harlem...

Dionne Brand explores the relevance and nature of identity and belonging in a culturally diverse and changing world. Drawing on cartography, narratives of childhood in the Caribbean, journeys across the Canadian landscape, African ancestry, history, politics, philosophy, and literature, A Map to the Door of No Return sketches the shifting borders of home and nation, and the connection to place.

"Gabriel Mathis, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring fantasy writer and reluctant Russophile, travels to Ukraine to teach English and meets the love of his life: an international arms dealer very much out of his league. Simon--a former Special Forces medic, torn over a warped sense of duty and a child he did not want--returns to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a mixed martial artist. After spending his adolescence defending his bisexuality, Michael...

"Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her Southern California home. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her closest childhood friend, Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette?s twenty-two-year-old son?and Fantine?s godson?Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor has fled to New Orleans. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor,...

"Acker navigates her characters' lives with humor, heart, and grace. I loved these stories." --Lisa Ko This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school"--with lessons on gentrification and respectability- and fight to create their own...

"National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew,"...

"Furo Wariboko wakes on the morning of a job interview to discover he's turned into a white man: red hair, green eyes, pale skin. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. Pursued from the streets to the boardroom by those who would use him, Furo hides the evidence of his former life... as he reinvents himself. In this wicked satire, Furo's search for an identity deeper than his skin leads to the unraveling of his...

Henry Louis Gates Jr. travels to Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Peru to discover the African influence on Latin America. He examines the shared legacy of colonialism and slavery in a region that imported ten times as many slaves as the United States, and kept them in bondage far longer. Gates finds that the influence of people of African descent has had a massive influence on the history and culture of Latin America and the Caribbean,...