Dion Graham
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Samuel and his younger brother, Joshua, are free black boys living in an orphanage during the Civil War, but when Samuel takes the blame for his brother's prank, he is sent South, given a new name, and sold into slavery--and somehow he must survive both captivity and the war, to find his way back to his brother.
63) Another country
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Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the...
64) King: a life
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"The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times"--
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"A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar:...
66) Arch-conspirator
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Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the genes of the fallen, humanity will end. Antigone's parents--Oedipus and Jocasta--are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle, Kreon, rising to claim her father's vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage. When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what is really is: a gilded cage, where she is...
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There's a reason hit songs offer such guilty pleasure--they're designed that way. Over the last two decades a new type of hit song has emerged, one that is almost inescapably catchy. Pop songs have always had a "hook, " but today's songs bristle with them: a hook every seven seconds is the rule. Painstakingly crafted to tweak the brain's delight in melody, rhythm, and repetition, these songs are highly processed products. Like snack-food engineers,...
68) Her right foot
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In this honest look at the literal foundation of our country, Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris investigate a seemingly small trait of America's most emblematic statue. What they find is about more than history, more than art. What they find in the Statue of Liberty's right foot is the message of acceptance that is essential to an entire country's creation.
69) Trombone Shorty
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Hailing from the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews got his nickname by wielding a trombone twice as long as he was high. A prodigy, he was leading his own band by age six, and today this Grammy-nominated artist headlines the legendary New Orleans Jazz Fest. Along with esteemed illustrator Bryan Collier, Andrews has created a lively picture book autobiography about how he followed his dream of becoming a musician,...
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One of the surprise bestsellers of 1991, this is the moving & powerful account of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex disfigured by crime & neglect. "Alex Kotlowitz joins the ranks of the important few writers on the subject of urban poverty." This is the moving and powerful account of two remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex...
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Richard Pryor was arguably the single most influential performer of the second half of the twentieth century, and certainly he was the most successful black actor/comedian ever. Controversial and somewhat enigmatic in his lifetime, Pryor's performances opened up a new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn't just new--it was heretofore unthinkable. His childhood in Peoria, Illinois, was spent just trying to survive....
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"From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists-Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans-who came together to create the most famous and bestselling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue. The myth of the 60s depends on the 1950s being the before times of conformity, segregation, straightness-The Lonely Crowd...
75) Being Clem
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Finding Langston trilogy volume 3
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When nine-year-old Clem's father dies in the Port Chicago Disaster he is forced to navigate his family's losses and struggles in 1940's Chicago.
1944. Clem's father is away, serving as a sailor in World War II. When the family receives news that his father has died in the infamous Port Chicago explosion in San Francisco, everything begins to fall apart. Clem's mother is forced to work long, tough hours as a maid for a wealthy white family. The obstacles...
76) Leaving Lymon
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Finding Langston trilogy volume 2
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Raised by his grandparents, first in Mississippi then in Wisconsin, ten-year-old Lymon moves to Chicago in 1945 to live with the mother he never knew, while yearning for his father.
77) A beach tail
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When his father tells him not to leave the lion he is drawing on the beach, a little boy starts making a very, very long tail--and a trail to follow back.
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"In a near-future Southern city, everyone is talking about a new experimental medical procedure that boasts unprecedented success rates. In a society plagued by racism, segregation, and private prisons, this operation saves lives with a controversial method--by turning people white. Like any father, our unnamed narrator just wants the best for his son Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is getting bigger by the day. But in order to afford...
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"A self-taught artist's odyssey from Jim Crow era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery-a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh start...
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"A harrowing true story of the modern Ku Klux Klan and an act of grace that shook a community in the Deep South. In 1996, the town of Laurens, South Carolina, was thrust into the international spotlight when a white supremacist named Michael Burden openeda museum celebrating the Ku Klux Klan on the community's main square. Journalists and protestors flooded the town, and hate groups rallied to the establishment's defense, dredging up the long history...