Collection: Staff Picks

  With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the...

Whitney Houston is as big a superstar as the music business has ever known. She exploded on the scene in 1985 with her debut album...

When Parker Curry came face-to-face with Amy Sherald’s transcendent portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, she didn’t just see the...

Tupac Shakur's most intimate and honest thoughts were uncovered only after his death with the instant classic The Rose That Grew from Concrete.His talent was unbounded—a...

Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever.In 2032,...

In The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curator and critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The...

Legendary author bell hooks and Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka present a lyrical celebration, brimming with enthusiasm for girls and their hair. Nominated for an NAACP...

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals...

For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries...

  Akwaeke Emezi makes their young adult debut with Pet on the inaugural Make Me a World list. An honoree on the National Book Foundation's "5 Under...

  When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage...

One of the most highly praised novels of the year, the debut from an astonishing young writer, Freshwater tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who...

What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know — A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press Malcolm...

  Maya Angelou's unforgettable poem is matched with the daring art of Jean-Michel Basquiat in this powerful ode to courage Shadows on the wallNoises down...

Black art in the era of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers In the period of radical change that was 1963–83, young black artists at the...

Presenting the essential writings of Black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of...

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the...

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don’t Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that...

In exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait for young people of the passionate performer and civil...

For the first time Gucci Mane tells his extraordinary story in his own words. It is “as wild, unpredictable, and fascinating as the man himself”...

Illustrator Jacqui C. Smith graduated from Columbia College of Chicago with a BA in Film & Video: Traditional Animation. Jacqui currently resides in Burbank, California...