Showing results by narrator "Bahni Turpin" in All Categories

In The Memory Librarian, music, fashion, film and activist icon Janelle Monáe returns to the Afrofuturistic world of her critically acclaimed album, Dirty Computer, to explore how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, love—become tangled in a totalitarian landscape...and to discover costs of unravelling them.

To respect yourself, to love yourself, should not have to be a radical decision. And yet it remains as challenging for an American girl to make today as it was in 1927 on the steps of the Supreme Court. It's a decision that must be faced when you're balancing on the tightrope of neurodivergence, finding your way as a second-generation immigrant, or facing down American racism even while loving America. And it's the only decision when you've weighed society's expectations and found them wanting. In The Radical Element, 12 of the most talented writers working in young adult literature today tell the stories of girls of all colors and creeds.

Wangari lives in a magical place in rural Kenya where the soil is rich for planting, the trees abundant, and the nearby pond full of mysterious creatures. She drinks from cool, clean streams and plays beneath her favorite fig tree under her mother's watchful gaze. Then Wangari grows up and goes away to school, and things start changing at home. Farmers chop down the trees.

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city's dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company - a biotech firm now derelict - and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech. One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump - plant or animal?

Today is the day Jo Monarch has been wishing on the moon about her entire life. It's the day of the Lineup, when she could be selected to leave her life in the Ashes behind. The day she could move across the mountains to a glittering, rich future. Once Jo is plucked from the Lineup, the real test begins. She still needs to impress the New Georgia Reps at tonight's Gala, and her path forward leads straight to Cove Wells. The damaged stepson of one of the Reps, Cove has been groomed as an emotional weapon, taught that love is a tool—and he's set on breaking Jo's heart next.

Each of these eight remarkable stories by Danzy Senna tightrope-walks tantalizingly, sometimes frighteningly, between defined states: life with and without mates and children, the familiar if constraining reference points provided by race, class, and gender. Tensions arise between a biracial couple when their son is admitted to the private school where they'd applied on a lark. A new mother hosts an old friend, still single, and discovers how each of them pities - and envies - the other. A young woman responds to an adoptee in search of her birth mother, knowing it is not she.

You may think you know the love triangle, but you've never seen love triangles like these. These top YA authors tackle the much-debated trope of the love triangle, and the result is 16 fresh, diverse, and romantic stories you don't want to miss: A teen girl who offers kissing lessons. Zombies in the Civil War South. The girl next door, the boy who loves her, and the girl who loves them both. Vampires at a boarding school. Three teens fighting monsters in an abandoned video rental store. Literally the last three people on the planet.

An eye-opening examination of how treating land as a source of profit has a massive impact on racial inequality and the housing, gentrification, and environmental crises.

In this radiant, highly anticipated debut, a cast of unforgettable women battle for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village. Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect, Nicole Dennis-Benn pens a tender hymn to a world hidden among pristine beaches and the wide expanse of turquoise seas. At an opulent resort in Montego Bay, Margot hustles to send her younger sister, Thandi, to school. Taught as a girl to trade her sexuality for survival, Margot is ruthlessly determined to shield Thandi from the same fate.

Buckhanon takes us into the life of 15-year-old Shivana Montgomery, who believes all black women wind up the same: single and raising children alone, like her mother. Until the sudden visit of her free-spirited Aunt Jewel, Shivana spends her days desperately struggling to understand life and the growing pains of her environment. When she accidentally becomes pregnant by an older man and must decide what to do, she begins a journey towards adulthood with only a mysterious voice inside to guide her.

Tash didn't want to go to camp, didn't want to spend the summer with a bunch of strangers, didn't want to be separated from the only two people she has ever been able to count on: her uncle Kevin, who saved her from foster care, and Cap'n Jackie, who lives next door. Camp turns out to be pretty fun, actually, but when Tash returns home, Cap'n Jackie is gone. And Tash needs her — the Captain always said all Tash had to do was hold it tight and the magic would come. Was it true? Could the key bring Cap'n Jackie back?

This is the story of one brave family: Mildred Loving, Richard Perry Loving, and their three children. It is the story of how Mildred and Richard fell in love, and got married in Washington, DC. But when they moved back to their hometown of Virginia, they were arrested (in dramatic fashion) for violating that state's laws against interracial marriage. The Lovings refused to allow their children to get the message that their parents' love was wrong, and so they fought the unfair law, taking their case all the way to the Supreme Court - and won!

In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes centre stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It's also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king.

Evie is disillusioned about love ever since her dad left her mum for another woman - she's even throwing out her beloved romance novel collection. When she's given a copy of a book called Instructions for Dancing, and follows a note inside to a dilapidated dance studio, she discovers she has a strange and unwelcome gift. When a couple kisses in front of her, she can see their whole relationship play out - from the moment they first catch each other's eye to the last bitter moments of their breakup.

From the hair on her head to the tips of her toes, Azira knows that she is awesome! And whether it’s styled in twists, curls, braids, Bantu knots, a textured bun, or left totally natural, her hair is just one of the countless things that helps Azira celebrate who God made her to be. She’s able to live out a beautiful story because God has crowned her with glory - and Azira wants you to do the same! 

This story was going to begin like all the best stories. With a school bus falling from the sky. But no one saw it happen. They were all too busy - Jason Reynolds conjures 10 tales (one per block) about what happens after the dismissal bell rings and brilliantly weaves them into one wickedly funny, piercingly poignant look at the detours we face on the walk home, and in life.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she’s thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: Leave Wagner. Now.

Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, when they were thrown together as roommates in a girls' shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then at a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem, but despite their conflict, the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them is undeniable.

Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the town of Lucille. Bitter's instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus...but her friends aren't willing to settle for a world that the adults say is 'just the way things are'. Pulled between old friendships, her creative passion and a new a romance, Bitter isn't sure where she belongs - in the art studio or in the streets.

From Margaret Atwood, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, comes a dazzling collection of fifteen stories. These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.