African Memory

Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.

Tracking the Memory is primarily a collection of informative and personal stories about the different experiences of hunting. It is also the culmination of a boyhood enterprise of exploration and discovery that began on a farm in the Chipinga area of British colonial Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) during the mid-1950s, and continued along the banks of the majestic Sabi (Save) River, and lives to this day 65 years on as a lifetime career and passion of the author. Kevin Thomas is first a professional hunter but thankfully he is also a writer, and as such we have this collection of first hand accounts ...

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks. In this updated edition of the classic work, Mark Pendergrast reviews the dramatic changes in coffee culture over the past decade, from the disastrous "Coffee Crisis" that caused global prices to plummet to the rise of the Fair Trade movement and the "third-wave" of quality-obsessed coffee connoisseurs.

At the age of 12, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti - to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have refused to forget the violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation South.

The first African men, women, and children in colonial America did not arrive with dreams of freedom or hopes of a new, better life. They arrived after a torturous 90-day journey called the Middle Passage. And they arrived as slaves. Since that time, African-Americans have suffered, triumphed, despaired,and dreamed.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched. That remains an undisputed fact of the case that ignited a flame within the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to be extinguished. Yet the rest of the details surrounding the event remain distorted by time and too many tellings. What does justice mean in the resolution of a cold case spanning nearly seven decades?

Poverty and depravity wreak havoc on Hassan Omar’s family. Amid great hardship he decides to escape. The arrival of independence brings new upheavals as well as the betrayal of the promise of freedom. The new government, fearful of an exodus of its most able men, discourages young people from travelling abroad and refuses to release examination results. Deprived of a scholarship, Hassan travels to Nairobi to stay with a wealthy uncle, in the hope that he will release his mother’s rightful share of the family inheritance.

An advance study team from a Benwarian spaceship is sent to earth to study humans to see if any are worth saving when the planet is terraformed. Two of them befriend select humans and develop a small community in N. Arizona. In their travels one of them becomes possessed by a demon whose only desire is to destroy everything in its path. It lives in the mind of Travis, one of the Benwarians, wreaking havoc. Expelled from his mind, it jumps from one being to another trying to kill both the Benwarians and their friends. The aliens engage the predator in a deadly battle of survival.

The Tribe: The Fourth Societal Unit is a profound exploration of identity, destiny, and the ties that bind us to our heritage. Set against the backdrop of South Sudan’s majestic savanna, this novel follows Panyim, a young man of the Nuer tribe, as he grapples with the expectations of his lineage and the call of a new destiny. Panyim stands at the crossroads of tradition and change, where the whispers of the golden grasses speak of ancient times and the rhythms of the seasons dictate the lives of his people. Yet, his heart is restless, caught between the role of a herdsman, as his father ...

Discover the transformative power of unity in The World: The Sixth Societal Unit, a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of Juba’s serene dawn. This poignant story follows Panyim, a young man whose heartbeat syncs with the tranquil rhythm of the Nile, as he contemplates a world united in peace. As Panyim and his beloved Nyakor walk the banks of the river, they reflect on a past marred by strife, now giving way to a tapestry of peace woven by the hands of those who dared to dream. Deng and Nyaluak, Panyim’s parents, embody the wisdom and hope that have shepherded their nation ...

In Bloody Tuesday, John Giggie powerfully recovers one of the last great untold stories of the civil rights movement and its role in the reckoning with America's ongoing struggle for racial justice.

The 1918 lynching of Mary Turner by a white mob in Brooks County, Georgia, is remembered and studied mainly because of the horror of an allegedly pregnant woman's murder. In Mary Turner and the Mob, author Thomas Aiello asserts that the gruesome details of Turner's execution have distracted historians from investigating the larger context of these terrible events. Turner was murdered but not pregnant, the author contends, and Walter White, the NAACP investigator in the case, knew this but obscured the facts because of the story's effectiveness.

In 1859, at the largest recorded slave auction in American history, more than 400 men, women, and children were sold by the Butler Plantation estates. This book is one of the first to analyze the operation of this auction and trace the lives of slaves before, during, and after their sale. Immersing herself in the personal papers of the Butlers, accounts from journalists that witnessed the auction, genealogical records, and oral histories, Anne C. Bailey weaves together a narrative that brings the auction to life.

This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." In a series of narrative essays, Dr. G writes eloquently and powerfully about the role of language in social transformation and the academic, intellectual, linguistic, and societal debates that shaped her groundbreaking work as a Black Studies O.G. and a Womanist scholar-activist of African American Language.

At Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, a Union force composed predominantly of former slaves met their Confederate adversaries in one of the bloodiest small engagements of the war. This important fight received some attention in the North and South but soon drifted into obscurity. The fighting at Milliken's Bend occurred in June 1863, about fifteen miles north of Vicksburg on the west bank of the Mississippi River, where a brigade of Texas Confederates attacked a Federal outpost.

"Monkey Weddings & Summer Sapphires" is a lovely telling of a childhood spent in Johannesburg, South Africa, and of settling into adult life and motherhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. Recipes, collected from travels, family, and friends allows the story to be told with the foods and dishes as the conveyance. The changing seasons, the natural wild beauty that surrounds everyday life, the abundance of wild edibles and local produce all serve as the inspiration to each chapter.

Phoenix Richards is used to getting what she wants. As the wedding planner guru of the century, she is in high demand and only the elite can afford her services. When real estate tycoon, Elijah Manning, hires Phoenix, she decides that he is the man for her. Never mind about the woman he actually plans on marrying.

Over the course of more than twenty years, James D. Richardson and his wife, Lori, retraced the steps of his ancestor, George Richardson (1824-1911), across nine states, uncovering letters, diaries, and more memoirs hidden away. Their journey brought them to the brink of the racial divide in America, revealing how his great-great-grandfather Richardson played a role in the Underground Railroad, served as a chaplain to a Black Union regiment in the Civil War, and founded a college in Texas for the formerly enslaved.