“If you don’t know my name, you don’t know your own.”—James Baldwin An anthology of African-American literature featuring contributions from some of the most prominent Black and African-American authors of our time, including James Baldwin, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Leroi Jones, Margaret Walker, Richard Wright, Malcom X, and many more. Featuring fiction, poetry, autobiography, and literary criticism, Black Voices captures the diverse and powerful words of a literary explosion, the ramifications of which can be seen and heard in the works of today’s African-American artists. A comprehensive and impressive primer, this anthology presents some of the greatest and most enduring work born out of the African-American experience in the United States. Contributors Also Include: Sterling A. Brown Charles W. Chesnutt John Henrik Clarke Countee Cullen Frederick Douglass Paul Laurence Dunbar James Weldon Johnson Naomi Long Madgett Paule Marshall Clarence Major Claude McKay Ann Petry Dudley Randall J. Saunders Redding Jean Toomer Darwin T. Turner Lerone Bennett, Jr. Frank London Brown Arthur P. Davis Frank Marshall Davis Owen Dodson Mari Evans Rudolph Fisher Dan Georgakas Robert Hayden Frank Horne Blyden Jackson Lance Jeffers Fenton Johnson George E. Kent Alain Locke Diane Oliver Stanley Sanders Richard G. Stern Sterling Stuckey Melvin B. Tolson

A teen girl hiding the scars of a past relationship finds home and healing in the words of strong Black writers. A beautiful sophomore novel from a critically acclaimed author and poet that explores how words have the power to shape and uplift our world even in the midst of pain. "A true embodiment of the term Black Girl Magic.” –Booklist When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known. Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can’t shake the feeling everyone knows what happened—and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G’s class. There, Angel’s classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from Black writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Zora NEale Hurston speak to her and begin to heal the wounds of her past. This stunning novel weaves together prose, poems, and vignettes to tell the story of Angel, a young woman whose past was shaped by domestic violence but whose love of language and music and the gift of community grant her the chance to find herself again.

Fourteen contributions by Smith (library and information studies, Queens College) and other scholars discuss African-American young adult literature. A sampling of topics includes periodical literature for African-American young adults, supernatural African themes in horror literature, and positive images of African-American fathers in young adult literature. The volume concludes with a study analyzing trends in the publication of contemporary African-American young adult literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A striking debut novel about a college freshman grappling with the challenges of attending an elite university with a disturbing racist history, which may not be as distant as it seems. "A searing debut.” –Entertainment Weekly Savannah Howard thought everyone followed the same checklist to get into Wooddale University: Take the hardest classes Get perfect grades Give up a social life to score a full ride to a top school But now that she’s on campus, it’s clear there’s a different rule book. Take student body president, campus royalty, and racist jerk Lucas Cunningham. It’s no secret money bought his acceptance letter. And he’s not the only one. Savannah tries to keep to head down, but when the statue of the university’s first Black president is vandalized, how can she look away? Someone has to put a stop to the injustice. But will telling the truth about Wooddale’s racist past cost Savannah her own future? First-time novelist Kristen R. Lee delivers a page-turning, thought-provoking story that exposes racism and hypocrisy on college campuses, and champions those who refuse to let it continue.

Just Us Girls: The Contemporary African American Young Adult Novel is a welcome addition to the literary criticism in a field that deserves more critical study - African American children's and young adult literature. This book is a close-reading textual study of major issues and themes in contemporary (i.e., post-Civil Rights era) young adult novels written by both well-known and lesser-known African American women writers, written primarily from an African American perspective and primarily, but not exclusively, for an African American female audience. Representative works by Candy Dawson Boyd, Rita Williams-Garcia, Deborah Gregory, Rosa Guy, Virginia Hamilton, Mildred Pitts Walter, and Jacqueline Woodson are analyzed. Each chapter investigates cultural, social, and/or psychological issues examined by the writers that are prevalent in the actual lives of African American girls.

Scholarly studies about the use of books by and about African-American children and young adults in classrooms across the United States.

In this heartfelt middle-grade novel that “brims with charm and compassion” (Vashti Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of Little Leaders), eleven-year-old G-baby must bring her family together when her little sister faces a dangerous illness "Love ain't like that." "How is it then?" Peaches asked, turning on her stomach to face me. "It's like sky. If you keep driving and driving, gas will run out, right?" "That's why we gotta go to the gas station." "Yep. But have you ever seen the sky run out? No matter how far we go?" "No, when we look up, there it is." "Well that's the kind of love Daddy and Mama got for us, Peaches -- love like sky." "It never ends?" "Never." G-baby and her younger sister, Peaches, are still getting used to their "blended-up" family. They live with Mama and Frank out in the suburbs, and they haven't seen their real daddy much since he married Millicent. G-baby misses her best friend back in Atlanta, and is crushed that her glamorous new stepsister, Tangie, wants nothing to do with her. G-baby is so preoccupied with earning Tangie's approval that she isn't there for her own little sister when she needs her most. Peaches gets sick-really sick. Suddenly, Mama and Daddy are arguing like they did before the divorce, and even the doctors at the hospital don't know how to help Peaches get better. It's up to G-baby to put things right. She knows Peaches can be strong again if she can only see that their family's love for her really is like sky.

“Calling My Name is a treasure.”—Nic Stone, New York Times–bestselling author of Dear Martin Calling My Name is a striking, luminous, and literary exploration of family, spirituality, and self—ideal for readers of Jacqueline Woodson, Jandy Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Sandra Cisneros. This unforgettable novel tells a universal coming-of-age story about Taja Brown, a young African American girl growing up in Houston, Texas, and deftly and beautifully explores the universal struggles of growing up, battling family expectations, discovering a sense of self, and finding a unique voice and purpose. Told in fifty-three short, episodic, moving, and iridescent chapters, Calling My Name follows Taja on her journey from middle school to high school. Literary and noteworthy, this is a beauty of a novel that captures the multifaceted struggle of finding where you belong and why you matter.

This multidisciplinary handbook pulls together in one volume the research on children's and young adult literature which is currently scattered across three intersecting disciplines: education, English, and library and information science.