Cover spine: The 6th Candorville collection.

How have African American writers drawn on "bad" black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art? This is the question posed by Howard Rambsy’s new book, which explores bad men as a central, recurring, and understudied figure in African American literature and music. By focusing on how various iterations of the bad black man figure serve as creative muse and inspiration for literary production, Rambsy puts a wide variety of contemporary African American literary and cultural works in conversation with creativity research for the first time. Employing concepts such as playfulness, productivity, divergent thinking, and problem finding, Rambsy examines the works of a wide range of writers—including Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tyehimba Jess, Trymaine Lee, Adrian Matejka, Aaron McGruder, Evie Shockley, and Kevin Young—who have drawn on notions of bad black men and boys to create innovative and challenging works in a variety of genres. Through groundbreaking readings, Rambsy demonstrates the fruitfulness of viewing black literary art through the lens of creativity research.

Cover subtitle: The 7th Candorville collection.

The fourth collection of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Candorville, by Darrin Bell. Barack Obama's historic election - not to mention Lemont's journalism career - hinges on a secret mission to rescue a prisoner of war. Lemont survives Embedded Journalists Boot Camp, but can he survive the boat mission up Vietnam's Nodung River with Anderson Cooper and a crew of misfit soldiers? And what horrifying secret awaits them all at the river's end? At home, Susan dates the Boyfriend-from-Hell as Dick Fink tries to steal her job. C-Dog goes to unbelievable lengths to prove Lemont's fiancee is cheating and that Lemont may not be Lionel's father. And when comedian George Carlin dies, Lemont accompanies him on his final journey and accidentally discovers the meaning of life. Candorville has been described as "This generation's Doonesbury, only a lot more surreal and irreverent." Contains a whopping 750 comics!

An insightful comic strip filled with edgy dialogue and thoroughly modern situations, Candorville: Thank God for Culture Clash by Darrin Bell is made for today's world. It fearlessly covers bigotry, poverty, homelessness, biracialism, personal responsibility, and more while never losing sight of the humor behind these weighty issues. The strip targets the socially conscious by tackling tough issues with irony, satire, and humor. Candorville: Thank God for Culture Clash celebrates diversity by poking a little fun at it.

Darrin Bell's Candorville is an insightful comic strip for today's world. Brutally honest but still evenhanded, Candorville takes on some of society's toughest issues, giving readers something to think about--as well as smirks, chuckles, and guffaws. Another Stereotype Bites the Dust is a collection of creator Darrin Bell's Candorville cartoon strip. In this thought-provoking strip Bell uses a diverse group of friends to paint a real yet humorous portrait of inner-city America. An educated underachiever, Lemont Brown is an aspiring writer. Socially conscious, he wants to work at changing the world and infusing it with wisdom and justice--if only he could pay his rent. Lemont's childhood friend Susan Garcia is a book-smart and street savvy Mexican-American woman who won't let bigotry or any glass ceiling keep her down. And Lemont's friend Clyde (aka C-Dog) is a streetwise thug and undiscovered rapper who'd rather mooch off his mother than get a job. Another Stereotype Bites the Dust deals with some tough issues--poverty, homelessness, racism, and personal responsibility--with knowing irony and incisive satire. Bell uses edgy dialogue and modern situations to jab everything from political correctness to political spinning, from political hindsight to office politics, making it a hit with the socially aware.

The 3rd collection of Darrin Bell's comic strip Candorville, which runs in major newspapers across the U.S. Follow the hilarious exploits of an African-American blogger, a gangsta rapper and a Latina advertising exec trying to get their piece of an American pie that might've been left out of the fridge a little too long. After one too many humorous rejections from the New Yorker, Lemont starts his own blog. But will a breaking scandal force him into the spotlight before he's ready? Will his unbelievable interviews with Hurricane Katrina survivors land him a Pulitzer, or a padded room? And why are socially-awkward Federal agents watching his every move? Meanwhile, C-Dog devises a half-dozen shameless ways to raise funds to publish his new CD. But can he kill off his newfound conscience before it destroys his misogynist street cred? And how can Susan Garcia win her promotion if she's so busy keeping an eye on her backstabbing assistant and living in denial about Lemont's life-shattering secret?

Rudy Park: The People Must Be Wired is the hilarious first collection of the technocentric comic strip Rudy Park. The strip lampoons the fast pace of our technology-driven world, our obsession with materialism, and the foibles of our cultural and political icons. Set at an Internet café, the strip follows the lives of a regular cast of characters, including Rudy, the café's manager, who believes in all things Internet, the healing powers of consumption, and the conviction that inner peace lies in having the latest technological gadget. At the cybercafé, Rudy must deal with his new station in life, his entrepreneurial boss, and an odd assortment of regular patrons, like Mrs. Cohen, an irascible octogenarian who challenges Rudy at every turn. The café is also a crossroads for contemporary issues and celebrity and political visitors, such as John Ashcroft (who monitors people from his home inside a pastry container at the cafe), and Senator Tom Daschle (who, afraid to draw too much attention to himself, lives under a table). Writer Theron Heir grew up in Boulder, Colorado, but currently lives in San Francisco. He is biding his time with cartooning until he finds a way to profit from his revolutionary theories on napping. Cartoonist Darrin Bell grew up in East L.A. before making his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. His other comic strip, Candorville, is syndicated by the Washington Post Writer's Group. His editorial cartoons appear regularly in the L.A. Times and other major newspapers.

The fifth collection of the syndicated newspaper comic strip Candorville, by Darrin Bell. Lemont's new success as the Chronicle's Senior White House Correspondent may be short-lived; as a startling revelation about his evil fiancee propels him and Dr. Noodle on a hilariously perilous journey to the heart of Mexico, where they face bloodthirsty demons, vampires, werewolves, and drug cartels. At home, in honor of the 1st black President, C-Dog summons the ghost of Richard Pryor for advice on how to stop saying the N word. He finds himself on the run, impersonating Lemont on his book tour to hide from the insanely huge brother of a girl he's wronged. And as Susan makes a life-altering pact with her backstabbing assistant, Lemont travels back in time to the Hammer-Time Nineties to help his younger self seduce The One That Got Away. Candorville, which has been called this generation's Doonesbury, appears in over 100 papers. This book contains over 750 comics!

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.