We live in a time where we live our whole life trying to find our purpose in life. The teachers in this book is symbolic in two ways. 1.) They are acting as characters in scenes to motivate, encourage, and help elevate members of the african american community. They see something in this little girl not only from the letter on her back; but by the light of her ora. They can see she’s ready to express herself in a way she wouldn’t be able to sitting indian style on a rug. 2.) The same way these beautiful souls is used in this book to teach the youth is parellel to the way their stories will inspire a generation and act as teacher’s from above to lead the way in the mission to be treated equally in an unjust society. In this time, we need angels to bridge the gap between us, and the most high. We need hoperah winfree and her ink pin to help kick start real change as a form of protest to bring light to inequality. Just like the mouse on the cover of the book, all we need is hope. We will create our own inspirations to become the best version of ourselves that we where always meant to be.

Since the early 2000s, the phenomenon of the “down low”—black men who have sex with men as well as women and do not identify as gay, queer, or bisexual—has exploded in news media and popular culture, from the Oprah Winfrey Show to R & B singer R. Kelly’s hip hopera Trapped in the Closet. Most down-low stories are morality tales in which black men are either predators who risk infecting their unsuspecting female partners with HIV or victims of a pathological black culture that repudiates openly gay identities. In both cases, down-low narratives depict black men as sexually dangerous, duplicitous, promiscuous, and contaminated. In Nobody Is Supposed to Know, C. Riley Snorton traces the emergence and circulation of the down low in contemporary media and popular culture to show how these portrayals reinforce troubling perceptions of black sexuality. Reworking Eve Sedgwick’s notion of the “glass closet,” Snorton advances a new theory of such representations in which black sexuality is marked by hypervisibility and confinement, spectacle and speculation. Through close readings of news, music, movies, television, and gossip blogs, Nobody Is Supposed to Know explores the contemporary genealogy, meaning, and functions of the down low. Snorton examines how the down low links blackness and queerness in the popular imagination and how the down low is just one example of how media and popular culture surveil and police black sexuality. Looking at figures such as Ma Rainey, Bishop Eddie L. Long, J. L. King, and Will Smith, he ultimately contends that down-low narratives reveal the limits of current understandings of black sexuality.

If Romeo and Juliet got the Hamilton treatment...who would play the leads? This vividly funny, honest, and charming romantic novel by Dana L. Davis is the story of a girl who thinks she has what it takes...and the world thinks so, too. Jerzie Jhames will do anything to land the lead role in Broadway’s hottest new show, Roman and Jewel, a Romeo and Juliet inspired hip-hopera featuring a diverse cast and modern twists on the play. But her hopes are crushed when she learns mega-star Cinny won the lead...and Jerzie is her understudy. Falling for male lead Zeppelin Reid is a terrible idea—especially once Jerzie learns Cinny wants him for herself. Star-crossed love always ends badly. But when a video of Jerzie and Zepp practicing goes viral and the entire world weighs in on who should play Jewel, Jerzie learns that while the price of fame is high, friendship, family, and love are priceless. Books by Dana L. Davis: Tiffany Sly Lives Here Now The Voice in My Head Roman and Jewel

Race has always been America’s first standard and central paradox. From the start, America based its politics on the principle of white supremacy, but it has always lived and dreamed of itself in color. The truth beneath the contradiction has finally emerged and led us to the threshold of a transformation of American identity as profound as slavery was defining. We live in a country where the “King of Pop” was born black and a leading rap M.C. is white, where salsa outsells ketchup and cosmetics firms advertise blond hair dye with black models. Whiteness is in steep decline as the primary measure of Americanness. The new, true American identity rising in its place is transracial, defined by shared cultural and consumer habits, not skin color or ethnicity. And this unprecedented redefinition of what “American” sounds, looks, and feels like is not being driven by the politics of protest or liberal multiculturalism but by a more basic American instinct: the profit motive. Smart marketers discovered that the inherent, subversive appeal of transracial American culture was the perfect boombox for breaking through the noise of a crowded marketplace: Nike and the NBA used unambiguous black style to create modern sports marketing; Pepsi validated Michael Jackson as a superstar while adding millions to its own bottom li≠ Hollywood turned a taboo into a lucrative cliché with black-white buddy films; Oprah Winfrey created the model for the ultimate individual corporate br∧ and Budweiser created a signature series of commercials built around four ordinary black men signaling something ineffably American with one word—“Wassup?” In the end, this is a hopeful but clear-eyed argument that while we fall short of true equality, we are opting to carry on that struggle together within a common American cultural skin. "There’s been a radical shift in the place of race and ethnicity in America. Near revolutionary developments in advertising, media, marketing, technology, and global trade have in the last two decades of the twentieth century nearly obliterated walls that have stood for generations between nonwhites and the image of the American dream. The mainstream, heretofore synonymous with what is considered average for whites, is now equally defined by the preferences, presence, and perspectives of people of color. The much-maligned melting pot, into which generations of European-American identities are said to have dissolved, is bubbling again, but on a higher flame; this time whiteness itself is finally being dissolved into a larger American identity. On its surface, this book tells the story of how and why big business turned up that flame, and a brief history of race and pop culture leading up to this watershed. But at its core American Skin is about the revolution that higher heat on American identity is bringing about: the end of ‘white’ America. This book begins, and my arguments and insights ultimately rest on, one premise and guiding belief about this country: We have always been, and will ever be, of one race—human—and of one culture—American." —From the Introduction

A bold exposé of the controversial secret that has potentially dire consequences in many African American communities. Delivering the first frank and thorough investigation of life “on the down low” (the DL), J. L. King exposes a closeted culture of sex between black men who lead “straight” lives. King explores his own past as a DL man, and the path that led him to let go of the lies and bring forth a message that can promote emotional healing and open discussions about relationships, sex, sexuality, and health in the black community. Providing a long-overdue wake-up call, J. L. King bravely puts the spotlight on a topic that has until now remained dangerously taboo. Drawn from hundreds of interviews, statistics, and the author’s firsthand knowledge of DL behavior, On the Down Low reveals the warning signs African American women need to know. King also discusses the potential health consequences of having unprotected sex, as African American women represent an alarming 64 percent of new HIV infections. Volatile yet vital, On the Down Low is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year. “A survey by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta found that nearly a quarter of black HIV-positive men who had sex with men consider themselves heterosexual.” —Essence

Winner of the John Boswell Prize from the American Historical Association 2018 Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association 2018 Winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Honor 2018 Winner of Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction 2018 Winner of the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies The story of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first prominent transsexual, famously narrated trans embodiment in the postwar era. Her celebrity, however, has obscured other mid-century trans narratives—ones lived by African Americans such as Lucy Hicks Anderson and James McHarris. Their erasure from trans history masks the profound ways race has figured prominently in the construction and representation of transgender subjects. In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials—early sexological texts, fugitive slave narratives, Afro-modernist literature, sensationalist journalism, Hollywood films—Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable. In tracing the twinned genealogies of blackness and transness, Snorton follows multiple trajectories, from the medical experiments conducted on enslaved black women by J. Marion Sims, the “father of American gynecology,” to the negation of blackness that makes transnormativity possible. Revealing instances of personal sovereignty among blacks living in the antebellum North that were mapped in terms of “cross dressing” and canonical black literary works that express black men’s access to the “female within,” Black on Both Sides concludes with a reading of the fate of Phillip DeVine, who was murdered alongside Brandon Teena in 1993, a fact omitted from the film Boys Don’t Cry out of narrative convenience. Reconstructing these theoretical and historical trajectories furthers our imaginative capacities to conceive more livable black and trans worlds.

EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.

Covering the vast and various terrain of African American music, this text begins with an account of the author's own musical experiences with family and friends on the South Side of Chicago. It goes on to explore the global influence and social relevance of African American music.

"Lush and lavish, Sing Me Forgotten hit all the right notes." —Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrow "A deliciously magical feminist twist on the beloved classic The Phantom of the Opera." —Kester Grant, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Court of Miracles Isda does not exist. At least not beyond the opulent walls of the opera house. Cast into a well at birth for being one of the magical few who can manipulate memories when people sing, she was saved by Cyril, the opera house’s owner. Since that day, he has given her sanctuary from the murderous world outside. All he asks in return is that she use her power to keep ticket sales high—and that she stay out of sight. For if anyone discovers she survived, Isda and Cyril would pay with their lives. But Isda breaks Cyril’s cardinal rule when she meets Emeric Rodin, a charming boy who throws her quiet, solitary life out of balance. His voice is unlike any she’s ever heard, but the real shock comes when she finds in his memories hints of a way to finally break free of her gilded prison. Haunted by this possibility, Isda spends more and more time with Emeric, searching for answers in his music and his past. But the price of freedom is steeper than Isda could ever know. For even as she struggles with her growing feelings for Emeric, she learns that in order to take charge of her own destiny, she must become the monster the world tried to drown in the first place. "Enchanting, lush, and decadent." —Adalyn Grace, author of All the Stars and Teeth Also by Jessica S. Olson: A Forgery of Roses