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Mary Wilson, Co-Founding Member of The Supremes, Dies at 76
She was a Motown legend, bestselling author, music activist, former U.S. cultural ambassador and co-founding member of The Supremes—of which she was dubbed “the sexy one.” Entertainer Mary Wilson, best known as the longest-running member of the group she made famous alongside Diana Ross and Florence Ballard (and later, Cindy Birdsong) died on Monday night…
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'That Ideology of Colorism Affects All of Us': The Root Presents It's Lit! Talks Prose, Passing and the Power of Black Women With Brit Bennett
There’s a reason Black women call each other “sister.” Even if we bear no blood relation or resemblance—and despite our broad variances in color, economic and educational access and life experience—there is an innate knowing between Black women—of what it is to be a Black woman. Writer Brit Bennett has a deep understanding of this…
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Capping Off a Winning Week, Amanda Gorman's First 3 Books Have Preemptively Garnered a Million First Prints
Ask any author or publisher, and they’ll tell you that garnering enough demand for reprints of any book is a very good sign. With that in mind, a million prints ordered prior to publication is a very rare indication of a predicted hit. After her performance at last Wednesday’s inauguration, Amanda Gorman’s publisher Penguin Random…
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A New Era for a Modern Museum: The Guggenheim Names Naomi Beckwith Its New Deputy Director and Chief Curator
For 84 years, New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has represented the vanguard of modern art, an early champion of artists today, its nautilus shell-inspired structure houses artworks from generations of the world’s most visionary and experimental artists. Yet like many fine arts museums, for decades, the Guggenheim’s iconic spiral of galleries have proved a…
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'Suddenly, You See the Story More Clearly': The Root Presents: It's Lit Talks Transcendent Writing With Yaa Gyasi
“I always say, writing a first novel, you feel like you’re writing in the dark, unsure of whether or not your book will ever see the light of day,” says author Yaa Gyasi, who has written not one but two bestsellers since 2016, when her debut novel Homegoing was published by Penguin Random House. An…
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InHAIRitance: Tracee Ellis Ross, Ayanna Pressley and Color Of Change Advocate for Small Black Beauty Businesses and the CROWN Act
Can you believe it’s nearly the end of 2020—and amid everything else, in most states in America we’re still asking for permission to wear our hair as we please? While the freedom to wear naturally textured or traditional Black hairstyles may seem purely aesthetic to the willfully ignorant some, it is in fact part of…
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Got 99 Problems, but a Book Ain't One: Jay-Z's Roc Nation and Random House to Launch 'Roc Lit 101'
If the ongoing pandemic has reignited your passion for reading (or simply deepened it), say no more, Fam. Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter has already Decoded his lyrics in book form, but now, the company he founded will add to its (and his) multimedia entertainment empire, announcing a new publishing partnership with Random House, a division of…
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'We're Better Than This, but Just Barely' The Root Presents: It's Lit Talks Democracy With Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings
“So, it turns out that we’re better than this, but just barely,” laughs Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings in the days after a historic but still contested election, one which her husband, the incomparable Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) unfortunately didn’t live to see. Dr. Cummings’ quip is a play on her late husband’s famous quote and…
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'You Cannot Do Anything Alone': Marley Dias Tells Us How She Gets It Done on The Root Presents It's Lit
When we grow up, we want to be like Marley Dias. At 15, the founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks—which she launched in 2015 at age 10—has already garnered worldwide acclaim and authored a book of her own in 2018: Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You! In 2019, The Root honored her as one of our Young Futurists,…
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'We're Not Some New Anomaly': The Root Presents It's Lit Talks Purpose, Process and Pronouns With George M. Johnson
When The Root first spoke to George M. Johnson (one of our longtime contributors) just ahead of the release of their debut book, All Boy Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto, we had a feeling they were on the cusp of something groundbreaking. Borne from their own reflections on growing up without the language and representation…
