It’s Lit
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A Black Woman Takes Us Into the Swirl of Bipolar Disorder in New Memoir, I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying
Bassey Ikpi’s I’m Telling The Truth, But I’m Lying, the 43-year-old’s journey into her mental health struggle, is not a traditionally written memoir—neither in its structure nor in its nonchronological narrative. It is poetic, it is revelatory, it is distressing; it is, at times, exhausting. It is a literal entree into the mind of someone…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates Announces The Water Dancer Book Tour
After attempting to deliver us all from evil with the beautifully written Between the World and Me, and his essay collection, We Were Eight Years in Power, award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates—who arguably may be the greatest essayist of our time—is veering into fiction to anoint us all with his debut novel, The Water Dancer, on…
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How It Feels to Be ‘Inside Out’ After 40 Years of Keeping Everything In
“I didn’t expect to know this much about your dick.” I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just start with the bar I sat at while writing this. No alcohol was served or consumed, but I could see my three tour companions: a bottle of Cutty Sark and a bottle of Lazzaroni—the ingredients for…
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Open Thread: VSB x Mahogany Books June Book Club Meeting Selection, Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor
Back on May 15, we announced that as a way to engage the online VSB community with the in-person monthly book club meeting, we’d post an open thread on the day of the actual book club meeting for those who aren’t in D.C. or who would rather have a convo about the book online. Well,…
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Very Smart Brothas x Mahogany Books Monthly Book Club: Zora and Langston by Yuval Taylor
Since November 2018, VSB has teamed with Mahogany Books, an online and brick-and-mortar, black-owned bookstore located in Washington, D.C., to do a monthly book club. On the first Friday of each month, we meet in the bookstore and discuss the book we read for the month in a very casual, entertaining and often enlightening manner.…
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10 Unbiased, Impartial and Very Good Reasons Why You Should Buy Damon's Memoir, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
If you follow VSB on any social media platforms, you know that Damon is currently in week one of his national tour for his debut book, a memoir-in-essays titled What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, released on Tuesday and published by ECCO Books. The release of this book is the culmination of a book…
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With On the Come Up, Bestselling Author Angie Thomas Continues Her Crusade: ‘I Can See Myself Writing About Black Girls From Here on Out’
Angie Thomas, author of the breakout novel The Hate U Give, remains steadfast about the types of stories she wants to tell, how she wants to tell them and to whom she’s speaking. In the poignant, powerful debut—pegged a “Black Lives Matter book”—Thomas introduced us to 16-year-old Starr Carter, a witty, complicated, code-switching black girl…
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On Reading Kiese Laymon’s Singular and Indestructible Heavy on the 5th Anniversary of My Mom’s Death
With his devastating and resplendent and transcendent Heavy, Kiese Laymon conjured, created and gave us a thing that each person who conjures, creates and gives things aspires to do, and that’s to create a thing that only he could have created. Of course, for the people who conjure, create and give things for a living,…