black authors
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Watch: Literary Giant Walter Mosley Doesn’t Need Inspiration to Write
Literary giant Walter Mosley needs no inspiration to write. “I don’t need inspiration because I love to write,” Mosley told The Root. With a three-decades-long career and over 50 books published, as one would imagine, Mosley’s love for writing runs deep. In fact, writing has become a discipline and an integral part of his life—Mosley…
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Black Girls Rock! And Founder and DJ Beverly Bond Does, Too
This International Women’s Day, the ultimate present arrived in my mailbox, gifted by my favorite person: me! It was a brand-spanking-new, hardcover edition of my new favorite coffee-table book, Black Girls Rock! Owning Our Magic. Rocking Our Truth. The book is a compilation of first person essays, insights and affirmations from a multigenerational cross section…
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Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage and the Lifesaving Power of Homegirls
The first paragraph of Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage lets us know she’s not playing with or scared of you motherfuckers: This is a book by a grown-ass women written for other grown-ass women. This is a book for women who expect to be taken seriously and for men who take grown women seriously. This is…
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5 Books I’m Reading Now Since the Really Dumb and Self-Defeating Book Fast I Was On Is Finally Over
I am going to attempt to explain why I intentionally went an entire year without reading a new book. I am not quite sure I can find the words to articulate why I did this. And, even if I do find those words, I’m not quite sure my book fast will make any sense. But…
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In An American Marriage, Tayari Jones Gets to the Heart of Our Matter
“When love calls, you better answer”—at least, that’s what Atlantic Starr once told us. But what happens when Oprah calls? The Glow Up asked writer Tayari Jones, who got the call from the great and powerful O in October when her latest novel, An American Marriage, was chosen as the first Oprah’s Book Club selection…
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These New and Upcoming Books by Black Authors Will Give You Life in These Perilous Times
In these dark, cold winter months, let us take comfort in the amazing things black people are doing in literature. 2018 is going to be lit, y’all. Morgan Jerkins’ newly released debut essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America, is, simply, incendiary. The…
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The Nerve: In This Will Be My Undoing, Debut Author Morgan Jerkins Isn’t Afraid to Go There
If you haven’t heard Morgan Jerkins’ name yet or seen her work, chances are you will soon. Her debut collection of personal essays, This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America, won over Roxane Gay, who lauds Jerkins as a “deft cartographer of black girlhood and…
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Watch: Author Nicole Dennis-Benn on Giving a Voice to Jamaica’s Working Class
Here Comes the Sun, the stunning debut novel by Jamaican author Nicole Dennis-Benn, offers readers a different view of the island paradise. The book follows a mother working as a prostitute to make ends meet for her two daughters in a town strongly dependent on tourists. Many issues are brought to the surface: sexism, colorism,…
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Watch: Angie Thomas on Writing Her Best-Selling Young-Adult Novel Inspired by Oscar Grant
Angie Thomas’ debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a must-read for our young people. It tells the story of 16-year-old Starr, who lives in a poor neighborhood but goes to a prep school in a wealthy suburb. She witnesses her best friend, Khalil, murdered by police. It cleverly tells the common, opposing narratives that…
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Black Lotus Is a Woman’s Search for Racial Identity in a Racist World
“‘Passing’ describes the choice to identify as a member of another racial group rather than face social prejudice,” writes Sil Lai Abrams in her memoir, Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity. “Today the term is used almost exclusively to describe black people who consciously adopt a white identity.” But for Abrams, born to…
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