Showing results by narrator "Janina Edward" in All Categories

One prisoner’s ninety-year murder conviction becomes another prisoner’s crusade in this ongoing true account of an unlikely friendship forged behind bars and the enduring power of hope. For seventeen years and counting, Robert Chattler has made good on his promise to help exonerate his former cellmate, Lee Harris, who he believes was baited and duped by Chicago PD and buried by the false testimony of a bribed witness. In this emotional story of courage and trust, suspicion and sacrifice, Tori Marlan reveals the uncanny friendship powering an impassioned fight for justice.

In their best-selling book All Are Welcome, Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman celebrate kindness, inclusivity, and diversity. Now with Big Feelings, they help children navigate the emotional challenges they face in their daily lives. What should we do when things don't go to plan? We may feel mad, frustrated, or overwhelmed, but by talking it through, compromising, and seeing another point of view, we can start fresh, begin anew.

A Blessing presents a fresh, bold analysis of African American female leadership. An unapologetic look at our often-overlooked role in America's social, political, psychological and economic history, it is armed with data that should be empowering for today's "unicorns". The book offers a "playbook" to help Black unicorns "team up" and find innovative ways to support one another as they climb, what research shows, are lonely, stressful, jagged yet ultimately rewarding ladders of opportunity.

More than two decades after Darrell Cannon was tortured into a false confession of murder, he was finally released from prison with hardly an apology. He wasn’t the only one with a story to tell. Award-winning author Natalie Y. Moore reveals the fight for justice and reparations engineered by Chicago’s Black People Against Police Torture movement. More than one hundred African Americans were brutalized by Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge’s sadistic, state-sanctioned “interrogation” ring that operated within the department for decades.

In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills combines the force of literature with the allure of women's fiction in a family saga that spans from Atlanta during the Civil Rights Movement to post-genocide Rwanda. At the heart of this novel that crosses racial and cultural boundaries is the search for family on a personal and global level.

Unsettling Choice traces the contestations that surfaced when, in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession, public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs. Ujju Aggarwal argues that this strategy mobilized mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side, solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private.

In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist Sylvia A. Harvey follows the fears, challenges, and small victories of three families struggling to live within the confines of a brutal system. In Florida, a young father tries to maintain a relationship with his daughter despite a sentence of life without parole. In Kentucky, where the opioid epidemic has led to the increased incarceration of women, many of whom are white, one mother fights for custody of her children.

A single "no" from someone close to us can crush our dreams. You can't.... You'll never.... You're kidding yourself.... In contrast, a single "yes" can sustain our dreams despite the setbacks we're sure to encounter. Yes, you can! Yes, I'm here for you! With passion and contagious enthusiasm, Angelia White shows you how to surround yourself with Yes Sisters - women who will remind you that you are worthy, that God loves you completely, and that you can accomplish even your wildest dreams.

A delightful foray into the world of yoga, unlocking the practice's spiritual, physical, and psychological benefits and exploring the path to becoming a master instructor. This is an insightful, multidimensional portrait of how this Eastern practice became one of the most popular disciplines in America and of the yoga instructors who love it, train for it, and make a living from it.

In Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone, his sixth collection of stories, John Edgar Wideman imbues with energy and life the concerns that have consistently infused his fiction and nonfiction. How does it feel to grow up in America, a nation that - despite knowing better, despite its own laws, despite experiencing for hundreds of years the deadly perils and heartbreak of racial division - encourages (sometimes unwittingly, but often on purpose) its citizens to see themselves as colored or white, as inferior or superior.

Examining the legacy of racial mixing in Indian Territory through the land and lives of two families, one of Cherokee Freedman descent and one of Muscogee Creek heritage, Darnella Davis' memoir writes a new chapter in the history of racial mixing on the frontier. It is the only book-length account of the intersections between the three races in Indian Territory and Oklahoma written from the perspective of a tribal person and a freedman.

This inspiring book gives girls permission to let their lights shine. They want all girls to know that there are no limits on what they can achieve. One by one, common misconceptions are flipped and replaced by empowering statements such as your hair is like a magnificent crown or you are like the moon among stars, or you shine the brightest. They suggest that if people doubt you or try to discourage your ambitions, you should disregard them and pursue your dreams to the fullest.

For too long, the Southern woman has been synonymous with the Southern belle, a "moonlight and magnolias" myth that gets nowhere close to describing the strong, richly diverse women who have thrived because of - and in some cases, despite of - the South. No more. Garden & Gun’s Southern Women: More Than 100 Stories of Trail Blazers, Visionaries, and Icons obliterates that stereotype by sharing the stories of more than 100 of the region’s brilliant women, groundbreakers who have embraced the South’s proud traditions and overcome its equally pervasive barriers.

Edited by Shelly Oria—author and editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus—this explosive, intersectional collection of essays, fiction, poems, plays, and more, explores the universality of human reproductive experiences, as well as their distinct individuality.

This groundbreaking anthology presents 40 narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice - first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs - these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

A dazzling, sublimely funny debut that follows three unforgettable women who fight back after life kicks them in the teeth. Esther, Frankie, and Ruth live in a small Ohio town anchored by the thriving Juliet Pencils factory. After a freak accident at the plant, these women have to re-create their lives using the only tools they’ve got: wits, molars, and a new pair of shoes.

It is 1848. On one side of the Mason-Dixon Line lives 15-year-old Willow, her master’s favorite servant. She’s been taught to read and has learned to write. She is permitted to spend much of her time riding her horse to the riverbank, where she writes letters to her dead mother. On the other side of the line is 17-year-old Cato, a black man, free born. It’s his personal mission to sneak as many fugitive slaves to freedom as he can. When Willow’s and Cato’s lives intersect, they will discover the true meanings of bondage and freedom, of family and love.

When Willow Brown was seven, she had her first vision. Her death played out like a movie. Her second vision came along shortly after that, when she predicted her father’s cancer diagnosis. Her mother always wanted her to hide her gift away. That’s what she called it, a gift. In one of Willow’s more recent visions, she saw her great aunt dying peacefully. What she couldn’t predicate was that Aunt Cora would leave her a house in Florida and a cat, forcing Willow to go back to her hometown to sort out affairs. But it turns out Aunt Cora is a little less dead than anyone thought.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the great American literary icons of the 20th century, a protégé of Langston Hughes and mentor to a generation of poets, including Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Elizabeth Alexander. Her poetry took inspiration from the complex portraits of Black American life she observed growing up on Chicago's South Side - a world of kitchenette apartments and vibrant streets.