Showing results by narrator "Lynnette R. Freeman" in All Categories

Trent July has been the mayor of this historic town for the past four years, but now he’s ready to let someone else take up the mantle. But when a surprise candidate also enters the ring, the town has opinions on who would be the best candidate. And of course that’s not the only drama, as Malachi “Mal” July continues to make reparations for the damage he’s caused and to the people he’s betrayed, especially his lady love Bernadine. Is she finally ready to forgive him and let the past go?

Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by a Black nurse who declares, “Lord Jesus, if that ain’t the blackest little baby born this side of heaven.” Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors’ promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi’s red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior, his son and Lottie Rebecca’s father, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the post Korean War GI Bill promises prosperity.

Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history and dreaming of a loving future. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters.

The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the ideology of white supremacy. Politicians and people of all colors propagated “ghetto” myths to justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces. In White Space, Black Hood, Sheryll Cashin traces the history of anti-Black residential caste - boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance - and unpacks its current legacy....

Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker’s first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury.

Stephanie Rose Bird grew up surrounded by forests, listening to the stories of her ancestors and learning African healing ways. From an early age, she dedicated herself to herbalism and living a spiritually fulfilled life in harmony with nature. Now, the wisdom she as accrued is gathered in this impressive encyclopedic work of African Healing and herbal medicine. Stephanie teaches you how to garden and harvest in unison with the seasons, and how to use herbalism and magic—derived from ancestral and spiritual helpers—to heal.

In Nothing Like a Dame, theater journalist Eddie Shapiro opens a jewelry box full of glittering surprises, through in-depth conversations with twenty leading women of Broadway. He carefully selected Tony Award-winning stars who have spent the majority of their careers in theater, leaving aside those who have moved on or occasionally drop back in. The women he interviewed spent endless hours with him, discussing their careers, offering insights into the iconic shows, changes on Broadway over the last century, and the art (and thrill) of taking the stage night after night.

A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today’s multi-billion-dollar diversity industry—and provides actional solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future.

Black Flora is the first book to feature profiles of contemporary Black experts innovating in the world of flowers. Author and longtime gardener, Teresa Speight, offers a beautiful intersection of flowers and community. This book is a homecoming, one that unearths the floral legacies of the past and present, while providing a source of inspiration for younger generations of plant-lovers seeking examples of successful Black floral artists and entrepreneurs.

After Futureland emerges from back-to-back scandals, Cam Walker and his family are ready to confront the people who keep targeting their flying park. A group called the Architects has been after them since Futureland made its Atlanta stop, and the Walkers have had enough. To settle things, the Architects propose the very first Architect Games, where the Walkers and the Architects will battle in a series of challenges. If the Walkers win, then the Architects will leave them alone once and for all.

Everyone wants a ticket to Futureland, where you can literally live out your wildest dreams. Want to step inside your favorite video game? Go pro in a sports arena? Perform at a real live concert? Grab your ticket and come right in.

A practical guide for handling life's financial emergencies for the cash-strapped, the meticulous budgeter, and everyone in between.

Growing up in a Blue Ridge mountain town, little Roberta didn't have fancy clothes or expensive toys...but she did have music. And she dreamed of having her own piano. When her daddy spies a beat-up old upright piano in a junkyard, he knows he can make his daughter's dream come true. He brings it home, cleans and tunes it, and paints it a grassy green. And soon the little girl has an instrument to practice on, and a new dream to reach for—one that will make her become a legend in the music industry.

George Washington Carver was determined to help the people he loved. Born enslaved in Missouri, he left home in search of an education, eventually earning his master’s degree. When Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department at the all-Black-staffed Tuskegee Institute, Carver found his calling. He spent the rest of his life seeking solutions to poverty among landless Black farmers by developing new uses for soil-replenishing crops such as peanuts, cowpeas, and sweet potatoes.

When the How to Catch Kids stumble upon a trail of glitter and the entrance to an enchanted garden, they decide that they have to explore! Hoping to find the resident Garden Fairy to learn about her magical realm, our heroes set off on a whirlwind adventure through this larger-than-life garden.

Lila Bonnard has left her island home in the Caribbean to join the faculty as a visiting professor at Mayfield College in a small Vermont town. On her way from the airport to Mayfield, Lila witnesses the fatal shooting of a Black man by the police. It turns out that the victim was a professor at Mayfield, and was giving CPR to a white woman who was on the verge of an opioid overdose. The two Black faculty and a Black administrator in the otherwise all-white college expect Lila to be a witness in the case against the police.

Cora was born with a veil. She is able to discern spirits and wield the power of both the dark and the light as well as the ability to heal. Her grandmother, Mi, called it The Knowing. Cora has carried it as both a prophetic blessing and a curse, struggling under the burden until one decision changes her world. Possessed with a healer’s compulsion to help, she is unable to turn away when Fannie arrives on her doorstep, ripped, torn, and hanging precariously on the knife’s edge of death.

Over the waves, sea lions bark and seagulls wheel and call. The bay is smooth and bright in the sun. But under the waves, there’s a whole hidden forest full of whales and wolf eels, sardines and sea bass, and leopard sharks and luminous jellies, as well as the waving kelp that shelters them all.

MaVynee loved going to the beach. But in the days of Jim Crow, she couldn't just go to any beach - most of the beaches in Jacksonville were for Whites only. Knowing something must be done, her grandfather bought a beach that African American families could enjoy without being reminded they were second-class citizens; he called it American Beach. Artists like Zora Neale Hurston and Ray Charles vacationed on its sunny shores. It's here that MaVynee was first inspired to sing, propelling her to later become a widely acclaimed opera singer who routinely performed on an international stage.

Writers are witnesses and scribes to society’s conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose which makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social justice lens.