Posted on: May 7, 2021
by Rebecca Carroll
Everyone interested in transracial adoption would be wise to read this new memoir. The author, a black cultural critic, recounts her story of being adopted as a young child by a white family from rural New Hampshire. She was raised in an...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 30, 2021
by James Avery Smith
Once only available to those visiting our Special Collections, this important book, published in 1999 by the New England Genealogical Society, can now be borrowed and read at home. Using tax lists, probate and land records, town record...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 23, 2021
by Trina Greene Brown
Parenting For Liberation was launched as a virtual platform in 2016 by activist-mama Trina Greene Brown. In her introduction to this guidebook she states that the blog and podcast were created to "...connect, inspire, and uplift ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 16, 2021
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
For National Poetry Month, we are pleased to highlight this volume of poetry written about Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Award-winning poet Jeffers spent fifteen years research...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: April 2, 2021
by Julian Bond
How lucky were the students at Harvard and other American universities who were able to take a class with Julian Bond. Along with being a famed civil rights activist, author, chairman of the NAACP, and Georgia state representative and senato...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 26, 2021
by Ashley Bryan
Based on an original estate-appraisal document from 1828, Ashley Bryan's poetry gives voices to 11 enslaved individuals, imagining not only their daily lives but their hopes for the future. While the document that inspired these po...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 19, 2021
by Breeshia Wade
The author, a Black end-of-life caregiver and chaplain, looks at the significance of grief to Black people. In particular she connects sorrow to the ongoing trauma of systemic racism. She encourages readers to attend to their grief so that...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: March 12, 2021
by Angie Thomas
Concrete Rose is the prequel to the number one New York Times best-seller, The Hate U Give. Set 17 years in the past, it follows Starr's father, Maverick, as he navigates growing up while raising an infant son and having to make di...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 25, 2021
edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
This bestseller marks a milestone in the study of African American history. It is the result of research conducted for the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 18, 2021
by Rita L. Hubbard; illustrated by Oge Mora
This picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Mary Walker, who learned to read at the age of 116. Born enslaved in 1848, Walker was emancipated as a teenager, and was gifted a Bible that she longed to ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: February 3, 2021
by Resmaa Menakem
Resmaa Menakem approaches the problem of racism from his perspective as a therapist. He explains that racism is embedded in the bodies of blacks and whites in this country. Blacks experience everyday threats and respond by fighting, fleei...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 26, 2021
by Julius Lester
On what would have been his 82nd birthday, we celebrate a distinguished Amherst author, civil rights activist, professor, musician, and photographer. Julius Lester wrote 31 award-winning children’s books as well as nonfiction and fiction f...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 8, 2021
by J. Drew Lanham
In honor of National Bird Day (January 5), we have chosen a remarkable memoir published in 2016 by an African-American birder and naturalist. The Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, J. Drew Lanham has writte...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: January 7, 2021
edited by Ibi Zoboi
This 2019 anthology of young adult short stories is a wonderful offering of modern Black voices. Featuring 16 excellent Black authors such as Nic Stone and Jason Reynolds, my favorite part of reading this was the diversity of stories to...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 28, 2020
by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
This highly acclaimed new book is winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 15, 2020
A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor by Adam Smyer
How do you write something humorous about racism in America? If you are Adam Smyer, an attorney, martial artist, and mediocre bass player,...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 15, 2020
by Kacen Callender
This bittersweet middle grade book takes us to the bayous of small town Louisiana where homophobia and racism are very real things that twelve year old Kingston James must deal with. Mourning the sudden death of his older brother, King s...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: December 1, 2020
by Michele Harper
The author of this eloquent memoir is an ER doctor and a practitioner of yoga and meditation. Here she recounts how she overcame racist colleagues, a background of domestic violence, and the trauma of seeing suffering people every day at ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 20, 2020
by Kamala D. Harris
The results of the presidential election are now acknowledged by most Americans, and for the first time a woman of color was on the winning ticket! Kamala Harris, the daughter of an economist from Jamaica and a cancer researcher from In...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 20, 2020
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; adapted by Jean Mendoza & Debbie Reese
In our antiracist efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we have to also look at this country's relationship with its Indigenous communities. Both Black and Indigenous people have suffered ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: November 4, 2020
by Ruha Benjamin
An African American Studies scholar turns a bright light on technology, illuminating how racism and inequality underpin its newest creations. From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to unders...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 29, 2020
by William A. Darity, Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen
Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. William Darity, an economist at Duke University and an Amherst native, and folklorist Kirsten Mullen toge...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 14, 2020
by N. K. Jemisin
Congratulations to N. K. Jemisin for being named one of this year’s MacArthur “geniuses!” The MacArthur Foundation describes her as “a speculative fiction writer exploring deeply human questions about structural racism, environmental crise...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: October 13, 2020
by Justina Ireland
This 2018 young adult historical fiction by Justina Ireland is the perfect spooky October read to get you in the mood for Halloween. Why? Because there are zombies! Zombies! Set just after the Civil War, this is a fun and action-packed s...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 29, 2020
by Leah Penniman
At a time when Americans are closely examining all aspects of our society for racism, those of us interested in food issues would do well to start with this remarkable book. Author Leah Penniman, the 2019 recipient of the James Beard Found...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 25, 2020
by Zetta Elliott; illustrated by Loveis Wise
Turn to the Acknowledgements section in the final pages of this short 100 page collection of poetry-activism and you will see that the author knowingly divines that there will be more black women to mourn and re...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 16, 2020
by Martha S. Jones
According to conventional wisdom, American women’s campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this women’s movement was an overwhelmingly ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 11, 2020
by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Fifth grade student Dèja is starting the year at a new school in Brooklyn after her family moves into a shelter. Although the first day is filled with challenges, it is also filled with promise: a teacher who connects to her student...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: September 11, 2020
by Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She earned her M.F.A. at UMass Amherst. Memorial Drive is her first book that is not poetry. This memoir was written because, in the aut...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 28, 2020
by Rita Garcia Williams
One Crazy Summer follows the three Gaither sisters as they travel from Brooklyn to Oakland in the summer of 1968, where they hope to get to know the mother who left them. Delphine, the oldest sister, takes on many roles in her famil...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach; foreword by Elijah Wald
We are excited to offer this new weekly feature and to share a wide array of books about Black lives in America. It seems appropriate to begin with a new book by a well-known Amherst res...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Jamey Christoph
This picture book biography introduces readers to the life and work of multi-talented artist Gordon Parks. It traces Parks’ path to becoming one of the most important photographers of the 20th ce...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell
The nation is mourning the death of a civil rights hero and “conscience of the Congress,” Representative John Lewis. Adults and young adults wanting to know more about Lewis and the civil rights mo...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Shayla Lawson
Writing in a fierce and humorous voice, Shayla Lawson provides a memoir in essays that is also a celebration of black women’s lives and culture. She knows the richness and resilience of black girl culture (its irony and rebellion!) and the...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week
Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Anne Monahan
Horace Pippin, sometimes described as an American Henri Rousseau, was a disabled veteran (WWI) without formal art training who began painting in his 40s and soon became famous in the art world. His works depict WWI, black families, Abraham ...
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Black Lives Matter Book of the Week