Helen Plum Library

For the first time ever, the complete poetry collection spanning three decades from Nikki Giovanni, renowned poet and one of America's national treasures. When her poems first emerged during the Black Arts Movement, in the 1960s, Nikki Giovanni immediately took her place among the most celebrated, controversial and influential poets of the era. Now, more than thirty years later, Giovanni still stands as one of the most commanding, luminous voices...

"After dropping her child off at preschool, Marla Hancock, a stay-at-home mother, disappears. She had recently left her verbally abusive husband in rural Indiana and moved in with her sister, Shelly, who simply can't believe that her sister would ever willingly vanish without her children. But with limited support from the town's police department or media resources, Shelly fears that Marla's disappearance won't get the attention it deserves, or worse,...

A "choreo-poem" reflecting the views of a black American woman about the women of her race

A hilarious and affecting essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster Phoebe Robinson Being a Black woman in American means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities. Robinson uses her trademark wit to explore examine our cultural climate and skewer our biases with humor and heart

""An utterly charming and deeply moving portrait of the joys--and the guilt--of trying to find your own way in life." --Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author "Meeting Maame feels like falling in love for the first time: warm, awkward, joyous, a little bit heartbreaking and, most of all, unforgettable." --Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means...

The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in...

The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novel is now a new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar...

A memoir by the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement explains the movement's position of love, humanity, and justice, challenging perspectives that have negatively labeled the movement's activists while calling for essential political changes "A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America--and the founding of a movement that demands restorative justice for all in the land at the tree Raised by a single mother...

"Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and...

Written by her great-granddaughter, a historical portrait of the boundary-breaking civil rights pioneer covers Wells' early years as a slave, her famous acts of resistance, and her achievements as a journalist and anti-lynching activist Journalist. Suffragist. Antilynching crusader. Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862. Though she died in 1931, her impact looms large over the country's slow movements toward progress....