Helen Plum Library

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. 
This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.
Sethe was born a slave and escaped...

"A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more, with biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer"--

A girl describes how she and her family celebrate the seven days of Kwanzaa

"In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and...

A young boy rides the bus across town with his grandmother and learns to appreciate the beauty in everyday things

"This volume contains entries presented in seventeen categories of scientific, artistic, political, and social innovation. The work will help readers to appreciate the critical but too often unrecognized role that African Americans in every generation have played in transforming the world through their creative work, invention, and leadership in every area of human endeavor"-- "While the achievements of such individuals as Barack Obama, Toni Morrison,...

"After losing her child and seeing the world as an increasingly dangerous place, a young Black woman from Boston decides to construct a separate society at an abandoned restaurant in Western Massachusetts. She locates a benefactor and soon it all begins to take shape, but it doesn't take long for problems to develop"--

"Vegas Duncan's release from prison is right on time for his older brother Junior's engagement to the voluptuous Sonya Brown. Unfortunately, Junior's attempt at happiness comes to a screeching halt when Sonya's husband, the mysterious Brother X, and his army of Muslim hit men declares war on the Duncan clan. Duncan family patriarch LC Duncan has gone up against many foes in his time and has always come out on top; however, he's never gone up against...

Introduces the youngest readers to the traditions, festivities, and history of Kwanzaa

When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints