The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Author: Deesha Philyaw
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2022-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1911590707

The irresistible literary debut about the hidden desires of church-going Black women 'Left me wanting more. Masterfully written' Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie 'Joyous... It's a book in love with life' The Times 'Exquisite... delicious' Bolu Babalola, author of Love in Colour The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires, and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who nurses a crush on the preacher's wife; the mother who bakes a sublime peach cobbler every Monday for her date with the married Pastor; and Eula and Caroletta, single childhood friends who seek solace in each other's arms every New Year's Eve. With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be – and as free as they deserve to be.

The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003-01-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780142001745

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 mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Secret Lives of the Civil War

Secret Lives of the Civil War
Author: Cormac O'Brien
Publisher: Quirk Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781594741388

Provides the birth and death dates, astrological sign, nicknames, famous words, and little-known or bizarre facts about the lives of over twenty-five people on the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War.

Long Division

Long Division
Author: Kiese Laymon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982174838

Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi. Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan. City’s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance. Brilliantly “skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism” (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike “smart, funny, and sharp” (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history “that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves” (The Wall Street Journal).

Palmares

Palmares
Author: Gayl Jones
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0807033529

2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction A NPR BOOKS WE LOVE 2021 Selection A New York Times “Biggest New Books Coming Out in September” Selection · A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Pick · A Guardian “50 Biggest Books of Autumn 2021” Selection · An Esquire “Best Books of Fall 2021” Selection · A Buzzfeed “Best Books Coming Out This Fall” Selection · A Bustle “Most Anticipated Books of September 2021” Selection · A LitHub “22 Novels You Need to Read This Fall” Selection · A Kirkus Reviews “16 Best Books to Read in September” Selection · A Root September “PageTurner” “This story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten . . . in many ways: holy. [A] masterpiece.”—The New York Times Book Review The epic rendering of a Black woman’s journey through slavery and liberation, set in 17th-century colonial Brazil; the return of a major voice in American literature. First discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is ready to publish again. Palmares is the first of five new works by Gayl Jones to be published in the next two years, rewarding longtime fans and bringing her talent to a new generation of readers. Intricate and compelling, Palmares recounts the journey of Almeyda, a Black slave girl who comes of age on Portuguese plantations and escapes to a fugitive slave settlement called Palmares. Following its destruction, Almeyda embarks on a journey across colonial Brazil to find her husband, lost in battle. Her story brings to life a world impacted by greed, conquest, and colonial desire. She encounters a mad lexicographer, desperate to avoid military service; a village that praises a god living in a nearby cave; and a medicine woman who offers great magic, at a greater price. Combining the author’s mastery of language and voice with her unique brand of mythology and magical realism, Jones reimagines the historical novel. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter century, with vibrant settings and unforgettable characters, steeped in the rich oral tradition of its world. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, “[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.” Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.

Shmutz

Shmutz
Author: Felicia Berliner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-07-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982177640

“Hilarious and endearing...Shmutz is a dirty book with a pure heart.” —The New York Times In this witty, provocative, and “compulsively readable coming-of-age story” (Cosmopolitan), a young Hasidic woman on a quest to get married fears she will never find a groom because of her secret addiction to porn. Like the other women in her ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn community, Raizl expects to find a husband through an arranged marriage. Unlike the other women, Raizl has a secret. With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As Raizl dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Between combative visits with her shrink to complicated arranged dates, Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the expectations of the family she loves. “Clever, subversive, juicy, and surprising” (Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies), Shmutz explores what it means to be a fully realized sexual and spiritual being caught between the traditional and modern worlds.

The Last Cruze

The Last Cruze
Author: LaToya Ruby Frazier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Automobile factories
ISBN: 9780941548793

As the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio halted production and faced possible closure, displacing its workers, artist LaToya Ruby Frazier joined with these workers, their families, and their local union leaders to tell the story of the plant in its final days. After more than fifty years of automobile production and a commitment to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruze until 2021, the facility was recently "unallocated" by GM, as the company shifts its focus toward overseas manufacturing and the production of electric and autonomous vehicles. For many, this meant uprooting their families and giving up the support of a close-knit community. Those who turned down transfers to GM plants in other states lost their income, pensions, and benefits. The Last Cruze, which sets out to amplify the voices of the auto workers in Lordstown, introduces a new chapter to Frazier's work in investigating labor, family, community, and the working class. Exhibited at the Renaissance Society in 2019, this body of work includes over sixty photographs, alongside the written stories of the workers, and was staged within an installation that echoes the structure of the plant's assembly line. This substantial catalogue includes extensive documentation of the work and introduces new essays and dialogues by contributors including Coco Fusco, David Harvey, Werner Lange, Lynn Nottage, Julia Reichert, Benjamin Young, and members of the local chapter of the United Auto Workers.

Midnight at the Organporium

Midnight at the Organporium
Author: Tara Campbell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2019-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781619761636

What do a homicidal houseplant, an enchanted office picnic, sentient fog, and the perfect piece of toast have in common? They're all part of the world of Midnight at the Organporium. At turns droll, wicked, and surreal, these tales cover topics from white flight, to the Princess and the Pea, to marriage in the afterlife. Visit Midnight at the Organporium for a dose of twisted obsession, covert complicity, and peculiar empowerment - and don't forget to pick up your spare heart while you're there.

It's All in the Mind

It's All in the Mind
Author: Robert R. Hieronimus
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021-01-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781736049860

Details the merry and wildly creative tribe who produced The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, the ground-breaking, one-of-a-kind visual adventure, first released in 1968. Get to know the formerly undiscovered artists and the technical wizardry behind your favorite scenes. Symbolic interpretations and subconscious messages of peace and love, plus in-studio hijinks by frustrated animators. How does the Yellow Submarine inspire such wonderful feelings of peace and love? This book lifts the veil of the animation screen to see behind The Beatles and detail that one magical year, during the Summer of Love in Swinging London, when a band of young artist-fans fell into the groove and brought their heroes to animated life. Part two of the internationally acclaimed Inside the Yellow Submarine: The Making of the Beatles Animated Classic by Dr. Robert R. Hieronimus and Laura E. Cortner. Full-color, with 203 illustrations, 368 pages.

Full Grown People

Full Grown People
Author: Jennifer Niesslein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2014
Genre: American essays
ISBN: 9780990830108

An anthology of thirty essays from the site fullgrownpeople.com.