In this 1983 short story about race and the relationships that shape us through life, Twyla and Roberta, friends since childhood who are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem as they grow older, cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. After losing touch, they meet several times by accident. Seemingly...

"An uncompromising examination of American identity. In an effort to be "black enough, " a mixed-race punk rock musician indulges his own stereotypical views of African American life by doing what his white bandmates call "black stuff." After remaining silent during a racist incident, the unnamed narrator has his Black Card revoked by Lucius, his guide through Richmond, Virginia, where Confederate flags and memorials are a part of everyday life. Determined...

"When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions. A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty's affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty's journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could--and between...

The story of a black man who passes for white and becomes a race-baiting U.S. senator. When he is shot on the Senate floor, the first visitor in hospital is a black musician-turned-preacher who raised him. As the two men talk, their respective stories come out. An unfinished novel by the author of Invisible Man.

After spending six months in a juvenile detention center for a crime he did not commit, seventeen-year-old Andre Jackson returns home and tries to adapt to a Covid-19 world and find his missing best friend. Life can change in an instant. When you're wrongfully accused of a crime. When a virus shuts everything down. When the girl you love moves on. Andre Jackson is determined to reclaim his identity. But returning from juvie doesn't feel like coming...

"Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The two are mismatched from the start--she's a lesbian, he's gay--but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind....

"Louisiana. 1969. Colleen, a white northern teacher, enters into the unfamiliar culture of a small southern town and its unwritten rules as the town surrenders to mandated school integration. Frank, a black high school football player, protects his family with a secret. And Evelyn, an experienced teacher and prominent member of the local black community, must decide whether she is willing to place trust in her new white colleague. Told alternatively...

Zahra sees the world in vivid colors. When kids at school tell her she's different because of the color of her skin, she doesn't know how to feel, but her mother tells her to feel proud.

The skin I'm in is just a covering. It cannot tell my story. The skin I'm in is just a covering. If you want to know who I am, you have got to come inside and open your heart way wide. Celebrating all that makes us unique and different, [this book] offers new ways to talk about race and identity. Race matters, but only so much-- what's most important is who we are on the inside. Looking beyond skin, going straight to the heart, we find in each other...

"Discover the unique mind and humane vision of an under-recognized American author. Encompassing themes of race, education, fame, law, and America's past and future, these essays are James Alan McPherson at his most prescient and invaluable. Born in segregated 1940s Georgia, McPherson graduated from Harvard Law School only to give up law and become a writer. In 1978, he became the first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But all the...