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The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH.org) chooses an official theme for Black History Month each year. |
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2021 The Black Family:
Representation, Identity, and Diversity |
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Black Women, Black Love : America's War on African American Marriageby Dianne M. StewartAccording to the 2010 US Census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried today. Sweeping in scope and expansively researched, this book reveals how four hundred years of the laws, policies, and customs have created this crisis for Black women in America today. |
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The Bold World : a Memoir of Family and Transformationby Jodie PattersonThis inspiring and highly personal debut memoir examines Patterson's extended families' African American experiences with racism and civil rights, and her own coming of age in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, and later on as a wife, mother, and activist.
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Breathe : a Letter to My Sonsby Imani PerryPerry admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love -- finding beauty and possibility in life -- and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.
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by Walter Thompson-Hernández
In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades.
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Daisy Turner's Kin : an African American Family Sagaby Jane C. BeckA daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--"a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved"--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life.
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Driving While Black : African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights by Gretchen Sullivan SorinCars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe.
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Motherhood So White : a Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in Americaby Nefertiti AustinIn this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Austin examines the history of adoption in the African American community, faces off against stereotypes of single, Black motherhood, and confronts the reality of raising children of color in racially charged, modern-day America. |
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by Denene Millner
Over the course of a decade, Millner has published almost 2,000 posts aimed at lifting the voices of moms and dads of color, Millner has now curated The Best of MyBrownBaby, (MyBrownBaby.com) a collection of the website's most important and insightful essays.
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Raise Him Up : a Single Mother's Guide to Raising a Successful Black Manby Derrick C. MooreThis book delves into the challenges faced by African-American single moms and offers advice, scriptural support, and helpful prayers. Each chapter relates a spiritual point taken from the book of Acts, a mother's story, and draws parallels to the struggles of the modern day African-American mother. |
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Roots : the Saga of an American Familyby Alex HaleyThe author shares the saga of an African American family that extends from his ancestor Kunta Kinte, an African brought to mid-eighteenth-century America as a slave, to himself. available in alternate format(s)
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by Thomas Chatterton Williams
The award-winning cultural critic and author of Losing My Cool draws on his controversial op-ed about the “one drop” rule that shaped his experiences and identity beliefs as a mixed-race youth who looked white but was treated as black.
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Skimmed : Breastfeeding, Race, and Injusticeby Andrea FreemanBorn into a tenant farming family in North Carolina in 1946, Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were medical miracles. Annie Mae Fultz, a Black-Cherokee woman who lost her ability to hear and speak in childhood, became the mother of America's first surviving set of identical quadruplets. They were instant celebrities.
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by Richard Bell
Philadelphia, 1825. Five young, free black boys are lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay. They are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
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Vanguard : How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for Allby Martha S. JonesAcclaimed historian Martha Jones offers a sweeping history of African American women's political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot and how they fought against both racism and sexism. From 1830s Boston to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and beyond to Shirley Chisholm, Stacey Abrams, and Kamala Harris |
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by Morgan Jerkins
Driven by a need to understand her own identity, cultural critic Jerkins mounted an investigation into her family’s tangled history, recounting in this candid memoir the surprising discoveries that emerged from her emotional journey.
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by Clifford Thompson
An African-American writer's concise, heartfelt take on the state of his nation, exploring the war between the values he has always held and the reality with which he is confronted in twenty-first-century America. |
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