On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Read an Exerpt from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s New Book Not “A Nation of Immigrants”

Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler

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Books for LGBTQIA+ History Month

October is LGBTQIA+ History Month, dedicated to celebrating the diversity and history of the community. We are celebrating with books that shed light on the history of the community, with stories from inspiring individuals to the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights to significant events that influenced LGBTQIA+ culture going forward. Delve into our list of recommended

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FROM THE PAGE: Bessie Smith

Excerpted from Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend by Jackie Kay   There are some people whose voices ring out across the centuries, who, even after they have gone, possess a strange ability to still be effortlessly here. Bessie’s voice has that quality. Unsettled most of her life, she still unsettles. Try

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With Her Historical Epic Palmares, Gayl Jones Makes Her Long-Awaited Literary Return

It was a long wait before Gayl Jones broke her years of silence. When Toni Morrison first discovered her, she said “no novel about any Black woman could ever be the same after this” upon reading the manuscript for Corregidora. It was published in 1975 when Jones was twenty-six. She followed up her debut novel with Eva’s

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Q&A with Science of Strength Training Author Austin Current

With unique CGI artworks and including the latest developments in sports science, Science of Strength Training gets under the skin of more than 100 exercises to identify every muscle worked and show how they engage at every stage. It will help students understand the physiology behind how to build and maintain muscle mass, raise metabolism,

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Read an Excerpt from Andy Robinson’s Gold, Oil, and Avocados

The 21st century began optimistically in Latin America. Left-leaning leaders armed with programs to reduce poverty and reclaim national wealth were seeing results—but as the aughts gave way to the teens, they began to fall like dominos. Where did the dreams of this “pink tide” go? Look no further than the original culprits of Latin

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Reading A DROP OF PATIENCE Through a Blind-Culture Lens

Written by By M. Leona Godin, author of There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness In William Melvin Kelley’s A Drop of Patience, we follow the life of a young Black musician named Ludlow Washington, who is placed in a school for the blind when he is five and remains there until

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Memoir as Medicine: Mallory Smith’s Salt in My Soul

Contributed by Diane Shader Smith, mother of Mallory Smith, author of Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life Literature and medicine have long been intertwined. In the early 2000s, Dr. Rita Charon helped formalize this intersection as a discipline through her work at Columbia University and her book, Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

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Read an Excerpt from Ruby Hamad’s White Tears/Brown Scars

Called “powerful and provocative” by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, White Tears/Brown Scars reveals how white feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color. Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought

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Titles for Constitution Day

To commemorate Constitution Day and the signing of the United States Constitution in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, we have assembled a list of books that can help guide students in understanding the constitution.   Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution  This guide includes annotations and accessible explanations from one of America’s most esteemed

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