Hutchins Library News Blog

Pope Francis (link to his Wikipedia entry), the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign ruler of Vatican City, passed away on the morning of April 21, 2025. Here at the library we offer our condolences to Catholics here and around the world as well as others mourning his death. Pope Francis was the first non-European Pope since the 8th century (that first one was Gregory III from Syria), the first Latin American Pope, and the first Pope member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

For folks wanting to learn more about Pope Francis, here are some resources available at the our library as well as online.

A small sampling of news reports about his death:

• From the Associated Press.
• From CNN.
• From the Vatican.

If you want to search for more news articles and news sources from the U.S. and around the world, our library offers the database Access World News, which can be found on our library website under "Electronic Resources." Access World News, also known as Newsbank, offers "full text from nearly 3,700 U.S. and 2,300 International newspapers. Direct links are available to search Kentucky and Appalachian Region newspapers, major metro titles, international resources, newswires, broadcast transcripts, America's news magazines, world and US newspapers."

Want more academic articles about Pope Francis, the papacy, the Conclave, and/or the Catholic Church, or religion in general? Then you can use the Religion Database, also accessible from the library website under "Electronic Resources." Religion Database, also known as ProQuest Religion, "provides an excellent source of religious news and information, informative details on doctrines and philosophies, and scholarly reports on religious history. More full-text journals have been added in related religious studies, such as philosophy, ethics, and international perspectives."

Want to read some books on Pope Francis? Our library has a selection of e-books that may be of interest. Here is a small sampling of titles:

Pope Francis and the Search for God in America by Maria Clara Bingemer (Editor); Peter J. Casarella (Editor); Archbishop Christophe Pierre

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9780813233796

Publication Date: 2021-06-25

In Tutti Fratelli, Pope Francis has called again for a "culture of encounter," But how should his theology, pastoral practice, and social message be understood and applied in the Church of the Americas, a single but complex reality that extends from South to North? This volume offers analyses from experts looking back to the Argentine pontiff's first fateful encuentros in the Americas as a help for understanding the present reality of the Church in the Western Hemisphere. The group includes theologians, historians, and political scientists, and the unique contribution of the volume lies in the panoramic perspective offered by the book as a whole. The initial essays set the stage for the volume as a whole, offering rich insight into Argentine and Latin American history, the world from which the Pope came and to which he returned in 2015, as well as surveying the impact of the Latin American "theology of the people" on the Pope's visit to the U.S.Additional essays address theological, historical, and pastoral engagements that cut across several of the visits. The final group of essays is dedicated to the visits themselves and is arranged in the order that they occurred. Pope Francis and the Search for God in América is offered to all the members of the Church in América, South and North, old and young, with the hope that it will spur even more thought, reflection, prayer, and service.

 

 

Pope Francis and the Caring Society by Robert M. Whaples (Editor)

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9781598132892

Publication Date: 2017-09-01

Pope Francis and the Caring Society is a thoughtful exploration of the Pope's earnest call for a dialogue on building a truly compassionate society. Francis's fervent support for uplifting the poor and protecting the environment has inspired far-reaching discussions worldwide: Do capitalism and socialism have positive or negative social consequences? What is the most effective way to fight poverty? And what value does a religious perspective offer in addressing moral, political, and economic problems? Pope Francis and the Caring Society is an indispensable resource for consideration of these vital questions. Edited by Robert M. Whaples, with a foreword by Michael Novak, the book provides an integrated perspective on Francis and the issues he has raised, examining the intersection of religion, politics, and economics. Readers will discover important historical and cultural context for considering Francis's views, along with alternative solutions for environmental preservation, a defense of Francis's criticism of power and privilege, a case for market-based entrepreneurship and private charity as potent tools for fighting poverty, and an examination of Francis's philosophy of the family. Pope Francis and the Caring Society is essential reading for anyone interested in creating a better, more caring, and prosperous world.

 

Pope Francis by Mario I. Aguilar

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9780718842314

Publication Date: 2014-05-29

Pope Francis: His Life and Thought paints a compelling picture of a truly remarkable pope, considering his life in detail until his election as Pope Francis in 2013. Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was a highly unusual candidate for the papacy for two main reasons: the 'pope from far away' is the first non-European to be elected, and, furthermore, he began his career as a Jesuit, one of 'God's soldiers'. Members of the order traditionally do not ascend the hierarchy of the Church, and it took a personal request from Pope John Paul II for Bergoglio to leave the Society of Jesus and accept his appointment as bishop. Bergoglio's theological principles have been profoundly shaped by these two factors. However, the author also reveals that the evolution of his thought was deeply affected by his simple Argentinean upbringing and his fearless work in the slums of Buenos Aires as a young Jesuit and as a senior member of the Church. Bergoglio has consistently emphasised the importance of alleviating the suffering of the poor, following the teaching of Vatican II, and in keeping with his own unflinching morality. This volume reveals Pope Francis as remarkably humble and altruistic man, doctrinally conservative, and engaged less in politics than in the struggle to re-centre the Church at the margins of society. It will be of great interest to any reader who wishes to know more about this inspiring individual.

 

Lead with Humility by Jeffrey Krames

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9780814449127

Publication Date: 2014-09-09

How did a relatively unknown priest from Argentina rise so quickly from obscurity to one of the top leaders of the twenty-first century? The answer lies in his humility, as well as the simple principles that have sprung from it. In the years since his election to the highest position in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has breathed life into an aging institution, reinvigorated a global base, and created real hope for the future. His early accomplishments have been so remarkable that in 2014, Fortune magazine awarded the top spot of their coveted World's Greatest Leaders list not to a captain of industry or political leader but to the new pontiff. Lead with Humility explores 12 of these principles and shows how other leaders and managers across a broad spectrum can adapt them for the workplace with just as impressive results as our great pope has. These invaluable principles include: Don't stand over your employees--sit down with them. Don't judge--assess. Take care of people, not lobbies. Go where you are needed. Temper ideology with pragmatism. Don't change--reinvent! Even just a few years in, it is clear to all that Pope Francis's ability to inspire the world is unprecedented in modern times. Lead with Humility reveals the power of his methods, and helps anyone lead with the humility, grace, and authenticity that has elevated the pope to where he is today and had a direct impact in inspiring everyone and everything around him.

 

Pope Francis' Little Book of Wisdom by Andrea Kirk Assaf

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9781612833507

Publication Date: 2015-09-01

Pope Francis appears to be changing the face of Roman Catholicism. He has infused what some consider a staid institution with openness and optimism. He has faced off against established power interests within the Vatican. He has reformed the Church's finances. And, most importantly, he has asked that Catholics approach one another and non-Catholics with candor, humility, and love. He has made the papacy and the Church relevant once again. A pope of the people, Pope Francis' teachings have been praised and shared by the faithful and nonreligious alike. Exploring themes such as faith and prayer, love and family, peace and poverty, this collection is accessible to all who admire the man and are inspired by his wisdom. Included in this gift-format edition are fifteen chapters on wide-ranging topics including: On Family On the Law of Love On the Nature of God On Humility and Faith On Sacrifice and Suffering On Prayer On Peace

 

 

Some resources for other related topics:

 

Need to learn what is a Conclave? How a Pope is elected? Other topics about the Catholic Church? For starters, we offer the The New Catholic Encyclopedia. Below is the information so you can find the set in the Reference Collection. The link also includes information for accessing the encyclopedia online as an e-book. This is a resource I often suggest to students and other researchers needing basic information about the Catholic Church. It also has some entries that can be useful for researchers exploring other Christian areas and denominations.

 

New Catholic Encyclopedia by Catholic University of America Staff (Contribution by)

Call Number: Reference - Stacks 282 N533 2003

ISBN: 9780787640040

Publication Date: 2002-09-13

The first edition of this reference work, called the Catholic Encyclopedia, was published around the turn of the 20th century, with the last revised edition appearing in 1967. This new edition includes the best of the previous entries - many completely revised and updated - as well as new entries, written by subject experts, covering the latest topics of interest. Many thousands of articles are biographical profiles of the people who make up the history of the Catholic Church.

 

Our Reference Collection has other resources on the Catholic Church and Christianity in general that may be useful at this time or any other time patrons need to learn and/or do research on Catholicism and Christianity. If you need assistance, please feel free to stop by the Reference Desk, and we will be happy to help you.

 

What's a Conclave? A Papal Conclave "is a gathering of the College of Cardinals convened to elect a bishop of Rome, also known as the pope" (from Wikipedia). Wikipedia can offer a good start, but if you want to learn more, in addition to some of the resources listed above, here are some books from our collection that may be of interest:

 

Heirs of the Fisherman by John-Peter Pham

Call Number: Stacks 262.13 P534h 2004

ISBN: 9780195178340

Publication Date: 2004-11-30

The election of a new pope always captures the world's attention, as all eyes turn to the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, where the color of the smoke is our only clue to the secret deliberations inside. In this fascinating volume, former Vatican insider John-Peter Pham takes us where outsiders have never gone before, providing vital background to the selection of the heir of the fisherman. Here is a highly accurate portrait of the modern Vatican--indeed, the only account to reveal the striking changes to papal succession procedures made by Pope John Paul II. Blending political and ecclesiastical history, Pham goes beyond a mere description of the complex rituals--including a rare insight into the dramatic shifts inside the College of Cardinals, whose 130 members now hail from 57 nations around the globe. Pham takes us into the secret conclave (from the Latin cum clave, "with key"), where the electors are kept under lock and key, incommunicado, until they have selected a new pope. Here we find a fascinating chronicle of political intrigue set in the context of ritual--including a chapter devoted to the intrigues of the 20th century where the first conclave had an emperor's veto and the last was won by the first non-Italian in four centuries because the Italians were bitterly divided. In a most timely analysis, Pham also provides a valuable one-by-one assessment of the present-day cardinals and possible candidates (papabili, or pope-ables) to succeed John Paul II. He explores the legacy of this highly influential pope--looking beyond his papacy to discuss the highly-charged issues that his successor will have to confront, including financial and sexual scandals, the roles of priests and women, and the very future of the church itself. And throughout the book, he provides a gold mine of information that make this book an indispensable reference, including appendices that contain biographical notes on many of the key personalities of Catholicism past and present as well as a useful glossary of Catholic history and theology. Here then is an illuminating history and must-have guide to a vitally important world event, one that is moving ever closer and will be watched with intense interest by more than a billion people around the globe.

 

The Election of Pope Francis by Gerard O'Connell

Call Number: E-book

ISBN: 9781626983199

Publication Date: 2019-04-24

Here is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of history in the making-- the election in 2013 of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope to choose the name Francis. The author, a friend the Pope, now reveals what actually happed inside the secret conclave.

 

 

A note on accessing some of our electronic resources. Some of the resources I am discussing here are library subscriptions. To access them, you can do so at the library. Otherwise, you need to have Berea College credentials (username, password, and DUO authentication to access them). If you are not part of the Berea College community (students and currently employed faculty and staff), as I stated, you can visit our library and access the resources inside the library. You may also be able to access some of these resources via your local public or academic library. Need assistance? Feel free to contact the reference desk.

 

Photo credit: Photo of Pope Francis in public domain. Photo shows Pope Francis, an elderly white man, dressed in white papal vestments, holding his staff on the left hand. He stands in front of an altar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week is National Library Week, a week where we celebrate libraries, the professionals who work in libraries, and the valuable role of libraries in society. This week, and always, is a good time to read a book or two, especially if you got it from a library. You can also encourage others to get a library card. For our campus community, in addition to having access to Hutchins Library and its resources, you can also get a library card with Madison County Public Library. Just make your way down to the Berea branch, show your Berea ID, and you can get a public library card.

To help celebrate this week, I have put together a small list of books that feature in some way libraries and librarians. These books are available in our collections. If you need assistance, you can always stop by the Reference Desk. Books are listed in no particular order.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Call Number: Stacks 027.479 O714L 2018

ISBN: 9781476740188

Publication Date: 2018-10-16

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie.'" The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library--and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before. In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present--from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as "The Human Encyclopedia" who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves. Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean's thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books--and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist's reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.

 

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; Lucia Graves (Translator)

Call Number: Stacks 863.64 Z17sxg

ISBN: 9781594200106

Publication Date: 2004-04-12

"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time..." Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

 

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco; William Weaver (Translator); Richard Dixon (Translator)

Call Number: Stacks 853 E19nxw

ISBN: 9780151446476

Publication Date: 1983-06-09

 Italy, 1347. While Brother William of Baskerville is investigating accusations of heresy at a wealthy abbey, his inquiries are disrupted by a series of bizarre deaths. Turning his practiced detective skills to finding the killer, he relies on logic (Aristotle), theology (Thomas Aquinas), empirical insights (Roger Bacon), and his own wry humor and ferocious curiosity. With the aid of his young apprentice, William scours the abbey, from its stables to the labyrinthine library, piecing together evidence, and deciphering cryptic symbols and coded manuscripts to uncover the truth about this place where "the most interesting things happen at night." First published in 1980, The Name of the Rose became an international sensation, beguiling readers around the world with its mix of history, humor, and intellectual heft.

 

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Preface by); Andrew Hurley (Translator)

Call Number: Stacks 863 B732cf

ISBN: 9780670849703

Publication Date: 1998-09-01

Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley. From his 1935 debut with "The Universal History of Iniquity," through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect one-volume compendium all those who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master's work for those who have yet to discover this singular genius. Come for "The Library of Babel" and stay for the rest of his stories.

 

BiblioTech by John Palfrey

Call Number: Stacks 020.285 P159b 2015

ISBN: 9780465042999

Publication Date: 2015-05-05

Libraries today are more important than ever. More than just book repositories, libraries can become bulwarks against some of the most crucial challenges of our age: unequal access to education, jobs, and information. In BiblioTech, educator and technology expert John Palfrey argues that anyone seeking to participate in the 21st century needs to understand how to find and use the vast stores of information available online. And libraries, which play a crucial role in making these skills and information available, are at risk. In order to survive our rapidly modernizing world and dwindling government funding, libraries must make the transition to a digital future as soon as possible -- by digitizing print material and ensuring that born-digital material is publicly available online. Not all of these changes will be easy for libraries to implement. But as Palfrey boldly argues, these modifications are vital if we hope to save libraries and, through them, the American democratic ideal.

 

Library by Matthew Battles

Call Number: Stacks 027.009 B336L 2015

ISBN: 9780393351453

Publication Date: 2015-07-27

Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge. Now they are in crisis. Former rare books librarian and Harvard metaLAB visionary Matthew Battles takes us from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries and on to the Information Age, to explore how libraries are built and how they are destroyed: from the scroll burnings in ancient China to the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia to the latest revolutionary upheavals of the digital age. A new afterword elucidates how knowledge is preserved amid the creative destruction of twenty-first-century technology.

 

Where Are All the Librarians of Color? by Rebecca Hankins (Editor); Miguel Juarez (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 027.709 W567 2015

ISBN: 9781936117833

Publication Date: 2016-01-20

This book offers a comprehensive look at the experiences of people of color after the recruitment is over, the diversity box is checked, and the statistics are reported. What are the retention, job satisfaction, and tenure experiences of librarians of color? The authors look at the history of librarians of color in academia, review of the literature, obstacles, roles, leadership, and the tenure process for those that endure. What are the recruitment and retention methods employed to create a diverse workforce, successes and failures? Finally what are some mentoring strategies that work to make the library environment less exploitative and toxic for librarians of color?

 

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel

Call Number: Stacks 027 M277L 2006

ISBN: 9780300139143

Publication Date: 2008-04-29

Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.   Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written—Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

 

You Could Look It Up by Jack Lynch

Call Number: Stacks 028.709 L987y 2016

ISBN: 9780802777522

Publication Date: 2016-04-21

"Knowledge is of two kinds," said Samuel Johnson in 1775. "We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." Today we think of Wikipedia as the source of all information, the ultimate reference. Yet it is just the latest in a long line of aggregated knowledge--reference works that have shaped the way we've seen the world for centuries. You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. From The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient Babylon almost two millennia before Christ to Pliny's Natural History; from the 11th-century Domesday Book recording land holdings in England to Abraham Ortelius's first atlas of the world; from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language to The Whole Earth Catalog to Google, Jack Lynch illuminates the human stories and accomplishment behind each, as well as its enduring impact on civilization. In the process, he offers new insight into the value of knowledge.

 

Down Cut Shin Creek: the pack horse librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt; Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer

Call Number: Stacks 027.076 A646d

ISBN: 9780060291358

Publication Date: 2001-04-24

It's 4:30 in the morning, and the "book woman" and her horse are already on their way. Hers is an important job, for the folks along her treacherous route are eager for the tattered books and magazines she carries in her saddlebags. During the Great Depression, thousands lived on the brink of starvation. Many perished. In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration under his 1933 New Deal initiative. The WPA was designed to get people back on their feet. One of its most innovative programs was the Pack Horse Library Project of Eastern Kentucky. Thoroughly researched and illustrated with period photographs, this is the story of one of the WPA's greatest successes. People all over the country supported the project's goals. But it was the librarians themselves -- young, determined, and earning just $28 a month -- who brought the hope of a wider world to people in the crooks and hollows of Kentucky's Cumberland Mountains.

 

The Library by Andrew Pettegree; Arthur der Weduwen

Call Number: Stacks 027.009 P499L 2021

ISBN: 9781541600775

Publication Date: 2021-11-09

Perfect for book lovers, this is a fascinating exploration of the history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age.   Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children's drawings--the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of literary tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare manuscripts. In doing so, they reveal that while collections themselves are fragile, often falling into ruin within a few decades, the idea of the library has been remarkably resilient as each generation makes--and remakes--the institution anew.    Beautifully written and deeply researched, The Library is essential reading for booklovers, collectors, and anyone who has ever gotten blissfully lost in the stacks. 

 

Reading Rooms by Susan A. Toth

Call Number: Stacks 820.803 R287

ISBN: 9780385412919

Publication Date: 1991-03-01

America's foremost writers celebrate our public libraries with stories, memoirs, essays, and poems.

 

 

 

 

March is Women's History Month. This is an annual observance where we take time to acknowledge and highlight the many achievements and contributions of women in society. In the United States, it has been a tradition for the President of the United States to sign a proclamation to recognize the observance (link to the 2025 proclamation from the White House).

Want to learn more about the month and observance? Here are some online resources:

• Women's History Month site from the U.S. Government.
• The Wikipedia entry, which provides some additional information for the observance internationally. This entry includes links to previous US presidential proclamations if you wish to view them going back to the mid-1980s. You can also check the list of references for additional information.
• Women's History Month from the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum.
• Women's History Month from the National Women's History Museum.

You can also visit Hutchins Library to find books and other resources on women's history and accomplishments during March and throughout the year. I did some searching in the library catalog, and I found some books that may be of interest. Books are listed in no particular order. If you need assistance finding these or other resources, you can visit the Reference Desk at Hutchins Library or contact us via chat on the library website. Our website also offers additional information on ways to contact us.

Herstory by Deborah G. Ohrn (Editor); Gloria Steinem (Introduction by); Ruth Ashby (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 305.409 H5726

ISBN: 9780670854349

Publication Date: 1995-06-01

This book contains 120 biographical sketches of women who changed the world, placing them in the context of their times, & taking the viewpoint that women's history has largely been ignored. The section on Mead's anthropological work also includes two lesser-known female anthropologists: Elsie Clews Parsons & Ruth Benedict. Introduction by Gloria Steinem, extensive bibliography, & three indexes: geographical, alphabetical, & occupational.

 

Mobilizing Minerva by Kimberly Jensen

Call Number: Stacks 940.373 J547m 2008

ISBN: 9780252032370

Publication Date: 2008-02-08

American women did more than pursue roles as soldiers, doctors, and nurses during World War I. Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War reveals women's motivations for fighting for full citizenship rights both on and off the battlefield. The war provided chances for women to participate in the military, but also in other male-dominated career paths. Intense discussions of rape, methods of protecting women, and proper gender roles abound as Kimberly Jensen draws from rich case studies to show how female thinkers and activists wove wartime choices into long-standing debates about woman suffrage and economic parity. The war created new urgency in these debates, and Jensen forcefully presents the case of women participants and activists: women's involvement in the obligation of citizens to defend the state validated their right of full female citizenship.

 

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Call Number: Stacks 510.925 S554h 2016

ISBN: 9780062363596

Publication Date: 2016-09-06

The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America's aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens. Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.  

 

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Call Number: Stacks 973.932 O122b 2018

ISBN: 9781524763138

Publication Date: 2018-11-13

 In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America--the first African American to serve in that role--she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.   In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her--from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it--in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations--and whose story inspires us to do the same.

 

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft; Carol H. Poston (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 305.42 W864v 1988

ISBN: 9780393024272

Publication Date: 1987-10-01

The First Edition of this Norton Critical Edition was both an acclaimed classroom text and ahead of its time. This Second Edition offers the best in Wollstonecraft scholarship and criticism since 1976, providing the ideal means for studying the first feminist document written in English.

 

 

Bell Hooks: the Last Interview by bell hooks; Mikki Kendall (Introduction by)

Call Number: Stacks 305.488 H784b 2023

ISBN: 9781685890797

Publication Date: 2023-07-18

 bell hooks was a prolific, trailblazing author, feminist, social activist, cultural critic, and professor. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell used her pen name to center attention on her ideas and to honor her courageous great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. hooks's unflinching dedication to her work carved deep grooves for the feminist and anti-racist movements. In this collection of 7 interviews, stretching from early in her career until her last interview, she discusses feminism, the complexity of rap music and masculinity, her relationship to Buddhism, the "politic of domination," sexuality, and love and the importance of communication across cultural borders. Whether she was sparking controversy on campuses or facing criticism from contemporaries, hooks relentlessly challenged herself and those around her, inserted herself into the tensions of the cultural moment, and anchored herself with love.

 

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Call Number: Stacks 824.92 G285b 2014

ISBN: 9780062282712

Publication Date: 2014-08-05

 A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation In these funny and insightful essays, Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.

 

Sister Outsider by Audre. Lorde

Call Number: Stacks 824.914 L867s 2020

ISBN: 9780143134442

Publication Date: 2020-02-25

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature, with a foreword by Mahogany L. Browne. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

 

This Bridge Called My Back by Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor); Cherríe Moraga (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 820.809 T448

ISBN: 9781438454382

Publication Date: 2015-03-01

Originally released in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, and sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation." Reissued here, nearly thirty-five years after its inception, the fourth edition contains an extensive new introduction by Moraga, along with a previously unpublished statement by Gloria Anzaldúa. The new edition also includes visual artists whose work was produced during the same period as Bridge, including Betye Saar, Ana Mendieta, and Yolanda López, as well as current contributor biographies. Bridge continues to reflect an evolving definition of feminism, one that can effectively adapt to, and help inform an understanding of the changing economic and social conditions of women of color in the United States and throughout the world.

 

In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker

Call Number: Stacks 828 W177s

ISBN: 9780151445257

Publication Date: 1983-10-10

As a woman, writer, mother, and feminist, Walker explores the theories and practices of feminism, incorporating what she calls the “womanist” tradition of African American women.

 

 

 

Need or want some popular and/or academic articles? You can try one of our databases. Please note: to access our databases off campus you will need to authenticate with your Berea College credentials and DUO. These and other databases can be accessed through the library website under "Databases A-Z."

• Academic Search Complete
• Humanities International
• Alt Press Watch
• J-Stor
• CQ Researcher
• Project Muse
• Hein Online

 

Image credit: From the U.S. Embassy in Argentina This is a US Government publication and thus not subject to copyright so can be used by the public.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw this article, "As Black History Month ends, a reading list for the rest of the year" by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes writing for Religion News Service (RNS). The author offers "an arsenal of 28 books that should make it possible for 'whosoever will' to learn and grow." So in the interest to help readers who wish to keep learning and growing, I checked our library catalog to see which books if any from the list Hutchins Library already has. Out of 28, we have 17 including one that is on order as of this blog post. It should arrive soon. Please note that to access e-books via the library, if you are off campus you will need to authenticate with Berea College username, password, and DUO.

On a side note, for our friends and readers who might not be local, you can always check WorldCat to see if a library near you has these and other books.

Books from the list available at Hutchins Library:

An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi

ISBN: 9780063335417

(Note: on order at this time, should arrive soon.)

Publication Date: 2025-01-14

Already a major international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi's sweeping and much-needed survey of African history traces the continent's extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective. "Equal parts gripping and galvanizing. . . . Researched across more than 30 countries, it brings the dazzling civilizations of pre-colonial Africa vividly to life. A book that feels both long-overdue--and wholly worth the wait." --British Vogue Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa's history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa's spectacular history--from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

 

Black in Blues by Imani Perry

Call Number: New Book Display 305.896 P463b 2025

ISBN: 9780062977397

Publication Date: 2025-01-28

A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue--and its fascinating role in Black history and culture--from National Book Award winner Imani Perry. Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong's question, "What did I do to be so Black and blue?" In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world's favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey--an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology. Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16thcentury. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as "Blue Black." The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon. Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.

 

Bouki Fait Gombo by Ibrahima Seck

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781608011155

Publication Date: 2015-08-15

Through an in-depth study of one of Louisiana's most important sugar plantations, Bouki Fait Gombo traces the impact of slavery on southern culture. This is a thorough examination of the Whitney's evolution--from the precise routes slaves crossed to arrive at the plantation's doors to records of the men, women, and children who were bound to the Whitney over the years. Although Bouki Fait does not shy away from depicting the daily brutalities slaves faced, at the book's heart are the robust culinary and musical cultures that arose from their shared sense of community and homesickness.

 

Carver by Marilyn Nelson

Call Number: Stacks 821.914 N428c

ISBN: 9781886910539

Publication Date: 2001-05-01

Newbery Honor Book National Book Award finalist Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Flora Stieglitz Straus Award Beautiful verse explores agricultural scientist George Washington Carver's life and many achievements, from his work as a botanist and inventor to his unsung gifts as a painter, musician, and teacher. George Washington Carver was determined to help the people he loved. Born a slave in Missouri, he left home in search of an education, eventually earning his master's degree. When Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department at the all-black-staffed Tuskegee Institute, Carver truly found his calling. He spent the rest of his life seeking solutions to the poverty among landless Black farmers by developing new uses for soil-replenishing crops such as peanuts, cowpeas, and sweet potatoes. This STEAM biography reveals Carver's complex and profoundly devout life.

 

Creating Black Americans by Nell Irvin Painter

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 P148c 2006

ISBN: 9780195137552

Publication Date: 2005-11-01

Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to our understanding of black history. Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowly became a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of our popular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americans today are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever. Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of the African-American experience. * Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker * Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

 

James by Percival Everett

Call Number: Fiction E932ja 2024

ISBN: 9780385550369

Publication Date: 2024-03-19

 When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

 

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman; Kelly Brown Douglas (Foreword by)

Call Number: Stacks 261.834 T539j 1996

ISBN: 9780807010297

Publication Date: 1996-11-30

Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation's history forever. In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does not empower--it decays. Only through self-love and love of one another can God's justice prevail.

 

My Face Is Black Is True by Mary Frances Berry

Call Number: Stacks 323.092 H842zb 2005

ISBN: 9781400040032

Publication Date: 2005-09-06

"My face is black is true but its not my fault but I love my name and my honest in dealing with my fellow man." ~Callie House (1899) In her groundbreaking new book, My Face Is Black Is True, historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the forgotten life of Callie House (1861-1928), ex-slave, widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five who, seventy years before the civil rights movement, headed a demand for ex-slave reparations. House was born into slavery in 1861 and sought African-American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers. In a brilliant and daring move, House targeted $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton (over $1.2 billion in 2005 dollars) and demanded it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor. Dr. Berry tells how the Justice Department, persuaded by the postmaster general, banned the activities of Callie House's town organizers, violated her constitutional rights to assembly and to petition Congress, and falsely accused her of mail fraud; the federal officials had the post office open the mail of almost all African-Americans, denying delivery on the smallest pretext. Berry shows how African-American newspapers, most of which preached meekness toward whites, systematically ignored or derided Mrs. House's movement, which was essentially a poor person's movement. Despite being denied mail service and support from the African-American establishment of the day, Mrs. House's Ex-Slave Association flourished until she was imprisoned by the Justice Department for violating the postal laws of the United States; suddenly deprived of her spirit, leadership and ferocity, the first national grassroots African-American movement fell apart. Callie House, so long forgotten that her grave has been lost, emerges as a courageous pioneering activist, a forerunner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. My Face Is Black Is True is a fascinating book of original scholarship that reclaims a magnificent heroine.

 

Prayers for Dark People by W. E. B. Du Bois; Herbert Aptheker (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 242.8 D816p

ISBN: 9780870233029

Publication Date: 1980-08-01

A collection of prayers written by Du Bois for students at Atlanta University, thoughtfully compiled and introduced by Herbert Aptheker. These prayers are deeply commited to paying attention to and caring for the inner lives of black Americans. Biblical familiarity and agnosticity are both present in these autobiographical writings, uplifting the hopes and practices of W. E. B. Du Bois's life, while meditating on the still relevant question of how to make "a good life for all".

 

"Somebody's Calling My Name" by Wyatt Tee Walker

Call Number: Stacks 782.253 W186s 1979

ISBN: 9780817008499

Publication Date: 1979-01-01

Traces the musical expressions of the black religious tradition from its ancestral roots to its influence upon the black religious experience today.

 

Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre. Lorde

Call Number: Exhibit/Display - Print 821 L867c 2000

ISBN: 9780393319729

Publication Date: 2000-02-17

A complete collection--over 300 poems--from one of this country's most influential poets.

 

 

 

The Mis-Education of the Negro (an African American Heritage Book) by Carter G. Woodson

Call Number: Stacks 371.974 W898m 2008

ISBN: 9781604592276

Publication Date: 2008-01-01

The Mis-Education of the Negro is one of the most important books on education ever written. Carter G. Woodson shows us the weakness of Eurocentric based curricula that fail to include African American history and culture. This system mis-educates the African American student, failing to prepare them for success and to give them an adequate sense of who they are within the system that they must live. Woodson provides many strong solutions to the problems he identifies. A must-read for anyone working in the education field.

 

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois; David L. Lewis (Introduction by)

Call Number: Stacks 301.451 D816s 2003

ISBN: 9780375509117

Publication Date: 2003-01-07

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. When first published in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk struck like a thunderclap, quickly establishing itself as a work that wholly redefined the history of the black experience in America, introducing the now famous "problem of the color line." In decades since, its stature has only grown, and today it ranks as one of the most influential and resonant works in the history of American thought. This centennial edition contains a landmark Introduction by historian David Levering Lewis that brilliantly demonstrates how The Souls of Black Folk remains indispensable not only to an understanding of the history of race and democracy in America but to considerations of the future of racial and cultural comity in the twenty-first century.

 

There Is a River by Vincent Harding

Call Number: Stacks 323.11 H263t

ISBN: 9780151893423

Publication Date: 1981-10-01

This account traces the history of black Americans from their origins in Africa to freedom at the end of the Civil War.

 

 

 

Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa

Call Number: Stacks 362.108 V722u 2022

ISBN: 9780385544887

Publication Date: 2022-06-14

In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

 

We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For by Eddie Glaude

Call Number: Stacks 323.042 G552w 2024

ISBN: 9780674737600

Publication Date: 2024-04-16

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary Black Americans can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and pursue self-cultivation and grassroots movements to achieve a more just and perfect democracy. We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them. Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude's unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency had become a disciplining tool to narrow legitimate forms of Black political dissent. This narrowing continues to undermine the well-being of Black communities. In response, Glaude guides us away from the Scylla of enthusiastic reliance on elected leaders and the Charybdis of full surrender to a belief in unchanging political structures. Glaude weaves anecdotes about his own evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison. Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must build a better society that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.

 

When Sunday Comes by Claudrena N. Harold

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780252052453

Publication Date: 2020-11-16

Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured the music. Harold details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music, and revisits the debates within the community over groundbreaking recordings and gospel's incorporation of rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, and other popular forms. At the same time, she details how sociopolitical and cultural developments like the Black Power Movement and the emergence of the Christian Right shaped both the art and attitudes of African American performers.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post with a small reading list for Black History Month. While I was writing that post and selecting books for the list, I found a few more books that may be of interest this month and beyond. This time I am focusing on biographies, memoirs, and similar works. Some these books feature prominent and known figures and others feature people who need to be better known. Books on this list are in no particular order, and they are all available here at Hutchins Library.

The First Black Marines: an Oral History by Trevor R. Getz; Robert Willis; Joseph H. Geeter III; Liz Clarke (Illustrator)

Call Number: Stacks 359.96 G394f 2025

ISBN: 9780197650370

Publication Date: 2024-10-24

The First Black Marines: An Oral History tells the extraordinary stories of the men who made history as the first African Americans to serve in the US Marine Corps. Based on extensive oral history interviews with a group of veterans conducted by the authors, this new title in OUP's Graphic History Series documents the experiences of these men as they underwent training at the segregated Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, North Carolina, during the 1940s and served in the Pacific theater of World War II. Narrated in the authentic voices of the Marines and featuring powerful imagery, this book provides a personal and moving account of the challenges they faced and overcame as pioneers in the US military during the Jim Crow era of widespread racial segregation and discrimination. The graphic history is accompanied by a highly accessible introduction to an inquiry-based approach to historical research and the methodology of oral history that empowers students to develop and conduct their own research projects in their communities. In addition, the book includes a brief overview of the historical context in which the Marines' stories unfold as well as a carefully chosen set of primary documents.

 

John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault

Call Number: Stacks 328.7309 L674za 2024

ISBN: 9780300253757

Publication Date: 2024-01-16

 In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."   Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. Lewis's activism led to repeated arrests and beatings, most notably when he suffered a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama, during the 1965 police attack later known as Bloody Sunday. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in Congress he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.   Arsenault recounts Lewis's lifetime of work toward one overarching goal: realizing the "beloved community," an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring mobilization and resistance in the fight for social justice.

 

Bring Judgment Day by Sheila Curran Bernard

Call Number: Stacks 782.421 L839zb 2024

ISBN: 9781009098120

Publication Date: 2024-07-11

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

 

American Imam by Taymullah Abdur-Rahman

Call Number: Stacks 297.87 A136a 2024

ISBN: 9781506489285

Publication Date: 2024-02-27

Imam Taymullah Abdur-Rahman's incredible life story weaves the contemporary Black American experience with the Black Muslim American experience and emphasizes the role of interreligious dialogue in the fight for abolition and justice. By the time he was twelve, Taymullah Abdur-Rahman (born Tyrone Sutton) was a rising pop star, recruited as part of the R&B group Perfect Gentlemen, with a top-ten hit, national teen magazine covers, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.However, after his music career peaked, Abdur-Rahman found himself back home, with little to show for his success. He became a teen father struggling to survive in Roxbury, MA. Seeing Islam as a way to discipline himself in an unrelenting environment, he converted. He went on to work in a maximum-security prison as a Muslim chaplain, where he became zealously focused on saving souls instead of understanding the outside forces that lead men to prison. Later, in his work as the first paid Muslim chaplain at Harvard, Abdur-Rahman began to seek counsel outside of Islam, engaging with Jewish and Christian mentors who opened his eyes to the gifts of interreligious dialogue and helped lead him to what he was truly seeking: enlightenment. With this new framework, he returned to working with prisoners and clearly saw the cyclical effects of systemic racism that keep Black and brown people locked up and without support in America today. A sweeping narrative, American Imam voices the contemporary concerns of Black Muslim Americans in the shadow of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in the aftermath of 9/11, and in light of the fights for social justice and prison abolition. Abdur-Rahman's story sounds an indelible rallying cry for understanding across race, religion, and cultural divides.

 

Night Flyer by Tiya Miles; Henry Louis Gates (Series edited by)

Call Number: Stacks 306.362 T885zm 2024

ISBN: 9780593491164

Publication Date: 2024-06-18

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero. Despite being barely five feet tall, unable to read, and suffering from a brain injury, she managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some seven hundred people. You could almost say she's America's Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood. Tiya Miles's extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman's life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes more palpable the more we understand it--a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

 

A Few Days Full of Trouble by Wheeler Parker; Christopher Benson

Call Number: Stacks 364.134 T574zp 2023

ISBN: 9780593134269

Publication Date: 2023-01-10

The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story, with poignant recollections of Emmett as a boy, critical insights into the recent investigation, and powerful lessons for racial reckoning, both then and now.  In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched. That remains an undisputed fact of the case that ignited a flame within the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to be extinguished. Yet the rest of the details surrounding the event remain distorted by time and too many tellings. What does justice mean in the resolution of a cold case spanning nearly seven decades? In A Few Days Full of Trouble, this question drives a new perspective on the story of Emmett Till, relayed by his cousin and best friend--the Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., a survivor of the night of terror when young Emmett was taken from his family's rural Mississippi Delta home in the dead of night.   Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback--and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith. A Few Days Full of Trouble is a powerful work of truth-telling, a gift to readers looking to reconcile the weight of the past with a hope for the future.

 

Built from the Fire by Victor Luckerson

Call Number: Stacks 976.686 L941b 2023

ISBN: 9780593134375

Publication Date: 2023-05-23

When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his family joined a community soon to become the center of black life in the West. But just a few years later, on May 31, 1921, the teenaged Ed hid in a bathtub as a white mob descended on his neighborhood, laying waste to thirty-five blocks and murdering as many as three hundred people in one of the worst acts of racist violence in U.S. history. The Goodwins and their neighbors soon rebuilt the district into "a Mecca," in Ed's words, where nightlife thrived and small businesses flourished. Ed bought a newspaper to chronicle Greenwood's resurgence and battles against white bigotry, and his son Jim, an attorney, embodied the family's hopes for the civil rights movement. But by the 1970s urban renewal policies had nearly emptied the neighborhood. Today the newspaper remains, and Ed's granddaughter Regina represents the neighborhood in the Oklahoma state legislature, working alongside a new generation of local activists to revive it once again.  In Built from the Fire, journalist Victor Luckerson tells the true story behind a potent national symbol of success and solidarity and weaves an epic tale about a neighborhood that refused, more than once, to be erased.

 

King: a Life by Jonathan Eig

Call Number: New Book Display 323.092 K53zei 2023

ISBN: 9780374279295

Publication Date: 2023-05-16

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.--and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father--as well as the nation's most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

 

The Talk by Darrin Bell

Call Number: Graphic Novels 305.896 B433t 2023

ISBN: 9781250805140

Publication Date: 2023-06-06

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn't have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Bell examines how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles--and finding a voice through cartooning--Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.

 

His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Robert Samuels; Toluse Olorunnipa

Call Number: Stacks 305.896 F645zs 2022

ISBN: 9780593490617

Publication Date: 2022-05-17

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.   His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston's housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country's enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd's family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction--putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd's closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd's America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.

 

A Worthy Piece of Work by Michael Hines

Call Number: Stacks 371.1 M849zh 2022

ISBN: 9780807007426

Publication Date: 2022-05-24

The story of Madeline Morgan, the activist educator who brought Black history to one of the nation's largest and most segregated school systems. A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a teacher and an activist in WWII-era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship. During the Second World War, as Black Americans both fought to save democracy abroad and demanded full citizenship at home, Morgan's work gained national attention and widespread praise, and became a model for teachers, schools, districts, and cities across the country. Scholar Michael Hines unveils this history for the first time, providing a rich understanding of the ways in which Black educators have created counternarratives to challenge the anti-Black racism found in school textbooks and curricula. At a moment when Black history is under attack in school districts and state legislatures across the country, A Worthy Piece of Work reminds us that struggles over history, representation, and race are far from a new phenomenon.

 

Walk with Me by Kate Clifford Larson

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 H214zLa 2021

ISBN: 9780190096847

Publication Date: 2021-09-01

Few figures embody the physical courage, unstinting sacrifice, and inspired heroism behind the Civil Rights movement more than Fannie Lou Hamer. For millions hers was the voice that made "This Little Light of Mine" an anthem. Her impassioned rhetoric electrified audiences. At the Democratic Convention in 1964, Hamer's televised speech took not just Democrats but the entire nation to task for abetting racial injustice, searing the conscience of everyone who heard it. Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, Hamer was the 20th child of Black sharecroppers and raised in a world in which racism, poverty, and injustice permeated the cotton fields. As the Civil Rights Movement began to emerge during the 1950s, she was struggling to make a living with her husband on lands that her forebears had cleared, ploughed, and harvested for generations. When a white doctor sterilized her without her permission in 1961, Hamer took her destiny into her own hands. Bestselling biographer Kate Clifford Larson offers the first account of Hamer's life for a general audience, capturing and illuminating what made Hamer the electrifying force that she became when she walked onto stages across the country during the 1960s and until her death in 1977. Walk with Me does justice to the full force of Hamer's activism and example. Based on new sources, including recently opened FBI files and Oval Office transcripts, the biography features interviews with some of the people closest to Hamer and conversations with Civil Rights leaders who fought alongside her. Larson's biography will become the standard account of an extraordinary life.

 

The Assault on Elisha Green by Randolph Paul Runyon

Call Number: Stacks 305.896 R943a 2021

ISBN: 9780813152387

Publication Date: 2021-10-26

On June 8, 1883, Rev. Elisha Green was traveling by train from Maysville to Paris, Kentucky. At Millersburg, about forty students from the Millersburg Female College crowded onto the train, accompanied by their music teacher, Frank L. Bristow, and the college president, George T. Gould. Gould grabbed the reverend by the shoulder and ordered him to give up his seat. When Green refused, Bristow and Gould assaulted him until the conductor intervened and ordered the assailants to stop or he would throw them off of the train. Friends advised Green to take legal action, and he did, winning his case against his assailants in March 1884, though with only token compensation. The significance of this case lies not only in the prevailing justice of the 1800s, but also in the fact that a black man won a lawsuit against two white men. In The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community, historian Randolph Paul Runyon recounts one man's pursuit of justice over violence and racism in the nineteenth century. He tells the story of Green's life and follows the network of relationships that led to the event of the assault. Tracing these three men's lives brings the reader from the slavery era to the eve of the First World War, from Kentucky to New Mexico, from Covington to the Kentucky River Palisades, with particular focus on Mason and Bourbon Counties. In this engagingly written tale, Runyon masterfully interweaves background information with the immediacy of the harrowing attack and its aftermath, revealing the true character of the primary actors and the racial tensions unique to a border state.

 

The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Call Number: Stacks 306.874 T884t 2021

ISBN: 9781250756121

Publication Date: 2021-02-02

Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning--from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America's racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families' safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.

 

 

If you want to find more books or other materials on this or other topics, you can visit the library website and check the library catalog.

Need assistance, please stop by or contact the Reference Desk.

I recently saw this article, "Celebrate Black History Month by reading these 16 sci-fi and fantasy authors who've shaped the genre," that offers a list of Black science fiction and fantasy authors. I decided to check the library catalog and see which authors and works we have so our readers can come on over and check them out. From the article's list of authors, we have the following items in our collections:

Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories (LOA #338) by Octavia Butler; Gerry Canavan (Editor); Nisi Shawl (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction B984955oc 2020

ISBN: 9781598536751

Publication Date: 2021-01-19

The definitive edition of the complete works of the "grand dame" of American science fiction begins with this volume gathering two novels and her collected stories. An original and eerily prophetic writer, Octavia E. Butler used the conventions of science fiction to explore the dangerous legacy of racism in America in harrowingly personal terms. She broke new ground with books that featured complex Black female protagonists--"I wrote myself in," she would later recall--establishing herself as one of the pioneers of the Afrofuturist aesthetic. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her achievement in creating new aspirations for the genre and for American literature.  This first volume in the Library of America edition of Butler's collected works opens with her masterpiece,  Kindred, one of the landmark American novels of the last half century. Its heroine, Dana, a Black woman, is pulled back and forth between the present and the pre-Civil War past, where she finds herself enslaved on the plantation of a white ancestor whose life she must save to preserve her own. In Fledgling, an amnesiac discovers that she is a vampire, with a difference: she is a new, experimental birth with brown skin, giving her the fearful ability to go out in sunlight. Rounding out the volume are eight short stories and five essays--including two never before collected, plus a newly researched chronology of Butler's life and career and helpful explanatory notes prepared by scholar Gerry Canavan. Butler's friend, the writer and editor Nisi Shawl, provides an introduction.

 

Imaro by Charles Saunders

Call Number: Fiction S2562r 2006

ISBN: 9781597800365

Publication Date: 2006-02-01

Imaro is a rousing adventure... a tale of a young man's continuing struggle to gain acceptance amongst his people, and to break the cycle of alienation and violence that plagues his life. Imaro is heroic fantasy like it's never been done before. Based on Africa, and African traditions and legends, Charles Saunders has created Nyumbani (which means "home" in Swahili), an amalgam of the real, the semi-real, and the unreal. Imaro is the name of the larger-than-life warrior, an outcast, who travels across Nyumbani, searching for a home. Like his contemporaries, Karl Edward Wagner (Kane) and Michael Moorcock (Elric), Charles Saunders brings something new to the traditional heroic fantasy tale. A broad knowledge of, and passion for, the history and myths of Africa led to the creation of a heroic fantasy character the likes of which the world has never seen. Imaro is no Tarzan... no Conan... Imaro is a warrior out of African legend. Saunders' novel fuses the narrative style of fantasy fiction with a pre-colonial, alternate Africa. Inspired by and directly addresses the alienation of growing up an African American fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which to this day remains a very ethnically homogenous genre. It addresses this both structurally (via its unique setting) and thematically (via its alienated, tribeless hero-protagonist). The tribal tensions and histories presented in this fantasy novel reflect actual African tribal histories and tensions, and provide a unique perspective to current and recent conflicts in Africa, particularly the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing conflict in The Sudan.

 

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Call Number: Fiction J49fi 2015 bk. 1

ISBN: 9780316229296

Publication Date: 2015-08-04

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times) This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy. Read the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

 

Hutchins Library does have the complete trilogy: The Obelisk Gate (book 2) and The Stone Sky (book 3).

 

After the Rain by Nnedi Okorafor; David Brame (Illustrator); John Jennings (Adapted by)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.5 J543a 2021

ISBN: 9781419743559

Publication Date: 2021-01-05

After the Rain is an adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor's short story "On the Road." The adaptation begins in Nigeria during a violent and unexpected storm. A young Nigerian American woman named Chioma answers a knock at her door and is horrified to see a boy with a severe head wound standing there. When he touches her, his hand burns like fire and he disappears. Chioma knows that something is wrong, and that the boy has "marked" her in some way . . . Haunted and hunted, Chioma must embrace her heritage in order to face her future. John Jennings and David Brame's collaboration uses bold art and colors to powerfully tell this tale of identity and destiny.

 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Call Number: Young Adult A233ch 2018

ISBN: 9781250170972

Publication Date: 2018-03-06

 They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise. Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.  

 

Hutchins Library also has the other two books in the trilogy: Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Book 2) and Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Book 3)

 

Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson

Call Number: Fiction H7972sk 2018

ISBN: 9781504052764

Publication Date: 2018-07-03

 In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best, spinning tales like "Precious," in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste," a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In "The Glass Bottle Trick," the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband's superstitions--to horrifying consequences.   Hopkinson's unique pacing and vibrant dialogue sets a steady beat for stories that illustrate why she received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Entertaining, challenging, and alluring, Skin Folk is not to be missed.  

 

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe

Call Number: Fiction M743me 2022

ISBN: 9780063070875

Publication Date: 2022-04-19

New York Times bestseller! In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, futurist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation--queerness, race, gender plurality, and love--become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape...and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms. Whoever controls our memories controls the future. Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborators have crafted a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts--as a means of self-conception--could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether you were human, AI, or other, your life and sentience were dictated by those who'd convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate. That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free. Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it's like to live in such a totalitarian society . . . and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the tradition of speculative fiction writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor--and filled with powerful themes and Monáe's emblematic artistic vision--The Memory Librarian serves to readers tales that dissect the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, reaching through to the worlds of memory and time, and the stakes and power that pulse there.

 

Note: Sheree Renee Thomas, mentioned in the article, contributes a story in The Memory Librarian.

 

Black Boy Joy by Kwame Mbalia (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction M478bL 2021

ISBN: 9780593379936

Publication Date: 2021-08-03

Celebrate the joys of Black boyhood with stories from seventeen bestselling, critically acclaimed Black authors-including Jason Reynolds, Jerry Craft, and Kwame Mbalia. Black boy joy is... Picking out a fresh first-day-of-school outfit. Saving the universe in an epic intergalactic race. Finding your voice-and your rhymes-during tough times. Flying on your skateboard like nobody's watching. And more! From seventeen acclaimed Black male and non-binary authors comes a vibrant collection of stories, comics, and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood. Contributors include- B. B. Alston, Dean Atta, P. Djeli Clark, Jay Coles, Jerry Craft, Lamar Giles, Don P. Hooper, George M. Johnson, Varian Johnson, Kwame Mbalia, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Tochi Onyebuchi, Julian Randall, Jason Reynolds, Justin Reynolds, DaVaun Sanders, and Julian Winters

 

Note: P. Djèlí Clark, mentioned in the article, contributes a story in Black Boy Joy.

 

The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk

Call Number: Young Adult P769mi 2021

ISBN: 9781645660293

Publication Date: 2021-12-07

From the bestselling, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Witchmark comes a sweeping, romantic new fantasy set in a world reminiscent of Regency England, where women's magic is taken from them when they marry. A sorceress must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to her family. Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling.  In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice's first kiss . . . with her adversary's brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.  The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries--even for love--she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?

 

You can find these and other books via the library catalog. Need assistance? Stop by the Reference Desk or you can use the virtual chat feature on the library website.

Happy reading.

 

 

February is Black History Month in the United States and other parts of the world. This is a time when libraries often offer suggested reading lists to help the community learn more through reading. Today I would like to highlight some books that may be of interest this month and throughout the year. These books are all available at Hutchins Library. If you want to find more, you can always visit our library website, check the library catalog, and do a search for more titles. Need assistance? You can stop by the Reference Desk during regular library hours, use our chat service, and/or set up an appointment with a librarian. See our website for hours and details.

Our History Has Always Been Contraband by Colin Kaepernick (Editor); Robin D. G. Kelley (Editor); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 O937 2023

ISBN: 9798888900574

Publication Date: 2023-07-04

"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We're ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." --Colin Kaepernick. Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum. Featuring writings by: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Saidiya Hartman, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and many others. Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history.

 

I have personally read this book and recommend it.

 

 

My Black Country by Alice Randall

Call Number: Stacks 781.642 R188m 2024

ISBN: 9781668018408

Publication Date: 2024-04-09

Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents "a celebration of all things country music" (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Alice Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood's "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)". Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity. What emerges in My Black Country is "a delightful, inspirational story of persistence, resistance, and sheer love" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of this most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.

 

 

The Stolen Wealth of Slavery by David Montero; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)

Call Number: Stacks 381.44 M778s 2024

ISBN: 9780306827174

Publication Date: 2024-02-06

This groundbreaking book tracks the massive wealth amassed from slavery from pre-Civil War to today, showing how our modern economy was built on the backs of enslaved Black people--and lays out a clear argument for reparations that shows exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed.   In this timely, powerful, investigative history, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery, Emmy Award-nominated journalist David Montero follows the trail of the massive wealth amassed by Northern corporations throughout America's history of enslavement. It has long been maintained by many that the North wasn't complicit in the horrors of slavery. The truth, however, is that large Northern banks--including well-known institutions like Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of America--were critical to the financing of slavery; that they saw their fortunes rise dramatically from their involvement in the business of enslavement;  and that white business leaders and their surrounding communities created enormous wealth from the enslavement and abuse of Black bodies. The Stolen Wealth of Slavery grapples with facts that will be a revelation to many: Most white Southern enslavers were not rich--many were barely making ends meet--with Northern businesses benefitting the most from bondage-based profits. And some of the very Northerners who would be considered pro-Union during the Civil War were in fact anti-abolition, seeing the institution of slavery as being in their best financial interests, and only supporting the Union once they realized doing so would be good for business. It is a myth that the wealth generated from slavery vanished after the war. Rather, it helped finance the industrialization of the country, and became part of the bedrock of the growth of modern corporations, helping to transform America into a global economic behemoth. In this remarkable book, Montero elegantly and meticulously details rampant Northern investment in slavery. He showcases exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed, calling for corporate reparations as he details contemporary movements to hold companies accountable for past atrocities.

 

 

A Most Tolerant Little Town by Rachel Louise Martin

Call Number: Stacks 379.263 M382m 2023

ISBN: 9781665905145

Publication Date: 2023-06-13

In graduate school, Rachel Martin was sent to a small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to attempt court mandated desegregation. But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, "Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it." For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn't want remembered. So, she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk--including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High--to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The National Guard rushed to town, along with national journalists like Edward R. Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn't the most explosive secret Martin learned... In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in an intimate, kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a turbulent turning point for America. The result is at once a "gripping" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) mystery and a moving piece of forgotten civil rights history, rendered "with precision, lucidity and, most of all, a heart inured to false hope" (The New York Times). You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee--but you won't be forgetting the town anytime soon.

 

 

Black Folk: the roots of the Black working class by Blair Kelley

Call Number: Stacks 331.639 K293b 2023

ISBN: 9781631496554

Publication Date: 2023-06-13

There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost mythic "white working class," a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In this brilliant corrective, Black Folk, acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story. Spanning two hundred years--from one of Kelley's earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid-19 pandemic--Black Folk highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers who established the Black working class as a force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking jobs white people didn't want and confined to segregated neighborhoods, Black workers found community in intimate spaces, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen, where multiple generations labored from dawn to dusk, talking and laughing in a space free of white supervision and largely beyond white knowledge. As millions of Black people left the violence of the American South for the promise of a better life in the North and West, these networks of resistance and joy sustained early arrivals and newcomers alike and laid the groundwork for organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights. As her narrative moves from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago, Texas to Oakland, Kelley treats Black workers not just as laborers, or members of a class, or activists, but as people whose daily experiences mattered--to themselves, to their communities, and to a nation that denied that basic fact. Through affecting portraits of her great-grandfather, a sharecropper named Solicitor, and her grandmother, Brunell, who worked for more than a decade as a domestic maid, Kelley captures, in intimate detail, how generation after generation of labor was required to improve, and at times maintain, her family's status. Yet her family, like so many others, was always animated by a vision of a better future. The church yards, factory floors, rail cars, and postal sorting facilities where Black people worked were sites of possibility, and, as Kelley suggests, Amazon package processing centers, supermarkets, and nursing homes can be the same today. With the resurgence of labor activism in our own time, Black Folk presents a stirring history of our possible future.

 

 

The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Created by); The New The New York Times Magazine (Created by); Caitlin Roper (Editor); Ilena Silverman (Editor); Jake Silverstein (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 973 S625 2021

ISBN: 9780593230572

Publication Date: 2021-11-16

 In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty people stolen from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine's award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation's founding and construction--and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

 

Have you read any of the above? Do you have other titles you would like to suggest? Feel free to leave us a comment.

 

In addition to the list above, if you are interested in graphic novels, we made a list of titles for Black History Month.

This appreciation day was created by Donita K. Paul in 2004. At the time, she was promoting her book DragonSpell, the start of a five-book series. From there, dragon lovers and enthusiasts observe the day annually on January 16th. To learn more about the observance, you can visit National Today.

Dragons can be found in many works of literature, arts, and media. From McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series to Martin's Game of Thrones, you can find dragons in a variety of stories, forms and settings.

To help our readers celebrate the day and indulge their love of dragons, here are some books about dragons or that feature dragons available at our library:

Three Tales of My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Call Number: Fiction G1981t 1998

ISBN: 9780679889113

Publication Date: 1997-11-25

Rediscover the classic fantasy trilogy beginning with Newbery Honor winner My Father's Dragon in this 50th anniversary edition that includes three timeless tales in one, with original illustrations!

 

A Gift of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey; Tom Kidd (Illustrator)

Call Number: Fiction M1215gi 2002

ISBN: 9780345456359

Publication Date: 2002-10-29

For more than thirty years, Pern has conjured visions of brave men and women mounted upon the backs of dragons. As anyone knows who has been touched by the storytelling magic of Anne McCaffrey, to read of the exotic world of Pern is to inhabit it—and to experience its extraordinary dragons is to soar aloft with them and share their dazzling adventures. Now, A Gift of Dragons brings together three beloved stories and a thrilling new tale of Pern in a single volume illustrated with beautiful artwork by Tom Kidd.

 

Dragon's Bait by Vivian Vande Velde

Call Number: Fiction V244dr

ISBN: 9780152007263

Publication Date: 1992-10-01

Left as dragon's bait by fellow villagers who want her father's shop, fifteen-year-old Alys is amazed to discover that the huge dragon can transform himself into a young man who agrees to take revenge on her former neighbors.

 

 

Discovery of Dragons by Graeme Base

Call Number: Picture Books B2985d

ISBN: 9780810932371

Publication Date: 1996-09-01

The book follows the adventures of three explorers, a 6th-century Viking, the daughter of a 13th-century Chinese silk-trader, and a Prussian cartologist of the 19th century. They all turn out to be discoverers of dragons, both legendary and modern lizards.

 

 

Enchanted Forest Chronicles Boxed Set by Patricia C. Wrede

Call Number: Fiction W944en 2003

ISBN: 9780152050528

Publication Date: 2003-07-01

Collected together for the first time are Patricia C. Wrede's hilarious adventure stories about Cimorene, the princess who refuses to be proper. Every one of Cimorene's adventures is included in its paperback edition--Dealing with Dragons, Searching for Dragons, Calling on Dragons, and Talking to Dragons.

 

Together We Burn by Isabel Ibañez

Call Number: Young Adult I121to 2022

ISBN: 9781250803351

Publication Date: 2022-05-31

Isabel Ibañez's Together We Burn is a lush, enchanting standalone fantasy inspired by medieval Spain, filled with romance, adventure and just the right amount of danger. An ancient city plagued by dragons Eighteen-year-old Zarela Zalvidar is a talented flamenco dancer and daughter of the most famous Dragonador in Hispalia. People come for miles to see him fight in their arena, which will one day be hers. But disaster strikes during one celebratory show, and in the carnage, Zarela's life changes in an instant. A flamenco dancer who must become a dragon hunter to save her family legacy With the Dragon Guild trying to wrest control of her inheritance from her, Zarela has no choice but to train to become a Dragonador. But when the most talented dragon hunter left in the land -- the infuriatingly handsome Arturo Díaz de Montserrat -- withholds his help, Zarela cannot take no for an answer. Without him, her world will burn.

 

 

You can find these and other books in the library. Want more? You can search for books using the library catalog. You can also stop by or contact the Reference Desk if you need assistance finding these books or any other books and resources.