• Return to Homepage
• Return to Booklist Index

 
(Note: This list was culled from the Lambda Rising database by 
a good--but not perfect -- search algorithm. Undoubtedly, there
are titles that are not included, and it is possible that
some listed titles would more appropriately be included on
lists of other genres. Use this list as a guide, not a
bible.)

2nd Time Around
Hardy, James Earl
Paperback $11.95

Yes, Raheim "Pooquie" Rivers and Mitchell "Little Bit" Crawford are back --they've got a serious love thang goin' on, and IT'S ALL JOOD. But for Raheim, it's a trip that promises to be both phat *and* frightening. As he struggles with being in love with another man for the first time, he must also come to terms with the murder of his homeboy, Derrick "D.C." Carter, and confront his father, who returns after abandoning him and his mother over 16 years ago. Add his ever-curious 5 year old son, Junior, to the mix, and it's no wonder Raheim doesn't go mad crazy. But he manages to survive it all--thanks to the passion and patience of the man he loves.
9/20/96

About Courage
Fleming, Mickey C.
Paperback $3.95

The saga of a child trapped by the circumstances of his birth and how the city of Washington, D.C. directed his upbringing. It is filled with energy, kindness, insight, and laughter, but strewn with the seeds of social disintegration; an explanation, of the genesis of "the Black Underclass." An exciting account of how stumbling blocks can be turned into stepping stones.
6/7/96

Acts of Faith: Daily Meditations for People of Color
Vanzant, Iyanla
Paperback $10.00

A thoughtful and inspirational book that explores the unique pressures on people of color today with great insight and sensitivity.
5/3/96

Afrekete: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Lesbian Writing
McKinley, Catherine and L. Joyce Delaney eds.
Paperback $12.95

Written a range of styles this book engages a variety of highly topical themes, placing these voices at the center of literary and social discourse. Includes writers such as Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, Jewelle Gomez, Carolivia Herron, Linda Villarosa, Barbara Smith, Michelle Parkerson, Jacqueline Woodson, Sapphire and many others.
5/1/95

African Creative Expressions of the Divine
Davis, ed. Kortright and Elias Farajaje-Jones
Paperback $19.95

Elias Farajaje-Jones (who is Gay), assured me that gay men and lesbians are an intregal and often a very strong part in most African religions. This book covers African images and religious traditions, as well as the transported versions that appear in the Western Hemisphere (Santeria, Candomble, Shango, Voodoo, etc), and covers the continuing spiritual and cultural linkages between the two worlds.
3/12/92

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
hooks, bell
Paperback $12.00

Hooks theorizes on the need for an autonomous movement to support the right of Black women and to push for change concerning the issues of racism, sexism and societal oppression that has victimized Black women historically in this country since the days of slavery. Black male attitudes of sexist oppresson receive diologue.

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $9.00

Written after her 1962 move to Ghana to join a community of "Revolutionist Returnees," this is Angelou's lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African-American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in puzzling ways.

American Dreams
Sapphire
Paperback $10.99

Through a series of prose and poetry works she addresses issues of family violence, urban decay, spiritual renewal, the wilding incident in Central Park as seen through the eyes of the perpetrators, incest, the Latasha Harlan murder in L.A., and other areas of African American life today. Her work transcends these harsh realities and finds hope and inspiration as guiding principles.
1/12/94

An Open Weave
Major, Devorah
Hardcover $20.95

This debut novel braids together three generations of an extended African-American family in which everyone is fiercely bound by love and loyalty. The story explores in particular the lives of the women in the family: Ernestine, the blind grandmother who weaves astonishing cloths; Iree, her epileptic and visionary daughter, Imani, Iree's strong-willed and fast-talking teenage daughter, and Amanda, Imani's shy best friend who is struggling to find her way.
4/13/96

Apartheid USA
Lorde, Audre
Pamphlet $3.50

Autobiography of A Family Photo
Woodson, Jacqueline
Hardcover $17.95

A moving portrait of childhood, family, and community that takes into account both the destruction wrought by war and the darker sides of emotional and sexual tension. Here is the story of a young woman's emotional awakening in a place chronically charged with sexual energy but tightly bound by oppression. Here is a novel of women and girls who hope for love in a place where everything is transitory.
4/19/95

Autobiography of a Family Photo
Woodson, Jacqueline
Paperback $9.95

A moving portrait of childhood, family, and community that takes into account both the destruction wrought by war and the darker sides of emotional and sexual tension. Here is the story of a young woman's emotional awakening in a place chronically charged with sexual energy but tightly bound by oppression. Here is a novel of women and girls who hope for love in a place where everything is transitory.
3/24/96

B-Boy Blues
Hardy, James Earl
Paperback $10.95

Mitchell Crawford always wished and dreamed for a Ruffneck, a hiphop loving, street struttin, crotch grabbin brotha. And he finally finds one in Raheim Rivers, who is a vision of lust: six feet tall and 215 pounds of mocha-chocolate muscle. Mitchell know Raheim will take him for a walk on the wild side,especially between the sheets. But he doesn't count on getting behind Raheim's mask and finding someone he can love.
11/2/94

Bad As I Wanna Be
Rodman, Dennis with Keown, Tim
Hardcover $22.95

Rodman shares his controversial opinions and talks honestly about a variety of provocative subjects, including sex in the NBA, fame, money, gambling, his fantasy of playing naked in the NBA, race relations, homosexuality and cross-dressing. Deemed the "bad-boy" of the sports world, Rodman is best known for his antics both on and off the court, for his trademark dyed hair and tattooed six-foot-eight body, and for his relationship with Madonna. Admired by many for speaking his mind regardless of the consequences, Dennis Rodman is widely acknowledged as the greatest rebounder in NBA history.
6/2/96

Bailey's Cafe
Naylor, Gloria
Paperback $11.00

Welcome to the most mythically real eating place in an urban backwater. It draws a wide variety of customers: Sadie, addicted to alcohol and cleanliness; Eve, the fresh flower madame; Peaches, with the marred face and goddess-like body; Jesse, whose love for a woman cannot overcome her love of heroine; Miss Maple, the transvestite who enters contests; and Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle.
8/30/93

BEST OF SIMPLE
Hughes, Langston
Paperback $9.95

Black Back-Ups
Rushin, Kate
Paperback $8.95

This collection captures the faces, voices, feelings, words, and stories of an African-American family, people in the neighborhood and town where she grew up, as well as the people in her life who have helped to sustain her.
2/24/93

Black Butterflies
Gordon, John
Paperback $11.95

Wesley and Floyd were teenage tearaways in South London, best mates with a strong erotic charge sparking just below the surface. Floyd's tragic death brought Wesley together with Sharon, Floyd's girlfriend, each drawn by the other's pain into a marriage based on illusion and self-deceit. As their relationship fails, Wesley flees and meets Paul, a young painter trying to overcome his white foster parents and cling to his art.
6/14/94

Black Lesbian in White America
Cornwall, Anita
Paperback $7.95

A collection of writing analysing racial and sexual oppression from a political perspective. Written long before current thought. Cornwall is a pioneer.

Black Lesbians: An Annotated Bibliography
Roberts, J.R.
Paperback $5.95

Categorizes and describes those books, periodicals, records, and more that make up the core of the black lesbian experience. A valuable addition to any lesbian library.

Black Looks: Race and Representation
hooks, bell
Paperback $14.00

In these eleven new essays, black feminist author hooks digs ever deeper into the personal and political consequences of contemporary representations of race and ethnicity with a white supremicists culture.
6/9/92

Black Theology: A Documentary History Vol. 2: 1980-1992
Cone, James H. and Wilmore, Gayraud
Paperback $18.95

A collection of essays discussing black theology and spirituality also includes essays about black gays and lesbians, bisexuality, womanist theology, and other issues of interest today.
6/16/93

Black Unicorn
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $9.00

Back in print! Lorde writes as a Black woman, mother, daughter, lesbian, feminist, visionary. Her poems are of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity.
1/1/95

Black Woman's Gumbo Ya-Ya: Quotations by Black Women
Jewell, Terri
Paperback $10.95

Thoughts, observations, viewpoints, songs, poetry, dreams, jazz lyrics, and proverbs from 350 black women the world over. These women are survivors, rulers, thinkers, warriors, lovers, and movers and shakers.
9/8/93

Blackbird
Duplechan, Larry
Paperback $7.95

It was a month to remember for Johnnie Ray Rousseau, a gay black high school boy: it was the month Todd Waterson, high-school hero and all-around hunk, got the Baptist minister's daughter pregnant, the month sweet Cherie Barker, his girlfriend, decided the time had come for them to make love, the month he met Marshall MacNeill, surely the sexiest man ever to walk the earth. And, of course, the month of his exorcism.

Blues for Mr. Charlie
Baldwin, James
Paperback $10.00

Unforgettable contemporary drama of murder and palpable racism. Bristles with fierce intensity, love, and humanity. A piercing vision of our nation, our times, and ourselves.
4/18/95

Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Race, Dreaming, Politics
Brand, Dionne
Paperback $14.95

Brand writes from the perspective of a woman, black and lesbian. She has created a trenchant and provocative study of race, sex and politics in contemporary culture. She address male violence toward women, sexism in the relationship of Black men to Black women, the Caribbean archtype of the woman as mother and nuturer, vulnerability of Black female life in the city, and the stereotypes of Black females in popular culture.
4/6/95

Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
hooks, bell and Cornel West
Paperback $14.00

In this captivating dialogue, hooks and West grapple with the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. Creating a spiritual, progressive, feminist, and ultimately organic definition of Black intellectuality, they discuss issues ranging from theology and the Left, to contemporary poplar culture.
10/30/91

Brother to Brother
Hemphill, Essex
Paperback $9.95

"Black men loving Black men is a call to action. . . We Take care of our own kind when the night grows cold and silent."--late editor Joseph Beam.This new anthology of fiction, essays, and poetry by black gay men includes contributions from Assotto Saint, Craig Harris, Melvin Dixon, Marlon Riggs, and many newer writers.
5/2/91

Burst of Light
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $7.95

Audre Lorde &emdash; black poet, lesbian, and mother &emdash; illuminates living life to the fullest in the presence of death. Courageous, wise, and once again battling cancer, she uses the dailiness of her life as the material for her own transformation.
5/1/88

But Some of Us are Brave: Black Women's Studies
Hull, Gloria T.
Paperback $15.95

A splendid anthology covering sisterhood, racism, black feminism, social sciences, theology, and a number of bibliographic works: includes black lesbian writers and raises lesbian issues throughout.

Cancer Journals
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $7.00

1981 Winner: Gay Book of the Year, American library Association. "This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me. That the sum total of me is infinitely greater than the number of my breasts. Should cancer of the breast be in my future, as it is in the future of thousands of American women each year, Lorde's words of love and wisdom and courage will be beside me to give me strength. THE CANCER JOURNALS should be read by every woman." &emdash; Alice Walker
12/12/80

Captain Swing
Duplechan, Larry
Hardcover
$15.95

Johnnie Ray Rousseau's life is at its lowest ebb. The love of his life was killed in a hit-and-run, and now he's been called to the deathbed of his hateful, homophobic father. There he meets Nigel, his second cousin, who looks like mortal sin in Levi's and a tank top, and who offers a love that Johnnie is none too sure he ought to accept.
9/5/93

Change of Territory
Dixon, Melvin
Paperback $7.95

Dixon's first book of poems covers much ground in historical and personal experiences through the language of exile and return, and a search for love and selfhood.
11/16/93

Changing Same: Black Women's Literature, Criticism, and Theory
McDowell, Deborah E.
Paperback $12.95

This book examines defining moments in African American women's fiction and its reception: the "Women's Era" of the 1890s, the Harlem Renaissance, and the "New Black Renaissance" of the 1970s and 1980s. McDowell examines representation of slavery, sexuality, and homoeroticism.
4/3/95

Children of Apartness
Upton, Elaine
Paperback $10.00

a Baltimore poetess who says she is a lesbian and so is her poetry.
2/11/94

Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America
Jordan, June
Paperback $11.00

This book bridges the gap between private and public views of racism. In it, Jordan, reveals the very personal ways in wich she experiences the social concerns of life in this country. She exposes the injustices and inequities of contemporary society--and expresses her belief in the possiblity of unity and inclusion.
9/29/95

Close to Death
Smith, Patricia
Paperback $10.95

Homicide, drug abuse, and AIDS-related deaths have forced black male life expectancy into a steady decline. These men, no longer afraid to die, wear baseball caps with "C2D," for close to death. This book of poems amplifies the voices and souls of black men at various stages in their lives.
9/28/93

Coffee Will Make You Black
Sinclair, April
Paperback $12.00

A sensitive honest portrayal of young Stevie Stevenson who is experiencing the pangs of being an African-American teenager in the early-to-mid sixties. It is also a time when Stevie is becoming aware of her sexuality and realizing that she is more attracted to the school nurse than the boy she is dating.
1/9/95

Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
Hughes, Langston
Paperback $16.00

A complete collection, 8960 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during four turbulent decades.
11/20/95

Color of the Heart: Writing From Struggle & Change 1959-1990
Sherman, Susan
Paperback $10.95
7/3/90

Color of Trees
Parker, Canaan
Paperback $8.95

Peter, a black scholarship student from Harlem, takes life too seriously at his new, mostly white boarding school. There he meets T.J., a wellborn but hyperactive imp with little use for clothing. Here, in his first novel, Parker explores the formation of both racial and homosexual identities, and the conflicts created by the narrator's dual allegiance.
11/3/92

Color Purple
Walker, Alice
Paperback $5.99

The wondrous Pulitzer Prize winning novel, now a major motion picture! A story of two sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife in the South, that breaks ground in its portrayal of the bonding of women.

Color, Sex, and Poetry
Hull, Gloria T.
Paperback $12.95

Biographical study of three Harlem Renaissance poets&emdash;Angelina Weld Grimke, Alice Dinbar-Nelson and Georgia Douglas Johnson. Relying on unpublished letters, diaries and manuscripts, this study provides a radical reassessment of these important authors.

Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
Angelou, Maya
Hardcover $23.00

This volume collects all of the poems previously published in book form: Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water, Oh Pray My Wings Gonna Fit Me Well, And Still I Rise, Shaker, and many others.
9/12/94

Complete Stories
Hurston, Zora Neale
Hardcover $25.00

These stories span from 1921 to 1960. Throughout the collection, Hurston's customary use of metaphor and black dialect enrich her simple narratives and bring her characters vividly to life. Folklore, the cornerstone of Hurston's fiction, and her abiding interest in Biblical themes are exemplified in such stories as "Possum or Pig," "Cock Robin Beale Street," and "Book of Harem."
3/21/95

Devil Finds Work
Baldwin, James Paperback $4.95

Bette Davis' eyes, Joan Crawford's bitchy elegance, Stepin Fetchit's stereotype, Sidney Poitier's superhuman black man, these are the movie stars and the qualities that influenced Baldwin, and now become part of his incisive look at racism in American movies.
11/24/92

Diary of A Young Soul Rebel
Julien, Isaac and Colin MacCabe
Paperback $18.95

Based on the film of the same name, this book includes the movie's full script and a diary the filmmaker recorded during the production of the film. Includes many still shots of movie scenes. The story itself deals with two black disc jockeys, one of whom is dealing with his homosexuality and white lover during a time of racial tensions in 1970's London.
11/22/91

Does Your Mama Know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories
Moore, Lisa C. editor
Paperback $19.95

Contributors are from across the U.S. and Canada, plus one from London; their backgrounds are African-American, Haitian-American, Jamerican, Jamaican-Canadian, Bajan.
4/27/97

Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers and Daughters
Bell-Scott, Patricia
Paperback $12.00

With a notable by Maya Angelou, 47 of America's leading black feminists explore the richness and complexity of black mother-daughter relationships in this monumental work of scholarship, which inlcudes poems, stories, and essays by Alice Walker, bell hooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez, and others.
12/24/92

Duo
Hasan, Umar and Sharon D. Crosby
Paperback $9.00

Poetry by Umar and Sharon. Umar died from AIDS complications in 1994 before his poetry could be published. Sharon is working on a book of black lesbian feminist thought.
6/12/95

Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $12.00
2/5/91

Eight Days a Week
Duplechan, Larry
Paperback $5.95

Johnnie Ray Rousseau is a 22-year-old black gay pop singer whose day starts at 11 p.m. Keith Keller is a white banker with a 10 o'clock bedtime--and muscles to die for. This story of their love affair is one of the most engrossing--and funniest--you'll ever read.
5/12/95

Erotique Noire/Black Erotica
DeCosta-Willis, ed. by Miriam and Martin and Roseann Bell
Paperback $14.00 African, African-, Latin-, and Caribbean-American men and women, gay and straight, novelists, poets , essayists, and scholars provide a Pandora's box of sexy and sensual delights ranging from the lyrical to the lasxivious, from the prurient to the provocative.
8/19/92

Evidence of Things Not Seen
Baldwin, James
Paperback $7.95

Using the Wayne Williams/Atlanta child-murder case both as a subject and a springboard, Baldwin covers the whole spectrum of this country's life while focusing on the problems of blacks in white America. What's happened to the American Dream?

Experimental Love
Clarke, Cheryl
Paperback $8.95

The preeminent African-American lesbian poet writing today, with a heady command of the language, the ability to work in a variety of forms, and an uncompromising Black and queer stance, she continues her thematic explorations of love objects and death subjects.
9/21/93

Faith in the Valley: Lessons for Women on the Journey to Peace
Vanzant, Iyanla
Paperback $10.00

In this companion mediation book to "Acts of Faith", Iyanla Vanzant inspires black women to look seriously at their lives and to try to determine how their own behavior may be causing avoidable problems. Vanzant urges black women to try to understand what they do and why they do it and how they contribute to the negative experiences they face. Addressing the eight valleys which create stress and imbalance for women of color, Vanzant explores the valleys of understanding, courage, knowledge and wisdom, success, love, and several others to pinpoint which kinds of behavior may complicate certain key areas of life.
5/3/96

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
hooks, bell
Paperback $11.00

Final Bell
Hunter, M.S.
Paperback $8.95

What happens when the new welterweight champion turns out to be gayÉand a poet as well? Coming out in the glare of publicity doesn't prove easy in the macho world of pro boxing. Harlem boxer Stormy Rhodes and his lover Carlos face homophobia and violence, yet also find warm support in unexpected quarters.
4/21/94

Fire Next Time
Baldwin, James
Paperback $12.50

Beginning with a moving letter to a young nephew on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and moving to eloquent and controversial modern opinions, Baldwin crosses a century of the most painful and confusing reality in America: being black. This volume expresses his stirring personal credo, and a vision imbued with deep, unshakable love.
4/26/95

Fire Next Time
Baldwin, James
Paperback $8.00

Beginning with a moving letter to a young nephew on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and moving to eloquent and controversial modern opinions, Baldwin crosses a century of the most painful and confusing reality in America: being black. This volume expresses his stirring personal credo, and a vision imbued with deep, unshakable love.
4/26/95

For the Love of Men: Shikata Gai Nai
Bogus, S Diane
Paperback $15.00

This is a first collection of poems written by a lesbian to, for, and about gay men. Bogus renders uncommonly tender, empathic, and telling portraits of, and perspectives on, the gay men in her life.
1/13/94

Forbidden Poems
Birtha, Becky
Paperback $10.95

Beginning with poems about confronting racism and her empowerment as an African-American woman and feminist, Birtha proceeds into the r4eealm of personal grief at the loss of a longtime lover.
2/27/91

Forty-Three Septembers
Gomez, Jewelle
Paperback $10.95

These essays weave together the varied strands of experience that contribute to her writing life: Black, lesbian, Native American, raised poor, ex-Catholic, fantasy-fiction authorÉall are blended here. Exploring her relationship to her grandmother and other women, gay men, coming out, and the political climate, all with a mythic sense of heroism.
10/15/93

Fragments That Remain
Corbin, Steven
Paperback $9.95

Skylar Whyte, a critically acclaimed actor, is the eldest son in a dysfunctional African-American Family. This book explores the dynamics of a family in which the lighter complected child is favored over his darker brother. It examines the subtle and sometimes not so subtle layers of racism within an interracial homosexual couple, and in the gay community at large.
2/22/95

Gather Together In My Name
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $4.95

Gemini
Giovanni, Nikki
Paperback $4.95

Go Tell It on the Mountain
Baldwin, James
Hardcover $13.50

Baldwin's staggering first novel, now an American classic, touches the heart with emotion and stimulates the mind with its excoriating vision of racism in America. From the rural South to the northern ghetto, the attitudes of two generations are in stark and painful contrast.
8/1/95

Good Sense & the Faithless
Clinton, Michelle T.
Paperback $9.95

These are poems about abuse and survival, finding love amidst madness, and coming of age as a woman of color. Clinton turns inward to explore and explode the myths of her complex sensuality/sexuality/ love.
7/13/94

Haruko/Love Poems
Jordan, June
Paperback $13.99

Expands and redefines the traditional idea of the love poem. In the first half, Jordan writes to Haruko in the style of the Neruda love poems. Taking from the haiku its purity and economy, but giving it her own vision. Following the Haruko poems is a selection by Adrienne Rich and Sara Miles from 20 years of love poems that bear witness to the depth and breadth of June Jordan's poetic brilliance.
1/12/94

Healing Heart
Hull, Gloria T.
Paperback $8.95

"Along with Toni Morrison, Charlotte Carter, and Lois Elaine Griffith, we are blessed with another foreign tongue: the voice of a free, fiercesome, sensual and vivid woman of color. Gloria Hull is 'family.' She's one of us. She means to live." Ntozake Shange.

Her
Muhanji, Cherry
Paperback $8.95

In this rowdy, irreverent novel the author explores a myriad of relationships between Black women--mother and daughter; mother and daughter-in-law; lesbians--that together depict the struggle of Balck women: how they hold each other up and sometimes let each other down.
12/21/90

Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete
Walker, Alice
Paperback $14.95

An anthology of new and uncollected poems alongside her earlier poetry. Revelatory introductions to the sections become essential threads in the tapestry of the tightly woven poems.
11/4/93

Her Head a Village, and Other Stories
Silvera, Makeda
Paperback $12.95

Told with candor and compassion, these are stories of a mother facing deportation after nine years of struggle and saving, of a lesbian love which persists despite differences of class and color, of the harsh realities of racism and homophobia, and of abiding friendships between women.
3/17/94

Here to Dare: 10 Gay Black Poets
Saint, Assotto editor
Paperback $10.00

Ten fierce and passionate poets often using gritty language that delights and disturbs with rhythms that hit you like winds and waves. Includes works by Arthur T. Wilson, John D. Williams, Robert Westley, Harold McNeil Robinson, Craig A. Reynolds, Cary Alan Johnson, Steve Langley, David Warren Frechette, Don Charles, and Djola Bernard Branner.
12/8/92

Hiding My Candy: The Autobiography of the Grand Empress of Savannah
Chablis, Lady with Theodore Bouloukos
Hardcover $22.00

The Lady Chablis, the outrageously charming drag queen made famous in John Berendt's bestselling "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," takes us on an unforgettable tour of Savannah in her amazing story--a triumphant woman's life filled with passion, humor, flair, and resourcefulness beyond the imaginings of mere mortals. With the guts of a five-star general and an appetite for life that would make even Madonna blush, Chablis takes us for a whirlwind walk on the wild side, callin' it out and pourin' the T! (truth, as The Lady would say).
7/9/96

Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
Smith, Barbara ed.
Paperback $15.95

A far-reaching collection of essays, poetry and prose on the black feminist experience. Includes contributions by Audre Lorde, Jewelle Gomez, June Jordan, Alice Walker, and many more.

Humid Pitch: Narrative Poetry
Clarke, Cheryl
Paperback $8.95

"Long a recorder of the difficult, juicy moment, the questions of difference, Cheryl Clark gives us acute highlights along a journey traveled with resolve, pain, joy. The best of her language has a singing tautness that is direct and unavoidable, often elegant."&emdash;Audre Lorde
10/20/89

Hundred Days From Now
Corbin, Steven
Hardcover $18.95

Dexter Baldwin is a celebrated black screenwriter, openly gay in both his personal and private life. When he meets Sergio, a self-made millionare, they embark on a relationship that seems perfect, but Sergio is closeted, to family and his business. As Sergio's health begins to erode from AIDS, he gambles on an experimental bone marrow transplant that may or may not help. It will take 100 days to see if it works. A hundred days in which Sergio's Catholic family must deal with his illness, his homosexuality, and his lover.
5/25/94

I am Your Sister
Lorde, Audre
Pamphlet $3.50

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $5.50

"This testimony from a black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts and lives of all black men and women.... [This book] liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood, when the people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved.... Her portrait is a biblical study of life in the midst of death." James Baldwin.

I Love Myself When I Am LaughingÉ
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $14.95

And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. An excellent collection of essays by a woman who was neither satisfied nor humbled by being relegated to second place. Includes short fiction, folklore, and autobiography as well as pithy and lively commentary about what it means to be black, then and now. Edited by Alice Walker.

I Shall Not Be Moved
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $8.95

A new collection of poems suffused with loss and restoriation, with history, love and ferocious courage. In the electrifying writing that has made her one of the foremost voices of the African-American experience, she demonstrates here the artistry and enduring vision that continue to influence our culture and touch our hearts.
11/4/91

I Wonder As I Wander
Hughes, Langston
Paperback $14.00

This second volume of Hughes' autobiography vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 30's. It is a continually amusing, wise revelation of an American writer journeying around the often strange and exciting world he loves.
8/16/93

Identities
Appiah, Kwame & Henry Gates, Jr. editors
Paperback $19.95

The study of identity crosses a number of disciplines to address such issues as the multiple intersections of race, class, and gender in feminist, lesbian, and gay studies, the interralations of postcolonialism, nationalism, and ethnicity in ethnic and area studies. These intersections provide a provocative site for the articulation and discussion of new theories and discourses of identity.
1/21/96

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose
Walker, Alice
Paperback $10.95

This first collection of Walker's nonfiction represents the views of a remarkable writer over a period of years and ranges over a wide variety of topics including nuclear madness, motherhood, and feminism.

In the Company of My Sisters: Black Women & Self Esteem
Boyd, Julia
Hardcover $18.00

This book explores the familial, personal, and social struggles black women face, and offers guidelines for finding sources of strength, identity, and self-esteem in a difficult world. Boyd analyzes the oppressive stereotypes and destructive myths--especially regarding sexuality--and explores such topics as interracial relationships, bi- and gay sexuality in the black community, and the roles played both by black families and by white culture in black womens' lives.
10/20/93

In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology
Beam, Joseph ed.
Paperback $8.95

This material was collected after years of frustration with gay literature that had no message for, and little mention of, black gay men. "The bottom line is this: We are black men who are proudly gay." &emdash; the editor

In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers
Powell, Kevin and Ras, Baraka ed.
Paperback $14.00

Contributors to this anthology range in age from 14 to 38 and cover the problems of contemporary life in a candid, tongue in cheek manner: sexism, racism, homophobia, black on black violence, the generation gap, police brutality, and many other issues. These young writers tell it like it is.
2/3/93

Infants of the Spring
Thurman, Wallace
Paperback $12.95

Possibly the first Black Gay novel ever written! The book was published during and is about the Harlem Renaissance. It acknowledges the homosexuality and the color prejudices that were very much a part of the era.
6/24/92

Invisible Life
Harris, E. Lynn
Paperback $10.95

In this bold debut novel we are taken into the world of Raymond, a black bisexual male who spends eight years trying alternately to deny and fulfill his passions. Caught between the man he loves and the woman he longs for, he must ultimately make a choice. This is a stunning novel of sexuality, homophobia in the black community, and the search for love in the age of AIDS.
2/16/94

James Baldwin
Kenan, Randall
Paperback $9.95

This biography, written for younger readers, follows Baldwin's incredible personal journey from the streets of Harlem to the dingy apartments and gay bars of Greenwich Village to literary exile in Paris and back to lead the civil rights of the 60s, from teenage preacher to internationally-acclaimed writer, to his death in 1987.
12/15/93

James Baldwin
Leeming, James
Paperback $15.95

Leeming, who was Baldwin's friend for 25 years, brings us close to the complex troubled man who struggled out of Harlem to create a series of works that expose the essential racism of America and the world. He explores every aspect of his personal life, his relationships with the famous, his homosexuality and precarious lifestyle, his expatriate years, his attempts at suicide, and, above all, his passionate and brilliant battle against the white society's denial of any black sense of identity.
5/11/95

James Baldwin: Artist On Fire
Weatherby, W. J.
Paperback $5.95
1/19/90

Jimmy's Blues
Baldwin, James
Paperback $9.95

Haunting lyricism, sometimes quiet and reflective, often bitter or violent, Baldwin's poems echo many of the themes of his novels and essays. This poetry is easily understood, but the emotions behind the works go to the core.
11/13/90

Jonestown and Other Madness
Parker, Pat
Paperback $7.95

Poet and performer Pat Parker writes in this straightforward, no-nonsense book about being Black, female and gay. Her poetry "is shot through with life; it's nothing if not genuine. It's clear, strong, visionary, and unmistakeably great." Women's Review of Books.

Josephine: The Hungry Heart
Baker, Jean-Claude and Chris Chase
Hardcover $27.50

A richly detailed and thoroughly researched look at the famous entertainer. It takes an in depth look at her nearly life long lesbian affair. As well as a jaunt through her many lovers, both men and women.
1/7/94

Just As I Am
Harris, E. Lynn
Paperback $10.95

This follow-up to "Invisible Life" features the further adventures of Raymond as he continues to search for love with that perfect man and as he finally comes to terms with fact that he is gay. In vivid prose, Harris also tackles the subjects of AIDS, racism, sexism and homophobia within the African American community. It is a moving sequel to the bestselling book and a sassy portrait of contemporary black gay life.
2/14/95

Killing Color
Sherman, Charlotte Watson
Paperback $8.95

Charlotte Watson Sherman says of her collection of stories, " The stories are words from the migratory mouths of rural dark folk transplanted from the periphery, the marginalized blank space, the shadowy edge of what some of us call history, words sprung from these soft African lips on the pages of our imaginations, full blown."
2/12/92

Land of Look Behind
Cliff, Michelle
Paperback $8.95

The Jamaican-born, light-skinned author speaks with a distinctive, commanding voice that is sensual yet unsympathetic. She tries to make a wholeness out of the colonialism that has fragmented her people.
11/13/91

Lesbians Talk: Making Black Waves
Mason-John, Valerie and Ann Khambatta
Paperback $8.50

Documenting the lives of Black lesbians in Britain, this book provides a fascinating record of achievements and struggles, debates and issues. A dynamic and honest book which searches among the embers of the 1990s British culture for a Black lesbian identity, it transcends labels to explore herstory, racism and separatism among the voices of Black lesbians living in Britain today.
1/13/94

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
Kenan, Randall
Paperback $11.00

These are stories about blacks and whites, young and old, rich and poor, rural and sophisticated; stories at once grittily down to earth and soaringly fantastical. We meet the folk of Tims Creek, NC. Clarence who receives messages from the grave. Lena who revitalizes her life after a weekend with a teen. Dean who is hired to seduce the richest black man in town and the Reverend doing a eulogy for a woman he enjoyed in the throes of passion.
6/1/93

Lettin It All Hang Out
RuPaul
Paperback $10.95

Part autobiography, part how-to manual, supermodel RuPaul comes out and comes clean with the full story of his remarkable rise and rise. Born to a mother who was a "hot firecracker of a woman," RuPaul Andre Charles talks about her powerful influence and of his life growing up in a house full of women. He tells the story of his difficult but loving childhood, his early awareness of "being different," and takes us on a wild ride hightlghting his various drag personae over the years in Atlanta, New York City, and eventually all over the world as the first drag queen spokesmodel for a major cosmetics company.
5/23/95

Life of Langston Hughes: Vol. 1: 1902-1941
Rampersad, Arnold
Paperback $13.95

This extraordinary portrait of Langston Hughes, the most original and revered of black poets, traces the nomadic and yet dedicated spirit that led the young Hughes to Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Europe, the Soviet Union, China and Japan, as well as all over the US.
3/1/88

Life of Langston Hughes: Vol. 2: 1941-1967
Rampersad, Arnold
Paperback $12.95

Tracing Hughes' life from the humiliations of 1940-41, with his career in jeopardy, to his death in 1967, this book combines with the first volume to offer a matchless panorama of life and culture in America and abroad during the first seventy years of this century.
9/21/89

Life Notes: Personal Writings By Contemporary Black Women
Bell-Scott, Patricia ed.
Paperback $12.00

The first collection devoted exclusively to writings from the journals, diaries, and personal notebooks of contemporary black women. These intensely personal testimonies illuminate the complexities of black women's lives, offering unique reflections about self, family, intimacy, work, politics, violation, and recovery. Included are Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid as well as emerging and previously unpublished writers.
1/12/95

Lightning On My Tongue
Kendall, Tina
Paperback $7.99

The author's experiences as a British black lesbian mother poet, her skill as a linguist, and her multicultural politics share the spotlight in a single volume of exquisite poetry.
1/20/95

Liliane
Shange, Ntozake
Paperback $12.00

Lilane Licoln is an artist who exposes what she knows of herself to the world through her bold and beautiful artwork. However, she realizes that in order to survive, she must com to terms with what she has kept hidden even from herself.
9/6/95

Linden Hills
Naylor, Gloria
Paperback $10.95

Through the eyes of two poets doing odd jobs in a swank, all-black neighborhood, Linden Hills is transformed into a place of lost souls trapped in the American dream. Naylor is quickly ascending to high praise among other contemporary American writers of fiction.

Living as a Lesbian
Clark, Cheryl
Paperback $7.95

Black lesbian feminist poetry that celebrates loving relationships, reminds one of one's past, decries male domination and it's destructive nature, and haunts the reader with touching, simple, and compelling feeling for the way words work.

Living by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987
Walker, Alice
Paperback $8.95

A new collection of prose pieces including an account of Walker's relationship to the lesbian and gay community of San Francisco where she currently resides. Walker also discusses the film version of THE COLOR PURPLE, the environment, her struggles to become a vegetarian, and much more.
10/11/89

Living Room
Jordan, June
Paperback $8.95

"Jordan makes us think of Akhmatova, of Neruda. She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet." &emdash; Alice Walker

Love Space Demands
Shange, Ntozake
Paperback $9.95

This is the house music of the soul, a love space where we all wear our desires, our t-cells, our hearts onour sleeves, frayed pants, custom limos, and all that comes with wanting to get hold of life, get hold of someone to love, or be left scrambling to get hold to a high.
4/10/92

Love's Instruments
Dixon, Melvin
Paperback $10.95

The poems in this new collection, many of which have never before been published, reflect Dixon's sophisticated world view and mediate on his identity as a gay African American man living with AIDS.
9/3/96

Lovers' Choice
Birtha, Becky
Paperback $10.95

Displaying her talent for charting the course of women's lives with insight and intelligence, Birtha describes the possibilities and problems of claiming an identity in a world that marginalizes lesbians, women, and people of color. She captures the elation of a 14-year-old girl who discovers her lesbianism; the gritty determination of a poor mother taking her family on an all-night bus ride to keep from freezing.
1/11/94

Malcolm X: In Our Own Image
Wood, Joe
Paperback $10.95

Essays on the representation of Malcolm X in american culture. Includes one by Ron Simmons and Marlon Riggs on Sexuality, Television, and Death: A Black Gay Dialogue on Malcolm X.
12/30/93

Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $8.95

Lorde's final collection of new work, this is a volume of posthumously- published poetry that continues to explore her lifelong themes of love and anger, family politics, sexuality, and the body of the city.
7/21/94

Meditations On the Rainbow
Sapphire
Paperback $7.00

"this book is dedicated to all the homosexuals, lesbians, queers, faggots, dykes, fairies, zami queens, jaspers, wimmin lovers and bulldaggers of the rainbow." &emdash; the Author

Men of Color: An Essay on the Black Male Couple
Vega Studios
Paperback $10.00

Further Subtitled: in Prose, Ilustrations, and Photographs. A graphic artist, poet, and photographer, Vega hopes to provide a network for other literary and visual artists through the creation of Vega Press. "It is the purpose of this book to explore one particular aspect of black gay life, the black gay male couple Éand will attempt to provide positive loving images of black gay males, and express the sensual and romantic side of two individuals, who are Men of Color, Men in Love." &emdash; from the introduction
9/1/89

Milking Black Bull: 11 Gay Black Poets
Vega Press ed.
Paperback $12.00

Eleven gay black poets continue the work of Melvin Dixon, Essex Hemphill, and Assottto Saint, exploring the diversity of gay black life in our time. Meditative and lyrical, celebratory and angry--verse that takes on black homophobia, desire, friendship, and family. An important addition to the liiterature of the gay black experience.
4/7/95

Moses, Man of the Mountain
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $12.00

Blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a powerful novel of the persecution of slavery.
2/5/91

Motion of Light In Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing In the East Village
Delany, Samuel R.
Paperback $12.95

This new version includes all the sex previously edited out of the original text. Young Chip Delany, obsessed with life and art, turns from Harlem to look for experience in East Village, London, and the Continent. Living in a grungy apartment after an elopement with the brilliant teenage poet Marilyn Hacker, Delaney started writing the novels and stories that have made him a dominant figure in science fiction. A known bisexual, Delaney has been one of the most famous and most controversial writers in contemporary science fiction.
11/3/93

Movement in Black
Parker, Pat
Paperback $8.95

Pat Parker -- Black lesbian poet, feminist, medical administrator, mother of 2 daughters, lover of women, softball devotee, and general progressive troublemaker -- died of breast cancer on June 17, 1989 at the age of 45. Long before coalition became a political watchword, Pat Parker's life and work embodied its principles. Here, back in print once again, is her signature collection.
3/1/90

Moving Towards Home: Political Essays
Jordan, June
Paperback $11.95

This collection gives a manifesto of hope, anger, and visionary power. The scope of her writing over the past twenty-five years bears vivid witness to her intention: police brutality, the poverty of educational opportunity offered to Black ghetto children, witnessing a white man's casual murder of another human being in Mississippi, her mother's death, the viability of Black English, Nicaragua and South Africa, and child abuse&emdash;all summon up Jordan's clear voice and unwavering commitment.
9/23/94

Mule Bone
Hughes, Langston & Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $9.95
2/5/91

Mules and Men
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $11.00

Simple, exciting reading on black folklore and culture, these tales and anecdotes of American injustice to blacks, why the rabbit has a short tail, voodoo, why some people are black and more about the mixing of African and European culture.
2/5/90

Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems
Jordan, June
Paperback $12.95

This collection is the definitive anthology of work by Jordan, compiling poetry from nearly 20 years &emdash; including over 50 poems published in the U.S. for the first time. Empathetic to all it encounters, her poetry is a deeply personal music sounded in response to universal concerns. She adresses racism, oppression, and dispossession with a call for justice and for sensitivity to our world.
10/4/89

Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women
Clark, Cheryl
Paperback $5.50

A gallery of incisive, specific portraits of black women, whose lives, as June Jordan states, are "honestly perceived with a clearly hard-working respect and without affectation." Clark considers her black, lesbian, and feminist identities to be "the filter of her imagination."

No Language is Neutral
Brand, Dionne
Paperback $12.95

Elegiac in tone, these poems by the authir of SANS SOUCI AND OTHER STORIES give full vent to her feelings as a Black Lesbian in a world dominated by white, heterosexual males.
4/11/91

No Name in the Street
Baldwin, James
Paperback $5.99

Vivid personal document of the turbulent sixties and early seventies during which time Baldwin saw the murder of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, went to Europe and Hollywood and returned to the American South to confront a violent America face to face.

Nobody Knows My Name
Baldwin, James
Paperback $10.00

Sparkling prose and intelligence illuminate the American consciousness. Literary and social history with immeasurable significance for our society and our hearts. Describes Baldwin's Harlem childhood, makes a startling assessment of Norman Mailer, and looks back with pain at his alienation of Richard Wright.
3/22/93

Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories of Langston Hughes
Harper, Donna Akiba Sullivan
Paperback $19.95

The fictional works of Langston Hughes have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. Harper's book will help to rectify this neglect. Harper traces the history of Hughes' short stories about Jesse B. Semple ("Simple"), published from 1943 to 1965, putting them into the context of their times and explaining the reasons for their long-standing appeal.
9/5/96

Notes of a Native Son
Baldwin, James
Paperback $11.00
8/14/90

Now Sheba Sings the Song
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $9.95

A new edition of the seamless collaboration between renowned poet Angelou and award-winning illustrator Tom Feelings, combines verse and sepia-toned illustrations in a beautiful paean to Black women. With a deep admiration, it celebrates the extraordinary ordinary women, their beauty, their presence, and their inner strength.
2/17/94

On Call: Political Essays
Jordan, June
Paperback $10.00
11/1/89

On the Pulse of Morning
Angelou, Maya
Pamphlet $5.00

The inaugural poem the author wrote and read.
5/18/93

One More River To Cross: Black and Gay in America
Boykin, Keith
Hardcover $23.95

Against an historical backdrop of civil rights and the black experience, Boykin interviews Baptist ministers, gay political leaders, and other black lesbians and gay men on issues of faith, family, discrimination, and visibility to determine what differences--real and imagined--separate the two communities. By portraying the "common ground" lives of everyday black gay people, Boykin dispels the myths that homosexuality is a "white thang" and that blacks are more homophobic than whites.
8/23/96

Other Lovers
Kay, Jackie
Paperback $12.95

The author explores the qualities of love in a variety of relationships rooted in the past and the present. Her poems move from the familiar to the extraordinary. They are poignant, bitter-sweet, sometimes joyous and often very funny commentaries on her life as a 'black' Scottish lesbian.
3/17/94

Our Dead Behind Us
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $9.00

A reprint of the classic collection of poetry. In this collection Audre gave us poems that explored differences as creative tensions, and the melding past strength, pain with future hope, fear; the present being the vital catalyst, the motivating force.
8/12/94

Out! To Lead
Ferebee, Gideon
Paperback $12.95

Ferebee does more than explain and define the historical and current paranoia of our homphobic society as created and perpetuated by the dominant white male infrastructure. Initially, one senses his deep anger and frustration, as an African American homosexual, at a system which essentially aims to eliminate his kind. However, as his ideas unfold, he precisely and logically exposes the blatant and subtle hypocrisies inherent in every stratum of American society.
8/10/94

Panther and the Lash
Hughes, Langston
Paperback $10.00

Hughe's last collection of poems explicitly addresses the racial politics of the 1960s. They are a lasting testament of a great American writer who grappled fearlessly and artfully with most compelling issues of his time.
1/28/92

Passing and the Fictions of Identity
Ginsberg, Elaine K.
Paperback $16.95

"Passing" refers to the process whereby a person of one race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation adopts the guise of another. Historically, this has often involved black slaves passing as white in order to gain their freedom. More generally, it has served as a way for women and people-of-color to access male or white privilege. In their examination of this practice of crossing boundaries, the contributors offer a unique perspective for studying the construction and meaning of personal and cultural identities.
5/9/96

Perversions
Gonsalves, Roy
Paperback $5.95
11/19/90

Phenomenal Woman
Angelou, Maya
Hardcover $10.00

Offers four highly acclaimed poems: Phenomenal Woman, And Still I Rise, Weekend Glory, and Our Grandmothers in a special hardcover edition. They are the one s most jouyously received at Angelou's SRO appearances.
1/10/95

Phoenix Rising
VEGA
Paperback $10.00

From his first sexual experience at age 17, to a gay marriage complete with children, and a journey of self-awareness after the break-up of a 3 year relationship, the author shares his innermost intimate joys and disappointments, as he deals with each new milestone and rises each time, like the Phoenix, to meet each new challenge.
5/5/95

Poems
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $5.50

"The wisdom, rue and humor of her storytelling are borne on a lilting rhythm completely her own, the product of a born writer's senses nourished on black church singing and preaching, soft mother talk, and salty street talk, and on literature." &emdash; The New York Times Book Review

Possessing the Secret of Joy
Walker, Alice
Paperback $5.99

The story of Tashi Johnson, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to submit to the tsunga's knife and be genitally mutilated (circumcised). Traumatized by this experience she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying desperately through psychoanalysis to regain the ability to recognize her own reality.
5/11/93

Postscripts
Cook, Carl
Paperback $10.00

In this follow-up to his first book (Tranquil Lake of Love), Cook travels further into his own heart to chart all the mysteries of black-on-black love. An experience that common to all who have ever been in love.
12/28/94

Presenting Sister No Blues
Gossett, Hattie
Paperback $8.95

A collection of highly spiced writings detailing the downs and ups of a mature Black urban member of the wild wimmins clan as she ekes out a living as a cleaning person, bar waitress, office temp, foiling the unwanted advances and criminal withholdings of landlords, bosses, lovers and others in the urban jungle.

Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985
Baldwin, James
Hardcover $29.95

A nearly complete collection of the non-fiction works of Baldwin

Push
Sapphire
Hardcover $20.00

In an electrifying novel, a black street girl, sixteen years old and pregnant (again) with her father's child, speaks. In a voice that shakes us by its dialectic language, its story and its unflinching honesty, Precious Jones records her journey up from Harlem's lowest depths. Hope appears and the world begins to open up when a courageous black woman--a teacher hell-bent to teach--bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set the story down in a diary in order to discover the truth of her life.
6/7/96

Racism 101
Giovanni, Nikki
Hardcover $20.00

This book indicts higher education for the inequities it perpetuates, contemplates the legacy of the 60's, provides a survival guide for black students on predominately white campuses, and denounces Spike Lee while offering her own ideas for a film about Malcolm X.
1/27/94

Representing Black Men
Blount, Marcellus and Cunningham, Geroge eds.
Paperback $17.95

Focuses on gender, race and representation in the literary and cultural work of black men. The book examines the ways in which black masculinities figure withing African American and American cultures, the ways in which notions of masculine agency place themselves in constructions of race and gender, and the way in which formal and popular modes of expression create gendered and racial selves as sites of resistance.
7/1/94

Rituals
Hickman, Craig
Paperback $12.95

This book brings together musical verse, unabashed autobiographical writing, short fiction, and seering commentary on being Black and gay in America today. The result is a celebration of life, the trials and tribulations and the triumphs. The author is a writer/performer/ artist and lives in Cambridge, MA.
9/21/94

Road Before Us (100 Black Gay Poets)
Saint, Assoto
Paperback $10.00

100 Black gay poets explore every aspect of Black gay life: from tradion to alienation, from the fierce gender bending "vogue" culture to defiant sex and love in the age of AIDS, from historical and political perspectives to personal reflections of future paths. Poets include: Melvin Dixon, Essex Hemphill, Roy Gonsalves, Andre De Shields, Donald Woods, etc.
10/29/91

Sacred Cows... and Other Edibles
Giovanni, Nikki
Paperback $7.95

In this collection of autobigraphical essays and articles, Nikki Giovanni, our most widely read living black poet, takes on some lofty institutions and major life crises and clearly comes out the winner. This is triumphant prose with all the gritty reality of Giovanni's best poetry.

Sanctified Church
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $9.95

Now back in print, CHURCH brings together Hurston's most famous essays on Afro-American folklore and legend, and the voodoo base to southern black folk religion.
11/1/89

Sans Souci and Other Stories
Brand, Dionne
Paperback $8.95

Born in the Caribbean and living in Toronto for the past eighteen years, Brand presents her first book for the U.S., a beautiful collection of short stories.
10/20/89

Selected Poems
Jonas, Stephen
Paperback $16.95

Since his death in 1970 the man and his work have become legendary. This book brings together an extensive selection of previously unpublished work together with the complete Exercises for Ear, Jonas's best known book. With a biographical and critical introduction by the editor Joseph Torra.
5/1/94

Seraph on the Suwanee
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $12.00
2/5/91

Serpent's Gift
Lee, Helen Elaine
Paperback $12.00

Central to this haunting novel are the mothers--Ruby Staples and Eula Smalls--and their children: LaRue Smalls, adventurer and chronicler of his people, his sister Vesta, intimidated by life yet determined to hold her family together, and Ouida Staples, a rare beauty who spends her life with another woman.
9/25/95

Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent
Morrow, Bruce & Rowell , Charles H. editors
Paperback $12.00

In the Black gay literary tradition that includes such gifted writers as James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen, this is the first anthology devoted exclusively to fiction by Black gay men. Here are twenty-two bold and spirited stories by award-winning authors and newcomers destined for prominence, from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean. Together these voices bear witness to the cultural changes wrought by the civil rights, feminist and gay liberation movements, the spread of AIDS, and the emergence of the Black middle class. Includes stories by Jaime Manrique, Melvin Dixon, Larry Duplechan, James Earl Hardy, Randall Kenan, and others.
5/15/96

Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $5.50

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $12.95

Covering eight of this black lesbian feminist poet's nonfiction work, here is a collection of essays and theory that speak to our struggles in the modern voice. Includes "Poetry is Not a Luxury," "Uses of the Erotic," and "Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface."

Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry
Sherman, Charlotte Watson
Paperback $12.00

A powerful collection of original and recent stories and poems by some of today's most notable authors including Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Sonia Sanchez, ntozake shange and many others speak directly to the lives and concerns of African-American women in the nineties.
7/1/94

Sisters Of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery
hooks, bell
Paperback $14.00

hooks politicizes the issue of self-recovery by making the connection between our individual efforts to be self-actualized and collective liberation struggles. Tackling such issues as addiction, violence, spirituality, erotic experience, community activism and others. She shares numerous strategies for self-recovery that can heal individuals and empower effective struggles against racism.
6/1/93

Sojourner: Black Gay Voices In the Age of AIDS
Other Countries
Paperback $10.95

A powerful collection of poetry, essays, letters, artwork and prose by black gay writers who evoke the full range o human emotions through this passionate, life affirming document. Melvin Dixon, Donald Woods, Assotto Saint, David Frechette, Craig Harris and others confont the realities of AIDS, racism and homophobia.
8/27/93

Some Are Drowning
Shepherd, Reginald
Paperback $10.95

This first collection of poems enacts the struggle of a young black gay man in his search for identity. Many voices haunt these poems: black and white, male and female, the oppressor's voice as well as the oppressed. The poet's aim, finally, is to rescue some portion of the drowned and the drowning.
1/20/95

Soul Make a Path Through Shouting
Cassells, Cyrus
Paperback $12.00

Enriched both mythologically and experientially by his own world travels, he draws with equal ease from classical Greek myth, children's rhymes, and African American oral traditions. The result is often hypnotic and rhapsodic interweaving dramatic narratives forming a single whole. Unflinching in its examinations of the Holocaust and AIDS, remarkable in its challenge to received notions of triumph and survival this book is a virtuoso performance.
8/1/94

Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream
Belton, Don
Hardcover $24.00

In this anthology of contemporary African-American men's writing, black men share their experiences as the revered and reviled of America. Through the voices of today's most prominent African-American writers, this collection explores the intimate territory behind the myths about black masculinity. These intensely personal essays and stories reveal contemporary black men from the vantage point of their own lives--as men with proper names, distinctive faces, and strong family ties.
4/16/96

Spunk: The Selected Short Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $9.95

This now famous collection of the best of Hurston's short stories, many of which are collected here for the first time, focuses on the rural Black community of Batonville, Florida, and on Harlem during the height of the Renaissance, forming a magnificent legacy from a writer whose work has sparked one of the major literary revivals of our time.
11/1/89

Stations
Saint, Assotto
Paperback $7.00

Saint, whose work has appeared in TONGUES UNTIED, IN THE LIFE: A BLACK GAY ANTHOLOGY, OTHER COUNTRIES: BLACK GAY VOICES, THE JAMES WHITE REVIEW, and numerous other publications, here presents a poetry cycle which traces two gay men's interracial love through the 80s and beyond.
9/25/89

Stealing the Fire: The Art and Protest of James Baldwin
Porter, Horace A.
Paperback $17.95
4/16/90

Stella Manhattan
Santiago, Silviano
Paperback $14.95

The story of sexual scandal and political intrigue. Set in the Brazilian exile community in New York City in the late 1960s, this is an electrifying adventure story of a young gay Brazilian transvestite man trying to make a go of it in New York after being forced out of his native country. Eduardo lands a job at the Brazilian consulate and hooks up with Colonel Vianna, whose alter ego, the S/M Black Widow, dresses up in leather and cruises the city for flesh.
11/3/94

Talking At the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin
Campbell, James
Paperback $12.00

An honest and moving story, it is the biography of the boy preacher who became a great man of letters, of the native son who fled his homeland. A literary biography, it places each work in the context of his life.
1/14/92

Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black
hooks, bell
Paperback $11.00

Talking Black: African, Caribbean and Asian Lesbians Speak Out
Mason-John, Valerie ed.
Paperback $14.95

The first anthology of Black lesbian writers in Britain. Here lesbians speak out about a wide range of issues which affect their lives, from popular culture, mental health and discrimination, to the Black lesbian community. They deal sympathetically with problems that often arise from coexistence in the Black and the lesbian and gay communities.
4/11/95

Technical Difficulties
Jordan, June
Paperback $12.00

A new collection of essays on a rich variety of contemporary American themes. From growing up in Brooklyn, the perverse myths of race and class, the romance of an artist, to the relationship between poetry and politics.
2/14/94

Tell My Horse
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $12.00
2/5/90

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paperback $12.00

This extraordinary novel about love between two black people belongs in the category of enduring American literature with that of Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway. "There is no book more important to me than this one." Alice Walker
2/5/90

Three Pieces
Shange, Ntozake
Paperback $10.95

In these three plays, she brilliantly recasts traditional forms to capture the essences of the lives of black people. Spell #7 is a black magic and variety show; A Photograph: Lovers In Motion, a sensual melodrama of intersecting lives and loves; and Boogie Woogie Landscapes, a stream of consciousness verse play.
4/10/92

Threshing Floor
Burford, Barbara
Paperback $7.95

A powerful collection of stories about the lives of Black women. Burford, a Black British lesbian, constructs cruel realities, dream fantasies, bitter escapes, visionary worlds, and day-to-day loves. Deeply etched portraits full of light and shadow.

Traitor to the Race
Scott, Darieck
Paperback $10.95

Kenneth, an unemployed actor, fills his empty hours with fantasies, but his fantasy world collapses when his cousin and boyhood friend is brutally raped and killed. Kenneth is forced to confront his guilt about having a white lover, his uneasy relationship with other African-American men, and the fear and excitement he feels about crossing the boundaries of sex, power, desire, and race.
6/5/96

Tranquil Lake of Love
Cook, Carl
Paperback $8.00

In documenting the nuances of an intense relationship, Cook evokes the passion, pain, sensuality and joy in language that is lyrical and flowing on serene rhythms of completion. This is a thoughtful and sensitive collection of love poetry.
3/4/93

Treasury of African Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Myths, Legends, Epics, Tales, Recollections, Wisdom, Sayings, and Humor of Africa
Courlander, Harold
Paperback $14.95

Eminent novelist and folklorist, Harold Courlander is the author of many well-known books about the traditions, lore, and oral literature of various peoples in Africa and the New World. In A Treasury of African Folklore, he gives us an extensive and unique collection of lore, recollections, epics, traditions, beliefs, and tales from widespread regions of the African continent. Here, in this oral lecture, is to be found the real "inner Africa," revealing the nature of the world and man as Africans have seen them over the centuries.
4/13/96

Trouble the Water
Dixon, Melvin
Paperback $8.95

A story of returning home after twenty years away from one's roots, of re-claiming past heritage, and facing the consequences of long absence. A successful young man from Pee Dee, North Carolina returns home to the funeral of his grandmother, and re-encounters his former life. There, he finds a more clear understanding of the troubles of his present lie in his past.
9/14/90

Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $9.95

"Here are the words of some of the women I have been, am being still, will come to be," writes the author of this volume which brings together many of the most important poems she has written over the past thirty years. Revised and updated edition includes six new poems.
9/1/92

Unforgetting Heart: An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women
Kanwar, Asha ed.
Paperback $9.95

This anthology of short stories by African American women spans 150 years. It includes short stories by Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Allen Shockley, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Alice Walker, Becky Birtha, and many others.
6/1/93

Visitation of Spirits
Kenan, Randall
Paperback $9.95

Kenan recounts the complex and sustaining truths of four generations of a black family's life in the South &emdash; as well as an urgent new view of the South's future. "Randall Kenan speaks eloquently and with a great deal of courage about personal and communal strife within the black community. But above all, he speaks in the voice of the future that is tinged with bittersweet love." &emdash; Gloria Naylor
9/27/90

Waiting Rooms
Parkerson, Michelle
Paperback $5.00

A modest collection of prose and poetry of an experimental nature with a high degree of success in each form. Parkerson addresses lesbianism, being black, and modern moral issues in a down to earth yet universal tone.

Warm December
Vega Studios
Paperback $9.95

A collection of poetry, illustrations, and photographs which introduce the works of new writers and artists. Rory Buchanan, Carl Cook, Adisa Osei Chionseu and others. The three mediums are delicately weaved together to tell the stories about love empowerment, and survival, in a time of victimization and the need for self-empowerment during the AIDS crisis.
2/13/92

Ways of White Folks
Hughes, Langston
Paperback $9.00

A collection of stories depicting black people colliding humorously and tragically with whites in the 1920's and 30's.
9/14/90

We Who Believe In Freedom: Sweet Honey In the Rock..Still on the Journey
Reagon, Bernice Johnson and Sweet Honey In the Rock
Paperback $16.95

Brings the full range of voices and palates of these exciting, dynamic African American women to the page as powerfully as they conquer the concert stage. This book moves with energy and good pacing through the lives and rhythms of the women who make up the group. It includes essays by each member and their support team, historical essays and appreciations by Alice Walker and Angela Davis.
10/21/93

Welcome To the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies
Mercer, Kobena
Paperback $17.95

Brings a black perspective to the reading of a wide range of cultural texts, events and experiences in the politics of ethnicity, sexuality and race during the 1980s. Mercer seeks out ne hybrid identities that have been forged out of this turbulent period, from Michael Jackson's ethnic androgyny to the homoerotic photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. Mercer's essays make for a powerful re-reading of the art of postmodernity and the location of Black and Queer cultural art practices within it.
8/16/94

Wishing For Wings
Saint, Assotto
Paperback $10.00

The last collection of poetry from Assotto. This collection revolves around AIDS, African Americans, racism, homophobia, and his late partner.
11/3/94

Woman That I Am: The Literature and Culture of Women of Color
Madison, D. Soyini
Hardcover $35.00

Gathers works of 126 contemporary authors including Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, June Jordon, Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou, and others.
11/22/93

Women of Brewster Place
Naylor, Gloria
Paperback $10.00

Seven women have made their way to Brewster Place, including some who are "that way." Naylor's book "sings of sorrows proudly borne by black women in America." The Washington Post. Made memorable by Oprah Winfrey's two-part television production.

Words in the Wind: An African Fantasy
Wood, Demon L. A.
Paperback $19.95

A tale about the Tall Walkers, the nameless giants of Africa's most ancient legends, and their wise and powerful elder, Shhaha. In his time, the human heart ruled the world. It was an age when men and women had to be forged from something more than solid matter, and could not afford the luxury of mating for love alone. Not when the infants they bore would never be children, as the magic they might possess would not be something for a child.
9/5/96

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now
Angelou, Maya
Paperback $5.50

A collection of wisdom, this volume distills her thoughts about how spirit and spirituality move and shape her life. It is about service and grace and giving, and about how she celebrates the spirit of her people and the earthy sensuality of the sisterhood.
10/6/94

Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
hooks, bell
Paperback $14.00
2/21/91

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Lorde, Audre
Paperback $10.95

Combining elements of history, biography, and myth, Lorde's book tells of her coming of age, and of the strength she has found through "zami &emdash; a West Indian term for women who work together as friends and lovers."

• Return to Homepage
• Return to Booklist Index

Last updated: 3 May 1997 by Chuck Tarver