Showing results for "Art" in African American

The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Critic's Pick that served Broadway "raucous comedy and nonstop pleasure" has made its way home to Audible. Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid already grappling with some serious questions of identity when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. But here’s the rub! Revenge doesn’t come easy to Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man in search of his own happiness and liberation.

On the night of her husband Matt’s fortieth birthday, Rachel Abbott receives a sexy, explicit text from her husband that she quickly realizes was meant for another woman. Divorce is inevitable, and Rachel is determined not to leave her thirteen-year marriage empty handed. Meanwhile, Matt, a rising star mayor with his eye on the White House, can’t afford a messy split in the middle of his reelection campaign. They strike a deal: Rachel gets one million dollars and lavish house in the wealthy DC suburb of Oasis Springs, as long as she keeps playing the ideal Black trophy wife until the election.

An important medical breakthrough has a shameful history. In 1840s Alabama, a slave-owning doctor performs medical experiments on involuntary subjects - enslaved women - in an effort to solve the problem of fistulas, a post-childbirth anomaly. As the experiments proceed, and he gets close to a solution, the women try to survive and even find dignity in the face of inhuman treatment.

In five autobiographical vignettes, Charlayne Woodard tells the moving and inspirational tale of her African-American family through three generations of love, struggle, and triumph.

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

Recognized as one of the great poets of modern times, and as a deeply respected and influential political and cultural activist and social critic, Linton Kwesi Johnson is also a prolific writer of non-fiction. Here, he selects some of his most powerful prose for the first time. Written over many decades, it is a body of work that draws creatively and critically on Johnson’s own Jamaican roots and on Caribbean history to explore the politics of race and ethnicity that continue to inform the Black British experience.

In Neat, writer/performer Charlayne Woodard shares her memories of growing up black in America in the '60s and '70s. The play focuses around the life of Woodard's Aunt Beneatha, Neat, who was mistakenly fed camphor oil as a baby, resulting in permanent brain damage. Stories of family and of time spent with Neat are weaved together with touching results.

The story of two single mothers - one Japanese, the other Appalachian - who struggle to raise their mixed-race children in a Chicago tenement. An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring Lira Angel as Penny, Takayo Fischer as Grandmother/Others, Lynn Hamilton as Momma Rainey, John Herzog as Judge/Others, Lyvingston Holmes as Mrs. Ellis, Dorothy Lyman as Jean, Jeanne Mori as Mariko, Gina Ravarra as Tami, Monte Russell as Terrence/Others, and Brenda Varda as Donna/Barbara.

Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to be treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power of spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou’s latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth in every minute.

You Don’t Know Us Negroes is the quintessential gathering of provocative essays from one of the world’s most celebrated writers, Zora Neale Hurston. Spanning more than three decades and penned during the backdrop of the birth of the Harlem Renaissance, Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life as only she could.

The first set of an extraordinary collection of 10 sets of personal letters written by Lord Chesterfield to his illegitimate son, young Philip Stanhope, then living abroad with his tutor to further his education. His Lordship, later secretary of state, hoped that his son would follow in his footsetps and took endless pains to instruct him on the essential and finer beharioral traits of a the aristocracy, which might lead him to such dizzying heights.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. What happened inside room 306 on the evening of April 3 is the subject of Katori Hall's The Mountaintop. Hours after King's final speech, punctuated by his immortal line "I've been to the mountaintop", the celebrated reverend forms an unlikely friendship with a motel maid as they talk into the early hours of what will be his final day.

One doomed love affair after another has made lovely Alex Walton swear off men. Now, she's determined to try something that maybe she can succeed at: a writing career. Little does she know that a chance meeting with a strikingly handsome stranger, a mysterious obelisk, and a lost kingdom will change her life forever. As Alex is about to discover, truth can be stranger—and far more dangerous—than fiction.

A comprehensive biographical and critical reading of the works of American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Linda Wagner-Martin covers all six of Angelou's autobiographies, as well as her essay and poetry collections, while also exploring Angelou's life as an African American in the United States, her career as stage and film performer, her thoughtful participation in the Civil Rights actions of the 1960s, and her travels abroad in Egypt, Africa, and Europe.

Poet, educator, and social activist Gwendolyn Brooks was a singular force in American culture. The first Black woman to be named United States poet laureate, Brook’s poetry, fiction, and social commentary shed light on the beauty of humanity, the distinct qualities of Black life and community, and the destructive effects of racism, sexism, and class inequality. A collection of 30 essays combining critical analysis and personal reflection, The Whiskey of Our Discontent presents essential elements of Brooks' oeuvre - on race, gender, class, community, and poetic craft.

These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City.

Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates Jr's legendary Harvard course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, these writers used words to create a liveable world – a “home” – for Black people destined to live in a bitterly racist society.

A call to action for all mothers of every hue and color to help save Black mothers who are dying during childbirth at three times the national rate. We invite all women to support and share this tale that explores a community's effort to protect Black mothers during their most vulnerable times in childbirth.

In this electrifying fusion of African American fiction, fantasy, and poetry, a former public school educator reinvents himself as Kayode, a DIY rapper on a mission to make it big. With raw talent and determination, he embarks on a cross-country journey, collaborating with celebrity artists and battling his way through the underground hip-hop scene. But as his music catches fire, so does the mysterious app guiding his rise—a tool designed to shape his career but secretly bent on controlling his mind.

Inspired by extensive interviews following the 2014 shooting of Black teenager Michael Brown by white Police Officer Darren Wilson, Orlandersmith gives equal voice and embodies the many faces of a community haunted by injustice, in a country yearning for change. Until The Flood is a tour de force solo performance that explores the dark forces of American history, race, and politics that exploded in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and sent shock waves across the nation.