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Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity, " as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...
2) Native son
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English
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Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...
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2023 FPPL Black History Month
Black History Month
Black History Month: Focus on Illinois (SCPL)
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Black History Month
Black History Month: Focus on Illinois (SCPL)
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Description
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey -- first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration...
4) Ghost boys
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English
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"After seventh-grader Jerome is shot by a white police officer, he observes the aftermath of his death and meets the ghosts of other fallen black boys including historical figure Emmett Till"--Provided by publisher.
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English
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This collection of essays by scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois is a masterpiece in the African American canon. Du Bois, arguably the most influential African American leader of the early twentieth century, offers insightful commentary on black history, racism, and the struggles of black Americans following emancipation. In his groundbreaking work, the author presciently writes that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,"...
6) Cross
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Series
Alex Cross novels volume 12
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English
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Alex Cross' life is finally getting back to normal following the shooting death of his wife several years earlier. He's set up a practice as a psychologist once again and even has a chance at a new love. Then Cross' former partner, John Sampson, calls in a favor. He's tracking a serial rapist in Georgetown that bears a similarity to a case the two worked on years earlier and reveals a connection to Alex's wife's death. Cross is about to go for the...
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When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."
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Banned Books - Adults
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
Right to Read (WPL-ADULT)
Right to Read: Banned Books
OBD Oprah's Book Club - Adult
Right to Read (WPL-ADULT)
Right to Read: Banned Books
Description
From the author of, A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. Grant Wiggins, a college-educated man returns to 1940s Cajun, he visits and forms an unlikely bond with Jefferson, a young Black man convicted of murder and sentenced to death, for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. Best Books for Young Teen Readers. In the 1940s in rural Louisiana,...
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English
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2024 Feb. Black History Month
Adult - Black Women Authors in Fiction
Audiobooks "Find Your Voice" 2023
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Adult - Black Women Authors in Fiction
Audiobooks "Find Your Voice" 2023
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Description
When August, an anthropologist who has studied the funeral traditions of different cultures, revisits her old neighborhood after her father's death, her reunion with a brother and a chance encounter with an old friend bring back a flood of childhood memories. Flashbacks depict the isolation she felt moving from rural Tennessee to New York and show how her later years were influenced by the black power movement, nearby street violence, her father's...
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Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family. It would be easier if King could talk with his best friend, Sandy Sanders. But just days before he died, Khalid...
11) The crossover
Author
Language
English
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Black Authors: Chapter Books & Graphic Novels (SCPL-YS)
Black History Month
Black History Month - Youth
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Black History Month
Black History Month - Youth
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Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
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English
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A National Book Award Finalist
A Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor Book
A Michael L. Printz Honor Book
A Walter Dean Myers Honor Book
With passion and precision, Kekla Magoon relays an essential account of the Black Panthers—as militant revolutionaries and as human rights advocates working to defend and protect their community.
In this comprehensive, inspiring,
13) Locomotion
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English
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In a series of poems, eleven-year-old Lonnie writes about his life, after the death of his parents, separated from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.
Author
Language
English
Description
From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here , a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago's most turbulent neighborhood. The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer...
15) Love: a novel
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English
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In life, Bill Cosey enjoyed the affections of many women, who would do almost anything to gain his favor. In death his hold on them may be even stronger. Wife, daughter, granddaughter, employee, mistress: As Morrison’s protagonists stake their furious claim on Cosey’s memory and estate, using everything from intrigue to outright violence, she creates a work that is shrewd, funny, erotic, and heartwrenching.
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English
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African American History
Black History Month
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights in America
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Black History Month
Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights in America
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"In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary...
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English
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7th Grade Booklist
Black Authors: Chapter Books & Graphic Novels (SCPL-YS)
Coping with Gun Violence
Coping with Gun Violence (Youth)
Black Authors: Chapter Books & Graphic Novels (SCPL-YS)
Coping with Gun Violence
Coping with Gun Violence (Youth)
Description
Unable to celebrate the holidays in the wake of his older brother's death in a gang-related shooting, Lolly Rachpaul struggles to avoid being forced into a gang himself while constructing a fantastically creative LEGO city at the Harlem community center.
19) Ophie's ghosts
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English
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Twelve-year-old Ophie uses her recent ability to see ghosts to help Clara, a spirit whose life ended suddenly and unjustly, pass on to the other side, but she soon realizes that Daffodil Manor, the place of Clara's untimely death, may hold more secrets than Ophie bargained for.
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English
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...