"The luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, her poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that...

...this writing thing was some kind of magic trick I didn't yet understand... Nikki Grimes discovered the power of writing at the tender age of six, when, alone in her room, she poured her fears, anger, and tears onto a piece of paper - and felt sweet relief. Words and faith were her most enduring companions as life flung her headlong from one harrowing experience to the next through her childhood and teenage years. Words, spilled into notebook after...

Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewing's narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances; blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. She identifies everyday objects: hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook...

From Children's Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance-- paired with full-color, original art from today's most talented female African-American illustrators. Taking inspiration from the unsung women poets of the era, Grimes uses the "Golden Shovel" poetry method to create original poems drawn from the words of ... groundbreaking...

"Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just twenty-four at its first appearance. Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem)--"I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa"--Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their...

"Poet, firebrand, mother, radical, healer, and sage, Nikki Giovanni has always been celebrated for her inspired and courageous voice. For decades, she has spoken out on the sensitive issues -- race and gender, violence and inequality -- that touch our national consciousness. As energetic and insightful as ever, Nikki Giovanni now offers us an intimate and affecting look at her personal history and the hidden corners of her own heart. In A Good Cry,...

"The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations. She's been hailed as a healer and a national treasure. But if her reputation is writ large upon the national stage, her heart resides in the everyday where family and lovers gather, friends commune, and those no longer with us are remembered. And at every gathering there is food, food as sustenance, food as aphrodisiac, food as memory. A...

"In her publishing debut, internationally acclaimed performance poet Sophia Thakur takes you on an intimate journey through love, loss, sacrifice, and self-discovery. In four parts -- titled Grow, Wait, Break, and Grow Again -- she shares her raw self and gives voice to experiences that connect people, inspiring readers to explore the tendencies of the heart." --

Contains one hundred poems from classic and contemporary African American poets, as selected by an award-winning black poet and activist, including such writers as Robert Hayden, Mari Evans, Kevin Young, and Rita Dove.

"Though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one." So writes Alice Walker in this new book of poems, poems composed over the course of one year in response to joy and sorrow both personal and global: the death of loved ones, war, the deliciousness of love, environmental devastation, the sorrow of rejection,...