Africa Memoir

Award-winning journalist Natasha S. Alford grew up between two worlds as the daughter of an African American father and Puerto Rican mother. In American Negra, a narrative that is part memoir, part cultural analysis, Alford reflects on growing up in a working-class family from the city of Syracuse, NY. In smart, vivid prose, Alford illustrates the complexity of being multiethnic in Upstate New York and society’s flawed teachings about matters of identity.

Lloyd Camp takes you on an evocative journey through some of the wildest places in Africa as he relives colorful vignettes from his adventurous childhood and long career as a safari guide. This is a charming, funny, thoughtful, and often hair-raising series of short stories that illustrate Lloyd's enthusiastic delight in leading his clients into the wilderness areas of Africa. Forthright yet lighthearted, Lloyd's suspenseful narrative emphasizes both his love of the African bush and the courage and resilience of the Africans that he encounters in his odysseys.

The first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she’s conquered being Black and a woman.

Nate Shaw's father was born into slavery. Nate was born into a bondage that was only a little gentler. At the age of nine, he was picking cotton and plowing behind a mule. At the age of 47, he faced down a crowd of White deputies who had come to confiscate a neighbor's livestock. His defiance cost him 12 years in prison.This triumphant autobiography, All God's Dangers, assembled from the 84-year-old Shaw's oral reminiscences, is the plainspoken story of an "over average" man who witnessed momentous changes in the lives of Southern people, Black and White....

Uplifting and occasionally heartbreaking stories of love from the time of slavery in the American south.

When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be. That someone was right. Where do I start?" Being an introvert in a world that glorifies cool isn't easy. But when Issa Rae, the creator of the Shorty Award-winning hit series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, is that introvert--whether she's navigating love, work, friendships, or rapping--it sure is entertaining.

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than 60 years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects.

Just as I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. Here, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams.

There’s a story about Rich Paul that everyone knows: A twenty-one-year-old kid from Cleveland who sells sports jerseys out of his car meets a high school basketball phenom named LeBron James at an airport—the two become friends and forge a decades-long partnership that reinvents the business of sports. That random meeting might seem like the lucky break that changed Paul’s life. But a moment of good fortune means nothing without the struggle that gets you there. And the truth is, Paul had always been lucky.

In the wake of the Tour de France’s fallen heroes, the story of one of history’s most legendary cyclists provides a much-needed antidote. In 1907 the world’s most popular athlete was not Cy Young or Ty Cobb. Rather, he was a black bicycle racer named "Major” Taylor. In his day, Taylor became a spiritual and athletic idol. He was the fastest man in America and a champion who prevailed over unspeakable cruelty. The men who aided him were among the most colorful to emerge from the era.

One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13, she was pregnant. By 15, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive.

Despite gold medals, WNBA championships, and a list of accolades, A’ja Wilson knows how it feels to be swept under the rug—to not be heard, to not feel seen, to not be taken seriously. As a fourth grader going to a primarily white school in South Carolina, A’ja was told she’d have to stay outside for a classmate’s birthday party. Wilson tells stories like this, about how even when life tried to hold her down, it didn’t stop her. She shares her contribution to “The Talk,” and how to keep fighting, all while igniting strength, passion, and joy.

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti-for man and beast alike.

As a young college student in Atlanta, Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. had a summer job driving a white banker around town. During the man’s post-luncheon siestas, Jordan passed the time reading books, a fact that astounded his boss. “Vernon can read!” the man exclaimed to his relatives. Nearly 50 years later, Vernon Jordan, now a senior executive at Lazard Freres, long-time civil rights leader, adviser and close friend to presidents and business leaders and one of the most charismatic figures in America, has written an unforgettable book about his life and times.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion, and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

The remarkable life of history’s first foreign-born samurai and his astonishing journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.

A provocative, lively deep dive into the meaning of America's first Black president and first Black presidency, from "one of the most graceful and lucid intellectuals writing on race and politics today" (

Vanity Fair).

Born in a country that has repeatedly traumatized her and her loved ones, Maya Wiley grew up in a household that prioritized activism, hope, and resilience above all else. This attitude landed her father on President Nixon’s enemies list as her mother organized third-party political platforms. Still, they modeled hope for their children. In the decades since, she has borne witness as presidents and political figures used racism and fascism to gain power, and as cities have again and again elected white men, effectively shutting out people of color and women from having a political voice.