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How We Do It is an anthology curated by Black writers for the creation and proliferation of Black thought. While a creator’s ethnicity does not solely define them, it is inherently part of who they are and how they interpret the world. For centuries, Black creators have utilized oral and written storytelling traditions in crafting their art. But how does one begin the process of constructing a poem or story or character? How do Black writers, when faced with questions of “authenticity,” dive deep into the essence of their lives and work to find the inherent truth?

It’s the summer of 1964 and three innocent men are brutally murdered for trying to help Black Mississippians secure the right to vote. Against this backdrop, twenty-one year old Violet Richards finds herself in more trouble than she’s ever been in her life. Suffering a brutal attack of her own, she kills the man responsible. But with the color of Violet’s skin, there is no way she can escape Jim Crow justice in Jackson, Mississippi. Before anyone can find the body or finger her as the killer, she decides to run. With the help of her white beau, Violet escapes.

It's the summer of 1955. For Ethan Harper, a biracial kid raised mostly by his White father, race has always been a distant conversation. When he's sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle in small-town Alabama, his blackness is suddenly front and center, and no one is shy about making it known he's not welcome there. Enter Juniper Jones. The town's resident oddball and free spirit, she's everything the townspeople aren't-open, kind, and accepting.

The New York Times best-selling 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse will jump-start your weight loss, increase your energy level, clear your mind, and improve your overall health. Made up of supernutrients from leafy greens and fruits, green smoothies are filling and healthy, and you will enjoy drinking them. Your body will also thank you for drinking them, as your health and energy improve to levels you never thought possible. It is an experience that could change your life if you stick with it!

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

When the office lotto pool lands the winning ticket for four friends, each will embark on journeys that change their lives forever. After years of stringing her along, Terrance has reluctantly married his longtime girlfriend, Sheray...just days before winning the lottery. When the money drives a wedge between them, Sheray leaves and Terrance learns the hard way to be careful what you wish for. Angelique has been overweight since she was young. When she uses some of her winnings to get weight loss surgery, her new body and new attitude could cost her the man she loves.

Hailed as the most masterful story ever told of the American civil rights movement, Parting the Waters is destined to endure for generations. Moving from the fiery political baptism of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the corridors of Camelot where the Kennedy brothers weighed demands for justice against the deceptions of J. Edgar Hoover, here is a vivid tapestry of America, torn and finally transformed by a revolutionary struggle unequaled since the Civil War.

Most men barely survive one mother, but Terrance Ellis has three: his aunts. His grandmother Essie's sisters - Eva, Dorothy Mae, and Mamie - lovingly raised him after Essie died in a tragic accident. They made sure that troubled young Terrance got on the right path and made something of his life. And now that he's all grown up and the rising pastor of Houston's Lily Grove church, the endlessly argumentative sisters agree on one thing: Terrance needs to find a wife.

When someone asks you to spend your life with him, it shouldn't come as a surprise - or happen in front of 45,000 people. When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part - they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans....

Two world wars, the Civil Rights movement, and a Jheri curl later, Blacks in America continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. From the antebellum practice of shaving the head in an attempt to pass as a "free" person to the 2013 uproar over an Ohio school that banned Afro puffs, the issues surrounding Black hair continue to linger as we move through the 21stst century.

In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye C. Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom, from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy.

In his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers. For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her Harlem congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety. But when Margaret's estranged husband, a scapegrace jazz musician, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.

Reverend Simon Jackson has always felt destined to lead and he's done a good job of it, transforming his small Houston church into one of the most respected and renowned in the region. But while the good Reverend's been busy tending his flock, his family's gone astray. His 19-year-old daughter, Rachel, gives new meaning to "baby mama drama." Crazy in love with her son's father, she's wreaking havoc on the man's life, even though he's about to marry another woman. David, Simon's oldest at 27, has been spiraling downward ever since a knee injury ended a promising football career.

There is an unaddressed Black mental health crisis in our world today. In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist Reeda Walker offers a comprehensive guide to help African Americans combat stigma, increase awareness around mental illness, practice emotional wellness, and get the best care possible for Black people in an unequal system.

From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, "multiracial" to "mixedblood," the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs, but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. But their relationships begin to fray when a visiting minister with a mysterious past starts to fill their heads with ideas about independence.

When a lion cub named Simba is born, his father, King Mufasa, introduces him to the beautiful Pride Lands he will one day rule. But when Mufasa is killed unexpectedly, young Simba blames himself. Unable to face his family, he runs away, leaving the Pride Lands under the rule of his evil uncle, Scar. Years later, the young prince must make a choice. Will he reclaim his homeland or turn his back on the kingdom in its darkest hour?

Author of Farming While Black and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman reminds us that ecological humility is an intrinsic part of Black cultural heritage. While racial capitalism has attempted to sever our connection to the sacred earth for 400 years, Black people have long seen the land and water as family and treating the Earth as a home essential.

Punishment Without Crime offers an urgent new interpretation of inequality and injustice in America by examining the paradigmatic American offense: the lowly misdemeanor. Based on extensive original research, legal scholar Alexandra Natapoff reveals the inner workings of a massive petty offense system that produces over 13 million cases each year.