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"In Hummingbirds in The Trenches, Kondwani Fidel digests the circumstances of every day living in Baltimore. His honest recollection of growing up in his city--one plagued by poverty, inadequate schools, and violent murders--is a must read till the end. Fidel skillfully guides readers down a narrow line--his vulnerability on one side, his deafening power on the other. In the end, Fidel emerges a victor--overtly aware of the ironclad, historical systemic racism that continues to confine his community, yet still a hopeful, suggestive voice with a strong belief in change. His essays will make you cry tears of anger, but also tears of light-hearted laughter."--Stephanie Wash, Emmy Award Winning Producer and ABC News Journalist.
Baltimore's own Kondwani Fidel creates a visual masterpiece in this compilation of poetic expressions. With over 100 pages, Asperous Artistry will create tears of joy, pain, and love. He fulfills an image of life fulfillment and enlightenment through the collection.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE O MAGAZINE BEST SUMMER BOOK Told by the man who lived it, The Cook Up is a riveting look inside the Baltimore drug trade as portrayed in the hit HBO series, The Wire. The smartest kid on his block in East Baltimore, D. was certain he would escape the life of drugs, decadence, and violence that had surrounded him since birth. But when his brother Devin is shot-only days after D. receives notice that he's been accepted into Georgetown University-the plans for his life are exploded, and he takes up the mantel of his brother's crack empire. D. succeeds in cultivating the family business, but when he meets a woman unlike any he's known before, his priorities are once more put into question. Equally terrifying and hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking, D.'s story offers a rare glimpse into the mentality of a person who has escaped many hells.
Beautiful Kondwani Fidel has once again composed a masterpiece of stories and memories that forms lessons to all young Suns growing up in the neighborhood. This piece, this lesson, is ever so necessary in an era where, we, who come from urban communities, are still fighting structural racism, police brutality, economic genocide while simultaneously fighting the ways in which we self-destruct, destroy one another, and create chaos in our communities. It is a critique of the system of our oppression and a critique of the dysfunctions in our own families, relationships, and communities. It is brilliant that a young mind such as Fidel's has been blessed with the conscious and creative spirit that allows him to compose a lesson from a perspective and in a way that no other could. Raw Wounds is sung in pitches and frequencies that invokes the emotion. It is a bittersweet song." -Dr. Zoe Spencer, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Virginia State University
From the row houses of Baltimore to the stoops of Brooklyn, the New York Times bestselling author of The Cook Up lays bare the voices of the most vulnerable and allows their stories to uncover the systematic injustice threaded within our society. Honest and eye-opening, the pages of We Speak for Ourselves “are abundant with wisdom and wit; integrity and love, not to mention enough laughs for a stand-up comedy routine” (Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math). Watkins introduces you to Down Bottom, the storied community of East Baltimore that holds a mirror to America’s poor black neighborhoods—“hoods” that could just as easily be in Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, or Atlanta. As...
Poetry. Native American Studies. SAVAGERY joins Mehta's oeuvre as a reflection of what it means to be indigenous in today's increasingly hostile, post-colonial America. Reflecting on self, place, and space and with strong confessional leanings, SAVAGERY joins the ranks of other much-needed indigenous poetry of the era to provide a lens (and mirror) into indigenous issues and disparities while also providing a constant offering of hope. These poems are raw and very, very necessary.
Other Voices, Other Lives is a selection of poems, plays, and interviews drawn from over 40 years of work by one of America's most beloved and influential women of letters. Grace Cavalieri writes of women's lives, loves, and work in a multitude of voices. The book also includes interview excerpts from her public radio series, The Poet & the Poem. Her incisive interviews with Robert Pinsky, Lucille Clifton, and Josephine Jacobsen offer profound insights into the writing life.
What would happen if people started moving beyond the conversation and took action to combat racism? We are in an era where many Americans express the sentiment, “I thought we were past that,” when a public demonstration of racism comes across their radar. Long before violence committed by police was routinely displayed on jumbotrons publicizing viral executions, the Black community has continually tasted the blood from having police boots in their mouths, ribs, and necks. The widespread circulation of racial injustices is the barefaced truth hunting us down, forcing us to confront the harsh reality—we haven’t made nearly as much racial progress as we thought. The Antiracist: How to ...
A “diverse collection” of essays, stories, and poems about Baltimore that provide “a wide-ranging account of what the city feels like today” (Baltimore Magazine). To many outsiders, Baltimore--sometimes derisively called “Mobtown” or “Bodymore”—is a city famous for its poverty and violence, twin ills that have been compounded by decades of racial segregation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But that portrait has only given us a skewed view of a truly unique and diverse American city, the place that produced Babe Ruth, Elijah Cummings, Nancy Pelosi, Edgar Allan Poe, John Waters, Frank Zappa, Billie Holiday, and Thurgood Marshall, among other notables. In over thirty-five ...
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Winner of the Pulitzer Prize From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms Bound together by the universal themes of time and mortality and with clarity and sureness of craft, Louise Glück's poetry questions, explores, and finally celebrates the ordeal of being alive.