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Essential Computer Skills + Essential Computer Skills -
Digital Literacy
Digital Literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.
Digital literacy also means individuals and communities alike have the skills necessary to live, learn, and work in a society where communication and access to information is increasingly dependent on digital technologies like the internet, social media, and mobile devices.
Digital Equity
Digital equity is a condition in which all individuals and communities have the ability to comfortably use technology in order to fully participate in our society, democracy, and economy. Digital equity is necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services.
By ensuring all people have access to the same vital resources, we are one step closer to closing the digital divide.
It is important to note here the use of “equity” vs. “equality.” When we use the word equity, we accurately acknowledge the systemic barriers that must be dismantled before achieving equality for all.
Digital Inclusion
Digital Inclusion refers to the activities necessary to ensure that all individuals and communities, including the most disadvantaged, have access to and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
This includes five elements:
- Affordable, robust broadband internet service;
- Internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user;
- Access to digital literacy training;
- Quality technical support; and
- Applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation and collaboration.
Digital Inclusion must evolve as technology advances. Digital Inclusion requires intentional strategies and investments to reduce and eliminate historical, institutional and structural barriers to access and use technology.
Staff Picks
Our team of professional selectors work tirelessly to ensure that the diversity and cultural richness of Prince George's County is represented in our collections. Each month, we feature recent titles that we think will appeal to a wide cross section of our community, as well as those titles that perhaps fall a little under the radar. Discovery is our goal.
English-Language Picks
Fiction
The Kamogawa Food Detectives
by Hisashi Kashiwai
Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason customers stop by . . . The father-daughter duo are 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.
Owning Up: New Fiction
by George Pelecanos
Four blistering novellas, drawn together by themes of strife, violence, and humanity. Pelecanos' portraits are characterized by shades of grey, resisting the mold of heroes and villains, victims and perpetrators, good and evil. At once streetwise and full of heart, "Owning Up" grapples with random chance, the bind of consequence, and the forked paths a life can take.
Brooklyn
by Tracy Brown
The question isn't who murdered her; the question is who wouldn't? Brooklyn Melody James has finally gotten the punishment she deserves after leaving a web of lies, heartache, and betrayal behind her. As her life slips away, Brooklyn remembers the events that shaped her into the cold, calculating creature she became. The is the last novel by the late Tracy Brown.
Non-fiction
The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic
by Daniel de Visé
The story of the epic friendship between John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the golden era of improv, and the making of a comedic film classic that helped shape our popular culture. "They're not going to catch us," Dan Aykroyd, as Elwood Blues, tells his brother Jake, played by John Belushi. "We're on a mission from God." So opens the musical action comedy The Blues Brothers, which hit theaters on June 20, 1980. Their scripted mission was to save a local Chicago orphanage. But Aykroyd, who conceived and wrote much of the film, had a greater mission: to honor the then-seemingly forgotten tradition of rhythm and blues, some of whose greatest artists--Aretha Franklin, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles--made the film as unforgettable as its wild car chases. Much delayed and vastly over budget, beset by mercurial and oft drugged-out stars, The Blues Brothers opened to outraged reviews. However, in the 44 years since, it has been acknowledged a classic: it has been inducted into the National Film Registry for its cultural significance, even declared a "Catholic classic" by the Church itself, and re-aired thousands of times on television to huge worldwide audiences. It is, undeniably, one of the most significant films of the 20th century. The story behind any classic is rich; the saga behind The Blues Brothers, as Daniel de Visé reveals, is epic, encompassing the colorful childhoods of Belushi and Aykroyd; the comedic revolution sparked by Harvard's Lampoon and Chicago's Second City; the birth and anecdote-rich, drug-filled early years of Saturday Night Live, where the Blues Brothers were born as an act amidst turmoil and rivalry; and, of course, the indelible behind-the-scenes narrative of how the film was made, scene by memorable scene. Based on original research and dozens of interviews probing the memories of principals from director John Landis and producer Bob Weiss to Aykroyd himself, The Blues Brothers illuminates an American masterpiece while vividly portraying the creative geniuses behind modern comedy.
Code Noir: Afro-Caribbean Stories and Recipes
by Lelani Lewis
Code Noir is a cookbook steeped in history. Not only because of its title, which refers to a seventeenth-century decree in which King Louis XIV outlined the rules about how enslaved Africans in the French colonies should be treated, but also because it sheds light on the food and people who suffered through the gruesome course of history and came together in the Caribbean, bringing ingredients from the Old and New World to one plate. Inside, chef and culinary activist Lelani Lewis goes back to the roots of her Caribbean food culture, with classic dishes like jerk chicken, cod fritters, pepper pot stew, and Guinness punch. But she also shares new creations with typical Caribbean ingredients such as cassava, corn, coconut, lime, plantain, and chilies in creations such as plantain with peanut-lime salsa, sweet potato gratin with ginger cream, and a corn cream anglaise with caramelized guava.
Borrow: Print
It's Hard For Me to Live With Me: A Memoir
by Rex Chapman with Seth Davis
He is considered by many the greatest basketball player ever produced by the hoops-crazy state of Kentucky. In two years at the University of Kentucky, he scored over 1,000 points, led the Wildcats to a Sweet Sixteen appearance and was nicknamed "King Rex." The first player ever drafted by the Charlotte Hornets, he spent twelve seasons in the NBA, dazzling in dunk contests and sinking one of the most memorable buzzer-beaters in league history. But by the end of his career, Rex Chapman was harboring a destructive secret; years before America's opioid crisis would become national news, Chapman developed a dependency on Vicodin and Oxycontin, ultimately ingesting fifty painkillers a day. In addition, he developed a severe gambling addiction, once nearly losing $400,000 at a Las Vegas blackjack table. All this would cost him his family as well as most of the $40 million fortune he'd made in basketball, leaving him to live in his car and shoplift to support his addictions. Only when he was arrested--and his mugshot made national news--did he finally commit to getting clean. In "It's Hard for Me to Live With Me," Chapman--who has amassed millions of social media followers for his relatable and uplifting posts--tells the story of his addiction and recovery in unflinching detail. With equal frankness, he describes his history with depression; the racism he witnessed growing up and how that shaped his outspokenness on matters of social justice; and his complex and volatile relationship with his father, also a former professional basketball player. Cowritten with New York Times bestselling author Seth Davis, Chapman's memoir is an equally devastating and inspiring story about the human struggle for self-acceptance.
Selecciones de personal
En Agosto Nos Vemos (Inglés: Until August)
Gabriel García Márquez, traducción de Anne McLean
Cada agosto, Ana Magdalena Bach toma el transbordador hasta la isla donde está enterrada su madre para visitar la tumba donde descansa. Estas visitas acaban convirtiéndose en una irresistible invitación a convertirse en otra persona durante una noche al año. Escrito con el inconfundible y fascinante estilo de García Márquez, En agosto nos vemos es un canto a la vida, a la perdurabilidad del goce a pesar del paso del tiempo y al deseo femenino. Un regalo inesperado para los innumerables lectores del Nobel colombiano.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
La Camarera (Inglés: The Maid)
Nita Prose, traducción de Ángela Esteller
Un cadáver en la cama. Esta vez no será tan fácil dejarlo todo impecable. Bienvenida al Regency Grand Hotel, donde nada es lo que parece.
Molly es una chica joven que trabaja de mesera en un hotel de lujo. Es tímida y socialmente torpe. También es dedicada, comprometida y profesional. Una perfeccionista. En su trabajo, esponja las almohadas y arregla los desastres que hacen los huéspedes, barriendo sus secretos. Es sólo una mesera, y nadie se fija en ella. Pero un asombroso descubrimiento en una de las suites pone su vida patas arriba y la obliga a convertirse en detective para limpiar su propio nombre, a enfrentarse a un mundo más allá de lo aparente.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Dead in Long Beach, California
by Venita Blackburn
Coral is the first person to discover her brother Jay's dead body in the wake of his suicide. There's no note, only a drably furnished bachelor pad in Long Beach, California, and a cell phone with a handful of numbers in it. Coral pockets the phone. And then she starts responding to texts as her dead brother. Kirkus Reviews calls this debut novel "intelligent, bizarre, and brilliantly written."
Girls with Bad Reputations
by Xio Axelrod
All her life, Kayla heard the same refrain: Don't be so loud. Don't act so wild. Don't take up so much space. Now she's the beating heart of an up-and-coming rock band...and the whole world is going to know her name. From the author of "The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes."
Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In "Wandering Stars," Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family that readers first fell in love with in "There There," asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre.
Non-fiction
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
by James Kaplan
The story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959 is told through the journey of three towering artists-Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans-who came together to create the most famous and bestselling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue. The myth of the 60s depends on the 1950s being the before times of conformity, segregation, straightness-The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, the great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, led there by a number of Black geniuses so iconic they go by one name-Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and above all, Miles. 1959 saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles's sextet come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the best-selling: Kind of Blue. This book is James Kaplan's magnificent account of the paths of the three giants Miles, Coltrane and Evans to the mountaintop of 1959 and their path on from there. It's a book about music, business, race, heroin, and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City. And it's about why this period has never been replicated, why the world of jazz most people visit is a museum to it. But above all this is a book about three very different men-their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness.
Roots, Heart, Soul: The Story, Celebration, and Recipes of Afro Cuisine in America
by Todd Richards with Amy Paige Condon
Across centuries and continents, the influence of West African food and culture draws a delicious family tree whose branches stretch into the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States from coast to coast--from the deep South to the Wild West and all the roads in between. In this sprawling and evocative cookbook, acclaimed chef Todd Richards traces these shared roots and the journeys that connect them. Researched and informative, this book takes you beyond the recipes, exploring the history behind these traditional dishes--and the people who created them--and how peoples of the West African diaspora shaped and changed American history as we know it today. At the heart of the book are Chef Todd's inspired recipes, including: Peanut and Mustard Greens Soup with Ginger and Tomato, Haitian Oxtail with Beef Broth and Pikliz, Grilled Shrimp Mojo with Black Bean Puree and Toasted Rice, Grilled Quail Tacos with Mole Poblano, Scallion and Smoked Cheddar Cornbread Fritters with Red Pepper Honey, Peach Cobbler with Butter Pecan Ice Cream, Buffalo Style Frog Legs, Chicken Wings with French Onion Ranch Dressing, and Beignets with Espresso Powdered Sugar. From page to glorious page, Todd's deep knowledge and vivid storytelling remind us that cooking and sharing food is a joyous way to connect with history, culture, and each other.
Work, Fight, or Play Ball: How Bethlehem Steel Helped Baseball's Stars Avoid World War I
by William Ecenbarger
In 1918, Bethlehem Steel started the world's greatest industrial baseball league. Some players, like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, and Shoeless Joe Jackson, used the steel mill and shipyard leagues to avoid wartime military duty, irking Major League owners, who saw their rosters dwindling. Bethlehem Steel President Charles Schwab (no relation to the financier) saw the league as a means to stave off employee and union organizing. Most fans loudly criticized the ballplayers, but nevertheless showed up to watch the action on the diamond. Ecenbarger traces the 1918 Steel League's season and compares the fates of the players who defected to industry or continued to play stateside with the travails of the Major Leaguers, such as Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Grover Cleveland Alexander, who served during the war. Work, Fight, or Play Ball reveals the home field advantage brought on by the war, which allowed companies to profit from Major League players.
Selecciones de personal
Me Llamo Cuerpo Que No Está: Poesía Completa
Cristina Rivera Garza
Los poemas de Cristina Rivera Garza se reúnen por primera vez en un solo volumen.
“La poesía de Cristina Rivera Garza es una carretera bífida: un camino que se bifurca entre la materialidad más tangible y rotunda y la posibilidad de lo contingente, de lo que podría o no suceder. Sus poemas son un lugar donde es viable que lo que es sea; pero, sobre todo, y como anhelaba Alejandra Pizarnik: que sea lo que no es.” - Del prólogo de Sara Uribe
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook | eAudio
El Silencio En Sus Ojos (Inglés: The Silence in Her Eyes)
Armando Lucas Correa, traducción de Nick Caistor, Faye Williams, y Cecilia Molinari
Al estilo de Paula Hawkins y Ruth Ware, una intrigante novela de suspense psicológico acerca de una joven con una rara condición neurológica que está convencida de que su vecina va a ser asesinada.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Take the Long Way Home
by Rochelle Alers
Spanning seven decades and two continents, this chronicle of one woman's remarkable journey through some of history's most turbulent eras follows Claudia Patterson, freedom fighter, businessperson, wife, master of languages and ultimately, savior of a European dynasty, as she encounters four men who impact her life along the way.
The Expectant Detectives
by Kat Ailes
For Alice and Joe, moving to the sleepy village in the Cotswolds is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. But then a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.
With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of Alice's troublesome dog, Helen.
This is the first in a new mystery series.
Blackward
by Lawrence Lindell
Tired of feeling like you don't belong? Join the club. It's called the Section. You'd think a spot to chill, chat, and find community would be much easier to come by for nerdy, queer punks. But when four longtime, bookish BFFs can't find what they need, they take matters into their own hands and create a space where they can be a hundred percent who they are: Black, queer, and weird.
Non-fiction
The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families
by Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer
In 1920, as art and writing flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, W. E. B. Du Bois published The Brownies' Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun--the first periodical for African American youth, collecting original art, stories, letters, and activities to celebrate their identities and inspire their imaginations and ambitions. Building upon Du Bois's mission, esteemed professor and scholar Karida Brown and celebrated artist Charly Palmer reimagine the groundbreaking publication with The New Brownies Book, gathering the work of more than 60 contemporary Black artists and writers, including Ntozake Shange, Frank X. Walker, Danny Simmons, and Alice Faye Duncan. Created by and for Black families today, this anthology is filled with inspiring essays, poems, photographs, paintings, and short stories reflecting on the joy and depth of the Black experience. Delivering delight to adults and children alike, this powerful celebration of twenty-first century Black culture fulfills the promise of its source material by reminding readers of all ages that Black is brilliant, beautiful, and bold.
Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond
by Bethonie Butler
The first of its kind, this illustrated gift book, written by veteran Washington Post TV reporter Bethonie Butler, is a comprehensive look at the rich history of groundbreaking--and often underappreciated--television shows with leading Black characters from the last fifty years. Over the past decade, television has seen an explosion of acclaimed and influential debut storytellers including Issa Rae (Insecure), Donald Glover (Atlanta), and Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You). This golden age of Black television would not be possible without the actors, showrunners, and writers that worked for decades to give voice to the Black experience in America. Written by veteran TV reporter Bethonie Butler, Black TV tells the stories behind the pioneering series that led to this moment, celebrating the laughs, the drama, and the performances we’ve loved over the last fifty years. Beginning with Julia, the groundbreaking sitcom that made Diahann Carroll the first Black woman to lead a prime-time network series as something other than a servant, she explores the 1960s and 1970s as an era of unprecedented representation, with shows like Soul Train, Roots, and The Jeffersons. She unpacks the increasingly nuanced comedies of the 1980s from 227 to A Different World, and how they paved the way for the ‘90s Black-sitcom boom that gave us The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single. Butler also looks at the visionary comedians, from Flip Wilson to the Wayans siblings to Dave Chappelle, and connects all these achievements to the latest breakthroughs in television with showrunners like Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, and Quinta Brunson leading the charge. With dozens of photographs reminding readers of memorable moments and scenes, Butler revisits breakout performances and important guest appearances, delivering some overdue accolades along the way. So, put on your Hillman sweatshirt, make some popcorn, and get ready for a dyn-o-mite retrospective of the most groundbreaking and entertaining shows in television history.
When Washington Burned: The British Invasion of the Capital and a Nation's Rise from the Ashes
by Robert P. Watson
Perhaps no other single day in US history was as threatening to the survival of the new nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. It is a unique moment in American history that might have significantly altered the nation's path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans. The British conquest of Washington, DC during the War of 1812 happened because of inept American leadership, a poorly trained and equipped military, and a lack of foresight. The burning of federal building, including the White House and Capitol, reversed a decade and a half of work to build the capital city. The humiliation of a foreign army eating dinner at the president's table and the flight of the federal government reopened old questions about the survival of the United States, what kind of government it would have, and where its capital should be located. Yet the British invasion was repulsed over the coming weeks and months, and from the ashes of the capital city, the United States ultimately emerged stronger. Robert P. Watson tells this almost forgotten history and probes questions about the American calamity, British motives, and what it all meant for the United States.
Selecciones de personal
Escudo Americano: el sargento inmigrante que defendió la democracia (Inglés: American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy)
Aquilino Gonell y Susan Shapiro, traducción de José García Escobar
Aquilino Gonell era un jóven cuando llegó a los Estados Unidos de la República Dominicana. Aunque no hablaba inglés, se dedicó a su nueva tierra adoptada, luchando para conseguir el dichoso sueño americano. Su resolución de lograr una vida de éxito le llevó a alistarse en el ejército, como manera de pagar sus estudios universitarios. Tras combatir en Irak, volvió a los EEUU con TEPT, pero siguió con confianza en las promesas del gobierno, y se concentró en su familia y en el proceso de sanarse. Sus labores dieron fruto cuando ganó un puesto muy codiciado con la United States Capitol Police, en la ciudad de Washington DC, y llegó al rango de sargento.
Todo cambió para siempre el 6 de enero de 2021, cuando los insurreccionistas irrumpieron en el Capitolio, con mucha valentía el sargento Gonell no se rindió a los que intentaron frustrar la transferencia pacífica de poder. Las heridas brutales que sufrió aquel día pondría fin a su carrera como agente de policía. Pero justo cuando algunos de los mismos políticos que el sargento defendía intentaron desmentir la verdadera historia de aquel día, él eligió denunciar la injusticia que sufría al igual que el país. Una crónica de lo que significa llevar una vida de principios, una que se adhiere a las mejores nociones de nuestra democracia, American Shield es un testimonio fulgurante del poder la verdad, la justicia y la responsabilidad de la boca de un oficial decorado e inmigrante que ilustra las mejores aspiraciones de una nación agradecida.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
Las madres (Inglés: Las Madres)
Esmeralda Santiago, traducción de Eva Ibarzábal
Se hacen llamar "Las Madres", un grupo muy cercano de mujeres que, junto con sus hijas, han creado una familia basada en la amistad y los lazos de sangre. La hija adulta de Luz, Marysol, desearía que su madre la comprendiera mejor. Pero, ¿cómo, si Luz apenas recuerda su propia vida? Para ayudar, la hija de Ada y Shirley, Graciela, sugiere que el grupo entero se vaya de vacaciones a Puerto Rico como una oportunidad para que Luz desentierre recuerdos del pasado que fueron enterrados y Marysol aprenda más sobre los primeros años de su madre. Pero a pesar de toda su cuidadosa planificación, dos huracanes, uno tras otro, alteran su bienvenida y exponen un secreto que descarrila sus vidas. En una voz que canta con calidez, humor, amistad y orgullo, la celebrada autora Esmeralda Santiago desarrolla una historia sobre la sexualidad, la vergüenza, la discapacidad y el amor de las mujeres dentro de una comunidad sacudida por el desastre.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook | eAudio
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Take the Long Way Home
by Rochelle Alers
Spanning seven decades and two continents, this chronicle of one woman's remarkable journey through some of history's most turbulent eras follows Claudia Patterson, freedom fighter, businessperson, wife, master of languages and ultimately, savior of a European dynasty, as she encounters four men who impact her life along the way.
The Expectant Detectives
by Kat Ailes
For Alice and Joe, moving to the sleepy village in the Cotswolds is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. But then a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.
With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of Alice's troublesome dog, Helen.
This is the first in a new mystery series.
Blackward
by Lawrence Lindell
Tired of feeling like you don't belong? Join the club. It's called the Section. You'd think a spot to chill, chat, and find community would be much easier to come by for nerdy, queer punks. But when four longtime, bookish BFFs can't find what they need, they take matters into their own hands and create a space where they can be a hundred percent who they are: Black, queer, and weird.
Non-fiction
The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families
by Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer
In 1920, as art and writing flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, W. E. B. Du Bois published The Brownies' Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun--the first periodical for African American youth, collecting original art, stories, letters, and activities to celebrate their identities and inspire their imaginations and ambitions. Building upon Du Bois's mission, esteemed professor and scholar Karida Brown and celebrated artist Charly Palmer reimagine the groundbreaking publication with The New Brownies Book, gathering the work of more than 60 contemporary Black artists and writers, including Ntozake Shange, Frank X. Walker, Danny Simmons, and Alice Faye Duncan. Created by and for Black families today, this anthology is filled with inspiring essays, poems, photographs, paintings, and short stories reflecting on the joy and depth of the Black experience. Delivering delight to adults and children alike, this powerful celebration of twenty-first century Black culture fulfills the promise of its source material by reminding readers of all ages that Black is brilliant, beautiful, and bold.
Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond
by Bethonie Butler
The first of its kind, this illustrated gift book, written by veteran Washington Post TV reporter Bethonie Butler, is a comprehensive look at the rich history of groundbreaking--and often underappreciated--television shows with leading Black characters from the last fifty years. Over the past decade, television has seen an explosion of acclaimed and influential debut storytellers including Issa Rae (Insecure), Donald Glover (Atlanta), and Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You). This golden age of Black television would not be possible without the actors, showrunners, and writers that worked for decades to give voice to the Black experience in America. Written by veteran TV reporter Bethonie Butler, Black TV tells the stories behind the pioneering series that led to this moment, celebrating the laughs, the drama, and the performances we’ve loved over the last fifty years. Beginning with Julia, the groundbreaking sitcom that made Diahann Carroll the first Black woman to lead a prime-time network series as something other than a servant, she explores the 1960s and 1970s as an era of unprecedented representation, with shows like Soul Train, Roots, and The Jeffersons. She unpacks the increasingly nuanced comedies of the 1980s from 227 to A Different World, and how they paved the way for the ‘90s Black-sitcom boom that gave us The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single. Butler also looks at the visionary comedians, from Flip Wilson to the Wayans siblings to Dave Chappelle, and connects all these achievements to the latest breakthroughs in television with showrunners like Shonda Rhimes, Ava DuVernay, and Quinta Brunson leading the charge. With dozens of photographs reminding readers of memorable moments and scenes, Butler revisits breakout performances and important guest appearances, delivering some overdue accolades along the way. So, put on your Hillman sweatshirt, make some popcorn, and get ready for a dyn-o-mite retrospective of the most groundbreaking and entertaining shows in television history.
When Washington Burned: The British Invasion of the Capital and a Nation's Rise from the Ashes
by Robert P. Watson
Perhaps no other single day in US history was as threatening to the survival of the new nation as August 24, 1814, when British forces captured Washington, DC. It is a unique moment in American history that might have significantly altered the nation's path forward, but the event and the reasons why it happened are little remembered by most Americans. The British conquest of Washington, DC during the War of 1812 happened because of inept American leadership, a poorly trained and equipped military, and a lack of foresight. The burning of federal building, including the White House and Capitol, reversed a decade and a half of work to build the capital city. The humiliation of a foreign army eating dinner at the president's table and the flight of the federal government reopened old questions about the survival of the United States, what kind of government it would have, and where its capital should be located. Yet the British invasion was repulsed over the coming weeks and months, and from the ashes of the capital city, the United States ultimately emerged stronger. Robert P. Watson tells this almost forgotten history and probes questions about the American calamity, British motives, and what it all meant for the United States.
Selecciones de personal
Escudo Americano: el sargento inmigrante que defendió la democracia (Inglés: American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy)
Aquilino Gonell y Susan Shapiro, traducción de José García Escobar
Aquilino Gonell era un jóven cuando llegó a los Estados Unidos de la República Dominicana. Aunque no hablaba inglés, se dedicó a su nueva tierra adoptada, luchando para conseguir el dichoso sueño americano. Su resolución de lograr una vida de éxito le llevó a alistarse en el ejército, como manera de pagar sus estudios universitarios. Tras combatir en Irak, volvió a los EEUU con TEPT, pero siguió con confianza en las promesas del gobierno, y se concentró en su familia y en el proceso de sanarse. Sus labores dieron fruto cuando ganó un puesto muy codiciado con la United States Capitol Police, en la ciudad de Washington DC, y llegó al rango de sargento.
Todo cambió para siempre el 6 de enero de 2021, cuando los insurreccionistas irrumpieron en el Capitolio, con mucha valentía el sargento Gonell no se rindió a los que intentaron frustrar la transferencia pacífica de poder. Las heridas brutales que sufrió aquel día pondría fin a su carrera como agente de policía. Pero justo cuando algunos de los mismos políticos que el sargento defendía intentaron desmentir la verdadera historia de aquel día, él eligió denunciar la injusticia que sufría al igual que el país. Una crónica de lo que significa llevar una vida de principios, una que se adhiere a las mejores nociones de nuestra democracia, American Shield es un testimonio fulgurante del poder la verdad, la justicia y la responsabilidad de la boca de un oficial decorado e inmigrante que ilustra las mejores aspiraciones de una nación agradecida.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
Las madres (Inglés: Las Madres)
Esmeralda Santiago, traducción de Eva Ibarzábal
Se hacen llamar "Las Madres", un grupo muy cercano de mujeres que, junto con sus hijas, han creado una familia basada en la amistad y los lazos de sangre. La hija adulta de Luz, Marysol, desearía que su madre la comprendiera mejor. Pero, ¿cómo, si Luz apenas recuerda su propia vida? Para ayudar, la hija de Ada y Shirley, Graciela, sugiere que el grupo entero se vaya de vacaciones a Puerto Rico como una oportunidad para que Luz desentierre recuerdos del pasado que fueron enterrados y Marysol aprenda más sobre los primeros años de su madre. Pero a pesar de toda su cuidadosa planificación, dos huracanes, uno tras otro, alteran su bienvenida y exponen un secreto que descarrila sus vidas. En una voz que canta con calidez, humor, amistad y orgullo, la celebrada autora Esmeralda Santiago desarrolla una historia sobre la sexualidad, la vergüenza, la discapacidad y el amor de las mujeres dentro de una comunidad sacudida por el desastre.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
The New Naturals
by Gabriel Bump
After losing their child, a husband and wife construct a separate Black utopia where everyone can feel loved and wanted, but when others hear about the place and want in, it doesn't take long for problems to develop, for conflicts to surface, and for the children to crave life beyond this place.
Harlem After Midnight
by Louise Hare
In this second Canary Club Mystery (after Miss Aldridge Regrets), jazz singer Lena Aldridge gets caught up in a murder investigation when a woman who looks just like her falls from a town house window in Harlem - and Lena's passport is in the dead woman's hand.
Perfect Little Lives
by Amber and Danielle Brown
Simone's mother was murdered when she was thirteen. When her father was convicted of the killing, Simone went from living in a wealthy white neighborhood to scraping by.
Ten years later, Simone has given up on her dreams and lives a quiet life. But the past seems set on haunting her, and after her childhood neighbor reveals that his father and her mother had a years-long affair, Simone is determined to find out who really killed her mother.
Non-fiction
The Color of Dance: A Celebration of Diversity and Inclusion in the World of Ballet
by Takiyah Wallace-McMillian
For decades the prominent image of a ballet dancer has been a white body with pale clothing. It took 75 years for American Ballet Theatre to have its first African American female principal dancer, Misty Copeland. When TaKiyah Wallace-McMillian went to enroll her three-year-old daughter into her first ballet class, she immediately saw this lack of diversity and representation--even on her local dance studio's website. Within weeks TaKiyah, a freelance photographer, began shooting a project she called Brown Girls Do Ballet, which eventually became an Instagram hit and a nonprofit organization that provides resources, mentorship, inspiration, and encouragement to young dancers of color worldwide.
For her first book, The Color of Dance, TaKiyah traveled around the United States seeking out dancers of African, Asian, East Indian, Hispanic, and Native American ancestry. With these more than 190 breathtaking images of colorful ballerinas of all ages and levels, both amateur and professional, TaKiyah gives a voice to dancers who have been underrepresented for too long. With dozens of quotes throughout from ballerinas themselves, The Color of Dance redefines what this classically Eurocentric art form has looked like for centuries and will inspire dancers--and all of us--to pursue our dreams no matter what barriers are put in front of us.
Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America
by Harry N. MacLean
On January 21, 1958, nineteen-year-old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in the United States when he murdered the parents and sister of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend (and possible accomplice), Caril Ann Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska. They then drove to the nearby town of Bennet, where a farmer was robbed and killed. When Starkweather's car broke down, the teenagers who stopped to help were murdered and jammed into a storm cellar. By the time the dust settled, ten innocent people were dead and the city of Lincoln was in a state of terror. Schools closed. Men with rifles perched on the roofs of their houses. The National Guard patrolled the street. If there is a cultural version of PTSD, the town suffered from it. Starkweather and Fugate's capture and arrest, and the resulting trials about the killing spree, received worldwide coverage. The event would serve as the inspiration for the movie Natural Born Killers and Springsteen's iconic album Nebraska, and other works of pop culture. With new material, new reporting, and new conclusions about the possible guilt or innocence of Fugate, the tale is an updated and definitive retelling of a crime spree that struck deep into the heart of the heartland.
Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture-And the Magic That Makes It Work
by Jesse David Fox
Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture--as trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities--yet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force. In Comedy Book, Jesse David Fox--the country's most definitive voice in comedy criticism and someone who, in his own words, "enjoys comedy maybe more than anyone on this planet"--tackles everything you need to know about comedy. Weaving together history and analysis, Fox unravels the genre's political legacy through an ode to Jon Stewart, interrogates the divide between highbrow and lowbrow via Adam Sandler, and unpacks how marginalized comics create spaces for their communities. Along the way, Fox covers everything from comedy in the age of political correctness and Will Smith's slap to the right wing's relationship with comedy and, for Fox, comedy's ability to heal personal tragedy. With memorable cameos from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Ali Wong, Kate Berlant, and countless others, Comedy Book is an eye-opening education in how to engage with our most omnipresent art form, a riotous history of American pop culture, and a love letter to laughter.
Selecciones de personal
Fluir para no sufrir: 11 principios para transformar tu vida
Ismael Cala
Fluir para no sufrir no es un simple eslogan, sino la síntesis de una filosofía de liderazgo. Pero, cuidado: fluir y aceptar no significa dejar que las cosas sucedan, sino hacer que las cosas pasen.
En este libro, Ismael Cala te explica los 11 principios del líder bambú, un camino hacia la transformación del ser humano en un líder capaz de empezar a hacer la diferencia en su vida y en la de los demás. Estas páginas son el resultado de un proceso de investigación sobre el camino hacia la felicidad, la plenitud y la autorrealización personal.
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¡Cómo salir del pozo! Las nuevas estrategias de los países, las empresas y las personas en busca de la felicidad
Andrés Oppenheimer
Una ola de descontento recorre el mundo, y cada vez menos personas se sienten verdaderamente felices. Las encuestas revelan un aumento constante de la insatisfacción, el estrés y la depresión a nivel global. ¿Qué está sucediendo? ¿Por qué los niveles de infelicidad alcanzan récords preocupantes? ¿Cuáles son las últimas innovaciones de países, empresas, escuelas y la ciencia para revertir esta tendencia y aumentar la felicidad?
Andrés Oppenheimer explora este fenómeno global y ofrece nuevas perspectivas para salir del pozo de la insatisfacción. A través de una exhaustiva investigación en diversos países, concluye que el crecimiento económico --el parámetro que usamos para medir el progreso-- es necesario, pero no suficiente para aumentar la felicidad. Hay otros factores, como la pérdida de comunidad, la carencia de propósito y la adicción a las redes sociales, que están alimentando la desesperanza. Sin embargo, lo más interesante es que están surgiendo soluciones concretas y accesibles para aumentar la satisfacción de vida.
A lo largo de esta reveladora y entretenida obra, los lectores se sumergirán en la nueva "ciencia de la felicidad", basada en evaluaciones de impacto respaldadas por evidencias sólidas. Así, Oppenheimer amplía el concepto de progreso y comparte novedosas estrategias para combatir la infelicidad en los países, las empresas y las escuelas. Nos cuenta sobre las "escuelas de la felicidad" que visitó en India, los "recetadores sociales" que entrevistó en el Reino Unido y los grupos de voluntarios con los que habló en Dinamarca, Finlandia y Bután. He aquí un libro inspirador que transformará todo lo que siempre creímos sobre la felicidad.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Three Holidays and a Wedding
by Uzma Jalaluddin
It's the year 2000, and the holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Ramadan are all buddying up on the winter calendar. When an emergency landing strands Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson in Snow Falls, Ontario, the two strangers become friends, experience romance, and fall under the spell of the winter festivities.
Hercule Poirot's Silent Night
by Sophie Hannah
In 1931, the world's greatest detective finds his plans for a much-needed, restful Christmas holiday thwarted by a murder investigation. Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders while someone plans to wreak holiday havoc on his life.
Christmas and Other Horrors: An Anthology of Solstice Horror
by Ellen Datlow, editor
The winter solstice is celebrated as a time of joy around the world--yet the long nights also conjure a darker tradition of ghouls, hauntings, and visitations. This anthology of all-new stories invites you to huddle around the fire and revel in the unholy, the dangerous, the horrific aspects of a time when families and friends come together--for better and for worse.
Non-fiction
The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice, and Courage
by Philippe Sands
In 1973, on the Chagos Islands off the coast of Africa, Liseby Elyse--twenty years old, newly married and four months pregnant--was, rounded up, along with the entire population of Chagos, and ordered to pack her belongings and leave her beloved homeland by ship or slowly starve; the British had cut off all food supplies. Some two thousand people who had lived on the islands of Chagos for generations, many the direct descendants of enslaved people brought there from Mozambique and Madagascar in the 18th century by the French and British, were deported overnight from their island paradise as the result of a secret decision by the British government to provide the United States with land to construct a military base in the Indian Ocean. For four decades the government of Mauritius fought for the return of Chagos. Three decades into the battle, Philippe Sands became the lead lawyer in the case, designing its legal strategy and assembling a team of lawyers from Mauritius, Belgium, India, Ukraine, and the U.S. When the case finally reached the World Court in the Hague, Sands chose as the star witness the diminutive Liseby Elyse, now sixty-five years old, and instructed her to appear before the court, speaking in Kreol, to tell the fourteen international judges her story of forced exile. The fate of Chagos rested on her testimony.
Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed
by Donald Bogle
Lena Horne's life and career are truly remarkable in American film history. She was the first Black performer to become a true star--to receive the kind of glamour treatment at the fabled MGM that the studio had previously given to the likes of Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, and Ava Gardner. At the same time, Horne dealt with endless indignities, not the least of which was the fact that her roles in films were often as a musical performer, which allowed her numbers to be easily stripped out of films without affecting the narrative when played to audiences that would find her presence undesirable. At long last, Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed gives the star her due. Through a highly informed and insightful narrative based on interviews, press accounts, studio archives, and decades of research, the book sheds new light on the star's compelling life and complicated career: her activism; her accomplishments and heady triumphs in movies, television, and nightclubs as she broke down long-standing barriers for Black individuals--especially Black women--and her solemn, sometimes bitter disappointments, both professional and personal.
Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close
by Hannah Carlson
Who gets pockets, and why? It's a subject that stirs up plenty of passion: Why do men's clothes have so many pockets and women's so few? And why are the pockets on women's clothes often too small to fit phones, if they even open at all? Hannah Carlson, a lecturer in dress history at the Rhode Island School of Design, reveals the issues of gender politics, security, sexuality, power, and privilege tucked inside our pockets. Throughout the medieval era in Europe, the purse was an almost universal dress feature. But when tailors stitched the first pockets into men's trousers five hundred years ago, it ignited controversy and introduced a range of social issues that we continue to wrestle with today, from concealed pistols to gender inequality. Pockets is for the legions of people obsessed with pockets and their absence, and for anyone interested in how our clothes influence the way we navigate the world.
Selecciones de personal
El pacto del agua (Inglés: The Covenant of Water)
Abraham Verghese, traducción de Eduardo Hojman
El pacto del agua sigue a una familia que sufre una aflicción peculiar: en cada generación, al menos una persona muere ahogada, y en Kerala el agua está en todas partes. A principios del siglo XX, una niña de doce años es enviada por barco para casarse contra su voluntad, con un hombre de cuarenta al que no conoce. A partir de entonces, la joven y futura matriarca, conocida como Big Ammachi, será testigo de cambios impensables: una historia llena de alegrías, pruebas de amor y lucha ante las adversidades.
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Le Dedico Mi Silencio
Mario Vargas Llosa
Toño Azpilcueta, experto en música criolla, descubre a un guitarrista virtuoso, Lalo Molfino, y su talento parece confirmar todas sus intuiciones: el amor profundo que siente por los valses, marineras, polkas y huaynos peruanos tiene una justificación social. Tal vez lo que ocurra es que la música criolla sea, en realidad, no sólo una seña de identidad de todo un país y expresión de esa actitud tan peruana de la huachafería («la mayor contribución de Perú a la cultural universal», según Toño Azpilcueta), sino algo mucho más importante: un elemento capaz de provocar una revolución social, de derribar prejuicios y barreras raciales para unir al país entero en un abrazo fraterno y mestizo. En un país fracturado y asolado por la violencia de Sendero Luminoso (la novela transcurre a principios de la década de los noventa, en plena ofensiva terrorista), la música podría ser aquello que recuerde a todos los que conforman la sociedad que, por encima de cualquier otra cosa, son hermanos y compatriotas. Y en esto, es posible que el virtuosismo de Lalo Molfino tenga mucho que ver.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., editors
Celebrating Indigenous peoples' survival and imagination, these twenty-seven spine tingling stories introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, intricate family legacies, desperate deeds and unsettling acts of revenge.
Blood Sisters
by Vanessa Lillie
Syd Walker, a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, returns to her Oklahoma hometown when her sister goes missing. Uncovering a string of missing Indigenous women cases going back decades, Syd must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face.
Swim Home to the Vanished
by Brendan Shay Basham
After the death of his brother, grief-stricken Damien seeks refuge and oblivion in a secluded fishing village dominated by a family of brujas. Resonant with the Diné creation story and the unshakeable weight of the Long Walk--the forced removal of the Navajo from their land--"Swim Home to the Vanished" explores the human capacity for grief and redemption, and the lasting effects it has on the soul.
Non-fiction
The Ark of Taste : delicious and distinctive foods that define the United States
by Slow Food USA, Giselle Kennedy Lord and David S. Shields; illustrations by Claudia Pearson
The Ark of Taste is a living catalog of our nation's food heritage preserving treasures passed down for generations-some rare, some endangered, all delicious. Created by Slow Food USA, the Ark shines light on history, identity, and taste through these unique food products, featuring recipes and the stories of how they reach our tables. In these pages you'll learn about: Carolina Gold rice, Wellfleet oysters, Cherokee Purple tomatoes, The Moon and Stars watermelon, Black Republican cherries, Candy Roaster squash, and more. These foods reflect our country's diversity. By championing them, we keep them in production and on our plates, while promoting a more equitable alternative to industrial agriculture. The Ark of Taste is a vital resource for all of us who spend the summer searching for that perfectly ripe peach or heirloom tomato-or who are simply looking for the next good thing to eat.
Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation's Capital
by Elizabeth Rule
Washington, DC is Indian land, but Indigenous peoples are often left out of the national narrative of the United States and erased in the capital city. To redress this myth of invisibility, Indigenous DC: Native Peoples and the Nation's Capital maps and analyzes historical and contemporary sites of Indigenous importance in the District of Columbia. This manuscript derives from the "Guide to Indigenous DC," a public history iOS mobile application and decolonial mapping project. Now, as a full length manuscript, Indigenous DC intervenes in US History, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Critical Geography Studies to reveal the centrality of Native peoples to the history of the District of Columbia, highlight Indigenous contributions to the United States and its capital city, and emphasize that all American land is Indian land.
Plantains & Our Becoming
by Melania Luisa Marte
"We, children of plátanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else's backyard and somehow feel at home." Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens Plantains & our becoming by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record--to build upon the legacies of your ancestors? In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood. Moving from New York to Texas to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, this collection looks at the legacies of colonialism and racism but never shies away from highlighting the beauty--and joy--that comes from celebrating who you are and where you come from.
Selecciones de personal
Sabiduría familiar (Inglés: Family Lore)
Elizabeth Acevedo, traducción de Kianny Antigua
Por la sangre de las mujeres Marte corre una magia que les concede dones especiales. Creciendo en República Dominicana, y luego al migrar a Nueva York, las hermanas Flor, Matilde, Pastora y Camila aprendieron a valerse de ellos, y de la fuerza de su vínculo, para protegerse de las hostilidades del mundo. Pero también, a callarse sus deseos, temores y anhelos más profundos. Por eso, cuando Flor anuncia que va a celebrar un velorio en vida, el matriarcado se conmociona: su don es predecir la muerte, pero ella se niega a admitir si ha llegado su hora. O la de alguien más.
Sabiduría familiar sigue a las Marte a través de este período liminal, mientras se preparan para el velorio de Flor y lo que vendrá después.
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Las 8 reglas del amor (Inglés: The 8 Rules of Love)
Jay Shetty, traducción de Andra Montero Cusset
Nadie nos enseña a amar y es por ello que, a menudo, nos vemos inmersos en relaciones amorosas cuyos únicos modelos son las películas románticas y la cultura pop. Jay Shetty se aleja de este concepto de amor etéreo, una mera colección de clichés, y establece los pasos específicos para desarrollar las habilidades que nos ayudarán a vivir y cuidar nuestro amor de la mejor forma posible.
Inspirándose en la antigua sabiduría védica y en la ciencia moderna, Shetty nos comparte sus ideas sobre cómo definir el amor, cómo evolucionar en pareja o, incluso, cómo romper una relación y empezar otra. Jay Shetty nos muestra cómo evitar las falsas promesas y las relaciones que no son para nosotros.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Vampires of El Norte
by Isabel Cañas
Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda. Oh, and there's a love story too, between Nena, a rancher's daughter trained as a curandera, and Néstor, a vaquero now fighting for Mexico against an invasion from the United States. Did we mention that it's an alternate history set in the 1840s? For fans of ALL the genres.
Dark Ride
by Lou Berney
Hardy Reed is a scare actor at the Haunted Frontier theme park. Easy-going and unambitious, he finds himself taking on unexpected responsibility when he encounters two children at the park who have clearly been abused. He puts his own life in terrible danger as he investigates the situation and tries to help the kids.
The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle
by T. L. Huchu
Ropa Moyo, a teenager with the ability to talk to ghosts, arrives at Dunvegan Castle for the Society of Skeptical Enquirers' conference just in time to encounter a locked-room mystery. One of the magical attendees has stolen a valuable scroll, and Ropa must use her special talent to learn what happened. This is the third book of T. L. Huchu's Edinburgh Nights series.
Non-fiction
Lifting the Chains: The Black Freedom Struggle Since Reconstruction
by William H. Chafe
All-Black institutions and local community groups have been at the forefront of the freedom struggle since the beginning. Lifting the Chains is a history of the Black experience in America since the Civil War, told by one of our most distinguished historians of modern America, William H. Chafe. He argues that, despite the wishes and arguments of many whites to the contrary, the struggle for freedom has been carried out primarily by Black Americans, with only occasional assistance from whites. Chafe highlights the role of all-black institutions--especially the churches, lodges, local gangs, neighborhood women's groups, and the Black college clubs that gathered at local pool halls--that talked up the issues, examined different courses of action, and then put their lives on the line to make change happen.
The Hidden History of Code-Breaking : The Secret World of Cyphers, Uncrackable Codes, and Elusive Encryptions
by Sinclair McKay
There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament, too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy. In The Hidden History of Code Breaking, Sinclair McKay explores these uncrackable codes, secret cyphers and hidden messages from across time to tell a new history of a secret world. From the temples of Ancient Greece to the court of Elizabeth I; from antique manuscripts whose codes might hold prophecies of doom to the modern realm of quantum mechanics, we will see how a few concealed words could help to win wars, spark revolutions and even change the faces of great nations. Here is the complete guide to the hidden world of codebreaking, with opportunities for you to see if you could have cracked some of the trickiest puzzles and lip-chewing codes ever created.
The Last Two : The Battle to Save the Northern White Rhinos
by Boštjan Videmšek and Maja Prijatelj Videmšek
This is the story of the last two northern white rhinos, Najin and Fatu, as the species has fallen victim to poaching, wars, climate change, and Asian economic boom to become functionally extinct, as well as the story of the scientists and conservationists around the world fighting to save the species through scientific innovation.
Selecciones de personal
Chita: Memorias (Inglés: Chita: A Memoir)
Chita Rivera, con Patrick Pacheco, traducción de Aurora Lauzardo Ugarte
Las memorias tan esperadas y tremendamente entretenidas de la leyenda del escenario Chita Rivera, tres veces ganadora del premio Tony, homenajeada en los Centros Kennedy y ganadora de la Medalla Presidencial de la Libertad.
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El juego del alma (Inglés: The Soul Game)
Javier Castillo, traducción de Kevin Gerry Dunn
Nueva York, 2011. Una chica de quince años fue encontrada crucificada en una iglesia de un barrio suburbano. Miren Triggs, periodista de investigación del Manhattan Press, recibe de manera inesperada un extraño sobre. Adentro de el sobre esta un fotografía de una chica que esta amordazada y maniatada, con una sola anotación: «GINA PEBBLES, 2002».
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
An Island Princess Starts a Scandal
by Adriana Herrera
Enjoying one last summer of freedom before being trapped in a loveless marriage, Manuela Caceres Galvan accepts an invitation to show her paintings in Paris. When Cora Kempf Bristol, Duchess of Sundridge, asks Manuela to part with a parcel of land she's sworn never to sell, Manuela proposes a trade: her beloved land for a summer with the duchess in her corner of Paris, and a taste of the wild, carefree world that will soon be out of her reach.
Non-fiction
Arepa: Classic & Contemporary Recipes for Venezuela's Daily Bread
by Irena Stein
The arepa--a crisp round pocket made from corn flour--is one of Venezuela's defining foods. Gluten-free and dairy-free, arepas are endlessly adaptable, unarguably delicious, and fun to eat. From chicken to cheese, avocado, and pork, just about anything you would put between two slices of bread can fit into an arepa. With a growing number of arepa bars opening globally and top chefs and food lovers alike discovering Venezuelan cuisine, arepa fever is spreading fast! Baltimore restaurateur Irena Stein introduces this celebrated little pocket to everyday eating, first by teaching how to make arepa dough from scratch, then providing instructions on how to cook them, and pairing them with countless fillings and flavor combinations. Making arepas is easily accomplished in any home kitchen with four simple ingredients--corn flour, water, oil, and salt--and they can be assembled in advance. They contain no replacement or unnatural ingredients, making them way healthier than most gluten-free bread recipes. No rising is required, making the dough easier than bread, and there's no rolling, making them less tricky than tacos. With a little practice, it will become simple to add arepas to your culinary repertoire.
Borrow: Print
Ode to Hip-Hop: 50 Albums That Define 50 Years of Trailblazing Music
by Kiana Fitzgerald
From underground roots to mainstream popularity, hip-hop's influence on music and entertainment around the world has been nothing short of extraordinary. Ode to Hip-Hop chronicles the journey with profiles of fifty albums that have defined, expanded, and ultimately transformed the genre into what it is today. From 2 Live Crew's groundbreaking As Nasty As They Wanna Be in 1989 to Cardi B's similarly provocative Invasion of Privacy almost thirty years later, and more, Ode to Hip-Hop covers hip-hop from coast to coast. Organized by decade and with sidebars on fashion, mixtapes, and key players throughout, the result is a comprehensive homage to hip-hop.
President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier
by C.W. Goodyear
In this magisterial biography, C.W. Goodyear charts the life and times of one of the most remarkable Americans ever to win the Presidency. Progressive firebrand and conservative compromiser; Union war hero and founder of the first Department of Education; Supreme Court attorney and abolitionist preacher; mathematician and canalman; crooked election-fixer and clean-government champion; Congressional chieftain and gentleman-farmer; the last president to be born in a log cabin; the second to be assassinated. James Abram Garfield was all these things and more. Over nearly two decades in Congress during a polarized era--Reconstruction and the Gilded Age--Garfield served as a peacemaker in a Republican Party and America defined by divisions. He was elected President to overcome them. He was killed while trying to do so...
Selecciones de personal
El viento conoce mi nombre (Inglés: The Wind Knows My Name)
Isabel Allende, traducción de Frances Riddle
Esta poderosa y conmovedora novela rastrea los efectos de la guerra y la inmigración en un niño en Europa en 1938 y otro en los Estados Unidos en 2019.
En “El viento conoce mi nombre”, el pasado y presente se entrelazan para relatar el drama del desarraigo y la redención de la solidaridad, la compasión y el amor. Una novela impactante sobre los sacrificios que a veces los padres deben hacer por sus hijos, sobre la sorprendente capacidad de algunos niños para sobrevivir a la violencia sin dejar de soñar, y sobre la tenacidad de la esperanza, que puede brillar incluso en los momentos más oscuros.
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El Infinito en un Junco: La Invención de los Libros en el Mundo Antiguo (Inglés: Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World)
Irene Vallejo, traducción de Charlotte Whittle
Este es un libro sobre la historia de los libros. Un recorrido por la vida de ese fascinante artefacto que inventamos para que las palabras pudieran viajar en el espacio y en el tiempo. Es la historia de su fabricación y de todos los modelos y formatos de libros que hemos ensayado a lo largo de casi treinta siglos.
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La Colina que Ascendemos: Un Poema Inaugural (Inglés: The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country)
Amanda Gorman, traducción de Nuria Barrios
Ante la mirada de un mundo sobrecogido tras la invasión al Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021, Amanda Gorman cautivó a millones de personas al recitar su poema La colina que ascendemos en la toma de posesión del presidente Joe Biden. Siguiendo los pasos de Robert Frost y Maya Angelou, la joven poeta ofreció con sus versos una luz de esperanza para el inicio de una nueva era.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Summer on Sag Harbor
by Sunny Hostin
In a hidden enclave in Sag Harbor, there's a close-knit community of African American elites who escape the city and enjoy the beautiful warm weather and beaches at their vacation homes. Now, real estate developers have discovered this hidden gem, and the residents must fight for the soul of their Black utopia.
Bad Summer People
by Emma Rosenblum
Two Fire Island queen bees and their single friend intend to spend summertime relaxing and gossiping. Then a body is discovered, face down, off the side of the boardwalk. Who is it? Were they murdered? The reader is kept in the dark until the end!
Non-fiction
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
by Christian Cooper
Christian Cooper is a self-described Blerd (Black nerd), an avid comics fan, and an expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. When birdwatching in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old. But when a routine encounter with a dog-walker escalates age-old racial tensions, Cooper's viral video of the incident would send shockwaves through the nation. In Better Living Through Birding, Cooper tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous encounter in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him, in the most uncanny of ways, to be a gay, Black man in America today. From sharpened senses that work just as well in a protest as in a park, to what a bird like the Common Grackle can teach us about self-acceptance, Better Living Through Birding exults in the pleasures of a life lived in pursuit of the natural world and invites you to discover your own. Equal parts memoir, travelogue, and primer on the art of birding, this is Cooper's story of learning to claim and defend space for himself and others like him, from his days as a writer for Marvel Comics, where Cooper introduced the first gay storyline, to vivid and life-changing birding expeditions through Africa, Australia, the Americas and the Himalayas. Better Living Through Birding is Cooper's invitation into the wonderful world of birds, and what they can teach us about life, if only we would stop and listen.
Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World
by Meredith F. Small
In 1459 a Venetian monk named Fra Mauro completed an astonishing map of the world. Seven feet in diameter, Fra Mauro's mappamundi is the oldest and most complete Medieval map to survive into modernity. And in its time, this groundbreaking mappamundi provided the most detailed description of the known world, incorporating accurate observation, and geographic reality, urging viewers to see water and land as they really existed. Fra Mauro's map was the first in history to show that a ship could circumnavigate Africa, and that the Indian "Sea" was in fact an ocean, enabling international trade to expand across the globe. Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith F. Small reveals how Fra Mauro's mappamundi made cartography into a science rather than a practice based on religion and ancient myths. Here Begins the Dark Sea brings Fra Mauro's masterpiece to life as a work of art and a window into Venetian society and culture. In telling the story of this cornerstone of modern cartography, Small takes the reader on a fascinating journey as she explores the human urge to find our way. Here Begins the Dark Sea is a riveting testament to the undeniable impact Fra Mauro and his mappamundi have had over the past five centuries and still holds relevance today.
National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home
by Anya von Bremzen
We all have an idea in our heads about what French food is--or Italian, or Japanese, or Mexican, or . . . But where did those ideas come from? Who decides what makes a national food canon? Recipient of three James Beard awards, Anya von Bremzen has written definitive cookbooks on Russian, Spanish, and Latin American cuisines, as well as her internationally acclaimed memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Now in National Dish, she sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal clicȟ-- "we are what we eat"--traveling to six storied food capitals, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity. Paris is where the whole idea of food as national heritage was first invented, and so it is where Anya must begin. With an inquisitive eye and unmistakable wit, she ponders the codification of French food and the current tension between locavorism and globalization. From France, she's off to Naples, to probe the myth and reality of pizza, pasta, and Italian-ness. Next up, Tokyo, where Anya and her partner Barry explore ramen, rice, and the distance between Japan?s future and its past. From there they move to Seville, to search for the community-based essence of Spain's tapas traditions, and then Oaxaca, where debates over postcolonial cultural integration find expression in maize and mole. In Istanbul, a traditional Ottoman potluck becomes a lens on how a former multicultural empire defines its food heritage. Finally, they land back in their beloved home in Queens, for a dinner centered on Ukrainian borsch, a meal that has never felt more loaded, or more precious and poignant. A unique and magical cook's tour of the world, National Dish brings us to a deep appreciation of how the country makes the food, and the food of the country.
Selecciones de personal
Al Paraíso (Inglés: To Paradise)
Hanya Yanagihara, traducción de Laura Manero Jimínez y Laura Martín de Dios
En una versión alternativa de la América de 1893, Nueva York forma parte de los Estados Libres, donde el matrimonio homosexual está permitido. Un muchacho de familia distinguida se debate entre casarse con un pretendiente elegido por su abuelo o escoger a un profesor de música con pocos recursos de quien está enamorado. En un Manhattan de 1993 asediado por «la enfermedad», un joven hawaiano vive con su pareja, cuya edad e ingresos superan con creces los suyos, y le oculta su infancia problemática y el destino de su padre. Y en 2093, en un mundo asolado por plagas y gobernado por un estado totalitario, un poderoso científico y su familia intentan encontrar las estrategias necesarias para sobrevivir sin perderse unos a otros por el camino.
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El Infinito en un Junco: La Invención de los Libros en el Mundo Antiguo (Inglés: Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World)
Irene Vallejo, traducción de Charlotte Whittle
Este es un libro sobre la historia de los libros. Un recorrido por la vida de ese fascinante artefacto que inventamos para que las palabras pudieran viajar en el espacio y en el tiempo. Es la historia de su fabricación y de todos los modelos y formatos de libros que hemos ensayado a lo largo de casi treinta siglos.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
American Mermaid
by Julia Langbein
Penelope goes to Hollywood to help adapt her feminist ecothriller about a mermaid stuck on land. As the novel's powerful main character is turned by the screenwriters into a standard sex object, Penelope begins to suspect that the mermaid has come to life to fight for her soul. (And really, who can blame her?)
Non-fiction
Lost Son : An American Family Trapped Inside the FBI's Secret Wars
by Brett Forrest
When Billy Reilly vanished, his parents embarked on a desperate search for answers. Was their son's disappearance connected to his mysterious work for the FBI, or was it a personal quest gone wrong? Only when Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Forrest embarks on his own investigation does a picture emerge: of the FBI's exploitation of US citizens through a secretive intelligence program, a young man's lust for adventure within the world's conflicts, and the costs of a rising clash between Moscow and Washington. September 11th roused Billy Reilly's curiosity for religions, war, and the world and its people beyond his small town near Detroit. Online, Billy taught himself Arabic and Russian. His passions led him into jihadi Internet forums, attracting the interest of the FBI. An amateur drawn into professional intelligence, Billy became a Confidential Human Source, one of thousands of civilians who assist FBI agents with investigative work, often at great hazard and with little recourse. When Russia stirred rebellion in Ukraine, Billy set out to make his mark. In Russia, Billy's communications dropped. His parents, frantic, asked the FBI for help but struggled to find answers. Grasping for clues, the Reilly family turned to Brett Forrest. Commencing a quest of his own, Forrest applied years' worth of research, along with decades of extensive experience in Russia, illuminating the inner workings of the national-security machine that enmeshed Billy and his family, picking up the lost son's trail. A masterwork of reporting, composed like a thriller, blending political maneuvering and international espionage, Lost Son illustrates one man's coming of age amid new global dangers.
The Bathysphere Book : Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths
by Brad Fox
In the summer of 1930, aboard a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, marine biologist Gloria Hollister sat on a crate, writing furiously in a notebook with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The phone line was attached to a steel cable that plunged 3,000 feet into the sea. There, suspended by the cable, dangled a four-and-a-half-foot steel ball called the bathysphere. Crumpled inside, gazing through three-inch quartz windows at the undersea world, was Hollister's colleague William Beebe. He called up to her, describing previously unseen creatures, explosions of bioluminescence, and strange effects of light and color. From this momentous first encounter with the unknown depths, The Bathysphere Book widens its scope to explore a transforming and deeply paradoxical America, as the first great skyscrapers rose above New York City and the Great Plains baked to dust. In prose that is magical, atmospheric, and entirely engrossing, Brad Fox dramatizes new visions of our planetary home, delighting in tales of the colorful characters who surrounded, supported, and participated in the dives--from groundbreaking scientists and gallivanting adventurers to eugenicist billionaires.
The Art of Ruth E. Carter : Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther
by Ruth E. Carter; foreword by Danai Gurira
Ruth E. Carter is a living legend of costume design. For three decades, she has shaped the story of the Black experience on screen--from the '80s streetwear of Do the Right Thing to the royal regalia of Coming 2 America. Her work on Marvel's Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever not only brought Afrofuturism to the mainstream, but also made her the first Black winner of an Oscar in costume design and the first Black woman to win two Academy Awards in any category. In 2021, she became the second-ever costume designer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In this definitive book, Carter shares her origins--recalling a trip to the sporting goods store with Spike Lee to outfit the School Daze cast and a transformative moment stepping inside history on the set of Steven Spielberg's Amistad. She recounts anecdotes from dressing the greats: Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Chadwick Boseman, and many more. She describes the passion for history that inspired her period pieces--from Malcolm X to What's Love Got to Do With It--and her journey into Afrofuturism.
Selecciones de personal
Al Paraíso (Inglés: To Paradise)
Hanya Yanagihara, traducción de Laura Manero Jimínez y Laura Martín de Dios
En una versión alternativa de la América de 1893, Nueva York forma parte de los Estados Libres, donde el matrimonio homosexual está permitido. Un muchacho de familia distinguida se debate entre casarse con un pretendiente elegido por su abuelo o escoger a un profesor de música con pocos recursos de quien está enamorado. En un Manhattan de 1993 asediado por «la enfermedad», un joven hawaiano vive con su pareja, cuya edad e ingresos superan con creces los suyos, y le oculta su infancia problemática y el destino de su padre. Y en 2093, en un mundo asolado por plagas y gobernado por un estado totalitario, un poderoso científico y su familia intentan encontrar las estrategias necesarias para sobrevivir sin perderse unos a otros por el camino.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook
El Infinito en un Junco: La Invención de los Libros en el Mundo Antiguo (Inglés: Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World)
Irene Vallejo, traducción de Charlotte Whittle
Este es un libro sobre la historia de los libros. Un recorrido por la vida de ese fascinante artefacto que inventamos para que las palabras pudieran viajar en el espacio y en el tiempo. Es la historia de su fabricación y de todos los modelos y formatos de libros que hemos ensayado a lo largo de casi treinta siglos.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook | eAudio
La Colina que Ascendemos: Un Poema Inaugural (Inglés: The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country)
Amanda Gorman, traducción de Nuria Barrios
Ante la mirada de un mundo sobrecogido tras la invasión al Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021, Amanda Gorman cautivó a millones de personas al recitar su poema La colina que ascendemos en la toma de posesión del presidente Joe Biden. Siguiendo los pasos de Robert Frost y Maya Angelou, la joven poeta ofreció con sus versos una luz de esperanza para el inicio de una nueva era.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Small Joys
by Elvin James Mensah
While working at a dead-end job at a movie theater, college dropout Harley attempts to take his own life. He is interrupted by his new roommate who takes him under his wing, showing him everything that makes life worth living. The publisher calls "Small Joys" a "moving, utterly charming debut about chosen family, the winding road to happiness, and the grace of second chances."
Rehearsed to Death
by Frank Anthony Polito
This quozy (queer cozy) mystery series stars a gay couple who solve crimes while renovating houses in suburban Detroit as part of their hit reality show Domestic Partners. In this sequel to "Renovated to Death," their foray into community theater proves a major risk thanks to some deadly improvisation.
The People Who Report More Stress
by Alejandro Varela
A father's sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century. Gray is the author of "The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls."
Non-fiction
My Sunday Best: Pearls of Wisdom, Wit, Grace, and Style
by Dr. La Verne Ford Wimberly
Earlier in her life as an educator, Dr. La Verne Ford Wimberly helped desegregate the Tulsa school system, served as a school superintendent, and had a high school library named after her. But it was her determination to stay positive and stay connected during the first year of the Covid pandemic that made Dr. Wimberly a household name around the world. After posting selfies in her Sunday best for fifty-two consecutive weeks during one of the most difficult times in our country's history, Dr. Wimberly became a viral sensation - for her hats, her smile, and most of all, her joy.
Minor Notes, Volume 1
foreword by Tracy K. Smith; edited with an introduction by Joshua Bennett, and Jesse McCarthy.
A new Penguin Classics series that recovers and rediscovers the work of African American poets from the 19th and 20th centuries, curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy. As scholars of African American literature and cultural history, Bennett and McCarthy repeatedly find themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they come across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals, whose work has been neglected and, in some cases, entirely ignored, even by those academic circles devoted to the study of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that addresses this problem by recovering archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the 19th and 20th centuries.
I Can't Save You: A Memoir
by Anthony Chin-Quee
The raw and gripping memoir of a Black physician who confronts his past mistakes and relationships as he learns to find his own path forward At first glance, Anthony Chin-Quee looks like a traditional success story: a smart, ambitious kid who grew up to become a board-certified otolaryngologist-an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. Yet the truth is more complicated. As a self-described "not white, mostly Black, and questionably Asian man," Chin-Quee knows that he doesn't fit easily into any category. Growing up in a family with a background of depression, he struggled with relationships, feelings of inadequacy, and a fear of failure that made it difficult for him to forge lasting bonds with others. To repair that, he began his own unflinching examination of what it means to be both a physician and a Black man today. What saved him and his sanity was not medicine but storytelling: by sharing stories from his life and career, Chin-Quee learned how powerful the truth can be in helping to forgive yourself and others as you chart a new way forward. By turns harrowing and hilarious, honest and human, I Can't Save You is the fascinating true story of how looking within can change you and your life for the better.
Selecciones de personal
Nuestra parte de noche (Inglés: Our Share of Night)
Mariana Enriquez, traducción de Megan McDowell
El legado, el deseo de vivir, la paternidad, el horror, lo íntimo y lo político. El terror sobrenatural se entrelaza con terrores muy reales en esta osada y perturbadora novela.
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La viajera nocturna (Inglés: The Night Travelers)
Armando Lucas Correa, traducción de Nick Caistor, Faye Williams, y Cecilia Molinari
Del autor del bestseller La niña alemana, nos llega esta conmovedora novela en la que cuatro generaciones de mujeres experimentan amores, pérdidas, guerras y esperanzas. Es una historia que comienza con el surgimiento del nazismo en Alemania, pasa por la Revolución cubana, y se extiende hasta la caída del Muro de Berlín.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Life and Other Love Songs
by Anissa Gray
A father's sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century. Gray is the author of "The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls."
Non-fiction
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream
by Alissa Quart
The promise that you can "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is central to the story of the American Dream. It's the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition. Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutions--from "grit" to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMe--Quart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need.
The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West, and Broke the Republic of China
by James M. Zimmerman
In May 1923, when Shanghai publisher and reporter John Benjamin Powell bought a first-class ticket for the Peking Express, he pictured an idyllic overnight journey on a brand-new train of unprecedented luxury--exactly what the advertisements promised. Seeing his fellow passengers, including mysterious Italian lawyer Giuseppe Musso, a confidante of Mussolini and lawyer for the opium trade, and American heiress Lucy Aldrich, sister-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., he knew it would be an unforgettable trip.
Charismatic bandit leader and populist rabble rouser Sun Mei-yao had also taken notice of the new train from Shanghai to Peking. On the night of Powell's trip of a lifetime, Sun launched his plan to make a brazen political statement: he and a thousand fellow bandits descended on the train, capturing dozens of hostages.
Aided by local proxy authorities, the humiliated Peking government soon furiously gave chase. At the bandits' mountain stronghold, a five-week siege began.
Skinfolk: A Memoir
by Matthew Pratt Guterl
Could a picturesque white house with a picket fence save the world? What if it was filled with children drawn together from around the globe? And what if, within the yard, the lines of kin and skin, of family and race, were deliberately knotted and twisted? In 1970, a wild-eyed dreamer, Bob Guterl, believed it could.
Bob was determined to solve, in one stroke, the problems of overpopulation and racism. The charming, larger-than-life lawyer and his brilliant wife, Sheryl, a former homecoming queen, launched a radical experiment to raise their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx--the so-called war zones of the American century. They moved to rural New Jersey with dreams of creating what Bob described as a new Noah's ark, filled with "two of every race."
While the venture made for a great photograph, with the proverbial "casseroles and potato chips out for everyone," the Brady Brunch façade began to crack once reality seeped into the yard, adding undue complexity to the ordinary drama of a big family. Neighbors began to stare. Vacations went wrong. Joy and laughter commingled with discomfort and alienation. Familial bonds inevitably buckled. In the end, this picture-perfect family was no longer, and memories of the idyllic undertaking were marred by tragedy.
Selecciones de personal
Indómita (Inglés: A Woman of Endurance)
Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, traducción de Aurora Lauzardo Ugarte
Pola, una mujer esclavizada en el Puerto Rico del siglo XIX ha sido forzada a vivir en el mundo brutalmente inhumano de las paridoras de esclavos. Golpeada y violada repetidamente, sus bebés le son arrebatados en el momento de nacer para no volver a verlos jamás. Después de un intento de fuga y una golpiza despiadada, despierta en una nueva plantación, Las Mercedes, para formar parte de su diversa comunidad negra. Pero su pasado la persigue en este nuevo hogar. ¿Podrá una mujer sobrepasar la desconfianza y la amargura? Aun cuando sobrevive a un mundo salvaje, ¿podrá volver a entablar relaciones normales o alcanzar un sentido saludable de su propia valía?
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La Herencia de Orquídea Divina (Inglés: The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina)
Zoraida Córdova, traducción de Natalia Navarro Díaz
Los Montoya están acostumbrados a una vida sin explicaciones. Han aprendido a no preguntar por qué la despensa nunca parece vacía, o por qué su matriarca nunca abandona su casa en Cuatro Ríos, ni siquiera para las graduaciones, bodas o bautizos. Pero cuando Orquídea Divina los invita a su funeral y a recibir su herencia, todos esperan descubrir los secretos que tan.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Token
by Beverley Kendall
Kennedy Mitchell is the founder of Token, a PR agency that helps companies with their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. When an ex-lover asks Mitchell for help, she is reluctant to take him on as a client...but then they end up in a fake-dating relationship. This story is getting kudos for taking on workplace tokenism, interracial dating, and the frustrations of being the only Black woman in the room. Romance author Brenda Jackson says: "The heroine's dialogue and inner thoughts had me chuckling from the first page. Beverley Kendall's Token is a smart, sexy rom-com with wry social commentary and a satisfying HEA. I loved it."
How to Sell a Haunted House
by Grady Hendrix
When is a haunted house story funny as well as scary? When it gets the Grady Hendrix treatment! Preparations to put a house on the market are complicated by bickering siblings, spooky puppets, and a realtor who knows a haunted house when she sees one.
Non-fiction
Blunt Instruments : Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices
by Kristin Ann Hass
Monuments, museums, and everyday patriotic practices have made headlines for most of the twenty-first century, yet they are seldom looked at together or understood explicitly as tools used by particular people in particular times and places to shape the culture in particular ways. Hass explores the complicated histories of sites of cultural infrastructure: memorials in parks, museums visited by school kids, and routine practices of patriotism. She unearths legacies of white supremacy and traces movements to reevaluate and resist countless sites that have been doing this work and asks that we look for sites that actually work to tell us who we are, how we came to be, and who belongs in the country.
The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America
by Saket Soni
In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000 dollars each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape; their march on foot to Washington, DC; and their 31-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause.
Have You Eaten Yet? Stories from Chinese Restaurants Around the World
by Cheuk Kwan
An eye-opening and soul-nourishing journey through Chinese food around the world. From Cape Town, South Africa, to small-town Saskatchewan, family-run Chinese restaurants are global icons of immigration, community and delicious food. The cultural outposts of far-flung settlers, bringers of dim sum, Peking duck and creative culinary hybrids, Chinese restaurants are a microcosm of greater social forces. They are an insight into time, history, and place. Author and film-maker Cheuk Kwan, a self-described "card-carrying member of the Chinese diaspora," weaves a global narrative by linking the myriad personal stories of chefs, entrepreneurs, laborers and dreamers who populate Chinese kitchens worldwide. Behind these kitchen doors lies an intriguing paradox which characterizes many of these communities: how Chinese immigrants have resisted--or have often been prevented from--complete assimilation into the social fabric of their new homes. In both instances, the engine of their economic survival--the Chinese restaurant and its food--has become seamlessly woven into towns and cities all around the world. An intrepid travelogue of grand vistas, adventure and serendipity, "Have You Eaten Yet?" charts a living atlas of global migration, ultimately revealing how an excellent meal always tells an even better story.
Selecciones de personal
Para chicas fuertes de corazón tierno y piel canela (Inglés: For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts)
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, traducción de Vania Vargas
Este libro ofrece sabiduría y caminos de liberación, maneras poderosas de enfrentar diversos retos y empodera a las mujeres para que desafíen la narrativa blanca y masculina contando sus propias historias. Esta es una guía hacia el orgullo y hermandad para las mujeres de piel canela y piel negra, una herramienta necesaria para avivar todo un movimiento.
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Ediciones en inglés: eBook
No estoy roto (Inglés: I'm Not Broken)
Jesse León, traducción de José García Escobar
En este inspirador e inquebrantable libro de memorias, Jesse León cuenta su historia extraordinaria de resiliencia y supervivencia. Nos acerca a su niñez, devastada por el tráfico sexual, experiencias de calle y el abuso de sustancias. "No estoy roto" es un retrato de la fuerza indomable y el espíritu luchador de un joven que sobrevivió, contra todos los pronósticos.
Pedir prestado: Libro impreso | eBook | eAudio
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Token
by Beverley Kendall
Kennedy Mitchell is the founder of Token, a PR agency that helps companies with their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. When an ex-lover asks Mitchell for help, she is reluctant to take him on as a client...but then they end up in a fake-dating relationship. This story is getting kudos for taking on workplace tokenism, interracial dating, and the frustrations of being the only Black woman in the room. Romance author Brenda Jackson says: "The heroine's dialogue and inner thoughts had me chuckling from the first page. Beverley Kendall's Token is a smart, sexy rom-com with wry social commentary and a satisfying HEA. I loved it."
How to Sell a Haunted House
by Grady Hendrix
When is a haunted house story funny as well as scary? When it gets the Grady Hendrix treatment! Preparations to put a house on the market are complicated by bickering siblings, spooky puppets, and a realtor who knows a haunted house when she sees one.
Non-fiction
Blunt Instruments : Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices
by Kristin Ann Hass
Monuments, museums, and everyday patriotic practices have made headlines for most of the twenty-first century, yet they are seldom looked at together or understood explicitly as tools used by particular people in particular times and places to shape the culture in particular ways. Hass explores the complicated histories of sites of cultural infrastructure: memorials in parks, museums visited by school kids, and routine practices of patriotism. She unearths legacies of white supremacy and traces movements to reevaluate and resist countless sites that have been doing this work and asks that we look for sites that actually work to tell us who we are, how we came to be, and who belongs in the country.
The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America
by Saket Soni
In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000 dollars each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape; their march on foot to Washington, DC; and their 31-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause.
Have You Eaten Yet? Stories from Chinese Restaurants Around the World
by Cheuk Kwan
An eye-opening and soul-nourishing journey through Chinese food around the world. From Cape Town, South Africa, to small-town Saskatchewan, family-run Chinese restaurants are global icons of immigration, community and delicious food. The cultural outposts of far-flung settlers, bringers of dim sum, Peking duck and creative culinary hybrids, Chinese restaurants are a microcosm of greater social forces. They are an insight into time, history, and place. Author and film-maker Cheuk Kwan, a self-described "card-carrying member of the Chinese diaspora," weaves a global narrative by linking the myriad personal stories of chefs, entrepreneurs, laborers and dreamers who populate Chinese kitchens worldwide. Behind these kitchen doors lies an intriguing paradox which characterizes many of these communities: how Chinese immigrants have resisted--or have often been prevented from--complete assimilation into the social fabric of their new homes. In both instances, the engine of their economic survival--the Chinese restaurant and its food--has become seamlessly woven into towns and cities all around the world. An intrepid travelogue of grand vistas, adventure and serendipity, "Have You Eaten Yet?" charts a living atlas of global migration, ultimately revealing how an excellent meal always tells an even better story.
Selecciones de personal
Para chicas fuertes de corazón tierno y piel canela (Inglés: For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts)
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez, traducción de Vania Vargas
Este libro ofrece sabiduría y caminos de liberación, maneras poderosas de enfrentar diversos retos y empodera a las mujeres para que desafíen la narrativa blanca y masculina contando sus propias historias. Esta es una guía hacia el orgullo y hermandad para las mujeres de piel canela y piel negra, una herramienta necesaria para avivar todo un movimiento.
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Ediciones en inglés: eBook
No estoy roto (Inglés: I'm Not Broken)
Jesse León, traducción de José García Escobar
En este inspirador e inquebrantable libro de memorias, Jesse León cuenta su historia extraordinaria de resiliencia y supervivencia. Nos acerca a su niñez, devastada por el tráfico sexual, experiencias de calle y el abuso de sustancias. "No estoy roto" es un retrato de la fuerza indomable y el espíritu luchador de un joven que sobrevivió, contra todos los pronósticos.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
My Darkest Prayer
by S. A. Cosby
While investigating the death of a beloved local minister, Nathan Waymaker must use all his skills to navigate the murky waters of small-town corruption while keeping his own dark secrets from coming to light. This is a new edition of Cosby's debut novel and features a new introduction by the author.
A Dash of Salt and Pepper
by Kosoko Jackson
Xavier returns to his small Maine hometown to work as a sous-chef in a new restaurant. There he develops an unexpected connection with the hot, single-dad chef. SWOON! If you enjoyed the author's previous title, "I’m So (Not) Over You," here's a new one for you.
That Dangerous Energy
by Aya de León
When she discovers that her billionaire boyfriend’s company is responsible for several ecological disasters, struggling artist Morgan Faraday must decide whether to cut and run or face the risk when things take an even more dangerous turn.
Non-fiction
Pests : How Humans Create Animal Villains
by Bethany Brookshire
A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don't expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It's no longer an animal. It's a pest. At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It's not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us. It's about what calling an animal a pest says about people, how we live, and what we want. It's a story about human nature, and how we categorize the animals in our midst, including bears and coyotes, sparrows and snakes. Pet or pest? In many cases, it's entirely a question of perspective. Bethany Brookshire's deeply researched and entirely entertaining book will show readers what there is to venerate in vermin, and help them appreciate how these animals have clawed their way to success as we did everything we could to ensure their failure. In the process, we will learn how the pests that annoy us tell us far more about humanity than they do about the animals themselves.
Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins
by Aidan Levy
Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic "Great Day in Harlem" portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse" has gone largely untold--until now.
Wild Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Natural World
by Mike Higgins
Which nations have launched animals into space? Where are the world's cat people? How many humans live in high-risk zones for natural disasters? How far do you have to travel to hug all fifteen of the world's oldest trees? Where in the world do snakes live--or better yet, where can you avoid them?! Find the thought-provoking answers to these questions and many more in Wild Maps for Curious Minds. This infographic atlas of nature's most impressive wonders and eye-popping oddities is bursting with discovery (Where's the most remote place on Earth?), whimsical insight (Which animals have launched into space?), and startling revelations (How much forest have we destroyed?) that will change the way you see the natural world--and that celebrate our planet and the plants and animals with whom we share it.
Selecciones de personal
Spare: en la sombra
Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex, traducción de Laura Martín de Dios, Laura Rins Calahorra, Verónica Canales Medina, Gabriel Dols Gallardo, y Rocío Gómez de los Riscos
Fue una de las imágenes más desgarradoras del siglo XX: Dos niños, dos príncipes, caminando detrás del ataúd de su madre, mientras el mundo contemplaba la escena con pesar... y horror. A la vez que se daba sepultura a Diana, princesa de Gales, miles de millones de personas se preguntaban qué debían pensar y sentir esos príncipes y qué rumbo tomarían sus vidas.
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Canción
Eduardo Halfon, traducción de Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn
Una fría mañana de enero de 1967, en plena guerra civil de Guatemala, un comerciante judío y libanés es secuestrado en un callejón sin salida de la capital. Nadie ignora que Guatemala es un país surrealista, había afirmado años antes. Un narrador llamado Eduardo Halfon tendrá que viajar a Japón, y revisitar su infancia en la Guatemala de los bélicos años setenta, y acudir a un misterioso encuentro en un bar oscuro y lumpen, para finalmente dilucidar los detalles de la vida y el secuestro de aquel hombre que también se llamaba Eduardo Halfon, y que era su abuelo. En este nuevo eslabón de su fascinante proyecto literario, el autor guatemalteco se adentra en la brutal y compleja historia reciente de su país, en la cual resulta cada vez más difícil distinguir entre víctimas y verdugos. Se añade así una importante pieza a su sutil exploración sobre los orígenes y los mecanismos de la identidad con la que ha logrado construir un inconfundible universo literario.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Pride and Protest
by Nikki Payne
Liza B. wants to take her neighborhood back from the soulless property developer dropping unaffordable condos on every street corner in DC. But her planned protest at a corporate event takes a turn after she mistakes the smoldering-hot CEO, Dorsey Fitzgerald, for the waitstaff. If you're picking up Pride and Prejudice vibes, you are on the right track!
Lavender House
by Lev A. C. Rosen
It is 1952, and Lavender House is a secluded estate where a found family of LGBTQIA+ people can live as themselves. When one of them falls to her death, her widow hires a disgraced gay police inspector to investigate. The publisher is calling this whodunit "Knives Out with a queer twist."
Non-fiction
The Best American Food Writing 2022
edited and with an introduction by Sohla El-Waylly ; Silvia Killingsworth, series editor
"Food offers a clear path to connecting with anyone because we all eat," writes editor Sohla El-Waylly. The Best American Food Writing 2022 celebrates the many innovative, comforting, mouthwatering, and culturally rich culinary offerings of our country. Here, we are reminded where food does and does not come from. We get a look into people, families and cultures, as food highlights politics, accessibility and equity. The Best American Food Writing 2022 includes Jaya Saxena, Adesh Thapliyal, Sam Dean, Hannah Selinger, Tom Philpott, Mayukh Sen, Bryan Washington, Logan Scherer, Liz Cook, and others.
Brave Hearted : The Women of the American West 1836-1880
by Katie Hickman
As the internationally bestselling historian Katie Hickman writes, "Myth and misunderstanding spring from the American frontier as readily as rye grass from sod, and - like the wiry grass - seem as difficult to weed out and discard." But the true-life story of women's experiences in the Wild West is more gripping, heart-rending, and stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends, and ballads of popular imagination. Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route; African-American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex-workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers -- all were women forced to draw on huge reserves of resilience and courage in the face of tumultuous change. Drawing on letters, diaries, and other extraordinary contemporary accounts, sifting through the legends and the myths, the laws and the treaties, Katie Hickman presents us with cast of unforgettable women: the half Cree, Marguerite McLoughlin, the much-admired "First Lady" of Fort Vancouver; the Presbyterian missionary Narcissa Whitman, who in 1837 became the first white woman to make the overland journey west across the Rocky Mountains; Biddy Mason, the Mississippi slave who fought for her freedom through the courts of California; Olive Oatman, adopted by the Mohave, famous for her facial tattoos. This is the story of the women who participated in the greatest mass migration in American history, transforming their country in the process; a tale brought to life by a brilliant social historian and a dynamic storyteller. This is American history, not as it was romanticized, but as it was lived.
Ride-or-Die : A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black women
by Shanita Hubbard
A "ride-or-die chick" is a woman who holds down her family and her community. She does anything for her family, friends and significant other, even at the cost of her own well-being. Hubbard argues that this way of life has left Black women exhausted, overworked, overlooked, and feeling depleted. She urges readers to expel the myth that your self-worth is connected to how much labor you provide others, and guides you toward healing.
Selecciones de personal
Solito
Javier Zamora, traducción de José García Escobar
Viaje. Mis padres empezaron a usar esa palabra hace más o menos un año: "un día vas a hacer un viaje para estar con nosotros. Como una aventura".
La aventura de Javier es una travesía de tres mil millas desde su pequeño pueblo en El Salvador, a través de Guatemala y México, hacia la frontera de Estados Unidos. Dejará atrás a sus queridos abuelos y su tía para reunirse con una madre que se fue cuatro años atrás y con un padre al que prácticamente no recuerda. Al viajar solo, a excepción de un grupo de extraños y un coyote contratado para guiarlos a salvo, Javier debía tardar solo dos semanas en llegar.
A los nueve años, todo lo que Javier puede imaginar es correr a los brazos de sus padres, acurrucarse en la cama entre ellos y vivir bajo el mismo techo otra vez. No puede prever los peligrosos trayectos en bote, las interminables caminatas por el desierto, las armas apuntándole, los arrestos y los engaños que le esperan. Tampoco sabe que esas dos semanas se alargarán hasta dos meses y le cambiarán la vida, junto a un grupo de extraños que acabará por cobijarlo como una familia improvisada.
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El Clima de Los Angeles (Inglés: L.A. Weather)
María Amparo Escandón, traducción de Laura Paz Abasolo
L.A. está seco como un desierto, Oscar, el patriarca de la familia Alvarado, está obsesionado con el clima y solo quiere un poco de lluvia. En realidad, alberga un secreto que lo distrae de todo lo demás. Su esposa, Keila, desesperada por tener una vida con un poco más de intimidad y un poco menos de Weather Channel, siente que no tiene más remedio que terminar su matrimonio. Sus tres hijas quedan sorprendidas ante la noticia y empiezan a cuestionar todo lo que saben. Cada uno tendrá que mirar críticamente sus propias relaciones y tomar decisiones difíciles en el camino.
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Corrido de amor y gloria (Inglés: A Ballad of Love and Glory)
Reyna Grande, traducción de Raúl Silva y Alicia Reardón
El año es 1846. Después de la controvertida anexión de Texas, el ejército de los EE. UU. marcha hacia el sur para provocar la guerra con México por la disputada frontera del Río Grande.
Ximena Salomé es una talentosa curandera mexicana. Cuando los Texas Rangers asaltan su rancho y matan a tiros a su esposo, Ximena usa sus habilidades curativas como enfermera del ejército en el frente de la devastadora guerra. Mientras tanto, John Riley, un inmigrante irlandés en el ejército yanqui, está asqueado por la guerra injusta. En un audaz acto de desafío, cruza a nado el Río Grande y se une al ejército mexicano, una deserción que se castiga con la ejecución. Cuando Ximena y John se encuentran, surge entre ellos una peligrosa atracción. A medida que la guerra se intensifica, también lo hace su pasión.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Jackal
by Erin E. Adams
A Black woman returning to her Rust Belt hometown for a wedding uncovers a sinister pattern of Black girls going missing from the area. When her friend's daughter disappears from the reception, leaving behind only a bloody piece of fabric, Liz Rocher must find the missing girl or be consumed by the evil creeping ever closer.
A Quiet Teacher
by Adam Oyebanji
Foreign Language teacher Greg Abimbola is hiding secrets: he isn't a real teacher, and Greg isn't his actual name. When someone he cares about is accused of murdering a student's parent, Greg emerges from the shadows, putting himself in mortal danger to try to prove a friend's innocence.
Non-fiction
Half American : The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
by Matthew F. Delmont
Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” To fill in some of those untaught gaps, Matthew Delmont provides American history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; James Thompson, the 26-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign; and poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.
The Seed Detective : Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables
by Adam Alexander
Did you ever wonder how peas, kale, asparagus, beans, squash, and corn have ended up on our plates? Well, so did Adam Alexander. His passion for vegetables was ignited when he tasted an unusual sweet pepper with a fiery heart while on a filmmaking project in Ukraine. Smitten by its flavor, Adam began to seek out local growers of endangered heritage and heirloom varieties in a mission to bring home seeds to grow, share, and return so that he could enjoy their delicious taste—and save them from being lost forever. In The Seed Detective, Adam shares his own stories of seed hunting, with the origin stories behind many of our everyday food heroes. Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization, and serendipity—describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.
Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History
by Kristina R. Gaddy
In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by enslavers throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten.
Selecciones de personal
La Resurrección de Fulgencio Ramirez: Una Novela
Rudy Ruiz
En la década de 1950, las tensiones en la ciudad de La Frontera son palpables. En medio de la discordia, el amor joven florece a primera vista entre Fulgencio Ramírez, hijo de inmigrantes empobrecidos, y Carolina Mendelssohn, la hija del farmacéutico local. Pero como pronto descubrirán, sus lazos serán deshechos por una fuerza más poderosa de lo que podrían haber imaginado.
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La fruta del borrachero (Inglés: Fruit of the Drunken Tree)
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, traducción de Guillermo Arreola
La familia Santiago vive en una comunidad cerrada en Bogotá, a salvo de la inestabilidad política que aterroriza al país. Chula de siete años y su hermana mayor, Cassandra, disfrutan de una vida carente de preocupaciones, gracias a la burbuja protectora de su madre y su hogar en una comunidad cerrada. Sin embargo, la amenaza de secuestros, coches bomba y asesinatos se ciernen justo afuera de las fronteras límites de su vecindario, donde el dios de la droga, Pablo Escobar, sigue eludiendo a las autoridades y captando la atención de la nación.
Inspirado en la propia vida de la autora, La fruta del borrachero contrasta dos historias muy diferentes pero inextricables. En una prosa exuberante, Rojas Contreras arroja luz sobre las decisiones casi imposibles que enfrentan a menudo las mujeres frente a la violencia, y las conexiones inesperadas que pueden surgir a raíz de la desesperación.
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El hombre que movía las nubes (Inglés: The Man Who Could Move Clouds)
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, traducción de Mercedes Guhl
La autora de La fruta del borrachero nos entrega una deslumbrante historia caleidoscópica que recupera el legado místico de su familia.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Calling for a Blanket Dance
by Oscar Hokeah
Guided by his Kiowa, Cherokee, and Mexican heritage, Ever Geimausaddle seeks safety and self-identity amid violence and instability. The author is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma from his mother's side and has Mexican heritage through his father.
Night of the Living Rez
by Morgan Talty
With searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight, Talty breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. The author is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up.
A Calm & Normal Heart
by Chelsea T. Hicks
This collection of short stories showcases modern-day adventurers seeking out new places to call their own inside a nation to which they do not entirely belong. The author is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation who belongs to Pawhuska District.
Non-fiction
Indigenous continent: The Epic Contest For North America
by Pekka Hämäläinen
This nation's history and self-understanding have long depended on the notion of a "colonial America," an epoch that supposedly laid the foundation for the modern United States. In Indigenous Continent, Pekka Hämäläinen overturns the traditional, Eurocentric narrative, demonstrating that, far from being weak and helpless "victims" of European colonialism, Indigenous peoples controlled North America well into the 19th century. From the Iroquois and Pueblos to the Lakotas and Comanches, Native empires frequently decimated white newcomers in battle, forcing them to accept and even adopt Native ways. Even as the white population skyrocketed and colonists' land greed become ever more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and flexible leadership structures. As Hämäläinen ultimately contends, instead of "colonial America" we should speak of an "Indigenous America" that was only slowly and unevenly becoming colonial. In our myth-busting era, this restoration of Native Americans to their rightful place at the very center of American history will be seen as one of the most important correctives yet.
A Picture Gallery of the Soul
by Howard Oransky (Editor)
A Picture Gallery of the Soul presents the work of more than one hundred Black American artists whose practice incorporates the photographic medium. Organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, this group exhibition samples a range of photographic expressions produced over three centuries, from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art. From the daguerreotypes made by Jules Lion in New Orleans in 1840 to the Instagram post of the Baltimore Uprising made by Devin Allen in 2015, photography has chronicled Black American life, and Black Americans have defined the possibilities of photography. Frederick Douglass recognized the quick, easy, and inexpensive reproducibility of photography and developed a theoretical framework for understanding its impact on public discourse, which he delivered as a series of four lectures during the Civil War. It has been widely acknowledged that Douglass, the subject of 160 photographic portraits and the most photographed American of the nineteenth century, anticipated that the history of American photography and the history of Black American culture and politics would be deeply intertwined. A Picture Gallery of the Soul honors the diverse visions of Blackness made manifest through the lens of photography. This is a vivid and moving celebration of the ways that Black Americans have shaped and been shaped by photography, from its inception to the present day.
Borrow: Print
Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda
by Michael Hingston
In the middle of the Caribbean, there sits a small island called Redonda. But what at first appears to be an uninhabited rock turns out to also be the site of a fragmented, fiercely contested kingdom that dates back more than a century--a kingdom of writers, with little in common besides their shared allegiance to the Redondan throne. Now, Michael Hingston has assembled this unbelievable true story for the first time. Drawing on a cast of characters that includes forgotten sci-fi novelists, alcoholic poets, vegetarian publishers, and Nobel Prize frontrunners, Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of The Kingdom of Redonda is a rollicking literary history that blurs the line between fantasy and reality to the point that it may never be restored.
Selecciones de personal
Mujer sin vergüenza (Woman without Shame)
Sandra Cisneros, traducción del inglés de Liliana Valenzuela
Han pasado veintiocho años desde que Sandra Cisneros publicara un libro de poesía. Con decenas de poemas inéditos, Mujer sin vergüenza es una conmovedora colección de canciones, elegías y declaraciones que dan testimonio de su peregrinaje hacia un renacimiento y hacia el reconocimiento de su derecho como mujer artista. Estas meditaciones descarnadas y a menudo humorísticas sobre la memoria, el deseo y la naturaleza esencial del amor abren un camino hacia la autoconciencia. Para Cisneros, Mujer sin vergüenza es la culminación de la búsqueda de un hogar, en el México de sus antepasados y en su propio corazón.
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Llorando en el baño (Crying in the Bathroom)
Erika L. Sánchez, traducción del inglés de Laura Lecuona
Hija de inmigrantes mexicanos y criada en Chicago en la década de los noventa, Erika L. Sánchez se ha descrito a sí misma como paria, inadaptada y un chasco: agitadora melancólica y malhablada que se pintaba las uñas de negro, pero también disfrutaba la comedia y tenía el sueño improbable de ser poeta. Veinticinco años más tarde se ha convertido en una galardonada novelista, poeta y ensayista, pero no ha perdido la risa incontrolable, su áspero ingenio y sus singulares poderes para percibir el mundo a su alrededor.
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A lo lejos (In the Distance)
Hernán Díaz, traducción del inglés de Jon Bilbao
Håkan Söderström, conocido como «el Halcón», un joven inmigrante sueco que llega a California en plena Fiebre del Oro, emprende una peregrinación imposible en dirección a Nueva York, sin hablar el idioma, en busca de su hermano Linus, a quien perdió cuando embarcaron a Europa. En su extraño viaje, Håkan se topará con un buscador de oro irlandés demente y con una mujer sin dientes que lo viste con un abrigo de terciopelo y zapatos con hebilla. Conocerá a varios personajes en su travesía incluyendo a un naturalista visionario. Será perseguido por un sheriff sádico y por un par de soldados depredadores de la guerra civil. Atrapará animales y buscará comida en el desierto, y finalmente se convertirá en un proscrito. Acabará retirándose a las montañas para subsistir durante años como trampero, en medio de la naturaleza indómita, sin ver a nadie ni hablar, en una suerte de destrucción planeada que es, al mismo tiempo, un renacimiento. Pero su mito crecerá y sus supuestas hazañas lo convertirán en una leyenda.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
If I Survive You
by Jonathan Escoffery
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls "the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive."
Daisy Darker
by Alice Feeney
Daisy Darker's entire family is assembling for Nana's 80th birthday party in Nana's crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows... With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None," "Daisy Darker's" unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.
Wash Day Diaries
by Jamila Rowser
"Wash Day Diaries" tells the story of four best friends through five connected short story comics that follow these young women through the ups and downs of their daily lives in the Bronx. From self-care to spilling the tea at an hours-long salon appointment to healing family rifts, the stories are brought to life through beautifully drawn characters and different color palettes reflecting the mood in each story. At times touching, quiet, triumphant, and laugh out loud funny, the stories of "Wash Day Diaries" pay a loving tribute to Black joy and the resilience of Black women.
Non-fiction
Africa Is Not A Country: Notes On A Bright Continent
by Dipo Faloyin
An exuberant, opinionated, stereotype-busting view of contemporary Africa in all its splendid diversity by one of its leading new writers. A lively and diverse continent of fifty-four countries, over two thousand languages, and 1.4 billion people, Africa has long been painted with a broad brush in Western literature, media, and culture, flattening it into a monolith. In Africa is Not a Country, the acclaimed journalist Dipo Faloyin boldly counters the stereotypes and highlights the realities of Africa's communities and histories. Starting with the complex urban life of Lagos, the largest city on the continent, Faloyin then traces the history of modern Africa, revealing how arbitrary boundaries drawn by colonizers led to tribal and cultural clashes, before telling the story of democracy in 10 dictatorships. He unravels the perils and ubiquity of the "white savior complex," explores the rivalries at the heart of the African Cup of Nations tournament, and joins the heated debate over which West African country makes the best jollof rice. And with an eye towards the future promise and potential of the continent, he speaks with local activists, artists, and writers who are defining Africa on their own terms. Witty and insightful, Africa is Not a Country is an idiosyncratic and entertaining exploration of a diverse continent that deserves to finally be understood, respected, and celebrated.
Dancing Cockatoos And The Dead Man Test: How Behavior Evolves And Why It Matters
by Marlene Zuk
A lively exploration of animal behavior in all its glorious complexity, from tiny wasps to lumbering elephants-and humans. It's time to leave behind the tired nature-versus-nurture debate. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, Marlene Zuk asks a more fascinating question: How does behavior evolve, and how is that process similar-and different-in people and animals? Drawing from a wealth of research, including her own on insects, she explores how genes and the environment work together to produce cockatoos that dance to rock music and ants that heal their injured companions. She follows the different paths cats and dogs took to living with humans, and asks whether bees are domestic animals. In exploring intelligence, mating behavior, and fighting disease, Zuk turns to smart spiders, silent crickets, and crafty crows. She shows how neither our behavior nor that of other animals is dictated solely by genes, and that animal behavior can be remarkably similar to human behavior and wonderfully complicated in its own right.
Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan
by Lt. Col. Scott Mann (Ret.)
In April, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army's first group of American-trained commandos. He passed through Fort Bragg's legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan's government and army are collapsing, and Nezam is getting threatening texts from the Taliban. The message reached Nezam's former commanding officer, retired Lt. Col. Scott Mann, who can't face the idea of losing another soldier in the long War on Terror. He sends out an SOS to a group of Afghan vets (Navy SEALs, Green Berets, CIA officers, USAID advisors). They all answer the call for one last mission and operating out of basements and garages, Task Force Pineapple organizes an escape route for Nezam and gets him into hiding in Taliban-controlled Kabul. After many tense days, he braves the enemy checkpoints and the crowds of thousands blocking the airport gates. He finally makes it through the wire and into the American-held airport thanks to the frantic efforts of the Pineapple express, a relentless Congressional aide, and a US embassy official. Nezam is safe, but calls are coming in from all directions requesting help for other Afghan soldiers, interpreters, and at-risk women and children. Task Force Pineapple begins all over again--and ends up rescuing 500 more Afghans from Kabul in the three chaotic days before the ISIS-K suicide bombing. Operation Pineapple Express is a thrilling, suspenseful tale of service and loyalty amidst the chaos of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Selecciones de personal
Berta Isla
escrito por Javier Marías, traducción de Margaret Jull Costa
Muy jóvenes se conocieron Berta Isla y Tomás Nevinson en Madrid, y muy pronta fue su determinación de pasar la vida juntos, sin sospechar que los aguardaba una convivencia intermitente y después una desaparición. Tomás, medio español y medio inglés, es un superdotado para las lenguas y los acentos, y eso hace que, durante sus estudios en Oxford, la Corona ponga sus ojos en él. Un día cualquiera, «un día estúpido» que se podría haber ahorrado, condicionará el resto de su existencia, así como la de su mujer. Berta Isla es la envolvente y apasionante historia de una espera y de una evolución, la de su protagonista. También de la fragilidad y la tenacidad de una relación amorosa condenada al secreto y a la ocultación, al fingimiento y a la conjetura, y en última instancia al resentimiento mezclado con la lealtad.
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Una vez fui tú: Memorias (Once I Was You)
escrito por María Hinojosa; traducción del inglés por Angélica Ramírez
María Hinojosa es una periodista galardonada que ha colaborado con las cadenas más respetadas y se ha distinguido por realizar reportajes con un toque humano. En estas memorias escritas con gran belleza, nos relata la historia de la política de inmigración de los EE.UU. que nos ha llevado al punto en que estamos hoy, al mismo tiempo que nos comparte su historia profundamente personal. Estas memorias honestas y estremecedoras crean un vívido retrato de co?mo llegamos aquí y lo que significa ser una superviviente, una feminista, una ciudadana y una periodista que hace valer su propia voz mientras lucha por la verdad. Una vez fui tú es un llamado urgente a los compatriotas estadounidenses para que abran los ojos a la crisis de la inmigración y entiendan que nos afecta a todos.
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La otra chica negra (The Other Black Girl)
escrito por Zakiya Dalila Harris; traducción del inglés por Eva González Rosales
La joven asistente editorial Nella Rogers está cansada de ser la única empleada negra en Wagner Books. Harta del aislamiento y las pequeñas ofensas, no puede evitar entusiasmarse cuando una nueva compañera negra, nacida y criada en Harlem, empieza a trabajar en el cubículo de al lado. Sin embargo, pronto una serie de incómodos acontecimientos convierten a Hazel en la predilecta de la oficina, y Nella es relegada a un segundo plano. Entonces empiezan a aparecer notas amenazantes en la mesa de Nella: «VETE DE WAGNER. AHORA.» Es difícil creer que Hazel esté detrás de esos mensajes hostiles. Pero cuando Nella empieza a obsesionarse con las siniestras fuerzas del juego, pronto se da cuenta de que está en riesgo mucho más que su carrera. Un thriller inteligente y dinámico, y una astuta crónica social, perfecta para cualquiera que alguna vez se haya sentido manipulado, amenazado o ignorado en el puesto de trabajo. Esta obra te mantendrá en vilo hasta la última página.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Our Gen
by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Residents of an active-living retirement community revert to lives of youthful indulgence, even as time-bomb secrets of their pasts tick toward explosion. BookPage calls Our Gen "a beach read with strong writing and emotional heft."
The Woman in the Library
by Sulari Gentill
The silence in the Boston Public Library is interrupted one morning by a woman's terrified scream. As security guards assess the threat, four strangers start a conversation and quickly become friendly. They each have their own reasons for being in the library's reading room that morning--and one of those reasons may turn out to be murder.
Husband Material
by Alexis Hall
In Boyfriend Material, Luc and Oliver met, pretended to fall in love, fell in love for real, dealt with heartbreak and disappointment and family and friends...and somehow figured out a way to make it work. Now it seems like everyone around them is getting married, and Luc's feeling the social pressure to propose. But it'll take more than four weddings, a funeral, and a hotly contested rainbow balloon arch to get these two from "I don't know what I'm doing" to "I do."
Non-fiction
100 animals that can f*cking end you
by Mamadou Ndiaye
Ever wonder how to tell if a moose is about to subtract you? Curious why you should be terrified of cassowaries, the ?velociraptor that time forgot?? Questioning whether that cute baby hippo is actually a homicidal maniac in the making? Yea, so was Mamadou Ndiaye . . . and now he's got your answers.
Black folk could fly
by Randall Kenan
A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies and in small journals, revealing countless facets of Kenan's life and work. Flying under the radar, these writings were his most personal and autobiographical. This powerful collection is a testament to a great mind, a great soul, and a great writer from whom readers will always wish to have more to read.
The sewing girl's tale : A story of the crime and consequences in revolutionary America
by John Wood Sweet
Summer, 1793. A crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel-- the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. Sweet takes us from a chance encounter in the street, and shows that if our laws and our culture were changed by a persistent young woman and the power of words two hundred years ago, they can be changed again.
Selecciones de personal
Páradais
escrito por Fernanda Melchor, traduccíon de Sophie Hughes
En un conjunto residencial de lujo, dos adolescentes inadaptados se reúnen por las noches para embriagarse a escondidas y compartir sus descabelladas fantasías. Ante la imposibilidad de conseguir lo que cada uno cree merecer, Franco y Polo maquinarán un plan tan pueril como macabro.
Páradais, escrita por una de las escritoras mexicanas más destacadas de la actualidad, explora la facilidad con la que el deseo puede convertirse en obsesión y, más aún, en violencia, al tiempo que narra la alianza entre los polos opuestos de la sociedad mexicana contemporánea.
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La Casa de Los Espiritus (Inglés: The House of the Spirits)
escrito por Isabel Allende, traduccíon de Magda Bogin
El despótico patriarca Esteban Trueba ha construido con mano de hierro un imperio privado que empieza a tambalearse con el paso del tiempo y un entorno social explosivo. Finalmente, la decadencia personal del patriarca arrastrará a los Trueba a una dolorosa desintegración. Atrapados en unas dramáticas relaciones familiares, los personajes de esta poderosa novela encarnan las tensiones sociales y espirituales de una época que abarca gran parte del siglo XX.
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Cien Años de Soledad (Inglés: One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Edited by Gabriel García Márquez, traduccíon de Gregory Rabassa
"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo."
Con estas palabras empieza una novela ya legendaria en los registros de la literatura universal, una de las aventuras literarias más fascinantes del siglo xx.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
On Rotation
by Shirlene Obuobi
Angie, a Ghanaian-American med student, has spent her life being the Perfect Immigrant Daughter. She has always faced her problems by working twice as hard to get half as far. Then she meets artist Ricky Gutiérrez, and suddenly Angie begins to question everything. When will she allow herself to live the fulfilling life that is best for her?
The Gatekeeper
by David Koepp
Dez, a retired mercenary and amateur musician, is enjoying the California sun when the hotel he's at comes under attack. Foiling a kidnapping attempt, Dez is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy involving media manipulation, militias, an armed coup and an attempt to fracture the very country in which we live.
The Boardwalk Bookshop
by Susan Mallery
Bree, Mikki, and Ashley have opened a bookshop on the California coast, and business is thriving. Their personal lives - not so much. At sunset every Friday, they share a champagne toast, challenging one another to become the best versions of themselves and giving each other courage to start over. Kirkus Reviews calls this "A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism."
Non-fiction
Riding Jane Crow: African American Women on the American Railroad
by Miriam Thaggert
As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement and thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences.
The Earth Is All That Lasts: Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and the Last Stand of the Great Sioux Nation
by Mark Lee Gardner
Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance in American history undeniable and together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed George Armstrong Custer's vaunted Seventh Cavalry. Their legendary victory at the Little Big Horn has overshadowed the rest of their rich and complex lives but now, based on years of research and drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders.
The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom
Gregory Nobles
Betsey Stockton's Odyssey is a remarkable saga of one woman's journey from slavery to freedom--and to leadership. Once the property of Princeton University president Ashbel Green, Stockton embarked on a remarkable life after Green emancipated her. She traveled as far as the Sandwich Islands as a missionary and teacher, eventually returning to Princeton in those roles, helping to found both the First Presbyterian Church of Colour and the town's public school for black children, where she taught for nearly thirty years.
Selecciones de personal
Violeta
escrito por Isabel Allende, traducción de Frances Riddle
Violeta viene al mundo un tormentoso di?a de 1920, siendo la primera nin?a de una familia de cinco bulliciosos hermanos. Desde el principio, su vida es marcada por acontecimientos extraordinarios, pues todavi?a se sienten las ondas expansivas de la Gran Guerra, hasta cuando la gripe espan?ola llega a las orillas de su pai?s sudamericano natal, casi en el momento exacto de su nacimiento. Gracias a la clarividencia del padre, la familia saldra? indemne de esta crisis para darse de bruces con una nueva, cuando la Gran Depresio?n altera la elegante vida urbana que Violeta ha conocido hasta ahora. Su familia lo perdera? todo y se vera? obligada a retirarse a una regio?n salvaje y remota del pai?s. Alli? Violeta alcanzara? la mayori?a de edad y tendra? su primer pretendiente... En una carta dirigida a una persona a la que ama por encima de todas las dema?s, Violeta recuerda devastadores desengan?os amorosos y romances apasionados, momentos de pobreza y tambie?n de prosperidad, pe?rdidas terribles e inmensas alegri?as. Moldeara?n su vida algunos de los grandes sucesos de la historia: la lucha por los derechos de la mujer, el auge y cai?da de tiranos y, en u?ltima instancia, no una, sino dos pandemias.
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La fugitiva
escrito por Sergio Ramírez
Rebeldía, pasión por la literatura, feminismo y libertad sexual. La historia de una mujer singular. Sergio Ramírez investiga la historia de una mujer costarricense, Amanda Solano, que publicó una única novela y que nunca obtuvo el reconocimiento de sus paisanos. "La maldición de Amanda fue su genialidad. Hizo todo lo que pudo como mujer para disimular su condición de ángel." Tres voces femeninas nos relatan la vida dramática de una mujer que eligió el oficio maldito de escribir en una sociedad cerrada y provinciana. Tres voces, tres maneras de concebir la vida, la amistad y el amor, pero todas con un denominador común: contarnos quién fue la deseada y envidiada Amanda Solano. Estas voces, cada una con su propio registro, nos devolverán a la Costa Rica de la primera mitad del siglo pasado, y así descubriremos a un personaje marcado por su belleza y su genio, por su desafiante sentido de la libertad, y por la mayor de sus debilidades: los hombres. En una convulsa época en que a las mujeres les era denegada la elección de sus opciones en la vida, a Amanda Solano no le quedó otro camino que el exilio, dentro y fuera de su propio país. Sergio Ramírez asume el reto de poner voz a tres personajes femeninos dispares, y lo hace con un estilo sencillo y emotivo que nos hará cómplices de la historia de esta mujer singular que vivió de su leyenda y murió sintiéndose olvidada por todos. Aún hoy, su tumba sigue marcada apenas por un número.
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Resistencia: poems of protest and revolution
Edited by Mark Eisner & Tina Escaja with an introduction by Julia Alvarez
En esta colección de poemas, escritores que representan a todos los países latinoamericanos exploran temas feministas, queer, indígenas, urbanos y ecológicos junto con protestas históricamente destacadas contra el imperialismo, las dictaduras y la desigualdad económica. Cada poema se presenta en una traducción al inglés junto con el texto original. Los idiomas originales representados incluyen español, francés, portugués, kaqchikel, mapudungun, miskito y quechua. Estos cincuenta y cuatro poemas nos inspiran a todos a abrazarnos a nosotros mismos y unirnos contra todas las formas de tiranía y opresión.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
By Her Own Design
by Piper Huguley
The incredible untold story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of enslaved people, rose above personal struggles and racial prejudice to design and create one of America's most famous wedding dresses of all time for Jackie Kennedy.
Nightcrawling
by Leila Mottley
When a drunken altercation with a stranger turns into a job she desperately needs, Kiara, who supports her brother and an abandoned 9-year-old boy, starts nightcrawling. Then her name surfaces in an investigation exposing her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
Non-fiction
The New Black West: Photographs from America's Only Touring Black Rodeo
by Gabriela Hasbun, foreword by Jeff Douvel
Held annually in cities across the United States, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo (BPIR) honors the historic accomplishments of Black cowboys and fosters a vibrant community dedicated to continuing that legacy; Bay Area photographer Gabriela Hasbun has spent more than a decade photographing this beloved event in the Oakland hills, capturing the joy and excitement of performers and audience members, showcasing the daring feats, spectacular outfits, and welcoming atmosphere that make the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo an unmissable experience.
Undelivered: the never-heard speeches that would have rewritten history
by Jeff Nussbaum
In Undelivered, political speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum presents the most notable speeches the public never heard, from Dwight Eisenhower's apology for a D-Day failure to Richard Nixon's refusal to resign the presidency, and even Hillary Clinton's acceptance for a 2016 victory--the latter never seen until now; examining the content of these speeches and the context of the historic moments that almost came to be, Nussbaum considers not only what they tell us about the past, but also what they can inform us about our present.
Miss Chloe : a memoir of a literary friendship with Toni Morrison
A. J. Verdelle
Toni Morrison, born Chloe A Wofford, was a towering figure in the world of literature when she entered A.J. Verdelle's life and their literary friendship was a young writer's dream--simultaneously exhilarating, intimidating, fulfilling, and challenging; Verdelle chronicles her grief at Morrison's passing, and finds comfort in Morrison's astute advice--wisdom Verdelle didn't always recognize at the time as this book honors Morrison among the cultural greats, while illuminating and celebrating the power of language, legacy, and genius.
Selecciones de personal
Invencible : Cómo Descubrí Mi Fuerza a Través del Amor Y La Pérdida (Inglés: Unstoppable: How I Found My Strength Through Love and Loss))
escrito por Chiquis Rivera
Un nuevo libro de memorias de la cantante ganadora del Latin Grammy y autora bestseller del New York Times, Chiquis Rivera, quien comparte sus triunfos, desafíos y lecciones de vida tras la muerte de su madre, Jenni Rivera. Su filosofía de vida lo dice todo: “O gano o aprendo.” Lleno de revelaciones afirmativas, Chiquis comparte su mayor regalo con sus fans: las lecciones inspiradoras y accesibles que la han hecho invencible.
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El Miedo Nos Hizo Fuertes
escrito por Alexis Valdés
Alexis Valdés es un artista polifacético con casi cuarenta años de carrera que se ha destacado como actor, comediante, presentador, escritor de teatro, guionista de cine y director de cine y teatro. Además, es músico, cantante, compositor y productor musical, nominado tres veces al premio Grammy Latino.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
One-Shot Harry
by Gary Phillips
When an army buddy’s death is ruled an accident, Korean War veteran and news photographer Harry Ingram discovers that his photographs show otherwise. Putting his life on the line amidst the racial tensions of Los Angeles in 1963, Harry seeks to learn what really happened to his friend.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
by Shelby Van Pelt
Widow Tova Sullivan works at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, where she befriends a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus. Marcellus is a sharp observer of humans (and his comments to the reader throughout the story are a hoot). He even knows something about the disappearance of Tova's son over thirty years ago - but how can he communicate his knowledge to Tova?
Non-fiction
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies
by Paul Fischer
The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures pulls back the curtain and reveals the riveting story of both Louis Le Prince's life and work, dispelling the secrets that shroud each. This captivating, impeccably researched work presents the never before told history of the motion picture and sheds light on the unsolved mystery of Le Prince's disappearance.
From the Hood to the Holler: A Story of Separate Worlds, Shared Dreams, and the Fight for America's Future
by Charles Booker
Kentucky state representative Charles Booker tells the improbable story of his journey from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country to a political career forging new alliances among forgotten communities across the New South and beyond.
Selecciones de personal
Mi Lenguaje Roto (Inglés: My Broken Life)
escrito por Quiara Alegría Hudes, traducción de Daniel Esparza
Quiara Alegri?a Hudes era la nin?a de ojos penetrantes que permaneci?a resguardada en las escaleras de la casa de su abuela en el norte de Filadelfia mientras observaba a su familia bailar en su estrecha cocina. Estaba asombrada por sus ti?as, ti?os y primos, pero vivi?a aterrada por los secretos de la familia y las historias ocultas del barrio--todo esto mientras intentaba encontrar su propia voz entre el mar de lenguajes que la rodeaban, tanto en el habla como por escrito: ingle?s y espan?ol, cuerpos y libros, arte occidental y altares sagrados. Su familia se convirtio? en su panteo?n privado, un ci?rculo de poderosas mujeres parecidas a orishas con tra?gicas heridas del mundo real, y se comprometio? a contar sus historias, pero primero tendri?a que bajarse de las escaleras y unirse al baile. Tendri?a que encontrar su propio lenguaje. Tejiendo el amor de Hudes por los libros con las historias de su familia, las lecciones aprendidas en el norte de Filadelfia y aquellas adquiridas en la universidad de Yale, esta es una exploracio?n del hogar, la memoria y la pertenencia, narrada por una nin?a obsesionada que lucho? por convertirse en artista para poder capturar el mundo que amaba en toda su belleza, delicada y salvaje.
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Velorio
escrito por Xavier Navarro Aquino, traducción de Aurora Lauzardo Ugarte
Es septiembre de 2017 y el huracán María acaba de arrasar con Puerto Rico. Camila se siente perturbada por la muerte de su hermana, Marisol. Todo empezó cuando le arrancó un pedacito del meñique que sobresalía del fango, tras el deslizamiento de tierra que se la llevó. Incapaz de desprenderse de ella, Camila carga con el cuerpo de su hermana hasta llegar al supuesto paraíso perdido llamado «Memoria». Urayoán, el profeta soñador pero peligroso de Memoria, tiene planes para su nueva sociedad: aspira a un nuevo orden tras el abandono del Gobierno. El paraíso que predica seduce a jóvenes de toda la isla, entre ellos a Pescao, Moriviví y Banto. Todos ellos tendrán que navegar el ascenso entre llamas del tirano Urayoán y enfrentarse a sus impulsos macabros para poder reclamar su hogar, una isla estremecida tanto por el paso impetuoso de María como por la violencia humana.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
Nobody's Magic
by Destiny O. Birdsong
Three Black women with albinism fight to live life on their terms in a world that rarely looks past their appearance. Each portrait is distinct from the others, reminding us that there is more than a single story for any group of people.
Non-fiction
The Impossible City: a Hong Kong Memoir
by Karen Cheung
Hong Kong has long been known as a city of extremes: a former colony of the United Kingdom that today exists at the margins of an authoritarian, ascendant China; a city rocked by mass protests, where residents take to the streets to rally against encroaching threats on their democracy and freedoms. But it is also misunderstood and often romanticized, its history and politics oversimplified in Western headlines. Drawing richly from her own experience, as well as countless interviews with the artists, protestors, students, and writers who have made Hong Kong their home, journalist Karen Cheung gives us an insider's view of this remarkable city, making the case along the way that we should look to Hong Kong as a warning sign for what lies ahead for other global democracies.
Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood
by DaMaris B. Hill
Through the eyes and stories of prominent Black female figures from Zora Neale Hurston to Riley Curry and Michelle Obama, and with an homage to Toni Morrison's Beloved, Breath Better Spent beautifully and trenchantly captures the culture of Black girlhood and its changing relationship to American culture, exploring the highly visible and invisible spaces that Black girls occupy, from school, to home, to others' imaginations, and proceeds to question the disappearance - metaphorically and literally - of Black girls from the American imagination. Powerfully drawing on both history and her own experiences, Hill brings to life the vitality, creativity, and strength of Black girlhood while shining a light on a crisis we cannot ignore.
The Dark Queens: The Bloody Tivalry That Forged The Medieval World
by Shelley Puhak
The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule. Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet, in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport, these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.
Selecciones de personal
Neruda: El Llamado del Poeta (Inglés: Neruda: The Poet's Calling)
escrito por Mark Eisner, traducción, Pedro Gómez, Daniel Jándula, Eloida Viegas
Un convincente retrato biográfico de una de las figuras más fascinantes e influyentes en la historia de América Latina, Pablo Neruda.
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Antología General
escrito por Pablo Neruda
Un original itinerario cronológico por los escritos de Neruda, que entrelaza la prosa con la poesía, las cartas con los artículos periodísticos, y estos con las crónicas de viajes, hasta conformar una biografía vital y literaria del poeta a través de su obra.
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Veinte Poemas de Amor Y Una Cancion Desesperada (Inglés: Twenty Love Poems: And a Song of Despair)
escrito por Pablo Neruda, traducción en inglés, W.S. Merwin
Una de las más célebres obras del poeta chileno Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). Publicado en 1924, el poemario lanzó a su autor a la fama con apenas 19 años de edad, y es una de las obras literarias de mayor renombre del siglo XX en la lengua castellana.
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Ediciones en inglés: Print
English-Language Picks
Fiction
Olga Dies Dreaming
by Tracy Brown
In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Olga, the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers, must confront the effects of long-held family secrets when she falls in love with Matteo, while other family members must weather their own storms.
Non-fiction
Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor's Fight for Fairness
by Laura Coates
A powerful true story and groundbreaking account of bias in the courtroom from CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates, recounting her time as a Black female prosecutor for the US Department of Justice.
Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun
by Charles J. Shields
This authoritative biography of one of the 20th century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of her life that have escaped public knowledge, including her struggle with class, sexuality and race.
Miss Me with That: Hot Takes, Helpful Tidbits, and a Few Hard Truths
by Rachel Lindsay
Rachel Lindsay rose to prominence as The Bachelor's first Black Bachelorette and has since become one of the franchise's most well-known figures--and outspoken critics. But there has always been more to Lindsay than meets the eye, and in this book, she finally tells her own story, in her own words.
Selecciones de personal
Los peligros de fumar en la cama (inglés: The Dangers of Smoking in Bed)
escrito por Mariana Enriquez, traducción en inglés, Megan McDowell
Doce cuentos en los que lo terrorí?co se in?ltra en lo cotidiano. Doce historias perturbadoras que llevan el género de terror a una nueva dimensión.
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Distancia de rescate (Inglés: Fever Dream)
escrito por Samanta Schweblin, traducción en inglés, Megan McDowell
El campo ha cambiado frente a nuestros ojos sin que nadie se diera cuenta. Y quiza? no se trate solo de sequi?as y herbicidas, quiza? se trate del hilo vital y filoso que nos ata a nuestros hijos, y del veneno que echamos sobre ellos. Nada es un cliche? cuando finalmente sucede. Distancia de rescate sigue esta vertiginosa fatalidad haciéndose siempre las mismas preguntas: ¿hay acaso algu?n apocalipsis que no sea personal? ¿Cua?l es el punto exacto en el que, sin saberlo, se da el paso en falso que finalmente nos condena?
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Proyecto Hail Mary (Inglés: Project Hail Mary)
escrito por Andy Weir, versión español traducido por Javier Guerrero Gimeno
Ryland Grace es el único superviviente en una misión desesperada. Es la última oportunidad y, si fracasa, la humanidad y la Tierra misma perecerán.
Claro que, de momento, él no lo sabe. Ni siquiera puede recordar su propio nombre, y mucho menos la naturaleza de su misión o cómo llevarla a cabo.
La nueva novela del autor de El marciano, que se convertirá en una película protagonizada y producida por Ryan Gosling.
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English-Language Picks
Fiction
The Fastest Way to Fall
by Denise Williams
A conflict of interest looms when a fitness coach finds himself attracted to a client, who is secretly reviewing his fitness app for her next writing assignment. Perfect for readers who appreciate romance stories with strong women, cinnamon-roll heroes, and body positivity.
Non-fiction
Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Popular Culture
by Zeba Blay
A film and culture critic, who was one of the first people to coin the viral term #carefreeblackgirls on Twitter, presents essays in which she expands on this initial idea by delving into the work and lasting achievements of influential Black women in American culture.
I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream
by Richard Antoine White
From the streets of Baltimore to the halls of the New Mexico Philharmonic, a professor, mentor and motivational speaker shares the extraordinary story of how he unexpectedly discovered a talent for music and a sense of purpose that led him to where he is today.
Selecciones de personal
Como agua para chocolate (Inglés: Like Water for Chocolate)
escrito por Laura Esquivel, traduccio?n en inglés, Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen
La clásica historia de amor se sitúa en el rancho De la Garza, mientras la dueña tiránica Mamá Elena corta cebolla en la mesa de cocina durante sus últimos días de embarazo. Aún dentro del útero de su madre, la futura hija llora tan violentamente que causa un parto prematuro y la pequeña Tita nace entre las especies para preparar sopa de fideos. Este temprano encuentro con la comida pronto se convierte en una forma de vida. Tita se convierte en una chef maestra y, a lo largo de la historia, comparte puntos especiales de sus recetas favoritas con los lectores.
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Dominicana
escrito por Angie Cruz, versión español traducido por Kianny N. Antigua
El ultimo dia de 1964, la quinceanera Ana Cancion se casa con Juan Ruiz, un hombre veinte anos mayor que ella, en el campo dominicano. Al dia siguiente se vuelve Ana Ruiz, una esposa confinada a un apartamento de un cuarto en Washington Heights. Juan la engana, abusa y controla, hasta le prohibe aprender ingles. Despues de un intento fallido de fuga, Ana se entera de que esta embarazada. Su madre y su esposo comparan su embarazo a ganar la loteria, su nina tendra ciudadania estadounidense. Juan vuelve a la Republica Dominicana cuando la guerra civil comienza, dejando a Cesar, su hermano, cuidando a Ana. Durante ese descanso del confinamiento ella se enamora genuinamente, lo cual despierta su voluntad de pelear por independizarse de su abusador y por su derecho de permanecer en su patria adoptiva. Un retrato atemporal de feminidad y ciudadania, que sigue vigente en esta epoca de migracion forzada.
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Nos llamaron enemigo (Inglés: They Called Us Enemy)
escrito por George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott ; ilustrado por Harmony Becker; versión español traducido por Lawrence Schimel
George Takei ha capturado corazones y mentes en todo el mundo con su cautivadora presencia en el escena y su compromiso incondicional con la igualdad de derechos. Pero, mucho antes de alcanzar nuevas fronteras en Star Trek, se desperto de nino, a los cuatro anos, para encontrar a su pais natal en guerra con el de su padre ... y a su familia entera forzada a abandonar su hogar, rumbo a un futuro incierto. En 1942, bajo ordenes del presidente Franklin D. Roosevelt, cada persona de ascendencia japonesa en la costa oeste fue capturada y enviada a uno de diez 'centros de reubicacion, ' a cientos o miles de millas de sus hogares, donde permanecerian durante anos bajo vigilancia armada. Nos llamaron enemigo es la historia en primera persona de Takei sobre esos anos detras de una alambrada de puas, las alegrias y terrores de crecer bajo un racismo legalizado, las difi?ciles elecciones de su madre, la fe inquebrantable de su padre en la democracia y como estas experiencias sembraron las semillas de su asombroso futuro.
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English-Language Picks
How We Can Win: Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged
by Kimberly Jones
Activist and YA novelist Jones (I'm Not Dying with You Tonight) expands in this searing look at racial inequality on a 2020 viral video in which she compared the impact of white supremacy on Black Americans' socioeconomic status to a fixed Monopoly game. This book expands on the video's theory and suggests policies to redress the economic imbalance.
The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality
by Mike Seilski
The shocking accidental death of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant in January 2020 remains one of those moments when time seemed to stand still. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Sielski (Fading Echoes) presents a riveting chronicle of the life of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant (1978-2020) from his youth up to when "great things" were just beginning to happen.
Let's Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World
by Danielle Friedman
Danielle Friedman is an award-winning journalist whose feature writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, Health, and other publications. Expanding on her viral article in New York Magazine's the Cut, Friedman offers an overview of how the now-hot women's exercise culture emerged, particularly in the United States.
They Can't Take Your Name
by Robert Justice
Wrongly convicted of the gruesome Mother’s Day Massacre, Langston Brown prepares to face his death while his daughter, in a desperate bid to find freedom for him, goes up against a crooked detective who will do anything to stop her.
The Ballerinas
by Rachel Kapelke-Dale
This thriller set in the world of the ballet explores the complexities of female friendship, the dark drive towards physical perfection in the name of artistic expression, the double-edged sword of ambition and passion, and the sublimated rage that so many women hold inside--all culminating in a twist you won't see coming, with magnetic characters you won't soon forget.
Selecciones de personal
Mujeres del alma mi?a : sobre el amor impaciente, la vida larga y las brujas buenas
escrito por Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende bucea en su memoria y nos ofrece un emocionante libro sobre su relacion con el feminismo y el hecho de ser mujer, al tiempo que reivindica que la vida adulta hay que vivirla, sentirla y gozarla con plena intensidad. En Mujeres del alma mia la gran autora chilena nos invita a acompañarla en este viaje personal y emocional donde repasa su vinculacion con el feminismo desde la infancia hasta hoy. Recuerda a algunas mujeres imprescindibles en su vida, como sus anoradas Panchita, Paula o la agente Carmen Balcells; a escritoras relevantes como Virginia Woolf o Margaret Atwood; a jovenes artistas que aglutinan la rebeldia de su generacion o, entre otras muchas, a esas mujeres anonimas que han sufrido la violencia y que llenas de dignidad y coraje se levantan y avanzan... Ellas son las que tanto le inspiran y tanto le han acompanado a lo largo de su vida: sus mujeres del alma. Finalmente, reflexiona tambien sobre el movimiento #MeToo --que apoya y celebra--, sobre las recientes revueltas sociales en su pais de origen y, como no, sobre la nueva situacion que globalmente estamos viviendo con la pandemia. Todo ello sin perder esa inconfundible pasion por la vida y por insistir en que, mas alla de la edad, siempre hay tiempo para el amor.
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English-Language Picks
Call Us What We Carry: Poems
by Amanda Gorman
In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman, #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet, explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, these poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home
by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen
Journalists Warzel and Petersen (Can't Even) refer to their proposal as a "work renovation project" that encompasses four concepts: flexibility, culture, technologies of the office, and community. The pandemic and remote-work chaos heightened awareness of the need for change, the return to work now occurring provides the opportunity, and this book provides a roadmap.
A Killer by Design: Murderers, Mindhunters, and My Quest to Decipher the Criminal Mind
by Ann Wolbert Burgess and Steven Matthew Constantine
Forensic and psychiatric nurse Burgess debuts with an affecting memoir about her crucial if largely unknown role in helping the FBI develop criminal profiling tools. In a revelatory book that is brimming with the fascinating coupled with the macabre, Burgess details the inner workings of the depraved mind. A Killer by Design shows how the BSU's evolving work has forever changed the law enforcement landscape.
All Her Little Secrets
by Wanda M. Morris
Ellice Littlejohn is the sole Black female attorney at her company. When she finds her white boss, and lover, shot to death, she leaves the scene - she has too many secrets to protect and can't afford to be implicated in a possible murder!
The Matzah Ball
by Jean Meltzer
When her publisher insists that she write a Hanukkah romance, Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt, a Jewish woman with a secret career as a Christmas romance novelist, unexpectedly finds inspiration when she encounters a childhood acquaintance at the Matzah Ball.
Mango, Mambo, and Murder
by Raquel V. Reyes
Moving from New York to Miami, food anthropologist Miriam gets a short-term job as a Caribbean cooking expert on a Spanish-language morning TV show. Then folks start dying around her and she adds murder investigation to her to-do list! Yes, this food mystery includes recipes, so dig right in.
Selecciones de personal
Gótico
escrito por Silvia Moreno-Garcia, traduccio?n, Alexander Pa?ez Garcia
Tras recibir una extraña carta de su prima recién casada, Noemí Taboada se dirige a High Place, una casa en el campo en México, sin saber qué encontrará allí. Noemí no parece tener dotes de salvadora: es glamurosa, más acostumbrada a asistir a cócteles que a las tareas de detective. Pero también es fuerte, inteligente y no tiene miedo: ni del nuevo marido de su prima, un inglés amenazante y seductor; ni de su padre, el antiguo patriarca que parece fascinado por Noemí; ni de la casa, que empieza a invadir los sueños de Noemí con visiones de sangre y fatalidad. El único amigo que Noemí encontrará es el hijo menor de la familia, quien también da la impresión de estar tapando secretos oscuros. Porque hay muchos secretos escondidos en las pareces de High Place, como descubrirá Noemí cuando empiece a desenterrar historias de violencia y locura. Cautivada por este mundo aterrador a la par que seductor, a Noemí le resultará difícil salvar a su prima... O incluso escapar de esa enigmática casa.
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Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo (bilingüe)
escrito por Sandra Cisneros, versión español traducido por Liliana Valenzuela
Cuando era joven, Corina deja a su familia mexicana en Chicago para perseguir su sueño de convertirse en escritora en los cafés de París. En cambio, pasa su breve tiempo en la Ciudad de la Luz quedándose sin dinero y haciendo cola con otros inmigrantes para llamar a casa desde un teléfono público roto. Pero los meses de amistad con artistas mendigando en el metro, durmiendo en pisos atestados, y bailando el tango en fiestas subterráneas reciben un brillo duradero por su intensa amistad con Martita y Paola. A lo largo de los años, las tres mujeres se dispersan a tres continentes, cayendo fuera de contacto y fuera de la mente, hasta que una carta redescubierta trae los días de Corina en París con una inmediatez impresionante.
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Tiempos recios
escrito por Mario Vargas Llosa
Guatemala, 1954. El golpe militar perpetrado por Carlos Castillo Armas y auspiciado por Estados Unidos a través de la CIA derroca el gobierno de Jacobo Árbenz. Detrás de este acto violento se encuentra una mentira que pasó por verdad y que cambió el devenir de América Latina: la acusación por parte del gobierno de Eisenhower de que Árbenz alentaba la entrada del comunismo soviético en el continente. Tiempos recios es una historia de conspiraciones internacionales e intereses encontrados, en los años de la Guerra Fría, cuyos ecos resuenan hasta la actualidad. Una historia que involucró a varios países y en la que algunos verdugos acabaron convirtiéndose en víctimas de la misma trama que habían ayudado a construir.
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Tiger King: The Official Tell-All Memoir
by Joe Exotic
Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix original documentary that "consumed the pop-cultural imagination" (The Atlantic) and transfixed a nation in the midst of a global crisis, opens up about his outlandish journey from Midwestern farmer to infamous Tiger King, and finally, to federal inmate
Rebel Homemaker: Food, Family, Life
by Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore has always done things in her own unique way--including how she cooks, lives, and finds happiness at home. In her first lifestyle and cookbook, Drew shares recipes, stories from her life, and personal photos that show how she lives a healthy, delicious, and joyful life through her own rebellious brand of homemaking.
Sis, Don't Settle: How to Stay Smart in Matters of the Heart
by Faith Jenkins
By day, Faith Jenkins is the host of the nationally syndicated TV show Divorce Court; by night, she's a happily married newlywed who navigated these dating streets for years before learning how to attract the love of her dreams. When she turned 35 without a wedding ring in sight, like most women, she started getting tons of questions about not being married. But she made a decision: I. Will. Not. Settle.
Sankofa
by Chibundu Onuzo
Raised in England, Anna Graham learns that the father she never met is the retired dictator of a (fictional) country in West Africa. She sets off to find him, embarking on a sometimes funny, sometimes painful journey. Kirkus Reviews says that the father is "a fantastic, charismatic character, and every scene he's in crackles with energy."
Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me
by Jaimee Foxx
In this debut full of genuine reflection and heartfelt humor, actor and comedian Foxx riffs on parenting and the life experiences that gradually helped shape him as a father. Fans and parents alike will get a kick out of this.
Not All Diamonds and Rosé
by Gabrielle Union
Welcome to the ultimate Real Housewives reunion! Not All Diamonds and Rosé is the definitive oral history of the hit television franchise, from its unlikely start in the gated communities of Orange County to the pop culture behemoth it has become.
Taste: My Life Through Food
by Stanley Tucci
Through food and scenes of family life, Stanley Tucci shares both his personal story and his celebration of all-things taste. Come hungry for the food, the cocktails, the gossip and the fun. Just never, ever, cut up your spaghetti.
Harlem Shuffle
by Colson Whitehead
The author of "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys" brings us a crime caper story set in 1960s Harlem. Ray Carney owns a furniture business, and manages to stay (mostly) inside the law. But then cousin Freddie comes along with his (totally) outside the law schemes, and Ray is sucked in. If you enjoyed "Deacon King Kong" by James McBride, try this exuberant heist novel.
The Matrix
by Lauren Groff
Cast out of the royal court, 17-year-old Marie de France, born the last in a long line of women warriors, is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. Tempted at first to run away, Marie instead rolls up her sleeves and vows to transform the nunnery into a true sanctuary for its residents.
Clark and Division
by Naomi Hirahara
It is 1944, and Aki Ito and her parents are being resettled from incarceration at Manzanar to a Japanese American neighborhood in Chicago. Eager to reunite with her sister, Rose, Aki is horrified to hear that Rose threw herself under a subway train. Aki knows her sister too well to believe that she killed herself, and she resolves to learn the truth.
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
by Mary Roach
Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post) Mary Roach on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet. What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree?
Sisters in Arms
by Kaia Alderson
This historical novel is based on the true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure that American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.
Dear Falling
by T. J. Newman
Thirty minutes before a flight to New York, the family of the pilot is kidnapped. In order for them to live, explains the kidnapper, the pilot must crash the plane, allowing himself and all the passengers to die. The pilot is determined to accept neither choice. The author is a former flight attendant.
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
by Mary Roach
Join "America's funniest science writer" (Peter Carlson, Washington Post) Mary Roach on an irresistible investigation into the unpredictable world where wildlife and humans meet. What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A grizzly bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree?
Sisters in Arms
by Kaia Alderson
This historical novel is based on the true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure that American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.
Dear Falling
by T. J. Newman
Thirty minutes before a flight to New York, the family of the pilot is kidnapped. In order for them to live, explains the kidnapper, the pilot must crash the plane, allowing himself and all the passengers to die. The pilot is determined to accept neither choice. The author is a former flight attendant.
All In: An Autobiography
by Billie Jean King
A tennis legend tells all. In a candid, vividly detailed memoir, co-authored by journalists Howard and Vollers, King (b. 1943) recounts her dazzling 30-year career, from her discovery of tennis when she was 10 to her amazing fame as the top player in the U.S., winner of 39 Grand Slam and 20 Wimbledon titles.
Every Minute Is a Day: A Doctor, an Emergency Room, and a City Under Siege
by Robert Meyer and Dan Koeppel
Meyer, an emergency room physician, teams up with his cousin, New York Times journalist Koeppel, to create a dramatic first-person account of the doctor's experience during the first six months of the pandemic at Montefiore, the largest hospital in one of America's poorest urban counties, the Bronx.
Ladyparts: A Memoir
by Deborah Copaken
In a candid, confessional voice, photojournalist and writer Copaken (Shutterbabe) chronicles her turbulent journey into situational poverty without health care after leaving a dysfunctional marriage. “Ladyparts” contextualizes soured marriage, solo parenting, and dating while ill with the substandard treatment of women by U.S. health care.
Dear Miss Metropolitan
by Carolyn Ferrell
Fern seeks refuge from her mother's pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation's dismay; and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts them and holds them captive in a dilapidated house in Queens.
The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science
by Sam Kean
Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last page, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale.
This Is Your Mind on Plants
by Michael Pollan
Pollan examines and experiences these plants, opium, caffeine, and mescaline, from several very different angles and contexts, and shines a fresh light on a subject that is all too often treated reductively--as a drug, whether licit or illicit.
Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works
by Joshua Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus
Millburn and Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people.
The Other Black Girl
by Zakiya Dalila Harris
When you're the only Black person in your company, you would normally welcome a new Black employee with open arms. So why is Nella getting the sneaking suspicion that new hire Hazel is an enemy rather than an ally? And who is leaving threatening notes warning Nella to leave the company, now?
One Last Stop
by Casey McQuiston
A subway commute becomes a portal to magic and romance when cynical August Landry spots Jane Su on the train one day and develops a crush. To her horror, she learns that Jane is displaced in time, stuck on the Q line forever unless August can figure out a way to save her.
Dead of Winter
by Stephen Mack Jones
Detroit ex-cop August Snow must fight for both his life and the soul of Mexicantown itself when a local family business is targeted by a net of ruthless billionaire developers. This is the third in the "August Snow" series, great for fans of Walter Mosley and Joe Ide.
Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir
by Ashley C. Ford
A potent coming-of-age memoir from a popular podcaster and BuzzFeed host. Ford debuts with a blistering yet tender account of growing up with an incarcerated father. This remarkable, heart-wrenching story of loss, hardship, and self-acceptance astounds.
She Memes Well: Essays
by Quinta Brunson
From comedian Quinta Brunson comes a deeply personal and funny collection of essays about trying to make it when you're broke, overcoming self-doubt and depression, and how she's used humor to navigate her career in unusual directions
House of Sticks: A Memoir
by Ly Tran
An intimate, beautifully written coming-of-age memoir recounting a young girl’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to Ridgewood, Queens, and her struggle to find her voice amid clashing cultural expectations. Readers who loved Tara Westover's Educated (2018) will find a similarly compelling memoir of resilience in a not-often-seen America.
Summer on the Bluffs
by Sunny Hostin
At 71, Amelia Vaux Tanner is moving to France to reunite with an old flame and wants to give her house to one of her goddaughters. All three are invited to spend the summer with her in Oak Bluffs, an affluent Black community on Martha's Vineyard. Their secrets may keep them from getting her house.
Project Hail Mary
by Andy Weir
The author of The Martian raises the stakes. In this thriller, an astronaut wakes from a coma to find his two crew members dead and his memory impaired. Alone, he must use his ingenuity and scientific know-how to prevent an extinction-level threat to humanity and the Earth.