"A poetic and raw coming-of-age memoir in essays about blackness, masculinity, and addiction"--

"Before Billy Porter was slaying red carpets and giving an iconic Emmy-winning performance in the celebrated TV show Pose; before he was the groundbreaking Tony and Grammy Award-winning star of Broadway's Kinky Boots, ... Porter was a young boy in Pittsburgh who was seen as different, who didn't fit in. At five years old, Porter was sent to therapy to 'fix' his effeminacy. He was endlessly bullied at school, sexually abused by his stepfather, and...

"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other,...

A compilation of 3 works by pioneering filmmaker Marlon Riggs addressing issues of black gay male identity and confronting HIV/AIDS. Anthem (9 minutes) is an experimental music video asserting a defiant homoeroticism of African American male sexuality. Affirmations (10 minutes) explores black male dreams and desires and is framed by the poetry of Essex Hemphill. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret) (38 minutes) is a poetic and intimate film presenting...

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was at once a major twentieth century American author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, a prophetic voice calling Americans, Black and white, to confront their shared racial tragedy. James Baldwin: the price of the ticket captures on film the passionate intellect and courageous writing of a man who was born black, impoverished, gay and gifted. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket uses striking archival...

"A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro--the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro : The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father...

From an international drag superstar and pop culture icon comes his most revealing and personal work to date-a deeply intimate memoir of growing up black, poor and queer in a broken home and discovering the power of performance, found family and self-acceptance.

"In this collection, Arceneaux takes stock of how far he has traveled--and how much ground he still has to cover in this patriarchal, heteronormative society. He explores the opportunities afforded to Black creatives but also the doors that remain shut or ever-so-slightly ajar; the confounding challenges of dating in a time when social media has made everything both more accessible and more unreliable; and the allure of returning home while still...

"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...

Weaving together his brilliant analyses of literature, art, and music with fearless insights on race, gender, and history. The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them--an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O'Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the...