I am a professor who teaches and works in the field of African American History. Because I am both white and Jewish, I’ve been repeatedly asked to give talks about relationships between African Americans and white Jewish Americans, and about what “went wrong” to shatter the “grand alliance” of the civil rights movement embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I had no answer, but I suspected that none of the stories that we had been told, whether good or bad, were fully true. So I went back to the sources and uncovered a complex and multilayered history. Black and Jewish collaboration was never a given, and underlying tensions and conflicts reflected the broader realities of race and class in the U.S. In the book I explored how these historical and political forces operated, and continue to resonate today.
Not all Jews are white. Again, there are a number of wonderful books by African American Jews that remind us of this fact, and how often we use the word “Jewish” to refer only to Jews of European descent. Azoulay insists on confronting this unthinking racism head-on by reflecting on her experiences as a Black woman who struggled to feel at home in the Jewish community. Too often “Black-Jewish relations” as a phrase defines two discrete communities. This book reminds us that this distortion of the truth both erases Jews of color and lets white Jews avoid taking responsibility for challenging social systems that privilege whiteness.
How do adult children of interracial parents-where one parent is Jewish and one is Black-think about personal identity? This question is at the heart of Katya Gibel Azoulay's Black, Jewish, and Interracial. Motivated by her own experience as the child of a Jewish mother and Jamaican father, Gibel Azoulay blends historical, theoretical, and personal perspectives to explore the possibilities and meanings that arise when Black and Jewish identities merge. As she asks what it means to be Black, Jewish, and interracial, Gibel Azoulay challenges deeply ingrained assumptions about identity and moves toward a consideration of complementary racial identities. Beginning with…
I’m a BIG reader of mysteries and thrillers, but I hate it when you read a thriller and guess who did it on page 20, or it turns out it’s a character so obscure you could never have guessed it! But it’s easy to criticize! I’ve wanted to write a young adult thriller since I was young, and over the last few years, I found myself more able to try. For me, writing my book was like running a marathon…I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but now I’m really happy that I did!
Caroline B. Cooney instantly drew me in with her book's gripping premise: Janie Johnson, your typical high school girl, spots her three-year-old self on a missing child alert on a milk carton during lunch. Suddenly, she's swept into a deep, psychological journey filled with doubt and fear about her own family. Could the parents she loves actually have kidnapped her? I was hooked by the exploration of identity and belonging, as Janie's turmoil—her fear, confusion, and anger—felt really real and relatable.
I found it impossible to put down because you're desperate to uncover the truth alongside Janie. Each revelation about her past tests her relationships and challenges her understanding of love and family. This novel is so unforgettable for me because it blends intense personal drama with the thrill of a mystery. It's not just a story about a potential kidnapping; it's a journey into what defines a family and…
In the vein of psychological thrillers like We Were Liars and One of Us Is Lying, bestselling and Edgar Award nominated author Caroline Cooney’s JANIE series seamlessly blends mystery and suspense with issues of family, friendship and love to offer an emotionally evocative thrill ride of a read.
No one ever really paid close attention to the faces of the missing children on the milk cartons. But as Janie Johnson glanced at the face of the ordinary little girl with her hair in tight pigtails, wearing a dress with a narrow white collar—a three-year-old who had been kidnapped twelve years…
I have long been drawn to how people of the past think about their sexual identities, attractions, and behaviors. I conducted my PhD research at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, where I spent many happy hours reading letters and books voicing people’s unfiltered desires for sexual arousal, connection, and expression. I found the punched-card machines that Alfred Kinsey used to organize data from his personal interviews oddly compelling, and that interest developed into a long-term engagement with the intersection of gender and sexuality with science and technology. I share my fascination with readers through my books on Kinsey, machines used in sex research, contraception, and fertility technology.
Interest in the German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institute for Sexual Science (active 1919–1933 in Berlin) has grown since the television program Transparent included him in its second season in 2015.
Laurie Marhoefer’s new book challenges his status as a queer history hero, highlighting how his views on sexual emancipation, cross-dressing (as drag was then known), and transgenderism were embedded in racism and colonialism. Marhoefer also tells the lesser-known history of Hirschfeld’s companion in later life, Li Shiu Tong, who after Hirschfeld’s death in May 1935 continued his own research on human sexuality.
Li’s previously unknown manuscript and notes—rescued serendipitously from a waste bin soon after his death in Vancouver in 1993—is a stark reminder of how many histories of sexuality are at risk of being (almost) similarly lost.
In 1931, a sexologist arrived in colonial Shanghai to give a public lecture about homosexuality. In the audience was a medical student. The sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, fell in love with the medical student, Li Shiu Tong. Li became Hirschfeld's assistant on a lecture tour around the world.
Racism and the Making of Gay Rights shows how Hirschfeld laid the groundwork for modern gay rights, and how he did so by borrowing from a disturbing set of racist, imperial, and eugenic ideas.
Following Hirschfeld and Li in their travels through the American, Dutch, and British empires, from Manila to Tel Aviv…
After 37 years of being undiagnosed with ADHD, I was so grateful to get my diagnosis! Once I had an inkling that I had ADHD, I began devouring books about it :-) The books in this list are five of many that have helped me understand myself and my brain, and I want to help others have access to them and to the inspiring, affirming, and empowering self-knowledge they provide! These books will help you figure out if you might have an ADHD brain and then, from there, help you work with and celebrate that brain.
This book is a fun way to get inside the head of a teen girl with ADHD! I love reading books with characters with ADHD, and I love reading romance, so this book is my happy place. :-) Mazey Eddings does an awesome job of portraying the mental loops an ADHD brain can get into and how to overcome them through connecting with the right others and working towards becoming one's authentic self.
Tilly in Technicolor is Mazey Eddings's sparkling YA debut about two neurodivergent teens who form a connection over the course of a summer.
Tilly Twomley is desperate for change. White-knuckling her way through high school with flawed executive functioning has left her burnt out and ready to start fresh. Working as an intern for her perfect older sister’s start up isn’t exactly how Tilly wants to spend her summer, but the required travel around Europe promises a much-needed change of scenery as she plans for her future. The problem is, Tilly has no idea what she wants.
I'm a full-time author and freelance editor from a small Canadian city, and I’ve always been fascinated by a good mystery—flipping through the pages, trying to guess who did or didn’t do it. Dark and gritty are my favorites, and the titles on this list do a good job of staying in that realm while still being very much YA. I hope you love them as much as I did!
In this book Ariel—AKA Olivia—is the daughter of a couple who was killed when she was a child. Olivia got away and was raised in foster care, but she’s always been haunted by what happened to her parents. The fact that his story was true crime fodder for the public doesn’t help, with many online speculations as to what really happened.
When new details arise in the case that make it seem as though the events of her parents’ deaths might not be what the public previously thought, Olivia is compelled to return home to her small Oregon hometown to uncover the truth. Equipped with enough red herrings to make your head spin, The Girl I Used to Be is a book that will keep you guessing until the end.
Winner of the Anthony Award for Best Young Adult Mystery Novel
The Girl I Used to Be is another thrilling murder-mystery that'll have you on the edge of your seat from the New York Times-bestselling author April Henry, the author of the Point Last Seen series, Girl, Stolen, and The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die.
Olivia was only three years old when her mother was killed and everyone suspected her father of murder. But his whereabouts remained a mystery. Fast forward fourteen years. New evidence now proves Olivia's father was actually murdered on the same fateful day her mother…
My father was transferred to Southern California from Charlotte, North Carolina when I was fourteen years old. I was excited and my friends were jealous. At that point, all I knew about California was the music of the Beach Boys and the Gidget television series. I thought everyone lived on the beach and knew movie stars. I didn’t know there were neighborhoods like Reseda and Anaheim and Fountain Valley, places where people live lives that have nothing to do with the glamour and celebrity of Hollywood. California has been my home for more than fifty years. I still find it fascinating and puzzling, and I still feel like an outsider.
D.J. Waldie elegantly captures the essence of the ordinary in this beautiful collection of essays. He has lived and worked in Lakewood, California his entire life and he doesn’t drive, which is remarkable in Southern California. Instead, he walks, he observes, and he writes about the kinds of Southern California neighborhoods that I know. I wish that I could describe the sky and the light as accurately and poetically as Waldie does. He has taught me to walk slower and pay attention. His stories of the history of Los Angeles are equally compelling. Waldie says he writes “about sacred and humanizing Los Angeles because I find myself there.” How fortunate for us all!
Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays.
Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie. – Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor
Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It’s through sacred ordinariness that Waldie…
I am an independent author, photographer, wildlife advocate, paranormal enthusiast, and cat mom living in Dallas, Texas. In 2012, I earned my Master's Degree in Art and Performance from the University of Texas at Dallas and have been pursuing my writing career ever since. I published my first book, Cemetery Tours, in 2013 and it will forever be the book that changed my life.
This is another book about supernatural beings of the sea, but this time, it’s all about mermaids! Emerge is the first in a young adult trilogy that follows the modern-day descendants of The Little Mermaid. Author Tobie Easton has absolutely mastered the art of world-building and I would absolutely love to see her underwater kingdom brought to life one day.
Lia Nautilus may be a Mermaid but she's never lived in the ocean. War has ravaged the seven seas ever since the infamous Little Mermaid unleashed a curse that stripped Mer of their immortality. Lia has grown up in a secret community of land-dwelling Mer hidden among Malibu's seaside mansions. Her biggest problems are surviving P.E. and keeping her feelings for Clay Ericson in check. Sure, he's gorgeous in that cocky, leather jacket sort of way and makes her feel like there's a school of fish swimming in her stomach, but getting involved with a human could put Lia's entire…
I was drawn to this book because, like me, the author was born and raised
in Hawaii. I’m not a big reader of short story collections, but this one pulled
me in from story one.
The book contains some of the most finely crafted lines
I’ve read in years. For example: “Sadie watches the spring of muscles flex and yield under her
step-uncles’ undershirts as they plunge their shovels into dirt. She watches
the burial of the carcass, then, eight hours later, its resurrection.”
After reading this line early in the first story, I started taking notes,
which I rarely do. I wasn’t disappointed. The collection is filled with gems
like these. This is Kakimoto’s first book. It’s the start of what might become
a brilliant literary career.
A HAUNTING COLLECTION OF STORIES THAT WEAVES HAWAIIAN MYTHOLOGY WITH A RICH SENSE OF PLACE
This wrenching and sensational debut story collection follows a cast of mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women through a contemporary landscape thick with inherited wisdom and the ghosts of colonisation. This is a Hawai'i where unruly sexuality and generational memory overflow the postcard image of paradise and the boundaries of the real, where the superstitions born of the islands take on the weight of truth.
A childhood encounter with a wild pua'a (pig) on the haunted Pali highway portends one young woman's fraught relationship with…
As a children's book writer, I want my books to be infused with S.T.E.A.M (science, technology, engineering, art, and science), imaginative adventure, and empowering words. These 3 elements are important for cultivating their minds. Great inventions and discoveries have come from people who were curious. I believe that it's our responsibility as parents to expose them to new interests and speak empowering words to their developing minds. Parents play a key role in how their children see themselves. I hope that my books encourage unity, spark the imagination, build strong parent-child relationships, initiate dialogue, and promote learning.
"I like my eyes, my ears, my nose. I like my fingers and my toes. I like me wild. Ilike me tame. I like me different and the same."
Saying "I like" something about myself is self-affirmation. This book is special to me because this is the first book I read to my daughter during my pregnancy. I remember receiving this book from a dear friend at my baby shower. I always knew that words are powerful, especially words from parents or guardians. Our words promote cognitive functioning. I used this book as the foundation to start incorporating positive reinforcement into my daughter through self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-love. Besides the message, I love the wild and colorful illustrations.
High on energy and imagination, this ode to self-esteem encourages kids to appreciate everything about themselves—inside and out. Messy hair? Beaver breath? So what! Here's a little girl who knows what really matters. At once silly and serious, Karen Beaumont's joyous rhyming text and David Catrow's wild illustrations unite in a book that is sassy, soulful . . . and straight from the heart. The sturdy board book is just right for little hands.
My faith is core to who I am. I love Jesus wholeheartedly and believe true fulfillment only comes through a relationship with Him. I believe we are all created on purpose for a purpose. I want every person I come in contact with to know that they are powerful, chosen, loved, and never alone. I also love creating and reading real and fictional stories that have a message. I believe that stories can seep through our layers and speak to the deepest parts of who we are. The books on my list are the ones that seeped deep down into my heart.
It was surprising how much a series for children spoke to my heart. I loved the deep worldbuilding that didn’t shy away from the darker things. As I listened with my daughter, I was overcome by the message of truth, transformation, and the power to do good. This beautiful story encouraged us to have value and purpose in this world–one that is more about being than doing.
After living for years under the occupation by the evil Fangs of Dang, the Igiby children find a map rumoured to lead to the lost Jewels of Anniera - the one thing the Fangs will do anything to find. The family is thrown headlong into a perilous adventure, uncovering truths about who they are that will change their world forever.
Repackaged with new illustrations, this is the opportunity to discover the Wingfeathers.
