“Nowhere near famous but still infamous,” Psalm One is a legend to rap nerds, scholars, and “heads,” and has gone on to work with the brightest names in rap and have her work celebrated and taught around the globe. In Her Word Is Bond, Psalm One tells her own story, from growing up in Englewood, Chicago through her life as a chemist, teacher, and legendary rapper. Intrinsically feminist, this story is a celebration of the life and career of one artist who blazed the trail for women in hip hop.

Her Word is Bond recounts the triumphs and setbacks of a rap legend who blazed a new trail for women in hip hop.

13 years after a TV blacked out trial, the event surfaces in all it's splendor, captured by the only indie media source covering the trial of the century, if you ever wondered what really went down, now is your chance to know first hand, relive the historic drama through the masterful journalism of Ital Iman I, truly Journalism at it's best, a great study for law students and seasoned veterans will also fare-well' with this read...Ital Iman Brings this one h

Soulful and with the sweetest taboo voice, STARR is an exceptional songbird, born to sing. A star rising in the Philadelphia music scene, she is always fresh with new lyrics as the microphone fits comfortably in her, coffee brown hands. Full lips part to expose her pearly whites as, her voice releases influences of Jazz, Soul, Gospel, R&B, Hip - Hop and Neo Soul. Rofiki, STARRS manager and Rastafarian boyfriend of ten years, has been away for a few weeks in New York City, supposedly putting together a new deal for her. But upon his return, STARR discovers that Sneaky Rofiki believes, her style and genre of music isnt what the music industry seeks. Unknown to her, he is investing, his interest on a new artist, a new freaky, a new Kandi Gyal. Bluesy with the bluest eyes, a U.S. Marine returning from war and the new owner of a coffee shop. Where he notices the intense discussion that left STARR ready to battle. He comes to the rescue or is she just in time to save him? The beat goes on with BearLove, the bad-est and wicked-est drummer internationally that inspires, STARR to sing and groove to new tunes.

ALL DAY is a behind-the-bars, personal glimpse into the issue of mass incarceration via an unpredictable, insightful and ultimately hopeful reflection on teaching teens while they await sentencing. Told with equal parts raw honesty and unbridled compassion, ALL DAY recounts a year in Liza Jessie Peterson's classroom at Island Academy, the high school for inmates detained at New York City's Rikers Island. A poet and actress who had done occasional workshops at the correctional facility, Peterson was ill-prepared for a full-time stint teaching in the GED program for the incarcerated youths. For the first time faced with full days teaching the rambunctious, hyper, and fragile adolescent inmates, "Ms. P" comes to understand the essence of her predominantly Black and Latino students as she attempts not only to educate them, but to instill them with a sense of self-worth long stripped from their lives. "I have quite a spirited group of drama kings, court jesters, flyboy gangsters, tricksters, and wannabe pimps all in my charge, all up in my face, to educate," Peterson discovers. "Corralling this motley crew of bad-news bears to do any lesson is like running boot camp for hyperactive gremlins. I have to be consistent, alert, firm, witty, fearless, and demanding, and most important, I have to have strong command of the subject I'm teaching." Discipline is always a challenge, with the students spouting street-infused backtalk and often bouncing off the walls with pent-up testosterone. Peterson learns quickly that she must keep the upper hand-set the rules and enforce them with rigor, even when her sympathetic heart starts to waver. Despite their relentless bravura and antics-and in part because of it-Peterson becomes a fierce advocate for her students. She works to instill the young men, mostly black, with a sense of pride about their history and culture: from their African roots to Langston Hughes and Malcolm X. She encourages them to explore and express their true feelings by writing their own poems and essays. When the boys push her buttons (on an almost daily basis) she pushes back, demanding that they meet not only her expectations or the standards of the curriculum, but set expectations for themselves-something most of them have never before been asked to do. She witnesses some amazing successes as some of the boys come into their own under her tutelage. Peterson vividly captures the prison milieu and the exuberance of the kids who have been handed a raw deal by society and have become lost within the system. Her time in the classroom teaches her something, too-that these boys want to be rescued. They want normalcy and love and opportunity.

New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, whose characters The Atlantic calls “bold, smart women oozing sexuality and vulnerability” introduces an unbreakable quartet of friends looking for love in this delectable romance. They call themselves the Blackbirds. Kwanzaa Browne, Indigo Abdulrahaman, Destiny Jones, and Ericka Stockwell are four best friends who are closer than sisters and will go to the ends of the earth for one another. Yet even their deep bond can’t heal all wounds from their individual pasts, as the collegiate and post-collegiate women struggle with their own demons, drama, and desires. Trying to forget her cheating ex-fiancé, Kwanzaa becomes entangled with a wicked one-night stand—a man who turns out to be one in five million. Indigo is in an endless on-again, off-again relationship with her footballer boyfriend, and in her time between dysfunctional relationships she pursues other naughty desires. Destiny, readjusting to normal life, struggles to control her own anger after avenging a deep wrong landed her in juvi, while at the same time trying to have her first real relationship—one she has initiated using an alias to hide her past from her lover. Divorced Ericka is in remission from cancer and trying to deal with two decades of animosity with her radical mother while keeping secret the desperate crush she has always had on Destiny’s father...a passion with an older man that just may be reciprocated. As the women try to overcome—or give in to—their impulses, they find not only themselves tested but also the one thing they always considered unbreakable: their friendship.