"Brown Skin, Curly Hair, I Love Being Me", is written as a poem to uplift children who experience the pressures of a society that promotes a specific standard of beauty that isn't always relatable. This book was inspired by my niece who has gracefully navigated through her grade school years embracing her culture while developing into a talented musician, athlete, and dancer. The story is centered around a Nigerian girl who expresses the love and pride she has for her rich African culture from her dad and grandma's side and her African-American culture from her mom and Nana. Learning that these give her the rich heritage and spirit she naturally embodies. By exploring their languages (Yoruba and English) and connecting with her ancestors, she realizes she can be whatever she dreams and believes because of who she already is.

Weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis, Same Family, Different Colors explores the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States. Colorism and color bias—the preference for or presumed superiority of people based on the color of their skin—is a pervasive and damaging but rarely openly discussed phenomenon. In this unprecedented book, Lori L. Tharps explores the issue in African American, Latino, Asian American, and mixed-race families and communities by weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis. The result is a compelling portrait of the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States. Tharps, the mother of three mixed-race children with three distinct skin colors, uses her own family as a starting point to investigate how skin-color difference is dealt with. Her journey takes her across the country and into the lives of dozens of diverse individuals, all of whom have grappled with skin-color politics and speak candidly about experiences that sometimes scarred them. From a Latina woman who was told she couldn’t be in her best friend’s wedding photos because her dark skin would “spoil” the pictures, to a light-skinned African American man who spent his entire childhood “trying to be Black,” Tharps illuminates the complex and multifaceted ways that colorism affects our self-esteem and shapes our lives and relationships. Along with intimate and revealing stories, Tharps adds a historical overview and a contemporary cultural critique to contextualize how various communities and individuals navigate skin-color politics. Groundbreaking and urgent, Same Family, Different Colors is a solution-seeking journey to the heart of identity politics, so that this more subtle “cousin to racism,” in the author’s words, will be exposed and confronted.

A joyfully poetic board book that delivers an ode to African American girls and the beauty of their curls. Me Morning Mirror Smile Shine big hair love This simple, playful, and beautiful board book stars four friends who celebrate the joy of their hairstyles from bouncing curls to swinging braids.

How did immigrants to the United States come to see themselves as white? David R. Roediger has been in the vanguard of the study of race and labor in American history for decades. He first came to prominence as the author of The Wages of Whiteness, a classic study of racism in the development of a white working class in nineteenth-century America. In Working Toward Whiteness, Roediger continues that history into the twentieth century. He recounts how ethnic groups considered white today-including Jewish-, Italian-, and Polish-Americans-were once viewed as undesirables by the WASP establishment in the United States. They eventually became part of white America, through the nascent labor movement, New Deal reforms, and a rise in home-buying. Once assimilated as fully white, many of them adopted the racism of those whites who formerly looked down on them as inferior. From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants-the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods-Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America. A disturbing, necessary, masterful history, Working Toward Whiteness uses the past to illuminate the present. In an Introduction to the 2018 edition, Roediger considers the resonance of the book in the age of Trump, showing how Working Toward Whiteness remains as relevant as ever even though most migrants today are not from Europe.

Mira doesn't like her hair. It curls at the front. It curls at the back. It curls everywhere! She wants it to be straight and smooth, just like her Mama's. But then something unpredictable happens . . . and Mira will never look at her mama's hair the same way again! A delightful celebration of natural hair and the courage it takes to be yourself.

Joy lives in a diverse world and comes from a multicultural family. It is only natural for her to have some questions. Join Joy as she learns how to describe skin color, and about how her skin color can tell her about where her family is from, but not really about who they are. "Daddy Why Am I Brown?" is a meant to be a starter conversation on how kids can learn to talk about skin color in a way that is kind, thoughtful, and healthy. And in the process, they learn a little bit about how to understand the difference between race, ethnicity, and culture.