Poetry. This new edition includes interruptions that focus on dismantling rape culture. "By turns violent, political, romantic, incestual, cerebral, bodily, and personal, this second full-length from Tamayo (RED MISSED ACHES) bears the formal markings of the hypermodern in its deployment of digital, pop, and intertextual elements. Written after her first trip back to her native Colombia in 25 years, the book is indebted to Rihanna, Barthes, and Aim� C�saire, whose texts she mines voraciously. Those influences, as well as the spectres of Alfred Molina and the author's father, haunt the page, intermixed with screen captures, cheap internet advertising, deliberate misspellings, and pun-ridden Spanglish."--Publishers Weekly

Jaquan Smiley, a successful, young, bachelor, just bumped into the gorgeous Chandra James inside Wal-Mart. He has a successful business, fine cars, a beautiful home, and young, attractive women vying for his attention...but he's missing one thing—that special someone to share in his life. The lovely, 40-something Chandra James is now living in Jackson, Mississippi, with her mother, trying to get her life back on track after escaping a volatile relationship with her ex-boyfriend in Memphis. She's not looking for a relationship--especially not one with a younger man. But Jaquan's kindness and persistence nearly sweeps her off her feet. Despite their age difference, can Chandra be Da One Jaquan has been looking for all of his life? Or will Jaquan’s overbearing, alcoholic, gold-digging mother succeed in coming between them? Moreover, will Chandra’s ex-lover, Michael, who has vowed to kill her once he's released from prison, destroy everything? In order to have a chance at true happiness and find love in each other’s arms, they must overcome all of the pitfalls and obstacles that come to test their relationship. This exciting, new novel by Claude Gooch is definitely a page-turner that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat! Read and find out if Jaquan has found Da One...

It is very important to know who you are and to know where you came from in your past in order to know where you are going in your future. It is my hope that you will take the time to review the issues of our nations past andcompare them to the current issues of today. Somehow they are exactly the same arent they? My question to you is how come these issues still remain the same? Take the challenge, read this book and learn about my peoples struggles FROM WHENCE WE CAME.

On the cold streets of Crackston, Georgia, there was only one commandant the young hustler lived by: get rich or die tryin’. While decent folks worked a 9–5 and waited on the Lord for salvation, the young took to the streets for their own deliverance. Instead of waiting for a pie in the sky, they whipped up their own pies. Cutting precise slices, they toiled daily delivering their load up and down the highway of sin, praying for profit. But their hustle did not go unanswered, as some were saved out a life of poverty , while the rest were cast into the hell of despair. Money become their salvation and fame their deliverance. In the end, what seemed as the way out was the trap that keep them enslaved. Old School: “Young blood, the game is lose-lose: you either go lose everything you got or everyone you love.”

It is a practiced belief that it takes a community to raise the youth of that community. But what happens to the youth of that community if the people of the community and the very soil the community is built on are corrupted? Vietnam G. Franklin, also known as Li'l One Gone, was conceived through a mixture of heated passion laced with a dose of intoxicants. Born into a community rampant with crime and violence, a place where the consumption of illegal drugs is more prevalent to the substance of life to the occupants of the community than food and water are; trying to find his way; rejected, ridiculed, and despised by his peers; an introvert by circumstance roaming the streets solo, trying to find his way, Li'l One Gone often finds himself in the company of the neighborhood movers and shakers. Pulled in under their wings, thrown into the hustle and bustle of the streets, schooled by them on the ways of the game and the arts of the streets called the life, will Li'l One Gone rise to the top of the cesspool of the streets, or will he be met with the same fate of the ones who tucked him in underneath their wings?

Life is complicated for a group of five friends living in the inner city. Tammy is starting to feel the pressure of being a single mother of two girls. Chris, her kids' father has been incarcerated for the past five months, not making Tammy's situation any better. Lamar and Falisha have crossed the lines of their friendship after having sex for the first time, and Kim is in her own world lately. She is so focused on her job that she really doesn't have time for any kind of relationship at the moment. Lisa has bitten off more than she can chew when Dre, her prior boyfriend, comes home from prison demanding that they be together again. When it comes to love, hate, trust, honesty, lying, cheating, deceit, betrayal, drama, money, power, respect—and back-breaking, limitless, raw and uncut sex—these five childhood friends experience it all. There will be no holding back, no biting of the tongue, and best believe the gloves are coming off when the single ladies take you through the everyday life of living as a female in the hood. Expect everything . . . but boredom!