What is it like when an 8-year-old Ethiopian boy finds himself living in one of the largest cities in the United States? How do you adapt to a life in Harlem, and in a school when you can't even speak the language? How do you learn and interact with others, make friends and strive to become a success? In his book, African Booty Scratcher, Michael Asmerom paints a vivid picture of his life as a young immigrant, desperately trying to fit into life in New York City and find his way amidst a confusing clash of cultures. From bullying and name-calling to trying to fit in with peers in a country that had its own views on African people, through to growing up as a child of African parents, becoming Americanized and choosing a career path, Michael tells his story with a mixture of humor and fluent writing. It is a book which carries a heartfelt message, but also something of a cautionary note at the same time. We are who we are because of the upbringing we receive and the effort we put in to succeed.

Why do students who belong to racial minority groups—particularly black students—fall short in school performance? This book provides a comprehensive and critical examination of black identity and its implications for black academic achievement and intellectualism. No other group of students has been more studied, more misunderstood, and more maligned than African American students. The racial gap between White and African American students does exist: a difference of roughly 20 percent in college graduation rates has persisted for more than the past two decades; and since 1988, the racial gap on the reading and mathematics sections of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has increased from 189 points to 201 points. What are the true sources of these differences? In this book, psychology professor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Black Psychology Kevin Cokley, PhD, delves into and challenges the dominant narrative regarding black student achievement by examining the themes of black identity, the role of self-esteem, the hurdles that result in academic difficulties, and the root sources of academic motivation. He proposes a bold alternate narrative that uses black identity as the theoretical framework to examine factors in academic achievement and challenge the widely accepted notion of black anti-intellectualism. This book will be valuable to all educators, especially those at the high school through undergraduate college/university level, as well as counselors associated with academic and community institutions, social service providers, policy makers, clergy and lay staff within the faith-based community, and parents.

Aaron Recess is a glazier for Cape Verdean Glass. Until his co-worker introduces him to cocaine, weed is the only drug that Aaron does. He snorts the cocaine in his frontroom while being watched by Danielle, a firebrand woman with frightening normalcy despite her otherworldly evilness. As a result of his descent into the proverbial silent aquamarine depths of a watery world, Aarons nose undergoes a transformation that a lowlife makes after he supplied the fatal drug dose to a woman Aaron has never met. Detailed with a lipsticked harridan, biracial litterbug, hopped-up teetotaler, German spelunker, and more, Villains Always Make Mistakes shadows Aaron in real time during his trailblazing misadventure to find out why Danielle is a wolf in sheeps clothing.

The expansion of the Black American middle class and the unprecedented increase in the number of Black immigrants since the 1960s have transformed the cultural landscape of New York. In The New Noir, Orly Clerge explores the richly complex worlds of an extraordinary generation of Black middle class adults who have migrated from different corners of the African diaspora to suburbia. The Black middle class today consists of diverse groups whose ongoing cultural, political, and material ties to the American South and Global South shape their cultural interactions at work, in their suburban neighborhoods, and at their kitchen tables. Clerge compellingly analyzes the making of a new multinational Black middle class and how they create a spectrum of Black identities that help them carve out places of their own in a changing 21st-century global city. Paying particular attention to the largest Black ethnic groups in the country, Black Americans, Jamaicans, and Haitians, Clerge’s ethnography draws on over 80 interviews with residents to examine the overlooked places where New York’s middle class resides in Queens and Long Island. This book reveals that region and nationality shape how the Black middle class negotiates the everyday politics of race and class.

This timely collection brings together a diverse array of field-leading contributors in order to offer an interdisciplinary investigation into a discourse, research, and action agenda in pursuit of the universal application of human dignity.

" . . . A novel about an autistic boy whose drawings represent something much deeper than even the doctors who study can grasp; his father, serving 25 to life for murder; his mother, trying to hold herself together and fix her broken child. It's a supernatural journey of crime and punishment, retribution and redemption that ultimately leads to a father saving his son, a mother connecting with her child, and an American family reclaiming itself"--

The Nuyorican Poets Café has for the past forty years provided a space for multicultural artistic expression and a platform for the articulation of Puerto Rican and black cultural politics. The Café’s performances—poetry, music, hip hop, comedy, and drama—have been studied in detail, but until now, little attention has been paid to the voices of its women artists. Through archival research and interview, Nuyorican Feminist Performance examines the contributions of 1970s and ’80s performeras and how they challenged the Café’s gender politics. It also looks at recent artists who have built on that foundation with hip hop performances that speak to contemporary audiences. The book spotlights the work of foundational artists such as Sandra María Esteves, Martita Morales, Luz Rodríguez, and Amina Muñoz, before turning to contemporary artists La Bruja, Mariposa, Aya de León, and Nilaja Sun, who infuse their poetry and solo pieces with both Nuyorican and hip hop aesthetics.