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Did everyone have an imaginary friend (or just me)? : adventures in boyhood / by Ellis, Jay,1981-author.;
"What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, military brat hustling school-to-school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from every child's favorite co-conspirator -- their imaginary best friend. Born in the perfect storm of especially ferocious rain and a sugar-fueled imagination, Mikey, his imaginary best friend, steps in to figuratively hold Jay's hand through various youthful shenanigans. A testament to the importance of imagination, trusting oneself, and making space for your creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend or Just Me? is a memoir of a 90s kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate everything from parallel pop culture universes, like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews, to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides him through greater tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target drive-by and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license. As imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking within yourself for guidance to some of life's biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homie"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; Ellis, Jay, 1981-; African American actors; African American children; Imaginary companions.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Your first million : why you don't have to be born into a legacy of wealth to leave one behind : an entrepreneur's guide / by Hamilton, Arlan,author.; Nelson, Rachel L.,author.;
"Having lived nearly her entire life below the poverty line before going on to attain wealth and success as an entrepreneur and investor, Arlan Hamilton knows that entrepreneurship is the quickest path to money and power -- particularly for those who haven't had much of it in the past. In Your First Million, she shows how anyone -- no matter what they look like or how much money they have -- they can tap into all the new tools they already have at their disposal to get their million-dollar idea off the ground. Readers will learn: how to identify unmet needs, raise money, choose the right collaborators, create multiple income streams, and turn their unique knowledge and experience into a profitable businesses -- while reinvesting in their communities and empowering others to do the same. If we can change who gets to decide what new ideas are worthy, and who gets to turn those ideas into reality, not only can we change our own circumstances -- we can change the world"--
Subjects: African American businesspeople; Business education.; Businesspeople; Entrepreneurship.; Intergenerational relations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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His name is George Floyd : one man's life and the struggle for racial justice / by Samuels, Robert,1984-author.; Olorunnipa, Toluse,1986-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy-from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing-telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off a series of protests in the United States and around the world, awakening millions to the dire need for reimagining this country's broken systems of policing. But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals, and a name that has become synonymous with civil rights, there is the reality of one man's stolen life: a life beset by suffocating systemic pressures that ultimately proved inescapable. This biography of George Floyd shows the athletic young boy raised in the projects of Houston's Third Ward who would become a father, a partner, a friend, and a man constantly in search of a better life. In retracing Floyd's story, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa bring to light the determination Floyd carried as he faced the relentless struggle to survive as a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the larger context of America's deeply troubled history of institutional racism, His Name Is George Floyd examines the Floyd family's roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his Houston schools, the overpolicing of his communities, the devastating snares of the prison system, and his attempts to break free from drug dependence-putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and extensive original reporting, Samuels and Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd's America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Floyd, George, 1973-2020.; African American men; African Americans; African Americans; Black lives matter movement.; Murder victims; Police brutality; Racism; Trials (Police misconduct);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Luster / by Leilani, Raven,author.;
"Sharp, comic, disruptive, tender, Raven Leilani's debut novel, Luster, sees a young black woman fall into art and someone else's open marriage. Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties--sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage--with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home. She becomes a hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman who young Akila knows. Razor sharp, darkly comic, sexually charged, socially disruptive, Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way."--
Subjects: Novels.; Novels.; Triangles (Interpersonal relations); Young women; African American women artists; Adopted children; Domestic fiction.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Say their names : how Black lives came to matter in America / by Bunn, Curtis,author.; Charles, Nick(Journalist),author.; Cottman, Michael H.,author.; Gaines, Patrice,author.; Harriston, Keith,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."For many, the story of the weeks of protests in the summer of 2020 began with the horrific nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds when Police Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd on camera, and it ended with the sweeping federal, state, and intrapersonal changes that followed. It is a simple story, wherein white America finally witnessed enough brutality to move their collective consciousness. The only problem is that it isn't true. George Floyd was not the first Black man to be killed by police-he wasn't even the first to inspire nation-wide protests-yet his death came at a time when America was already at a tipping point. In say their names, five seasoned journalists probe this critical shift. With a piercing examination of how inequality has been propagated throughout history, from Black imprisonment and the Convict Leasing program to long-standing predatory medical practices to over-policing, the authors highlight the disparities that have long characterized the dangers of being Black in America. They examine the many moderate attempts to counteract these inequalities, from the modern Civil Rights movement to Ferguson, and how the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others pushed compliance with an unjust system to its breaking point. Finally, they outline the momentous changes that have resulted from this movement, while at the same time proposing necessary next steps to move forward. With a combination of penetrating, focused journalism and affecting personal insight, the authors bring together their collective years of reporting, creating a cohesive and comprehensive understanding of racial inequality in America"--
Subjects: African Americans; African Americans; Black lives matter movement.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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God bless you, Otis Spunkmeyer / by Thomas, Joseph Earl,author.;
"After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life-of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Psychological fiction.; Novels.; African American men; Fathers and sons; Interpersonal relations; Veterans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The hate u give [videorecording] / by Hall, Regina,actor.; Hornsby, Russell,actor.; Mackie, Anthony,1978-actor.; Rae, Issa,actor.; Smith, Algee,1994-actor.; Tillman, George,1969-film director.; Stenberg, Amandla,actor.; Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, Inc.,publisher.;
Amandla Stenberg, Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie, Issa Rae, Algee Smith.Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Now, facing pressures from all sides of the community, Starr tries to find her voice in order to stand up for what's right.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.MPAA rating: PG-13.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1, 2.0.
Subjects: Fiction films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; African American teenagers; Race relations; Police shootings; Witnesses;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The message / by Coates, Ta-Nehisi,author.;
"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories - our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking - expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist - and named for Nubian pharaoh - Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the "steampunk" city of "old traditions and new machinery," meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains - and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the "racial reckoning" of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community - a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians - the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him - and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Coates, Ta-Nehisi; African American journalists; Journalists;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The truths we hold : an American journey / by Harris, Kamala D.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages [287]-307) and index."From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country. By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers in The Truths We Hold a master class in problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come"--
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Harris, Kamala D.; Harris, Kamala D.; United States. Congress. Senate; African American women legislators; National characteristics, American.; Legislators; Justice, Administration of; Public prosecutors; Attorneys general;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Till [videorecording] / by Beauchamp, Keith A.,film producer,screenwriter.; Bennett, Haley,1988-actor.; Broccoli, Barbara,1960-film producer.; Bukowski, Bobby,director of photography.; Chukwu, Chinonye,1985-film director,screenwriter.; Deadwyler, Danielle,actor.; Faison, Frankie,actor.; Goldberg, Whoopi,1955-actor,film producer.; Hall, Jalyn,actor.; Korzeniowski, Abel,1972-composer (expression); Levine, Thomas,film producer.; Patane, Ron,editor.; Reilly, Michael,film producer,screenwriter.; Renell, Jamie,actor.; Zollo, Frederick,film producer.; Eon Productions (Firm),production company.; Orion Pictures,publisher.; Whoop, Inc.,production company.;
Music by Abel Korzeniowski ; editor, Ron Patane ; director of photography Bobby Bukowski.Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Jamie Renell, Whoopi Goldberg, Sean Patrick Thomas, John Douglas Thompson.Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.Described video for the blind and visually impaired.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD ; wide screen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Biographical films.; Feature films.; Fiction films.; Historical films.; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; African Americans; Nineteen fifties; Race relations;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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