Showing results by narrator "Deanna Anthony" in All Categories

In the past, being a “difficult bitch” was bad. Girls weren’t supposed to call people out for their BS, stand up for themselves, or do their own thing. This book embraces the insult with irreverent humor, encouraging listeners to be themselves no matter what, including an exploration of the ways this phrase can be interpreted differently among people of different backgrounds.

The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions.

MediMiracle Corporation manufactures Sophrosyne, a miracle cure for opiate addiction. Ellison Ricard, a research analyst for the company, claims to have uncovered data that proves Black users of Sophrosyne experience fatal side effects far more often than people of other races. When Ricard confronts MediMiracle’s charismatic founder and CEO, Peyton Burke, a violent confrontation ensues. The wheelchair-bound Ricard—a Black man who had been severely injured years earlier—is fired that very day.

As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while White-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia. Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past.

Taking care of ourselves is essential, and lately, we’ve started to pay more attention to the ways our physical bodies need and deserve nourishment. But we are not just bodies, we sacred beings, and our souls need just as much care and attention to be healthy. As a clinical psychologist, pastor, and activist, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes has studied and worked with clients, clergy, seminary faculty, faith-based activists, and others to encourage them to think of self-care as both a divine right and a sacred obligation.

In 1692, a few paranoid Puritans accused their neighbors of being witches sending the town flying off the (broomstick) handle. Before it was all over, dozens of women in Salem, Massachusetts were executed—burned at the stake. RIGHT? WRONG! There was some serious witch worry, but no one in the United States was put on a pyre (though the truth isn't much better). And women weren’t the only ones caught in crossfire…maybe don’t tell your dog about this one.

After four years at the country’s top culinary school and several years as head chef in her mother’s restaurant, Rowan Townsend has built a notable reputation. Her farm-to-table collard greens have long been bringing everyone to the yard, but limits on the restaurant’s size have led to long waits. Looking to expand the restaurant, she enters a televised chef competition. The problem? Her infuriatingly talented nemesis from culinary school also enters.

New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.

When was the last time you cried? Was it because you were sad? Or happy? Overwhelmed, or frustrated? Maybe from relief or from pride? Was it in public or in private? Did you feel better afterwards, or worse? The reasons that we cry—and the circumstances in which we shed a tear—are often surprising and beautiful. Sad Happens is a collective, multi-faceted archive of tears that captures the complexity and variety of these circumstances.

People of color have been having abortions since the dawn of time, yet our access is continuously under attack. In Liberating Abortion, award-winning abortion activist Renee Bracey Sherman and journalist Regina Mahone illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment, uncover the hidden figures who set the foundation activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities.

Women are resilient leaders driven to achieve but can often feel stressed out. They are being adversely impacted by the Covid-19 “she-cession” with less and less women returning to the workforce due to the multi-faceted responsibilities they face inside and outside of their homes. And in a world where heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, they can’t afford to wait to relax. Author Angela D. Coleman’s prescription in The Art of Chilling Out for Women teaches women the value of chilling out.

In Our Brave Foremothers, discover an intergenerational, intercultural bouquet of Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous women lifted into the significance that they deserve. From Etel Adnan to Mary Jones, Thelma Garcia Buchholdt to Pura Belpré to Zitkála-Šá, here are 100 women of color who left a lasting mark on United States history. Including both famous and little-known names, the thoughtful profiles and detailed portraits of these women herald their achievements and passions.

In this updated and revised edition of Take a Lesson: Today's Black Achievers on How They Made It and What They Learned Along the Way, award-winning journalist and author Caroline Clarke once again compels a dynamic list of Black business heroes and role models to openly share their own goals, hits, and misses, exploring what they overcame and what they’re still working to overcome, not just for themselves, but for their peers and would be peers, who the equity odds are still against.

Roberto Fratelli is the meanest man in Marthasville, Virginia. So when he puts his antiques store up for sale, the other merchants in town are overjoyed. And now the business has a prospective buyer: local resident and the newly elected mayor's mother, Camille Benson. During a celebration in honor of Camille’s new venture, her best friend, Opal, tells her about finding a letter, purportedly from Sally Fairfax to George Washington, dated 1756, hidden under a chair in the shop. When they return to retrieve the cache, they find Roberto’s lifeless body on the floor—and no letter.

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York—the same night her grandmother dies—or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie’s story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong.

Barack Obama famously said that the purpose of social movements is to get a seat at the table. However, as Deva Woodly argues in Reckoning—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy. Drawing from on-the-ground interviews with activists in the movement, Woodly analyzes the emergence of the M4BL, its organizational structure and culture, and its strategies and tactics.

After losing her parents in high school, Ryan Landry grew up fast, solely focusing on supporting her younger twin sisters. With the twins now preparing for college, the financial stakes are raised so Ryan enters a restaurant-manager-of-the-year contest. Her chances for the grand prize are strong—after all, she’s the executive manager of Everheart Bar and Fine Dining, which is as famous for its exemplary service as it is for its mouth-watering food. The only thing standing in her way? The restaurant’s Michelin star patriarch chef.

How often do you wake up and ask yourself: “How can I be better today than I was yesterday?" Black Excellence: 20 Stories About Rising from Ordinary to Extraordinary will inspire you to expand and broaden the range of phenomenal goals you want to achieve in life. Author L. Jeff Shafer II celebrates Black culture through interviews, research, and his personal journey to show there are endless examples of Black excellence today in many different industries.

Kasi Blythewood has spent most of her life in the shadow of her famous film producer father, who’s deliberately kept her under his thumb with tough love. Ready to make a name for herself, she secretly heads to Austin for a film conference to rustle up some financing for her dream project - an indie series that showcases cuisine from around the world. When Kasi meets chef Declan Everheart, it’s instant lust spiced with an intriguing business opportunity. Declan’s father, a Michelin-starred chef, is interested in funding her film, but there is a sexy string attached....

After years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing. She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell.