August Lucky Stars: Our National Conversation

As our country continues to grapple with big issues of race, identity, respect, justice and understanding, our thoughts keep going back to certain books, the ones that opened our minds and got us thinking and talking. These stories — heart-wrenching, mind-opening, conversation-starting — are just $1.99 each in e-book throughout August.

On the Road to Freedom by Charles E. Cobb Jr.: This in-depth look at the civil rights movement goes to the places where pioneers of the movement marched, sat-in at lunch counters, gathered in churches; where they spoke, taught, and organized; where they were arrested, where they lost their lives, and where they triumphed.

Award-winning journalist Charles E. Cobb Jr., a former organizer and field secretary for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), knows the journey intimately. He guides us through Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, back to the real grassroots of the movement. He pays tribute not only to the men and women etched into our national memory but to local people whose seemingly small contributions made an impact. We go inside the organizations that framed the movement, travel on the “Freedom Rides” of 1961, and hear first-person accounts about the events that inspired Brown vs. Board of Education. An essential piece of American history, this is also a useful travel guide with maps, photographs, and sidebars of background history, newspaper coverage, and firsthand interviews.

You can buy On the Road to Freedom e-book for $1.99 through August.

Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph: In the 1960s he exhorted students at Columbia University to burn their college to the ground. Today he’s chair of their School of the Arts film division. Jamal Joseph’s personal odyssey—from the streets of Harlem to Riker’s Island and Leavenworth to the halls of Columbia—is as gripping as it is inspiring.

Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. But this was the late 1960s in Bronx’s black ghetto, and fifteen-year-old Eddie was introduced to the tenets of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison on the infamous Rikers Island—charged with conspiracy as one of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the sixties.

When exonerated, Eddie—now called Jamal—became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers’ New York chapter.He joined the “revolutionary underground,” later landing back in prison. Sentenced to more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned three degrees there and found a new calling. He is now chair of Columbia University’s School of the Arts film division—the very school he exhorted students to burn down during one of his most famous speeches as a Panther.

In raw, powerful prose, Jamal Joseph helps us understand what it meant to be a soldier inside the militant Black Panther movement. He recounts a harrowing, sometimes deadly imprisonment as he charts his path to manhood in a book filled with equal parts rage, despair, and hope.

You can buy Panther Baby e-book for $1.99 through August.

The Good Negress by A. J. Verdelle: The year is 1963 and young Denise Palms has rejoined her family in Detroit where she must work to make a place for herself and prepare for the arrival of her mother’s new baby. The baby will mean the end of Denise’s afterschool lessons with a stern teacher who insists that Denise learn to speak “proper” English to make herself heard.

Verdelle’s intuition and ear allow her to dramatize precise moments of Denise’s self-recognition and, in the process, offer an inside look at a maturing intelligence. The Good Negress marks the arrival of an original voice in contemporary fiction.

“Truly extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison

Harold D. Vursell Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters

You can buy The Good Negress e-book for $1.99 through August.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow: Rachel, the daughter of a danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop.

Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity.

This searing and heartwrenching portrait of a young biracial girl dealing with society’s ideas of race and class is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

You can buy The Girl Who Fell from the Sky e-book for $1.99 through August.

Silver Rights by Constance Curry: Silver Rights is a true story of clear-eyed determination, down-home grit, and sweet triumph. It’s the story of the Carter family of Sunflower County, Mississippi, African-American sharecroppers on a cotton plantation who, in 1965, sent seven of their thirteen children to desegregate an all-white school system.

As Marian Wright Edelman notes in her introduction, “this deeply moving book chronicles the pain and poverty in the lives of share-croppers, their extraordinary grit, courage, and endurance.”

The story of the Carter children’s long, difficult road to high school, college, and a way out of the Delta, comes to live in Constance Curry’s firsthand account. And Mae Bertha Carter’s letters to the author resonate with this family’s fierce determination to win those shining, tantalizing rights that novelist Alice Walker has called “silver.”

You can buy Silver Rights e-book for $1.99 through August.

Clover by Dori Sanders: Clover Hill is ten years old when her father, the principal of the local elementary school, marries a white woman, Sara Kate. Just hours later, an automobile accident compels Clover to forge a relationship with the new stepmother she hardly knows in this beautiful, enduring novel about a family lost and found.

First published by Algonquin in 1990 and winner of the Lillian Smith Award for Southern literature that enhances racial awareness, Clover is a national bestseller and has been recommended reading for classrooms across the country. Now on our thirtieth anniversary we have the pleasure of republishing this Algonquin classic in trade paperback, with an original essay by the author. In the spirit of Cold Sassy Tree and The Secret Life of Bees, Clover is a witty, insightful classic for readers of all ages.

You can buy Clover e-book for $1.99 through August.