Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Burn This Book is a powerful collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves.As Americans we often take our freedom of speech for granted. When we talk about censorship we talk about China, the former Soviet Union, or the Middle East. But recent political developments—including the passage of the Patriot Act—have ...

Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.Unloved, unseen, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes. In this way she dreams of becoming beautiful, of becoming someone – like her white schoolfellows – worthy of care and attention. Immersing us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression Ohio, Toni Morrison’s indelib...

A fascinating, first-person account of a historic era in the struggle for black empowerment in America.Long an iconic figure for radicals, Huey Newton is now being discovered by those interested in the history of America's social movements. Was he a gifted leader of his people or a dangerous outlaw? Were the Black Panthers heroes or terrorists?Whether Newton and the Panthers are remembered in a positive or a negative light, no one questions Newton's status ...

A celebration of the voices of women of color in prayerWomen of color pray and have prayed out of necessity for survival, out of love for the Divine and because we believe in the power of prayer. Prayer has been the prevailing force behind the education of our children, protection and courage for our men, hope for our daughters and the balm that heals sorrows.—from the IntroductionPrayers by women around the world—from China and Japan, to Syria and G...

Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home, the farm where she was kept as a slave.Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, she is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, ‘Beloved’. A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison’s enduring masterpiece and best-known work.‘Dazzling. . . Magica...

What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Andrei Sakharov, and James Michener have in common? They were all published by Bob Bernstein during his twenty-five-year run as president of Random House, before he brought the dissidents Liu Binyan, Jacobo Timerman, Natan Sharansky, and Václav Havel to worldwide attention in his role as the father of modern human rights.Starting as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, Bernstein moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Ben...

What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Andrei Sakharov, and James Michener have in common? They were all published by Bob Bernstein during his twenty-five-year run as president of Random House, before he brought the dissidents Liu Binyan, Jacobo Timerman, Natan Sharansky, and Václav Havel to worldwide attention in his role as the father of modern human rights.Starting as an office boy at Simon & Schuster in 1946, Bernstein moved to Random House in 1956 and succeeded Be...

'Extravagantly beautiful... Enormously, achingly alive... A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter' New York TimesAs young girls, Nel and Sula shared each other's secrets and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married.Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her. Sula is a story of fear - the fear that traps us...

The author of On Writing Well presents stories and advice on the writing process from Frank McCourt, Annie Dillard, and many more.For anyone who enjoys reading memoirs—or is thinking about writing one—this collection offers a master class from nine distinguished authors: Russell Baker, Jill Ker Conway, Annie Dillard, Ian Frazier, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alfred Kazin, Frank McCourt, Toni Morrison, and Eileen Simpson."Annie Dillard talks of her Pittsb...

Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Beloved Toni Morrison investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation’s collective unconscious.In a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America’s most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the c...

Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Beloved Toni Morrison investigates Black characters in the American literary canon and the way they shaped the nation’s collective unconscious.In a dazzling series of lectures from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University, Toni Morrison interrogates America’s most famous works and authors, drawing a direct line from the Black bodies that built the nation to the Black characters that many of the c...

Toni Morrison’s fierce and provocative novel exposes the damage adults wreak on children, and how this echoes through the generations.Sweetness wants to love her child, Bride, but she struggles to love her as a mother should.Bride, now glamorous, grown up, ebony-black and panther-like, wants to love her man, Booker, but she finds herself betrayed by a moment in her past, a moment borne of a desperate burn for the love of her mother. Booker cannot fathom Bri...