Novels
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
In his first book for young adults, bestselling author Sherman Alexie
tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the
Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his
own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an
all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the
school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the
author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by
acclaimed artist Ellen Forney, that reflect the character's art, chronicles
the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he
attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
http://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-True-Diary-Part-Time-Indian/dp/0316013684
Kindred
Octavia Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday
with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home
in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the
white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been
summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time
to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more
arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not
Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60931.Kindred
Angry Black White Boy
Adam Mansback
Macon Detornay is a suburban white boy possessed and politicized
by black culture, and filled with rage toward white America. After
moving to New York City for college, Macon begins robbing white
passengers in his taxicab, setting off a manhunt for the black man
presumed to be committing the crimes. When his true identity is
revealed, Macon finds himself to be a celebrity and makes use of the
spotlight to hold forth on the evils and invisibility of whiteness. Soon
he launches the Race Traitor Project, a stress-addled collective that
attracts guilty liberals, wannabe gangstas, and bandwagon riders
from all over the country to participate in a Day of Apology—a day set
aside for white people to make amends for four hundred years of
oppression. The Day of Apology pushes New York City over the edge
into an epic riot, forcing Macon to confront the depth of his own
commitment to the struggle. http://www.amazon.com/Angry-Black-White-Boy-Novel/dp/1400054877
The End of the Jews
Adam Mansbach
Each member of the mercurial clan in Adam Mansbach’s bold new
novel faces the impossible choice between the people they love and
the art that sustains them. Tristan Brodsky, sprung from the asphalt of
the depression-era Bronx, goes on to become one of the swaggering
Jewish geniuses who remakes American culture while slowly
suffocating his poet wife, who harbors secrets of her own. Nina
Hricek, a driven young Czech photographer escapes from behind the
Iron Curtain with a group of black musicians only to find herself
trapped yet again, this time in a doomed love affair. And finally, Tris
Freedman, grandson of Tristan and lover of Nina, a graffiti artist and
unanchored revolutionary, cannibalizes his family history to feed his
muse. In the end, their stories converge and the survival of each
requires the sacrifice of another. http://www.amazon.com/End-Jews-Novel-Adam-Mansbach/dp/0385520441/
Stone Butch Blues
Leslie Feinberg
Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the
finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered
existence. Woman or man? Thats the question that rages like a storm
around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up
differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950s, coming out as
a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist 60s, deciding to
pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a
community in the early 70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply
moving novel sees Jess coming full circle, she learns to accept the
complexities of being a transgendered person in a world demanding
simple explanations: a he-she emerging whole, weathering the
turbulence. http://www.amazon.com/Stone-Butch-Blues-Leslie-Feinberg/dp/1459608453/
ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343935145&sr=1-1&keywords=stone+butch
+blues
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid
At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an
uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the
tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting . . . Changez is living
an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton,
he is snapped up by the elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson.
He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with elegant,
beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same
exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in
the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted
city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica
eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own
identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more
fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love. http://www.amazon.com/The-Reluctant-Fundamentalist-A-Novel/dp/0151013047
Passing
Nella Larsen
Irene Redfield, the novel's protagonist, is a woman with an enviable
life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a
comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Her work arranging
charity balls that gather Harlem's elite creates a sense of purpose and
respectability for Irene. But her hold on this world begins to slip the
day she encounters Clare Kendry, a childhood friend with whom she
had lost touch. Clare—light-skinned, beautiful, and charming—tells
Irene how, after her father's death, she left behind the black
neighborhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding
her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband. As Clare
begins inserting herself into Irene's life, Irene is thrown into a panic,
terrified of the consequences of Clare's dangerous behavior. And
when Clare witnesses the vibrancy and energy of the community she
left behind, her burning desire to come back threatens to shatter her
careful deception. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/349929.Passing
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an
ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one
character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind
of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola
Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to
bear: "You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you
looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it
came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some
mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness
to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they
took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and
went about the world with it." There are far uglier things in the world
than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them.
She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by
her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what
she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the
blondest hair and the bluest eye. http://www.amazon.com/Bluest-Eye-Vintage-International/dp/0307278441/
ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344010238&sr=1-1&keywords=the+bluest
+eye
Drama
The Dutchman & The Slave
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
Centered squarely on the Negro-white conflict,
both Dutchman and The Slave are literally shocking plays—in ideas, in
language, in honest anger. They illuminate as with a flash of lightning
a deadly serious problem—and they bring an eloquent and
exceptionally powerful voice to the American theatre. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79528.Dutchman_The_Slave
for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow
is enuf
Ntozake Shange
From its inception in 1974 to its critical success on Broadway, this
work has excited and inspired audiences all over the country.
Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it means to be
of color and female in the 20th century. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/
58098.for_colored_girls_who_have_considered_suicide_when_the_rainbow_is_enuf
Fences
August Wilson
The protagonist of Fences, Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man.
He has had to be—to survive. For Troy Maxson has gone through life
in an America where to be proud and black was to face pressures that
could crush a man, body and soul. But now the 1950s are yielding to
the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s... a spirit that is changing the
world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can...a
spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he
never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less… http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/539282.Fences
Memoir and biography
A Taste of Power
Elaine Brown
Brown's account of her life at the highest levels of the Black Panther
party's hierarchy. More than a journey through a turbulent time in
American history, this is the story of a black woman's battle to define
herself. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/913316.A_Taste_of_Power
The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir
Stacyann Chin
Staceyann Chin, acclaimed and iconic performance artist, now brings
her extraordinary talents to the page in a brave, lyrical, and fiercely
candid memoir about growing up in Jamaica. She plumbs tender and
unsettling memories as she writes about drifting from one home to the
next, coming out as a lesbian, and finding the man she believes to be
her father and ultimately her voice. Hers is an unforgettable story told
with grace, humor, and courage.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5600534-the-other-side-of-paradise
Black Boy
Richard Wright
Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi, with poverty,
hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around
him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about taverns. Surly, brutal,
cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by
whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the
other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the
common lot. Black Boy is Richard Wright's powerful account of his
journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. It is at
once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment—a
poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human
suffering. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Boy-P-S-Richard-Wright/dp/0061443085
Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade
Chase Clifford
Seventh grade: You remember it, don't you? Sweet sixteen seemed
impossibly far away, an elegant, unattainable future. All that we had
was the doldrums of thirteen -- not so sweet, and definitely queer.
Now, some of the finest observers of the gay experience take us back
to the homerooms and hallways of our youth, in a collection of original
essays that captures that time of adolescence when social and sexual
development was at its raging worst. From gym class to kissing
parties, obsessive crushes to after-school pummelings, every day
held the possibility of discovery -- and complete humiliation. For
those of us who are gay, our sexuality added another twist,
that extra little way we didn't quite fit in. It was a time of becoming
who we truly are, a passage into adulthood that was as memorable as
it was agonizing. Queer 13 tells these tales of teenage trauma -- from
funny to painful, reflective to literary -- all ringing with the universal
truths of a poignant, extraordinary time. http://www.amazon.com/Queer-13-Lesbian-Writers-Seventh/dp/0688158110
The Beautiful Struggle
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who
rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and newage believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing
company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of
African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission
was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence—
and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack
—and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so
his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main
challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically
miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and alltoo-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful
Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period,
and their father’s steadfast efforts—assisted by mothers, teachers,
and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to
meet the needs of a troubled present—to keep them whole in a world
that seemed bent on their destruction. http://www.amazon.com/The-Beautiful-Struggle-Unlikely-Manhood/dp/0385520360
Farewell to Manzanar
Jean Wakatsuki Houston
Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was
uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment
camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight
towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured
cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a
dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular
song except the nation’s #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In." Farewell to
Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's
attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a
native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow
up behind barbed wire in the United States. http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Manzanar-Japanese-Experience-Internment/dp/
0553272586
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X and Alex Haley
From hustling, drug addiction and armed violence in America's black
ghettos Malcolm X turned, in a dramatic prison conversion, to the
puritanical fervor of the Black Muslims. As their spokesman he
became identified in the white press as a terrifying teacher of race
hatred; but to his direct audience, the oppressed American blacks, he
brought hope and self-respect. This autobiography (written with Alex
Haley) reveals his quick-witted integrity, usually obscured by batteries
of frenzied headlines, and the fierce idealism which led him to reject
both liberal hypocrisies and black racialism. http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Malcolm-Penguin-Modern-Classics/dp/
0141185430/ref=sr_1_3?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344012779&sr=1-3&keywords=malcolm+x
Assata
Assata Shakur
On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne
Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed,
while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about
the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a
white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to
defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and
their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her
conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder.
This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the
fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media
and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the
experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the
strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White
revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is
a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in
America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography
of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Assata.html?id=XyljCgAAQBAJ
Graphic novels and histories
Nat Turner
Kyle Baker
The story of Nat Turner and his slave rebellion—which began on
August 21, 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia—is known among
school children and adults. To some he is a hero, a symbol of Black
resistance and a precursor to the civil rights movement; to others he
is monster—a murderer whose name is never uttered. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2080794.Nat_Turner
Students for a Democratic Society
Harvey Pekar
In 1962 at a United Auto Workers' camp in Michigan, Students for a
Democratic Society held its historic convention and prepared the
famous Port Huron Statement, drafted by Tom Hayden. This
statement, criticizing the U.S. government's failure to pursue
international peace or address domestic inequality, became the
organization's manifesto. Its last convention was held in 1969 in
Chicago, where, collapsing under the weight of its notoriety and
popularity, it shattered into myriad factions. Through brilliant art and
they were-there dialogue, famed graphic novelist Harvey Pekar, gifted
artist Gary Dumm, and renowned historian Paul Buhle illustrate the
tumultuous decade that first defined and then was defined by the men
and women who gathered under the SDS banner. Students for a
Democratic Society: A Graphic History captures the idealism and
activism that drove a generation of young Americans to believe that
even one person's actions can help transform the world. http://www.amazon.com/Students-Democratic-Society-Graphic-History/dp/
0809095394
Maus I and II
Art Spiegelman
[T]he complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and
surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust
through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and
is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of
survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way
affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of
immeasurable significance. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15195.The_Complete_Maus
American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang
Jin Wang starts at a new school where he’s the only ChineseAmerican student. When a boy from Taiwan joins his class, Jin
doesn’t want to be associated with an FOB like him. Jin just wants to
be an all-American boy, because he’s in love with an all-American girl.
Danny is an all-American boy: great at basketball, popular with the
girls. But his obnoxious Chinese cousin Chin-Kee’s annual visit is
such a disaster that it ruins Danny’s reputation at school, leaving him
with no choice but to transfer somewhere he can start all over again.
The Monkey King has lived for thousands of years and mastered the
arts of kung fu and the heavenly disciplines. He’s ready to join the
ranks of the immortal gods in heaven. But there’s no place in heaven
for a monkey. Each of these characters cannot help himself alone, but
how can they possibly help each other? They’re going to have to find
a way—if they want fix the disasters their lives have become. http://www.amazon.com/American-Born-Chinese-Gene-Luen/dp/0312384483/
ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344011296&sr=1-1&keywords=american
+born+chinese
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel
Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive
restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral
home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent,
and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his
male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is
alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a
daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from
assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as
Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most
intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison
comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the
denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Home-Tragicomic-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0618871713/
ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453419337&sr=1-1&keywords=fun+home
Poetry
The Other Side of Night
Fransisco Alarcón
Alarcón invokes both the mysteries of Mesoamerica and the
"otherness" of his gay identity. "My skin is dark / as the night / in this
country / of noontime," he writes, "but my soul / is even darker / from
all the light / I carry inside." In lyrical poems open to wide
interpretation, he transcends ethnic concerns to address social,
sexual, and historical issues of concern to all Americans. The fourteen
new poems in From the Other Side of Night offer startling new
commentaries on life and love, sex and AIDS. Shifting effortlessly
between English and Spanish—and even Nahuatl—Alarcón
demonstrates the gift of language that has earned him both a wide
readership and the admiration of fellow poets. With this book, he
invites new readers to meet him where the darkness is palpable and
the soul burns bright. http://books.google.com/books/about/From_the_Other_Side_of_Night.html?
id=UatnCX_09U0C
Tarnish and Masquerade
Roger Bonair-Agard
These poems chart an exile's coming-of-age and an increasingly
relevant immigrant's experience. Whether set in Trinidad, Washington
Heights, Texas, Brooklyn or other less-fixed locales, these poems
written (and spoken) with equal parts joy and fury are full of clarity,
compassion and unsentimentality. In Bonair-Agard's collection, we
get to taste rum for the first time, get angry at adults for the first time,
and point fingers at those who should know better. http://www.cypherbooks.org/books/release-tarnish.html
Nonfiction
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
Since it was first published, this famous study of the Black Problem in
America has become a classic. Powerful, haunting and prophetic, it
sounds a clarion warning to the world. http://www.amazon.com/Hrw-Library-Fire-Next-Time/dp/003055442X/ref=sr_1_1?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344010131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+fire+next+time+james
+baldwin
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism
Derrick Bell
The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to
present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These
essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues
of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law
and reality, the “racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the
temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more. http://www.amazon.com/Faces-At-Bottom-Well-Permanence/dp/0465068146/
ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343935218&sr=1-1&keywords=faces+at+the
+bottom+of+the+well+derrick+bell
Visual art
Collected Works
Elizabeth Catlett
The U.S.-born sculptor and printmaker, who lived most of her life in
Mexico, blended art and social consciousness. Her work confronted
the most disturbing injustices against African Americans. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/04/local/la-me-elizabeth-catlett-20120404
Collected Works
Christi Furnas
At 25, Christi Furnas was diagnosed with schizophrenia. This queeridentified woman has used her disability as inspiration for making
beautiful art and connecting with other mentally ill artists. Based in
Minneapolis, MN, Furnas has been involved with Spectrum Artworks,
an organization that serves as a community and studio space for
artists with mental illness.
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/smart-christi-furnas-disability-art-feminism
Self Portraits (multiple works)
Frida Kahlo
Drawn from personal experiences, including her marriage,
her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are
often characterized by their suggestions of pain. Of her 143 paintings,
55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of
physical and psychological wounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo#Career_as_painter
Vanilla Nightmare Series
Adrian Piper
In the "Vanilla Nightmare" series that she began in 1986, Ms. Piper
makes charcoal drawings over New York Times articles about race
relations and advertisements for the good life. Her images are
phantoms, often larger than the white people in the advertisements,
indeed often larger than life, with no individuality. They are little more
than forces of lubriciousness, potency, envelopment and night.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/26/arts/review-art-adrian-piper-s-head-onconfrontation-of-racism.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Music
Black Boy Radio
Actual Proof
A two-man group from North Carolina, Actual Proof (Enigma and
Sundown) goes the concept route with its first album, relaying the
story of a young boy growing up alongside the radio in Raleigh…
Lyrically, the duo has a relatable, everyman style akin to Little Brother
or De La Soul, with solid storytelling, slick verbals, and no gangster
fronting whatsoever. Extremely listenable and undeniably funky, Black
Boy Radio also benefits from quality features, including Raheem
DeVaughn ("All the Way"), Rapsody ("Headlights"), Bird & The
Midnight Falcons ("A Letter to Coretta"), and Geechi Suede from
Camp Lo ("Poison Ivy Gloss").
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/black-boy-radio/id513488235
The Cool
Lupe Fiasco
The Cool is cool not only for its sober, clear-headed vibe -- Fiasco
ponders everything from the apocalypse to poverty to the weight of
worldly possessions in these songs, some of them produced with a
level of sensitivity uncommon among studio tracks by Soundtrakk -but also for its potential. Songs like "Dumb It Down," about the music
industry's insistence on the same old sorry themes, burn with
relatability and realness. But others go deeper. "Little Weapon,"
produced by Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump, and "Intruder Alert"
shape-shift customary hip-hop dialogue to let the issues of the day
come sharply into focus. They make you think. http://www.amazon.com/Lupe-Fiascos-Cool-Fiasco/dp/B000WPNL8Q
Distant Relatives
Nas & Damien Marley
International Hip Hop superstar Nas and Grammy-winning artist
Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley join creative forces to release this highly
anticipated and exciting 2010 collaboration. This is an album created
by the two serious artists to explore and celebrate the correlations
and deep-rooted connections between reggae and Hip Hop, tracing
both sounds back to the African motherland that is both the cradle of
humanity and the wellspring of mankind's music. The project features
the signature instrumentation and musicianship of Marley with the
hard-hitting beats and lyrics of Nas. Distant Relatives traces the direct
line from Dancehall Reggae's breakthrough moment 40 years ago to
the rise of Hip Hop several years later. http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Relatives-Nas/dp/B0039ZF8D2/ref=sr_1_1?
s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1344012707&sr=1-1&keywords=nas+distant+relatives
Film and television
City of God
Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take
different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug dealer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/
The Color Purple
The award-winning drama about a black woman's struggles to take
control of her life in a small Southern town in the early 20th century,
based on Alice Walker's novel. Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover,
Margaret Avery and Oprah Winfrey head an impressive cast, under the
direction of Steven Spielberg. http://www.amazon.com/Color-Purple-Danny-Glover/dp/0790729717/ref=sr_1_3?
s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1344011864&sr=1-3&keywords=the+color+purple
Daughters of the Dust
Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of
South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained
well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these
mores in America. Set in 1902. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104057/plotsummary
4 Little Girls
From the director of Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X comes “a
masterpiece.” (Chicago Tribune) When a bomb tears through the
basement of a black Baptist church on September 15, 1963, it takes
the lives of four young girls. This racially motivated crime, sparks the
nation’s outrage and helps fuel the civil rights movement sweeping
across the country. http://www.amazon.com/4-Little-Girls-Spike-Lee/dp/B000053V7G
Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes provides a riveting examination of
manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976039/
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
Chantel Mitchell (Ariyan Johnson), a hip, articulate, black high-school
girl in Brooklyn, is determined not to become "just another girl on the
IRT" (the IRT is one of NYC's subway lines). She dreams of medical
school, a family, and an escape from the generational poverty and
street-corner life her friends seem to have accepted as their lot. But
personal and sexual challenges confront Chantel on her way to
fulfilling these dreams. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104575/plotsummary
Kids
An amoral, HIV-positive skateboarder sets out to deflower as many
virgins as possible while a local girl who contracted his disease tries
to save his next target from her same fate. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113540/
Sankofa
A self-absorbed Black American fashion model on a photo shoot in
Africa is spiritually transported back to a plantation in the West Indies
where she experiences first-hand the physical and psychic horrors of
chattel slavery, and eventually the redemptive power of community
and rebellion as she becomes a member of a freedom-seeking
Maroon colony. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108041/plotsummary
Slavery by Another Name
[A] 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most
cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended
with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as
chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of
African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking
force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no
crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly
bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Tolerated
by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the
20th century. http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/
HerStory
A 6-episode new-media series about two trans women in Los Angeles
who have given up on love, when suddenly chance encounters give
them hope. HerStory depicts the unique, complicated, and very
human women we see in queer communities, and explores how these
women navigate the intersections of label identity and love. herstoryshow.com