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Check it out Download ItThe Three Mothers : how the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation
By: Anna Malaika Tubbs
In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most pivotal heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin’s son James, about Alberta King’s son Martin Luther, and Louise Little’s son Malcolm. But virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them, who were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. Berdis, Alberta, and Louise passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning-from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America’s racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families’ safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.
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Check it out Download ItBrown Girl Dreaming
By: Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson, one of today’s finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Praise for Jacqueline Woodson: Ms. Woodson writes with a sure understanding of the thoughts of young people, offering a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story. but a mature exploration of grown-up issues and self-discovery.
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Check it outRiver Sing Me Home
By: Eleanor Shearer
Rare. Moving. Powerful. This beautiful, page-turning, and redemptive story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children in the aftermath of slavery marks the arrival of a remarkable new talent. Her search begins with an ending…. The master of the Providence plantation in Barbados gathers his slaves and announces the king has decreed an end to slavery. As of the following day, the Emancipation Act of 1834 will come into effect. The cries of joy fall silent when he announces that they are no longer his slaves; they are now his apprentices. No one can leave. They must work for him for another six years. Freedom is just another name for the life they have always lived. So Rachel runs. Away from Providence, she begins a desperate search to find her children–the five who survived birth and were sold. Are any of them still alive? Rachel has to know. The grueling, dangerous journey takes her from Barbados then, by river, deep into the forest of British Guiana, and finally across the sea to Trinidad. She is driven on by the certainty that a mother cannot be truly free without knowing what has become of her children, even if the answer is more than she can bear. These are the stories of Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane, and Mercy. But above all this is the story of Rachel and the extraordinary lengths to which a mother will go to find her children…and her freedom.
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Check it out Download ItTroublemakers in Trousers : women and what they wore to get things done
By: Sarah Albee
Meet twenty-one women through history who wore men’s clothing, pretended to be men, or broke the rules in order to do something they wanted-or needed-to do.
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Check it outThe Keeper : soccer, me, and the law that changed women’s lives
By: Kelcey Ervick
A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.
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Check it out Download ItThe Pirate’s Wife : the remarkable true story of Sarah Kidd
By: Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos
Captain Kidd was one of the most notorious pirates to ever prowl the seas. But few know that Kidd had an accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies. That accomplice was his wife, Sarah Kidd, a well-to-do woman whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Twice widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers. More remarkable still was that Sarah not only survived the tragedy wrought by her infamous husband’s deeds, but went on to live a successful and productive life as one of New York’s most prominent citizens. Marshaling in newly discovered primary-source documents from archives in London, New York, and Boston, historian and journalist Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos reconstructs the extraordinary life of Sarah Kidd, uncovering a rare example of the kind of life that pirate wives lived during the Golden Age of Piracy. A compelling tale of love, treasure, motherhood and survival, this landmark work of narrative nonfiction weaves together the personal and the epic in a sweeping historical story of romance and adventure.
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Check it outThe Woman in the Moon : how Margaret Hamilton helped fly the first astronauts to the moon
By: Richard Maurer
A stunning and intimate biography of Margaret Hamilton, the computer engineer who helped Apollo 11 and mankind get from the Earth to the moon. First-hand accounts, exclusive interviews with the legendary Margaret Hamilton, and detailed science populate the pages of this remarkable biography. In 1969, mankind successfully left our atmosphere and landed on the moon. It took countless hours of calculations, training, wonder, and sacrifice from all of the men and women who worked hard to make that landing. One of those people was Margaret Hamilton. A young computer engineer, Hamilton was hired to develop the completely new software used in the groundbreaking Apollo Space Program. Soon she became the lead engineer, one of the few women in the almost entirely male-dominated profession. But it wasn’t always easy. In The Woman in the Moon, science-writer and journalist Richard Maurer (Destination Moon, 2019) dives deep into the backstory of this extraordinary woman. With first-hand interviews and access to primary sources, this striking biography perfectly captures the exciting atmosphere of the Space Race and the inspiring figure of Margaret Hamilton.
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Check it outJustice Rising: 12 amazing Black women in the Civil Rights Movement
By: Katheryn Russell-Brown
Told through twelve short biographies, this book celebrates just some of the many Black women–each of whom has been largely underrepresented until now–who were instrumental to the nation’s fight for civil rights and the contributions they made in driving the Movement forward.