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A Quick Ting On: The Black Girl Afro
Regular price $22.95 Save $-22.95Black Women's hair is a topic that has been at the centre of contemporary conversation for some time. This informative book explores the rich cultural history of Black Womens' Afros, weaving in anecdotal tales from Black women along the way.
Exploring the ways in which Black women's natural hair is often politicised and judged, A Quick Ting On The Black Girl Afro chronicles the ways in which the styling of Black Women's hair has influenced popular culture and intersected with Black expression.
Complete with intimate interviews and real-life stories about natural hair journeys and the hunt for hair products, A Quick Ting On The Black Girl Afro is a powerful exploration into the Black Woman's Afro - celebrating the versatility and diversity of Black women's natural hair.
Creatures of Passage
Regular price $13.00 Save $-13.00Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022.
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying ill-fated passengers in a haunted car: a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.
Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash-reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw-has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man," who somehow appears each time he goes there.
When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door one day bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face both the family she abandoned and what frightens her most when she looks in the mirror.
Creatures of Passage beautifully threads together the stories of Nephthys, Dash, and others both living and dead. Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington, D.C., filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim themselves.
Bad Love
Regular price $16.95 Save $-16.95A young woman living in London, Ekuah loves deeply and loves hard, yet with each romantic encounter she is left feeling increasingly unmoored and adrift. She struggles in her love for Dee Emeka, a gifted musician, who is both passionate and distant in the way he loves her back. Confirming her worst fears about the unstable foundation of their relationship, he suddenly disappears from her life. Heartbroken, she is left to pick up the pieces, while searching for new validations and preoccupations from others.
But when, against a backdrop of enigmatic, poetic, nights in London, Venice, Accra and Paris, she finds an unexpected new love in the form of Jay Stanley, Ekuah re-focuses on her journey to meaningful love. She is determined to feel deeply again, but can she handle the vulnerability and forgiveness that comes with falling in love?
Ghost Season
Regular price $22.00 Save $-22.00With supreme skill and reverence, capturing shards, stillness and chaos, Fatin Abbas delivers a novel that gallops close and parallel to current events in Sudan.
A dynamic, beautifully orchestrated debut novel connecting five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border.
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese translator William connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a northern nomad with whom he's fallen in love. Meanwhile, Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect to her unfamiliar homeland, and white midwestern aid worker Alex finds his plans thwarted by a changing climate and looming civil war. Dancing between the adults is Mustafa, a clever, endearing twelve-year-old, whose schemes to rise out of poverty set off cataclysmic events on the compound.
Amid the paradoxes of identity, art, humanitarian aid, and a territory riven by conflict, William, Layla, Dena, Alex, and Mustafa must forge bonds stronger than blood or identity. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders?whether they be national, ethnic, or religious?and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
Locating Strongwoman
Regular price $14.95 Save $-14.95Locating Strongwoman is a portrait of unperformed femininity. Eschewing the stereotypical portrayal of the "Strong Woman" and the even more loaded "Strong Black Woman", these poems invite the reader to interrogate the protagonists and find in their stories a quiet strength.
"...This is a book filled with want, love and the lack thereof, with striking lines like, 'As if he wasn't a bed of nails your love/laid on' and 'The factory of my body works overtime'. It teeters between violence and the razor-blade threat thereof. Straddling the inside and outside worlds on the head of a 'bobbing sewing needle', Locating Strongwoman is visceral and raw, vulnerable and strong. It will leave you thinking and feeling long after you turn its last page".
Peter Kahn, author of Little Kings and co-editor of The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks
"Through Locating Strongwoman, Tolu Agbelusi hosts a black women's sleepover. Where we drink wine and share stories, about the many complexities of navigating our hearts, how we are our mother's daughters and how our mothers are complex women. Strongwoman... The chilling truth behind this collection is that to be woman is to be silent... or silenced.
Both in form and content, Locating Strongwoman is a trace of our mothers' silences and the inevitable release of our own voices. Tolu paints in a language that is familiar and comforting. And how wonderful it is to find yourself, over and over in poetry! As the woman who cannot be pinned into a box and doesn't want to be. To be seen."
Vangile Gantsho, author of Red Cotton and Undressing in Front of the Window; co-founder of Impepho Press