“Black Summers also became a powerful, tender, and hopeful collection about the personal and racial traumas of Black childhood.” - Desiree Cooper, Black Summers
By Dr. Brenda M. Greene
When Desiree Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, first conceived of Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban...
Book ReviewBy Dr. Brenda M. GreeneAngela Dodson’s and Michael Day’s We Have Been Here Before: How Rebellion and Activism Have Always Sustained America (Broadleaf, 2026) provides a compelling counternarrative on the history of enslaved, disenfranchised, and subjugated people in our nation. Through an examination...
Book Review By Dr. Brenda M. Greene
“Words let you outlive yourself. They take your energy, your life force, and speak for you long after you’re gone.”Black (Issac’s Song, 308)
Daniel Black’s novels, Don’t Cry for Me (Hanover Square Press, 2022) and Issac’s Song (Hanover Press,...
Book Review- Our Time Press
By Dr. Brenda M. Greene
“Stories Always Come Back in the Water” - Bonét (26)
Sasha Bonét’s The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters (Alfred Knopf, 2025) draws from Tony Morrison’s classic essay, “The Site of Memory.” Morrison posits that “All water has a...
By Dr. Brenda M. Greene
The Woodie King Jr. Memorial Tribute at the Barrymore Theater on Monday, April 27, was an event that will be cherished and remembered in the theatrical, literary, and performance arts community.
On the stage of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and...
Reviewed by Dr. Brenda M. GreeneBetween Chance and Mercy: PoemsEdge of the Wind: A NovelBy James E. Cherry
James E. Cherry, a socially and politically conscious poet, novelist, and author of Between Chance and Mercy: Poems (Willow Books, 2024) and Edge of the Wind: A...
Dr. Brenda M. GreeneProf. Donna HillThe Center for Black Literature hosted the 18th National Black Writers Conference, a community gathering with the dual purpose of expanding Black literature while opening a dialogue around the layers of environmental justice and its impact on Black and...
The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland
A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland - By DaMaris B. HillBloomsbury Publishing, 163 pages. 2019
“In these poems, the legacy of...
"Something in the Water" by Phyllis R. Dixon - Review by Dr. Brenda M. Greene
Phyllis Dixon’s novel, Something in the Water (Kensington, 2025), based on a compendium of facts in our environment, portrays the underlying reasons for troubled waters in a family and community....
By Dr. Brenda M. GreeneAs we read and meditate on our shared history and cultural experiences and on books, art, and images we see, these meditations leave imprints in our dreams and become part of our personal consciousness; however they do not become firmly...
Book Review by Dr. Brenda M. GreeneThe Queen of Sugar Hill:A Novel of Hattie McDanielReShonda Tate. William Morrow,420 pages, 2024.With Love from Harlem: A Novel of Hazel ScottReShonda Tate. William Morrow, 402 pages, 2026
For every woman who has ever felt unseen, whose brilliance was...
Not only did I greatly admire Garvey, but his conviction also represented one of the most poignant examples of the injustice that the law can exert on an individual’s life trajectory and indeed the trajectory of thousands of people who follow that person if...
Book Review by Dr. Brenda M. Greene
“What you need to know for now is that it was just like this. I wasn’t running away. I was running toward myself.”
From The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
We know that spies have always been necessary...
What you need to know for now is that it was just like this. I wasn’t running away. I was running toward myself.”From The American Daughtersby Maurice Carlos Ruffin
We know that spies have always been necessary and crucial to people and countries engaged in...
Everybody talks about how he’ll change race in America. Erase it or whatever. By this they mean he’ll change white people, which if it happened, would be amazing enough. But nobody mentions the better thing, Dave. How he could absolutely abolish, all at once,...
“Families, as my suddenly silenced uncle used to say, expand like ripples in a pond… Family is not only made up of your living relatives. It is elders long buried and generations yet unborn, with stories as bridges and potential portals.”
Edwidge Danticat, We’re AloneEdwidge...
For Gaza’s Children: Black, Brown, and Jewish Writers and Poets Speak OutMarc Lamont Hill, Haki R. Madhubuti and Keith Gilyard, EditorsThird World Press Foundation, 196 pages, 2025.
What they don’t tell youWhat’s not recorded for newsIs the screaming drownedOut by bombs that rattle bonesBurst eardrums...
Remembering Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu
Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, national educational consultant, publisher, and the author of over 30 books that address empowering Black youth through a culturally responsive curriculum, made his transition on April 25, 2025. His books include Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys...
“My alma mater was books, a good library. . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”- Malcolm X
As we mark the May 19th 2025 centennial of the birth of Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), our renowned Civil...
In his most recent book The Message (One World, 2024), National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates presents readers with his personal journey as he travels and explores the prevalence and impact of racism on peoples throughout the United States, the Middle East, and Africa....
