Showing results for "Literature and Science" in African American

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, whom they consider to be less than human.

Echo London never wanted to be the curator of the People’s Library, a digital collection of human consciousness. But when she’s assigned as its head librarian, Echo is entrusted with humanity’s greatest minds and historical figures, all of whom have been recreated through controversial consciousness-capturing technology that lets visitors interact with the dead. But an anti-tech rebellion is stirring. When a rebel attack results in tragedy, a mysterious woman wearing an ancient death mask leaves behind cryptic final words for Echo: It all begins with nothing.

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree....

A thousand years into the future, a Black elite class reigns while the underclass toils at their feet. With her society’s future hanging in the balance, young Avi Jore enters into an arranged marriage. But the ceremony turns violent when the servants rebel and kill Avi’s father. In the aftermath of General Jore’s death, Avi and her sister Jade vie for power in a vicious contest. As the rightful heir, Avi has no choice but to defend what’s hers—at any cost. With her loyalties tested and her enemies closing in, Avi must rely on her sister Saige, who searches for allies outside the Union’s walls.

From a new voice in the tradition of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor comes The Prey of Gods, a fantastic, boundary-challenging tale, set in a South African locale both familiar and yet utterly new, which braids elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor. In...

Rewriting the pernicious, enduring relationship between blackness and animality in the history of Western science and philosophy, Becoming Human breaks open the rancorous debate between Black critical theory and posthumanism. Through the cultural terrain of literature by Toni Morrison, Nalo Hopkinson, Audre Lorde, and Octavia Butler, the art of Wangechi Mutu and Ezrom Legae, and the oratory of Frederick Douglass, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson both critiques and displaces the racial logic that has dominated scientific thought since the Enlightenment.

Jackie is a poor boy from Harlem and the victim of abuse from his widowed, alcoholic father. But everything changes on the day he discovers the power of comedy. When his classmates make fun of his tattered clothes, Jackie turns everything around by freely poking fun at himself and soon has everyone on the floor with laughter. His amazing talent, and raging ambition, take him through the local club circuit to become the most sought after comedic entertainer in opulent, '50s Las Vegas and beyond.

A mysterious murder has been committed at a mythical and magical HBCU campus. Nobody knows who did it. School is covering it up in order to protect the students. Until it happens again...

It is the end of days. A nuclear strike hits New York. Alfie, a young black male, survives but with no memory of what has happened. The only thing he can remember with any clarity is how to play his guitar and a few snatches of old blues and folk songs. Another survivor, Meg, has taken refuge in the hills of Vermont, and she, too, is the victim of near absolute amnesia. Her only hope is to survive these darkest of days.

Arnulf slås medvetslös på en engelsk strand och när han vaknar upp befinner han sig, till sin förvåning, i ett kloster. En munk vid namn Stefanus sköter om hans såriga kropp och till en början förstår Arnulf varken ut eller in. Hur har han hamnat där? Och var ska han ta vägen härnäst? Det ena leder till det andra och inte långt därefter är Arnulf, nu under namnet Veulf, återigen på plundringsfärd med ett nytt sällskap vikingar.

A northern white couple has relocated to the South to operate a vineyard on a North Carolina plantation. There, they pass their idle hours listening to the stories of one Uncle Julius, who has a deep knowledge of the land. These stories, however, are more than mere entertainments. They all have their time and place, and they offer not only a quiet commentary on the events of the day but also a deeper reckoning with the plantation’s disturbing past.

Cora was born with a veil. She is able to discern spirits and wield the power of both the dark and the light as well as the ability to heal. Her grandmother, Mi, called it The Knowing. Cora has carried it as both a prophetic blessing and a curse, struggling under the burden until one decision changes her world. Possessed with a healer’s compulsion to help, she is unable to turn away when Fannie arrives on her doorstep, ripped, torn, and hanging precariously on the knife’s edge of death.

Ty Carter is at the prime of his career, making millions in Atlanta real estate, and his Cuban-Jamaican good looks and charm make him a hit with the ladies. One would think he was on top of the world; however, things are not always what they seem. Recently divorced, he’s taking care of his grandfather, who suffers from dementia, and also trying to keep his sexual addiction under wraps.

A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.