Memoirs & Biographies

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  • A Visible Man: A Memoir

    by Edward Enninful

    $30.00

    *ships/available for pickup in 7-10 business days

    From one of fashion's most important changemakers, a memoir of breaking barriers

    When Edward Enninful became the first Black editor in chief of British Vogue, few in the world of fashion wanted to confront how it failed to represent the world we live in. But Edward, a champion of inclusion throughout his life, rapidly changed that.
     
    Edward grew up in Ghana in a world of beauty, riotous color, and strong Black women. Nurtured by his mother, a dressmaker whose West African designs had a flair for drama, he learned in her atelier what it meant for a woman to see herself as truly beautiful. But the threat of violence emerged for his family and they fled the country, becoming refugees in central London. There, Edward faced a more insidious and institutionalized kind of danger: a culture where his opportunities would be diminished because of his accent and the color of his skin.
     
    A Visible Man traces an astonishing journey through one of the world’s most exclusive industries. With heart and humor, Edward candidly shares how as a Black, gay, working-class refugee, he found in fashion not only a home, but the freedom to share the world as he saw it, with Black women often at the center. Determined to reflect the times, through the course of his career he has championed those who have been pushed to the margins, placing first responders, octogenarians, and civil rights activists on the cover of Vogue. He has inspired people with new ways to dream and an exhilarating vision of what is possible, here and now.
     
    Written with style, grace, and emotion, A Visible Man shines a spotlight on the career of one of the greatest creative forces of our times. It is the story of a visionary who changed not only an industry, but how we understand beauty.

  • When They Tell You To Be Good: A Memoir

    by Prince Shakur

    $27.95

    Winner of the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award

    Prince Shakur’s debut memoir brilliantly mines his radicalization and self-realization through examinations of place, childhood, queer identity, and a history of uprisings.

    After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur’s family is rocked by the murder of Prince’s biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince’s father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family’s secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of coming to terms with one’s inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora.

    When They Tell You to Be Good charts Shakur’s political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump’s America. Shakur journeys from France to the Philippines, South Korea, and elsewhere to discover the depths of the Black experience, and engages in deep political questions while participating in movements like Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock. By the end, Shakur reckons with his identity, his family’s immigration, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence.

    Examining a tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, When They Tell You to Be Good shines a light on what we all must ask of ourselves—to be more than what America envisions for the oppressed—as Shakur compels readers to take a closer, deeper look at the political world of young, Black, queer, and radical millennials today.

  • Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical

    by Sherie M. Randolph

    $27.95
    The first complete biography of the brilliant and ostentatious Black Power and women’s liberation leader

    Often photographed in a cowboy hat with her middle finger held defiantly in the air, Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916–2000) left a vibrant legacy as a leader of the Black Power and feminist movements. In the first biography of Kennedy, Sherie M. Randolph traces the life and political influence of this strikingly bold and controversial radical activist. Rather than simply reacting to the predominantly white feminist movement, Kennedy brought the lessons of Black Power to white feminism and built bridges in the struggles against racism and sexism. Randolph narrates Kennedy's progressive upbringing, her pathbreaking graduation from Columbia Law School, and her long career as a media-savvy activist, showing how Kennedy rose to founding roles in organizations such as the National Black Feminist Organization and the National Organization for Women, allying herself with both white and black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, H. Rap Brown, Betty Friedan, and Shirley Chisholm.

    Making use of an extensive and previously uncollected archive, Randolph demonstrates profound connections within the histories of the new left, civil rights, Black Power, and feminism, showing that black feminism was pivotal in shaping postwar U.S. liberation movements.
  • Walking with the Muses by Pat Cleveland
    $17.00

    *Ships in 7-10 business days*

    An exciting account of the international adventures of fashion model Pat Cleveland—one of the first black supermodels during the wild sixties and seventies.

    “Taking her reader through fifty years of fashion from the intersection of the Civil Rights Movement, the disco era's decadence, and the grandeur of Hollywood’s late 70s renaissance, Cleveland provides a glimpse at some of design’s most important moments—and her own personal history.” —Vogue

    “Pat Cleveland is to fashion what Billie Holiday is to the blues; a muse for all ages.” —Essence

    Chronicling of the glamorous life and adventures of Pat Cleveland—one of the first black supermodels—this compelling memoir evokes the bohemian lifestyle and creative zeitgeist of 1970s New York City and features some of today’s most prominent names in fashion, art, and entertainment as they were just gaining their creative footage.

    New York in the sixties and seventies was glamorous and gritty at the same time, a place where people like Warhol, Avedon, and Halston as well as their muses came to pursue their wildest ambitions, and when the well began to run dry they darted off to Paris. Though born on the very fringes of this world, Patricia Cleveland, through a combination of luck, incandescent beauty, and enviable style, soon found herself in the center of all that was creative, bohemian, and elegant. A “walking girl,” a runway fashion model whose inimitable style still turns heads on the runways of New York, Paris, Milan, and Tokyo, Cleveland was in high demand.

    Ranging from the streets of New York to the jet-set beaches of Mexico, from the designer drawing rooms of Paris to the offices of Vogue, here is Cleveland’s larger-than-life story. One minute she’s in a Harlem tenement making her own clothes and dreaming of something bigger, the next she’s about to walk Halston’s show alongside fellow model Anjelica Huston. One minute she’s partying with Mick Jagger and Jack Nicholson, the next she’s sharing the dance floor next to a man with stark white hair, an artist the world would later know as Warhol. In New York, she struggles to secure her first cover of a major magazine. In Paris, she’s the toast of the town. And through the whirlwind of it all, she is forever in pursuit of love, truth, and beauty in this “riveting, celeb-drenched account of her astonishing life in fashion” (Simon Doonan, author of The Asylum).

  • More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)

    by Elaine Welteroth

    $18.00

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Part-manifesto, part-memoir, from the revolutionary editor who infused social consciousness into the pages of Teen Vogue, an exploration of what it means to come into your own—on your own terms

    Throughout her life, Elaine Welteroth has climbed the ranks of media and fashion, shattering ceilings along the way. In this riveting and timely memoir, the groundbreaking journalist unpacks lessons on race, identity, and success through her own journey, from navigating her way as the unstoppable child of an unlikely interracial marriage in small-town California to finding herself on the frontlines of a modern movement for the next generation of change makers.

    Welteroth moves beyond the headlines and highlight reels to share the profound lessons and struggles of being a barrier-breaker across so many intersections. As a young boss and often the only Black woman in the room, she’s had enough of the world telling her—and all women—they’re not enough. As she learns to rely on herself by looking both inward and upward, we’re ultimately reminded that we’re more than enough.

  • Breathe

    by Imani Perry

    $19.95
    2020 Chautauqua Prize Finalist

    2020 NAACP Image Award Nominee - Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction)

    Best-of Lists: Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews) · 25 Can't-Miss Books of 2019 (The Undefeated)

    Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world.

    Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love—finding beauty and possibility in life—and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.

    Perry draws upon the ideas of figures such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her own life and from encounters in places as varied as the West Side of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools.

    With original art for the cover by Ekua Holmes, Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience.
  • Surviving the White Gaze

    by Rebecca Carroll

    Sold out

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    A stirring and powerful memoir from black cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle to overcome a completely white childhood in order to forge her identity as a black woman in America.

    Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older.

     

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