Search Results: Titles starting with S from Oasis in the Diaspora

Hyperion Books For Children, 2003. 1. Fine. Hardcover
Box 4

Longman Nigeria, 1973. 1st. Fine. Softcover

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Doubleday, 2003. 1st. Fine. The debut of a major new talent, SAPPHIRE'S GRAVE tells the stories of several generations of African-American women, bringing their spirit and their sorrow to life with a power, sensitivity, and immediacy. In 1749 in Sierra Leone, a woman of fierce dignity is captured and forced onto a slave ship. On the harrowing voyage to the Americas, she is beaten for her unrelenting will and staunch pride. When she arrives, she gives birth to a daughter who is called Sapphire because of the "black-blue-black" complexion she shares with her mother. Sapphire has also inherited her mother's strength and defiant spirit, and despite a life of poverty and opression, she grows up to mother several daughters of her own. Even when tragedy strikes and part of Sapphire dies, her strength gives rise to a legend that will sustain the women who follow her, "each carrying something of her mother, her grandmother, her aunts; each passing on to her own daughters blessing and cursing, the… Read More

Random House, 1977. 1. Good. Ten stories of Black life written with Ms. Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in "The Apprentice" to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizers wife, to the dark and bright notes of the title story about the passengers on a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation. Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries -- Toni Cade Bambara handles them all the expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, "Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat...she dazzles, she charms." Hardcover
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Little, Brown, 1996. 1st. Pristine. The Seasons of Beento Blackbird marks the debut of Akosua Busia, an exciting and passionate new novelist. It is the story of Solomon Wilberforce, a magnetic and brilliant man who writes bestselling children's books under the name Beento Blackbird and who has dedicated himself to educating the far-flung children of African descent about their glorious heritage. And it is also the story of the three women who love him: Miriam, the Caribbean midwife who delivered him into the world when she was nine years old; Samantha, his beautiful, talented, and utterly modern New York book agent; and Ashia, an innocent woman-child who awaits him in her native village in Ghana. Solomon spends one season a year with each of these very different women. But when a family tragedy brings him to New York out of season, he finds that the neat compartments that once separated Miriam, Sam, and Ashia begin to fold in on one another. In a life that was once ordered by the cadence of… Read More

Random House Publishing Group, 2009. 1st. Pristine. For Josephine Evans, home was on the stages of the world where she spent thirty years establishing herself as one of the finest actresses of her generation. Josephine was the toast of Europe, and her fabulous apartment in Amsterdam’s theater district was a popular gathering place for an international community of artists, actors, and expatriates who considered themselves true citizens of the world. Josephine lived above and beyond the reach of conventional definitions of who and what an African American diva could be, and her legions of loyal fans loved her for it. She had a perfect life and enough sense to live it to the hilt, but then a war she didn’t fully understand turned everything upside down, thrusting her into a role she never wanted and was not prepared to play. Suddenly the target of angry protests aimed at the country she had never really felt was her own, Josephine is forced to return to America to see if she can create a new… Read More

Scribner's, 1948. 1st. Good. In a perceptive study of the meaning of love, two people find themselves at once deeply in love and deeply at odds. Hardcover
No dust jacket

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Zoland Books, 1999. Fine. First English edition
Hardcover

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A.A. Knopf, 1999. 1st. Fine. Told with the irrepressible warmth and humor of a natural-born storyteller, The Seventh Child is the chronicle of a remarkable woman's life, and of three generations of an African-American family. The seventh of eight children, Freddie Mae Baxter was born in 1923 in rural South Carolina. When her father left the family, her mother had to raise the children alone, and Freddie Mae went to work--first picking cotton, then cooking for the white families in town. At seventeen, she decided to go up North in search of new horizons and a better life. Now, in an astonishingly original voice, Freddie Mae shares with us the wisdom of her seventy-five years, and some vivid memories: from her childhood in the South ("Two cents was money in those days. . .") to her life in Harlem, where she played saxophone in an all-girl band ("We just jammed!") and danced at all the hot clubs ("Anyplace that there was music, you could find me"). Through the good times, bad times, and the… Read More

Agate Pub., 2003. 1. Fine. Smart, explicit, and side-splittingly funny."--Ebony Jill Nelson, bestselling author of Volunteer Slavery and Straight, No Chaser, has written a steamy and uproarious debut novel that tells the story of Lydia and Acey, two childhood friends who've grown up to become successful midcareer professionals. But their career success is matched by their romantic and sexual frustrations. One night, dissecting their dissatisfactions over a bottle of wine, they concoct a plan: why not develop a business that discreetly supplies handsome black men willing and able to serve the sexual needs of black women? Thus is born the idea for Sexual Healing -- a "full--service" spa aimed at meeting all of black women's intimate desires. Launching the enterprise is a struggle, but the conflict is just beginning: even as their delighted customer base grows, they face a firestorm of attacks from hostile media, grandstanding church leaders and other outraged parties. From the most dignified black… Read More

Strebor Books, 2009. 1st. Fine. A sexy, psychological thriller that explores why men and women commit sinister crimes of passion, do the most hateful things in the name of love, and cook up schemes to punish one another when sweet romance turns sour.Groomed for the good life by his affluent family, Thaddeus Carmichael has a new MBA and a new outlook. Unfortunately, Thad is also embroiled in a power struggle with his girlfriend, the ever-fabulous Chelsea Fuller. Thad insists that living happily ever after is a state of mind, and he questions the state of Chelsea’s mind. As time goes on, their relationship is seasoned with deceit, betrayal, and obsession—ingredients for a bitter existence. Bad things happen to good people who wrestle with destiny, so Thad’s pursuit of his passion over his fate with Chelsea is a recipe for disaster. With pulsating dialogue and funky backdrops, Sin in Soul’s Kitchen is a voyage into literary sensuality and suspense. It’s full of high drama and vibrates… Read More

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. First printing, first edition
Signed & inscribed
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Dutton, 1996. 2nd. Fine. The Time is now. The place is Washington, D.C. Ph.D. candidate Lisa Allen is a success in everything she does - except finding a good man to marry. Thirtysomething and newly out of a long-term relationship, she meets charismatic Walter Henderson at her friend Sundi's wedding. He seems perfect - except for the scandalous baggage he carries from his recent divorce. To her complete surprise, Lisa catches the bouquet but loses her heart. New bride Sundiata Karif changed her name ten years ago when she got involved in the Pan-Africanist movement. Financially secure and spiritually independent, she is not ready for the kind of life her Nigerian husband, Chris, expects. His cultural traditions concerning the role of a wife will challenge Sundi's beliefs and values as their emotions are linked on a collision course. Advertising executive Danielle, Sundi's maid of honor and Lisa's big sister, is married to a wonderful guy. Roger is successful, passionate, and supportive of his… Read More

St. Martin's Press, 1987. J. California Cooper writes with a transparent clarity and such exuberant energy that her characters leap off the page, bursting with stories they've got to tell--stories of simple people, stories of families and fate, of love and marriage, of death and the triumph of the human spirit. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. Signed & and inscribed
First edition, ninth printing
Box 2

Knopf, 1977. 1. Very Good. Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, a novel of large beauty and power, creates a magical world out of four generations of black life in America, a world we enter on the day of the birth of Macon Dead, Jr. (known as Milkman), son of the richest black family in a mid-western town; the day on which the lonely insurance man, Robert Smith, poised in blue silk wings, attempts to fly from a steeple of the hospital, a black Icarus looking homeward... We see Milkman growing up in his father's money-haunted, death-haunted house with his silent sisters and strangely passive mother, beginning to move outward--through his profound love and combat with his friend Guitar...through Guitar's mad and loving commitment to the secret avengers called the Seven Days...through Milkman's exotic, imprisoning affair with his love-blind cousin, Hagar...and through his unconscious apprenticeship to his mystical Aunt Pilate, who saved his life before he was born. And we follow him as he strikes out… Read More

World Publishing Company, 1947. 1. Very Good. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR TAYARI JONES “How can a novel’s social criticism be so unflinching and clear, yet its plot moves like a house on fire? I am tempted to describe Petry as a magician for the many ways that The Street amazes, but this description cheapens her talent . . . Petry is a gifted artist.” — Tayari Jones, from the IntroductionThe Street follows the spirited Lutie Johnson, a newly single mother whose efforts to claim a share of the American Dream for herself and her young son meet frustration at every turn in 1940s Harlem. Opening a fresh perspective on the realities and challenges of black, female, working-class life, The Street became the first novel by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies. Hardcover
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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2002. 1st. Fair. From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life. Inscribed Hard cover Damage to dust jacket but not the book Box 3

Simon and Schuster, 2000. 1st. Fine. Strength and resilience fuel an urban teen’s fight for survival in this acclaimed novel from Bil Wright that “delivers a knock-out punch” (Venus Magazine).Fourteen-year-old Louis Bowman lives in a boxing ring—a housing project circa 1968—and is fighting “just to get to the end of the round.” Sharing the ring is his mother, Jeanette Stamps, a ferociously stubborn woman battling for her own dreams to be realized; his stepfather, Ben Stamps, the would-be savior, who becomes the sparring partner to them both; and the enigmatic Ray Anthony Robinson, the neighborhood “hoodlum” in purple polyester pants, who sets young Louis’s heart spinning with the first stirrings of sexual longing. Bil Wright deftly evokes an unrelenting world with quirky humor and a clear-eyed perspective in this “deeply felt coming-of-age novel” that “reads like the best of memoirs” (School Library Journal). Includes publisher ephemera
Softcover

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