Library Newsletter - February 2024
African Americans and the Arts
This month we celebrate the profound and diverse history of African American art and its influence across the visual and performing arts. This includes literature, fashion, folklore, film, music, architecture, and culinary arts. Inspired by the diverse roots of the African Diaspora, artists have employed their craft to preserve history, community memory, and empower their communities.
Black History Month
Read-in at the Library
The 6th Annual African American Read-in will be on February 21st from 10:30 to noon in the library. Come join the celebration by reading an excerpt from your favorite African American author or just listen to others share. Fill out this form to sign up to read. For inspiration, visit the library display, browse the Black History Month research guide, and scan the Black Heritage Collection online.
New Database: Exploring Race in Society
This unique research database from EBSCOhost contains essential content on critical issues related to race in society today. Essays, articles, reports, and other reliable sources provide an in-depth look at the history of race and provide critical context for learning more about topics associated with race, ethnicity, diversity, and inclusiveness. Exploring Race in Society covers the Black Lives Matter movement; speeches from BlackPast; Indigenous communities; the digital divide; environmental racism; intersectionality; police use of force; voting rights and voter suppression; and much more.
EMPLOYEE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CORNER
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission. Access the Open Educational Resources Libguide to learn what OER is, why you should use it, where to find it, and how to create your own OER. Using Open Educational Resources gives you control over course materials, increases inclusion, improves learning, and saves students money.
New Books
Let Us Descend: A Novel
by Jesmyn Ward
Drawing on Dante and African spirit mythology, Ward resurrects an enslaved girl out of the lost folds of the antebellum South, twists magic through every raindrop, mushroom, and stalk of sugar cane, and drops you into the middle of her harrowing, unendurable, magnificent song.
I’m From
by Gary R Gray, Jr.
illustrated by Oge Mora
While describing a seemingly ordinary routine, the lyrical text is a journey through Black language and culture, evoking a sense of identity, community, and connectedness. Mora's beautiful illustrations enhance the view of the hero's environment and experiences.
Harlem World: How Hip Hop's Super Showdown Changed Music Forever
by Jonathan Mael
A thrilling narrative history of how a rap battle on July 3rd, 1981, in New York’s Harlem World Club transformed American culture forever. Mael chronicles this pivotal night of hip hop rivalry and shares a new look at how Harlem helped ignite a musical revolution.
Thicker than Water: A Memoir
by Kerry Washington
Utterly immersive, beautifully descriptive, and radically honest, this book makes a crack in the facades that so many of us create in our lives. Washington gives us a glimpse of the events that shaped the person she has become through stories about traumatic past events, her most beloved roles, and how her own family came to be.
Soul Food Sunday
by Winsome Bingham
illustrated by C.G. Esperanza
At Granny's, Sunday isn't Sunday without a big family gathering over a lovingly prepared meal. An ode to a delicious, African American tradition, a bouncy love song to family, and the passing on of family legacies. Plus, a mac ’n’ cheese recipe helps share the soul food love.
Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed
by Donald Bogle
Using archival interviews and newspaper articles, Bogle presents fascinating details about Horne's personal and professional lives, including her fierce political and social activism as she handled racism in Hollywood and later took part in the civil rights movement. Accompanied by stunning never-before-published photographs of Horne.
Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World
by Wil Haygood
narrated on Libby by Cary Hite
At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book, Haygood's tome is extensively researched, intricately detailed, beautifully written, and massively entertaining. An unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.
Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit
by Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay
The book focuses on the collaborative work of women hip hop artists as culture producers, political actors, and community revitalizers while showing us that there is no movement toward racial, environmental, or any kind of justice today that is not led by women and powered by hip hop.
Ebony Magazine Archive
through Ebscohost
Ebony is an influential African American magazine promoting stories important to the Black community and focusing on the achievements of African American leaders. From its first issue in 1945 through 2014, the Ebony Magazine archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship, and other social topics with an African American focus.
