Ain T I A Diva

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick Seven Days in June comes a hot and hilarious borough-crossed love story about a Manhattan beauty editor, a Brooklyn writer, and the attraction that takes them by storm. Billie Burke is smart, endlessly driven, and fabulous—it’s no accident she landed a job as the beauty editor at the world’s leading fashion magazine. Caught in a whirlwind of long office hours and fashion industry party-hopping, she hasn’t had time to focus on her nonexistent love life. Instead, she’s been living vicariously through her friends. Then she meets Jay Lane, a gorgeous up-and-coming Brooklyn writer who pretty much knocks her right out of her stilettos. Soon Billie finds herself doing things with Jay in broad daylight that she’s never even dared to think about in the privacy of her own head. In no time at all she’s absolutely addicted to an affair that’s as crazy and seductive as New York itself. But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Jay, whose rough past seems determined to start creeping back into their present....

Kimani Lewis is as cold hearted as they come, at least that's the persona she portrays. She's been hurt one time too many and has decided to play the game she's always loosing at. She meets Harrison Williams who is trying to teach her how to love again. Harrison is confident that he can change Kimani and does everything in his power to do so. Only she's rejecting his acts of kindness and attempts to push him away. Will Harrison be successful in teaching Kimani how to love again? Or is he just like the other men who's broken her heart in the past? Follow Kimani and Harrison on the quest to learning how to trust after being heart broken.

“[Allred] interrogates Beyoncé’s music and videos to explore the complicated spaces where racism, sexism, and capitalism collide.” —Kirkus Reviews In 2010, Professor Kevin Allred created the university course “Politicizing Beyoncé” to both wide acclaim and controversy. He outlines his pedagogical philosophy in Ain’t I a Diva?, exploring what it means to build a syllabus around a celebrity. Topics range from a capitalist critique of “Run the World (Girls)” to the politics of self-care found in “Flawless”; Beyoncé’s art is read alongside black feminist thinkers including Kimberlé Crenshaw, Octavia Butler, and Sojourner Truth. Combining analysis with classroom anecdotes, Allred attests that pop culture is so much more than a guilty pleasure, it’s an access point—for education, entertainment, critical inquiry, and politics. “Proving himself a worthy member of the BeyHive, Kevin Allred takes us on a journey through Beyoncé’s greatest hits and expansive career—peeling back their multiple layers to explore gender, race, sexuality, and power in today’s modern world. A fun, engaging, and important read for long-time Beyoncé fans and newcomers alike.” —Franchesca Ramsey, author of Well, That Escalated Quickly “Ain’t I a Diva? explores the phenomenon of Beyoncé while explicitly championing not only her immense talent and grace but what we can learn from it. In this celebration of Beyoncé, and through her, other Black women, Allred is giving us room to be exactly who we are so that maybe we, too, can stop the world then carry on!” —Keah Brown, author of The Pretty One “A must-read for any fan of Beyoncé and of fascinating feminist discourse.” —Zeba Blay, senior culture writer, HuffPost

Kayla Hopkins is young, beautiful, and can't win for losing. That's why everyone calls her the Drama Queen. She doesn't go looking for drama, it just happens to find her. Take, for instance, her love life. Kayla's not satisfied with just one man. She has two--one she's in love with and another she's pregnant by. It's a ready-made formula for disaster, but will Kayla see it before everything blows up in her face? Her track record says no, but her friends and family can only hope. Terrell Sims has just turned his life around, gotten a new job, and the girl of his dreams, but when a problem he thought he had taken care of comes back to haunt him, he might just lose everything he's worked so hard to gain.

Social Media: Culture and Identity examines the global impact of social media in the formation of various identities and cultures. New media scholars— both national and international— have posited thought-provoking analyses of sociocultural issues about human communication that are impacted by the omnipresence of social media. This collection examines issues of gender, class, and race inequities along with social media’s connections to women’s health, cyberbullying, sexting, and transgender issues both in the United States and in some developing countries.

A girl. A guy. A one-night stand. Fate threw us together-twice. The first time was a vibe that led to some adult behavior...that neither of us would recall. The second time it was supposed to be a business transaction. That was it ... just business. But it ended up being something way more than that. It was souls mating. Energy. Yeah, that's how I would describe it. Two creatives drawn to each other on an indescribable level. One that shifted the foundation that I stood firmly on top of. After what I had gone through, my focus was on building empires and taking care of my amazing baby boy. I didn't want to say that I was at the point where I had sworn off men-but I guess you could say that I was at the point where I had sworn off men. Somehow, though, the universe knew what she was doing, because this man that I got... But then, there's the one I had-or should I say, the one that was for the streets. You remember him, right? Percy. Well, he's all in his feelings. You know what's crazy to me? How bent out of shape men get when the shoe is on the other foot. They talk reckless, they throw tantrums, try to paint us as hoes. Never owning up to the fact that if they hadn't fucked up a good thing, they wouldn't have shit to worry about. The formula is simple. Act right and you never have to tap into all those emotions. With everything he did, you'd think he would just accept defeat, and gone about his business. But nah, he had to go and do the unthinkable. And it's not just him either. Seems other individuals feel like they want to be up in business that doesn't pay them. I'm just trying to live my life... my new life; be problem, and drama free. But you can't go around trying to cause problems for other people's lives and expect it not to come to your front door to collect. I guess we'll just let the consequences begin...

Finalist for The Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre History, given by the American Society for Theatre Research. Silver Medal Winner of The Victor Villaseñor Best Latino Focused Non-Fiction Book Award, given by the International Latino Book Awards. Honorable Mention for the Best LGBTQ+ Themed Book, given by the International Latino Book Awards. A queer genealogy of the famous performance space and the nuyorican aesthetic One could easily overlook the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a small, unassuming performance venue on New York City’s Lower East Side. Yet the space once hosted the likes of Victor Hernández Cruz, Allen Ginsberg, and Amiri Baraka and is widely credited as the homespace for the emergent nuyorican literary and aesthetic movement of the 1990s. Founded by a group of counterculturalist Puerto Rican immigrants and artists in the 1970s, the space slowly transformed the Puerto Rican ethnic and cultural associations of the epithet “Nuyorican,” as the Cafe developed into a central hub for an artistic movement encompassing queer, trans, and diasporic performance. The Queer Nuyorican is the first queer genealogy and critical study of the historical, political, and cultural conditions under which the term “Nuyorican” shifted from a raced/ethnic identity marker to “nuyorican,” an aesthetic practice. The nuyorican aesthetic recognizes and includes queer poets and performers of color whose writing and performance build upon the politics inherent in the Cafe’s founding. Initially situated within the Cafe’s physical space and countercultural discursive history, the nuyorican aesthetic extends beyond these gendered and ethnic boundaries, broadening the ethnic marker Nuyorican to include queer, trans, and diasporic performance modalities. Hip-hop studies, alongside critical race, queer, literary, and performance theories, are used to document the interventions made by queer and trans artists of color—Miguel Piñero, Regie Cabico, Glam Slam participants, and Ellison Glenn/Black Cracker—whose works demonstrate how the Nuyorican Poets Cafe has operated as a queer space since its founding. In focusing on artists who began their careers as spoken word artists and slam poets at the Cafe, The Queer Nuyorican examines queer modes of circulation that are tethered to the increasing visibility, commodification, and normalization of spoken word, slam poetry, and hip-hop theater in the United States and abroad.