From Harlem With Love

As a diplomat's son, star athlete, and Harvard Law School graduate, in the early 1980s Joseph Holland had a world of opportunities awaiting him on Wall Street and in corporate America. Instead, Holland moved to the inner city, driven by a divine calling full of unfolding mystery and challenge. He found himself in Harlem during the nadir of its blight and endeavored to contribute to a neighborhood that was tough in every sense of the word. A Republican among Democrats, a privileged Southern scion among working-class Northerners, Holland earned his stripes as an entrepreneur/activist embracing a vision of personal and community transformation. A five-year sojourn became a three-decade commitment, as his Harlem-based career morphed from practicing law to empowering the homeless, to running small businesses, to writing plays, to serving in politics, to building housing--all aimed at revitalizing a beaten-down, dream-deferred cultural mecca haunted by poignant memories of its glory days in the early twentieth century.

Qua loves Wynner. Wynner loves Qua. Easy enough, right? But Wynner comes with two brothers who can't stand Qua with their baby sister. In spite of it all, Qua grabs Wynner's hand and marries her at the courthouse. Flash forward five years, and Qua has kept all his promises to Wynner, supporting her through constant illness. As a wife, she's supposed to nurture and cater to her husband, but she's always sick, and she feels like less than a wife. When Qua's childhood friend comes to the city, she's sure to shake things up between the couple. Will they take their vows to heart? Uzi is feared by everything with a beating heart in New York. He has no time for a steady woman, but when Remi, a smart-talking bartender at his favorite strip club catches his eye, he chases her like a lion does an antelope. Remi is so over men wasting her time that she doesn't want to play. Will Uzi eventually shoot an arrow in her heart? Remi's younger sister, Tweeti, was always overlooked as a child. Now, all the boys who played her for being plus-sized are the same men chasing her. Tweeti doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. One week she wants to save lives; then the next she wants to take them. When Jahquel rolls into her life, she's taken aback. Will he eventually capture her heart? In New York where you gotta go hard, these kings need to reign with an iron fist. Will they do it with or without queens?

Cadence Camille Diaz could never imagine that colliding with the love of her life again after two years would turn her world upside down and inside out. This is not your typical love story, and there's no happy ending. Cadence walks a tightrope between right and wrong. Richard Jefferson represents everything right. The combination of the two presents problems that could have never been predicted. As the answers to most of the questions she has had all her life come flying at full speed, Cadence is forced to question the loyalty and trust of the people she has put in her life, and face the truth about herself.

By the groundbreaking author of the award-winning Monster–a visionary who influenced and inspired a generation–this story take us back to the world of 145th Street: Short Stories to show how love can be found, and thrive, in the most unlikely places. Curtis finds love in Iraq as he struggles to stay alive in a war he doesn't want to fight, and Letha discovers her own beauty in the love of her child. There is the "good daughter" who realizes that there's only one way to help her brother and her family. Other stories center on the daily drama of the Curl-E-Que beauty shop, or capture the slapstick side of passion. AWARDS FOR WALTER DEAN MYERS: New York Times Bestselling Author 3-Time National Book Award Finalist Michael L. Printz Award 5 Coretta Scott King Awards 2 Newbery Honors National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (2012-2013) Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement Children’s Literature Legacy Award

Cousin of novelist Dorothy West and friend of Zora Neale Hurston, Helene Johnson (1905-1995) first gained literary prominence when James Weldon Johnson and Robert Frost selected three of her poems for prizes in a 1926 competition. This volume brings together the poetry and a selection of correspondence by this poet of the Harlem Renaissance.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Dapper Dan is a legend, an icon, a beacon of inspiration to many in the Black community. His story isn’t just about fashion. It’s about tenacity, curiosity, artistry, hustle, love, and a singular determination to live our dreams out loud.”—Ava DuVernay, director of Selma, 13th, and A Wrinkle in Time NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VANITY FAIR • DAPPER DAN NAMED ONE OF TIME’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time. Decade after decade, Dapper Dan discovered creative ways to flourish in a country designed to privilege certain Americans over others. He witnessed, profited from, and despised the rise of two drug epidemics. He invented stunningly bold credit card frauds that took him around the world. He paid neighborhood kids to jog with him in an effort to keep them out of the drug game. And when he turned his attention to fashion, he did so with the energy and curiosity with which he approaches all things: learning how to treat fur himself when no one would sell finished fur coats to a Black man; finding the best dressed hustler in the neighborhood and converting him into a customer; staying open twenty-four hours a day for nine years straight to meet demand; and, finally, emerging as a world-famous designer whose looks went on to define an era, dressing cultural icons including Eric B. and Rakim, Salt-N-Pepa, Big Daddy Kane, Mike Tyson, Alpo Martinez, LL Cool J, Jam Master Jay, Diddy, Naomi Campbell, and Jay-Z. By turns playful, poignant, thrilling, and inspiring, Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem is a high-stakes coming-of-age story spanning more than seventy years and set against the backdrop of an America where, as in the life of its narrator, the only constant is change. Praise for Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem “Dapper Dan is a true one of a kind, self-made, self-liberated, and the sharpest man you will ever see. He is couture himself.”—Marcus Samuelsson, New York Times bestselling author of Yes, Chef “What James Baldwin is to American literature, Dapper Dan is to American fashion. He is the ultimate success saga, an iconic fashion hero to multiple generations, fusing street with high sartorial elegance. He is pure American style.”—André Leon Talley, Vogue contributing editor and author

In this timely, insightful, and darkly funny investigation, the acclaimed author of Against Love asks: what does living in dystopic times do to our ability to love each other and the world? COVID-19 has produced new taxonomies of love, intimacy, and vulnerability. Will its cultural afterlife be as lasting as that of HIV, which reshaped consciousness about sex and love even after AIDS itself had been beaten back by medical science? Will COVID end up making us more relationally conservative, as some think HIV did within gay culture? Will it send us fleeing into emotional silos or coupled cocoons, despite the fact that, pre-COVID, domestic coupledom had been steadily losing fans? Just as COVID revealed our nation to itself, so did it hold a mirror up to our relationships. In Love in the Time of Contagion, Laura Kipnis weaves (often hilariously) her own (ambivalent) coupled lockdown experiences together with those of others and sets them against a larger backdrop: the politics of the virus, economic disparities, changing gender relations, and the ongoing institutional crack-ups prompted by #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, mapping their effects on the everyday routines and occasional solaces of love and sex.