african american families

Story of the Taylor family and their lives in a housing project over a twenty year span.

"A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers. Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise. Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward's distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature"--.

"It's 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi, and Sunny's town is being invaded by people from up north who are coming to help people register to vote. Her personal life isn't much better, as a new stepmother, brother, and sister are crowding into her life, giving her little room to breathe"--From publisher's description.

Aisha Branch, her mother Camille, and her grandmother Geneva, are in the midst of planning the wedding of the century when Aisha falls for another man who brings up old feelings and hurts in all of the Branch women.

A homework pack that contains book and audio versions of "A Raisin in the Sun," the story about tensions in a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago's South Side in the 1950s; and includes a student worksheet and teacher's guide.

"Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. A ... look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control"--Provided by publisher.

"Living with his grandparents and sister on a Gulf Coast farm, Jojo navigates the challenges of his mother's addictions and his grandmother's cancer before the rele ase of his father from prison prompts a road trip of d anger andhope"--OCLC.

In early-1970s Detroit, African-American teenager Rae Dodson struggles to care for her ill father, who suffers debilitating migraines, after the departure of her mother and tries to make sense of her parents' dysfunctional relationship and her own future.

Presents eleven essays written by the auther discussing the life at Monticello, the plantation owned by Thomas Jefferson.

A play about a black family's struggle to buy a house in a white neighborhood, after the father dies. An insurance check can allow the Youngers to escape their frustrating life in a crowded Chicago apartment, but escape means different things to each family member. It deals with their attempt to maintain dignity, self-respect, and a sense of humanity.