african american families

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., uses genealogical research and DNA analysis to investigate the family histories of eight prominent African-Americans, including Whoopi Goldberg, Mae Jemison, Quincy Jones, and others.

Genealogical investigations and DNA analysis help participants discover where they come from and who they are.

Keysha's mom, recently released from prison, wants to reconnect with Keysha and her brother, but Keysha fears her mother's past will endanger her own present and future.

After having her reputation ruined by a girl who planted drugs on her, Keysha returns to school to find she is a social outcast and builds a relationship with Wesley Morris, a sexy guy who wants to help her but whom her family doesn't approve.

Keysha, happy because she landed the lead role in the school play and her boyfriend has moved back to town, finds life getting complicated when her part is compromised by a rival and another girl begins to show interest in her man.

A collection of poems from the viewpoint of a young boy living in the projects.

Jodie Patterson is the mother of five children, including her ten-year-old transgender son Penelope, the catalyst for the author's reexamination of identity within her own dynamic household--and the wider world. This inspiring and highly personal debut memoir goes on to examine Jodie's extended families' African American experiences with racism and civil rights, and her own coming of age in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, and later on as a wife, mother, and activist. With a novelist's sense of artful structure and pacing, Jodie turns her lens on a range of subjects--from the women who raised her and provided strength and comfort, all the while going against cultural norms and gender expectations, to her own children, who acted as a vehicle for Jodie's own growth and ultimately her acceptance of her very diverse family. The result is an exquisite study in transformation, identity, courage, and love.

"In 1854 in Eastern Maryland twelve-year-old Ann is a slave, grateful that her family is still all together; but when their master, in need of money, decides to sell Ann andher younger brother, their parents decide to take the dangerous step of running away north to freedom--a journey filled with danger, especially since they are not sure how to find the first station on the Underground Railroad"--OCLC.

Follows the humorous struggles of a mom raising her two teenage sons. Includes a story about the author's life in comics and a "How to draw" section.

The day nine-year-old Grace is called to work in the kitchen in the Big House, everyone warns her to to keep her head down and her thoughts to herself, but the more she sees of the oppressive Master and his hateful wife, the more she questions things until one day her thoughts escape--and to avoid being separated she and her family flee into the Dismal Swamp, to join the other escaped slaves who live there.