For the first time in years, the entire Whitfield clan comes home to celebrate Christmas and learn through the drama and emotional baggage how to be a family once again.

The protagonist of Fences (part of Wilsons ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle plays), Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can,...

The author examines the poverty, violence, and drug culture impacting the Portland, Oregon community of his youth, examining the large and small cultural forces that shaped his family.

"Gayle Jessup White had long heard the stories passed down from her father's family, that they were direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson-lore she firmly believed, though others did not. For four decades the acclaimed journalist and genealogy enthusiast researched her connection to Thomas Jefferson, to confirm its truth once and for all. After she was named a Jefferson Studies Fellow, Jessup White discovered her family lore was correct. Poring through...

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people--and the times--that touched her life.

"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,...

"With family matriarch Pamela now deceased, outsider Carissa Walker is only a few scheming steps away from taking control of the powerful Sanders family and their fortune. But she didn't count on the return of Pamela's sister, Alexis, to stand in her way with a bombshell of a secret. Haunted by his past, Camron must come to terms with the imminent death of his father. While Torrance rebounds from a gunshot wound, trying to reclaim his basketball career,...

Through the alternating stories of twins Callie and Charlie, their fictional counterparts, teenagers Ryan Elizabeth Peete and RJ Peete discuss what it is like for RJ as a teenager with autism and Ryan as a teenager with an autistic sibling.

Film of the award-winning play about a struggling black family living on Chicago's South Side and the impact of an unexpected insurance bequest. Each family member sees the bequest as the means of realizing dreams and of escape from grinding frustrations.

"When Desiree Johnson receives an unexpected call from her brother, Ernest, Jr., about their father, she and her sixteen-year-old son, Tyree, pack up and rush to her family's summer home in Idlewild. Desiree hasn't been to Michigan in over seventeen years, but when her family calls, she feels she has no choice but to answer. Arriving in the beautiful town, Desiree quickly realizes that no matter how long she has stayed away, the place still holds...