In his new collection of poetry, Naked, Abiodun Oyewole unveils his thoughts on self-love, forgiveness, lost love, survival, and cultural identity. Known as a founding member of The Last Poets, a spoken word performance group that arose out of the black nationalism movement in East Harlem in the late 1960's, Oyewole brings his revolutionary voice to this collection. His writing is straight-forward, engaging, and intense, with the poems taking on the shape of various emotions. Inspired by the "naked poetry" of Juan Ramon Jimenez, Naked is rooted in a striving for freedom, for an essential natural state devoid of all external adornment, turning sensations into concepts that express the concrete realization of nature itself. Written in free form, the brief transcendental poems of Naked convey the character of Oyewole, who has evolved into a master poet of his generation.

Since slavery, Black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most difficult circumstances, they managed to achieve greatness. TRAILBLAZERS shines a light on these their accomplishments, which often led to widespread cultural change. TRAILBLAZERS is a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over four hundred brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. Each TRAILBLAZERS volume is organized into several sections. Along with biographical information and powerful photographs, David provides a historical timeline for each section-written from the viewpoint of Black women-that maps out the significance of the featured women that follow. Volume 1 features an assortment of sixty-five activists, dancers, and athletes. We learn about the significance of activists like Ella Baker, Pauli Murray, Rosina Tucker, and Clara Day, who represent the hundreds of unnamed women who participated in the civil rights and labor movements. We re-discover dancers Jeni Legon and Margot Webb, who are honored alongside dance legends Josephine Baker, Katherine Dunham, Janet Collins, and a new generation of dancers including Misty Copeland, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, and choreographers like Camille A. Brown, and Cynthia Oliver. And then there are the Black women athletes who disrupted the world of sports, from the nearly forgotten tennis champion Ora Washington and Alice Coachman-the first to compete and win in the Olympics-to Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history. Throughout the series, as David re-introduces many of these women into the public sphere, they are not always in predictable ways. For example, Debbie Allen makes a brief appearance in this volume, not for her acting or as a director, but rather as the dancer she initially trained to be, reminding us that Black women are multifaceted, multitalented, and complex. What binds these women together is that as they struggled on the front lines, they shook up the status quo of Black people in America. Throughout the volume, David also challenges the socially conditioned assumptions, stereotypes, and false binaries that denigrate Black women's bodies particularly in dance and sports, including the barriers they face in how they wear their hair. In this regard, David addresses the totality of Black womanhood: physically, culturally, and politically. With painstaking research, David has created an affordable, visually rich, and accessible reference book. From the foremothers who blazed trails and broke barriers, to the women who follow in their footsteps, TRAILBLAZERS offers powerful and inspiring role models for women and girls from all cultural backgrounds and for the intellectually curious. TRAILBLAZERS is a clarion call for recognition of the transformative work Black women have done and continue to do. Written in accessible prose that contains personal reflections for a broad audience, TRAILBLAZERS also serves as a vital reference guide for use in schools and libraries.

"Last Night a DJ Saved My Life" takes readers behind the velvet rope and inside A-list nightlife. At thirty-five, Destiny Day is at the top of her game. Having escaped her hardscrabble beginnings in the small Midwestern town she calls "East Boogie, Illinois," she is the savviest sister walking around in a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. As New York's premiere party promoter, she has glitz, riches, and steers clear of any man who threatens to cramp her style. Her parties, held at the hippest clubs, are packed with hip-hop royalty; top celebs from the worlds of sports, film, and fashion; and New York's most successful power brokers. Destiny's personal life takes a backseat to her career, but she's got two best friends and a string of men to keep her satisfied. However, when she meets Taye Crawford, an independent financial advisor, at one of her own fantastic parties, Destiny finds herself moving in a direction she never anticipated.