Acclaimed writer Walter Dean Myers celebrates the people of Harlem with these powerful and soulful first-person poems in the voices of the residents who make up the legendary neighborhood: basketball players, teachers, mail carriers, jazz artists, maids,veterans, nannies, students, and more. Exhilarating and electric, these poems capture the energy and resilience of a neighborhood and a people.

"A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now"--

from his younger sister, living in a foster home, and finding his poetic voice at school.

Thematically arranged contributions of eighty-five Afro-American poets.

Contains one hundred poems from classic and contemporary African American poets, as selected by an award-winning black poet and activist, including such writers as Robert Hayden, Mari Evans, Kevin Young, and Rita Dove.

Poems on aspects of race or racial problems by well-known Negro poets, including Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, Leroi Jones, Langston Hughes, and James Weldon Johnson.

Born the prince of Dukandarra, Guinea, Broteer Furro was captured by slave traders at age six. As Broteer stepped off the African continent and onto a cargo ship bound for Rhode Island, the vessel's steward purchased the boy and gave him a new name: Venture. The young man crossed the Atlantic Ocean, landed in Narragansett, and worked through three decades of slavery to buy not only his own freedom but also the freedom of his wife and children. Remarkable...

"In her most famous spoken-word poem, author of the Pura Belpré-winning novel-in-verse The Poet X Elizabeth Acevedo embraces all the complexities of Black hair and Afro-Latinidad--the history, pain, pride, and powerful love of that inheritance. Paired with full-color illustrations by artist Andrea Pippins in a format that will appeal to fans of Mahogany L. Browne's Black Girl Magic or Jason Reynolds's For Everyone, this poem can now be read in a...

A collection of poems by African-American writers.