Pauline Hopkins Boeken

Sappho Clark--beautiful, mysterious, Southern--arrives in Boston to earn her living as a stenographer. She lodges with the Smith family and immediately becomes a source of fascination to the them: Ma Smith is impressed by Sappho's financial independence; Dora Smith admires Sappho's quiet self-possession; and Will Smith, Dora's brother, falls madly in love with Sappho. But as Sappho enters the Smiths' community, it becomes clear that her beauty is a lure to bad actors, including someone who entertains dark suspicions about her past. . . A murder mystery, the story of a friendship, and a romance set in Boston's thriving, politically active middle-class Black community, Contending Forces is an unjustly forgotten American classic.

The story of the wife of a rich, white landowner who hides a dark secret she is of black origin.

A mixed-race Harvard medical student stumbles upon a hidden Ethiopian city, the inhabitants of which possess both advanced technologies and mystical powers. Long before Marvel Comics gave us Wakanda, a high-tech African country that has never been colonized, this 1903 novel gave readers Reuel Briggs—a mixed-race Harvard medical student, passing as white, who stumbles upon Telassar. In this long-hidden Ethiopian city, the wise, peaceful inhabitants of which possess both advanced technologies and mystical powers, Reuel discovers the incredible secret of his own birth. Now, he must decide whether to return to the life he’s built, and the woman he loves, back in America—or play a role in helping Telassar take its rightful place on the world stage. Considered one of the earliest articulations of Black internationalism, Of One Blood takes as its theme the notion that race is a social construct perpetuated by racists. Minister Faust is best known as author of The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004) and 2007’s Kindred Award-winning From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (retitled Shrinking the Heroes, it also received the Philip K. Dick Award Special Citation). An award-winning journalist, community organizer, teacher, and workshop designer, Faust is also a former television host and producer, radio broadcaster, and podcaster. His 2011 TEDx talk, “The Cure For Death by Smalltalk,” has been viewed more than 840,000 times.

Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century America, this novel explores themes of race, identity, and social justice through its complex characters and narrative. Pauline Hopkins, a significant yet underrecognized figure of her time, weaves a compelling story that reflects her editorial influence and literary prowess. Initially serialized in Colored American Magazine, it showcases her commitment to addressing pressing societal issues, making it a vital part of African American literature's evolution during a transformative era.

Feminists have long known that it's all connected. The stories, the families, the country, the River. In this anthology, poets and short story writers create worlds with words. This book includes stories that draw on mythic traditions rewritten for our time. There are thieves, grandmothers, teenagers breaking out, dark caves to explore and real estate to sell; there are mysteries from the grave, experiments that go wrong, road trips, a circus, an opera, families that break and families that hold together; there are birds and animals and babies, and there is the pandemic. There is stillness and movement; closeness and distance. This eclectic range of authors brings their unique perspectives to storytelling as they each grapple to understand the past and meet the challenges ahead, daring to share their joy and pain, their fear and anger, their hopes and disappointments. These are women who dare to remember, to claim their own stories and to wonder what may have been.