Rattle & Numb is the prestige edition of the poetry of John Burroughs, State of Ohio Beat Poet Laureate 2019-2021, and master of the expressive beat voice for which he has toured the US in his evangelism.

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Pidgin Eye features thirty-five years of poetry by acclaimed author Joe Balaz. Writing in Pidgin (Hawaiʻi Creole English), he honors the beauty, strength, and complexity of Hawaiʻi and the voices of its peoples. Balaz’s philosophical lyricism tightly weaves history and humor, aloha ʻāina and protest, the spiritual and the everyday. Together, these poems envision a world in which—like Pidgin—“everyting deserves to fly.”Joe Balaz, born and raised in Wahiawa on the island of Oʻahu, is of Hawaiian, Slovakian, and Irish ancestry. He is the author of multiple books of poetry in Standard English and Pidgin (Hawaiʻi Creole English), as well as the editor of Hoʻomānoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature. His writing, visual poetry, and artwork have been published in national and international journals and anthologies. Throughout his career, he has passionately advocated for Hawaiian and Pidgin literature. 

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Refreshingly unconfessional, placed largely in a Europe between unspecified wars, this is a brave attempt to use poetry to describe the current epoch. Like a young John Ashbery, Hickey skirts from slogan to commonplace, from sound bite to cliché, always returning to the unpropitious conditions for authentic experience, be that hysterical, religious, or communal. - Prof. Graham Allen

In poetry, as in other forms of creative thinking one is always on the lookout for the original voice and occasionally one comes across one that is worth celebrating. Kenneth Hickey ploughs his own rich furrow with welcome assuredness. Here, in his first book, he presents us with work that has the feel of being around for a long time. - Gerry Murphy 

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A series of poems by underground lit legend and film aficionado Alex Gildzen, Elyria: Point A in Ohio Triangle is inspired by his hometown in northern Ohio. 

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Victoria Woodhull not only believed women should vote, she believed they should be President! So she became to first woman to run for the job in 1872! 

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The poems in Portals seek new connections between our inner and outer worlds. This vibrant collection is packed with poems about wild places, ancestors, quicksand, the microbiome, protests, yeast, consequential strangers, and the fierce persistence of hope.

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When attempting to get a “handle” on poets (or any artist), it’s standard—and helpful—to identify them into general categories, such as race, gender, ethnicity, geography, etc. And there’s no denying that poets so labeled often share commonalities of subject matter, language use, references, and general sensibilities, which offer readers richer ways of understanding those categories. But, of course, no artist wants to be so confined, as Walt Whitman yawps: “I am not contained within my hat and my boot soles.” Certainly, all good poets “contain multitudes.” To label Uncle Walt as an “American” poet helps us to understand—at a time when America was taking its first steps away from royalty—his celebrations of the individual “self,” yet he is also a poet of spirituality, of love, of nature. Langston Hughes was also an American poet, but Black, and so his take on America is different: “I am America’s darker brother/They send me to eat in the kitchen/when company comes…”

Of late, Appalachia has received wider poetic attention when poets learned that the region doesn’t only include West Virginia, Kentucky and points south, but actually is more expansive. Poets in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, even southern New York State can identify as an Appalachian poet. Yet, in keeping with Whitman’s famous tenet concerning “multitudes,” in what ways does a “labeled” poet write both inside and outside any particular category and integrate in a unique poetic voice those categories into a singular larger vision we call—well, poetry?

A good example of this integration of categories into a singular voice and vision would be the poet Tabbasam Shah, who asserts that she is “a child of Pakistani immigrants growing up in the foothills of Southern Appalachia.” Her award-winning (a recent recipient of the Watershed Group Poetry Prize) first book, Red and Crescent Moons, introduces an underheard (indeed, often unheard) and fresh voice into the Appalachian poetic lexicon, demonstrating that a breakdown of barriers enriches both of the so-called categories of “Muslim” and “Appalachian,” (and this book offers us more, of course—political, familial, the natural world, and several poems about the act of writing itself, among others) leaving us, particularly in many of this volume’s richly crafted poems, with a deeper understanding of each.

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This book of poetry is unapologetic in its challenge to self and to society. It calls for us, humans to get to know who we are and to like it, to appreciate our uniqueness and love ourselves. It takes us on a journey through struggle and triumph, from family issues, domestic violence, war, suicide, having children, poverty spirituality, love and more. Through the book you will see a tug-o-war between spirit and the mind. We often ask ourselves questions about ourselves and things or events that take place in life. The poems in this book allow us to step outside of ourselves and realize the connection we have with our neighbors next door and our neighbors miles away. 

This book shows how someone can be vulnerable and victorious at the same time. The poems are written in a way that makes you focus on the bigger picture of life while still paying attention to the smallest details that we sometimes overlook. Overall, the poems connect life to life and show that if you use your voice to tell your story, people will connect because they understand that they are not alone in their journey. 

https://www.poetryislifepublishing.com/myconscienceismypimp-jfb

South Shore Suite…POEMS offers a selection of narrative and lyric poems arranged in four sections. The eponymous “South Shore Suite” emerged from JC’s posting a line of poetry a day on her blog for a year. “Second Nature” focuses a wider lens on the natural world. “Cameo Appearances” draws poems from interviews JC conducted with people in different professions about life choices they made. The final section, “Cradle to Grave,” contains poems closest to JC’s personal experience. 

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prizewinning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection.

“Vital and sophisticated ... sinks hooks into you that cannot be easily removed.” —The New York Times

Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times.

From "History"—a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"—to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power.

These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story.

A testament to Young's own—and our collective—experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.

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Longlisted for the National Book Award

A rich and lively gathering of highlights from the first twenty years of an extraordinary career, interspersed with “B sides” and “bonus tracks” from this prolific and widely acclaimed poet.

Blue Laws gathers poems written over the past two decades, drawing from all nine of Kevin Young’s previously published books of poetry and including a number of uncollected, often unpublished, poems. From his stunning lyric debut (Most Way Home, 1995) and the amazing “double album” life of Jean-Michel Basquiat (2001, “remixed” for Knopf in 2005), through his brokenhearted Jelly Roll: A Blues (2003)and his recent forays into adult grief and the joys of birth in Dear Darkness (2008) and Book of Hours (2014), this collection provides a grand tour of a poet whose personal poems and political poems are equally riveting. Together with wonderful outtakes and previously unseen blues, the profoundly felt poems here of family, Southern food, and loss are of a piece with the depth of personal sensibility and humanity found in his Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels or bold sequences such as “The Ballad of Jim Crow” and a new “Homage to Phillis Wheatley.”

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Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and former U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey’s elegiac Native Guard is a deeply personal volume that brings together two legacies of the Deep South.

The title of the collection refers to the Mississippi Native Guards, a black regiment whose role in the Civil War has been largely overlooked by history. As a child in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the 1960s, Trethewey could gaze across the water to the fort on Ship Island where Confederate captives once were guarded by black soldiers serving the Union cause.

The racial legacy of the South touched Trethewey’s life on a much more immediate level, too. Many of the poems in Native Guard pay loving tribute to her mother, whose marriage to a white man was illegal in her native Mississippi in the 1960s. Years after her mother’s tragic death, Trethewey reclaims her memory, just as she reclaims the voices of the black soldiers whose service has been all but forgotten. 

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From the white boy who transforms himself into a full-fledged Chicano, to the self-assured woman who effortlessly terrorizes her Anglo boss, the author introduces a unique new viewpoint of the American literary landscape through a collection of poems and stories. Reissue. 

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A comedic romp into the world of fantasy role-playing games, She Kills Monsters tells the story of Agnes Evans as she leaves her childhood home in Ohio following the death of her teenage sister, Tilly. When Agnes finds Tilly’s Dungeons & Dragons notebook, however, she stumbles into a journey of discovery and action-packed adventure in the imaginary world that was Tilly’s refuge. In this high-octane dramatic comedy laden with homicidal fair

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Evie Malone- gamer girl, college senior and confirmed virgin- has it all figured out. Not only does she command a top-ranked guild in Warcraft with her online boyfriend, she also makes a little cash on the side writing love letters for people who've screwed up their relationships. Love is like Warcraft, after all. It's all about strategies, game plans, and not taking stupid risks. Well, that's what she thinks... until she actually falls for a guy. In Real Life. And no amount of gaming expertise.

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Eyewitness testimony brought to life through verbatim theater

On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen occupying the Kent State University campus fired 67 shots in 13 seconds, leaving four students dead. This tragedy had a profound impact on Northeast Ohio and the nation and is credited as a catalyst in changing Americans’ views toward U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Supported by the Ohio Humanities Council, May 4th Voices was originally written and performed as part of a community arts project for the 40th commemoration of the events of May 4th.

The text of David Hassler’s play is based on the Kent State Shootings Oral History Project, begun in 1990 by Sandra Halem and housed in Kent State University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and Archives. The collection is comprised of over 110 interviews, with first-person narratives and personal reactions to the events of May 4, 1970, from the viewpoints of members of the Kent community; Kent State faculty, students, alumni, staff, and administrators who were on campus that day; and National Guardsmen, police, hospital personnel, and others whose lives were affected by their experience. Weaving these voices and stories together anonymously, Hassler’s play tells the human story of May 4th and its aftermath, capturing the sense of trauma, confusion, and fear felt by all people regardless of where they stood that day.

Directed by Katherine Burke, May 4th Voices premiered on May 2, 2010, on the Kent State University campus. It offered the Kent community an opportunity to take ownership of its own tragic story and engage in a creative, healing dialogue. Now, with the publication of the play and its accompanying teacher’s guide and DVD, May 4th Voices brings to a national audience the emotional truth of this tragedy, connecting it to the larger issues of war, conflict, and trauma. A powerful work of testimony, May 4th Voices offers a new and unique contribution to the literature of the protest movement and the Vietnam era.

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"Parks has burst through every known convention to invent a new theatrical language, like a jive Samuel Beckett, while exploding American cultural myths and stereotypes along the way.... She's passionate and jokey and some kind of genius."--Vogue

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A new edition of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens's classic 1859 historical novel, set in London and Paris during the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities is centered on Dr. Manette, as he is released from eighteen years of imprisonment as a political prisoner in the Bastille and his reunion with his daughter, Lucie Manette, who has found sanctuary in England. Their lives become intertwined with two men they meet in England, the exiled French aristocrat, Charles Darnay, and a disreputable by brilliant English lawyer, Sydney Carton, both of whom fall in love with Lucie. From their relative safety in London, they soon find themselves drawn back to Paris, which is at the height of the Reign of Terror and poses more danger to them than ever.

Dickens' best-known work of historical fiction, A Tale of Two Cities is one of the best-selling novels of all time, and regularly is ranked among the greatest novels ever written -- a "must-read" for all lovers of classic literature. The novel has been adapted for film, television, radio, and the stage, and continues to have an enormous influence on popular culture.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer, novelist, and social critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time, having written some of the most famous works in the English language, such as A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist. His works have been translated into more than 100 languages, and his stories have been adapted into countless plays, films, and television shows.

Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, and lived in London for much of his life. He was the second of eight children and had a difficult childhood. He was forced to leave school at the age of twelve and start working at a factory to help support his family. Despite his difficult circumstances, Dickens was an avid reader and a talented writer. He began publishing his works in 1833, and quickly gained fame and popularity.

Throughout his career, Dickens wrote some of the most influential works of the 19th century, exploring themes of morality, poverty, and social justice. He was also an outspoken critic of Victorian-era injustices, particularly those experienced by the poor. His works were often seen as critiques of the social and political issues of his time.

Dickens' popularity has endured over the years and his works are still widely read today. His novels have been adapted and re-imagined countless times, and his characters and stories have become part of the English literary canon. He is remembered as one of the most influential authors of all time, and his works have shaped generations of readers.

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A modern classic, this edition has been restored by Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III and features a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s great-granddaughter Blake Hazard and a new introduction by bestselling Amor Towles.

Set in the south of France in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic tale of a young actress, Rosemary Hoyt, and her complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick’s decline.

Lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year when it was originally published in 1934, and is even more beloved by readers today.

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A deluxe trade paperback edition of The Great Gatsby, a true classic of 20th-century literature and one of America’s best-loved and iconic novels.

This edition of The Great Gatsby has been updated by F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar James L.W. West III to include the author’s final revisions and features a note on the composition and text, a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan—and an introduction by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. Featuring the iconic original cover art and French flaps, this is a must-have for all Gatsby fans.

The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.

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A wickedly funny novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Squeeze Me in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance.

“[A] comedic marvel … [Hiaasen] hasn’t written a novel this funny since Skinny Dip.”—The New York Times

Andrew Yancy—late of the Miami Police and soon-to-be-late of the Monroe County sheriff’s office—has a human arm in his freezer. There’s a logical (Hiaasenian) explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its shadowy owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, the sheriff might rescue him from his grisly Health Inspector gig (it’s not called the roach patrol for nothing). But first—this being Hiaasen country—Yancy must negotiate an obstacle course of wildly unpredictable events with a crew of even more wildly unpredictable characters, including his just-ex lover, a hot-blooded fugitive from Kansas; the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; two avariciously optimistic real-estate speculators; the Bahamian voodoo witch known as the Dragon Queen, whose suitors are blinded unto death by her peculiar charms; Yancy’s new true love, a kinky coroner; and the eponymous bad monkey, who with hilarious aplomb earns his place among Carl Hiaasen’s greatest characters. 

https://amzn.to/3kv5W7A

The old neighborhood was the place Joe Mackall left. It was a place where everyone’s parents worked at the factory at the dead end of the street, where the Catholic church and school operated like a religious city hall, and where a boy like Joe grew up vowing to get out as soon as he could and to shed his blue-collar beginnings and failed, flawed religion. When the mysterious death of a childhood friend draws him back to the last street before Cleveland, however, he discovers that there is more to “old haunts” than mere words—and more to severing one’s roots than just getting away.

The Last Street Before Cleveland chronicles Mackall’s descent into his past: the story of how, looking for answers about his lost friend, he stumbles on larger questions about himself. With clear-eyed candor, Mackall describes the resurfacing of dormant demons, the opening of the old chasms of depression and addiction, and the discovery, at rock bottom, of a flickering faith that casts a surprising light over everything that has come before. Mackall’s is, finally, a story about life—lived and lost, given and earned.

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In Bound for Shady Grove, essayist Steven Harvey celebrates the spirit of the music of his adopted home in the southern Appalachian mountains. There, at the wellspring of mountain music, he took up his guitar and assumed the journey that culminated in this book.

Harvey's essays measure out in words the four seasons of a life in music. Springtime pieces describe playing music in the log house of friends born and raised in the mountains or entering a banjo contest and losing with style. There are essays about fiddles and the devil, homemade instruments and homemade weapons, and a trip to England to trace mountain songs back to their elusive sources. As the book progresses into winter, the mood darkens, with pieces exploring the connection between music and resentment, loss, and death.

Descriptions of music, hills, and people blend into a rich harmony as Harvey explores where music has taken him―where, in fact, music can take any of us.

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“If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be this—the most inspiring book I've ever read."

—Bill Gates (May, 2017)

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year

The author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now offers a provocative and surprising history of violence.

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millenia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, programs, gruesom punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?

This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the esesnce of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives--the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away--and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.

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The United States is one of the most religious places on earth, but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy.

• Only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and 15 percent cannot name any.

• Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible.

Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed—or misinterpreted—by the vast majority of Americans.

"We have a major civic problem on our hands," says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this problem, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education.

Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this book has to tell."

Prothero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing both the core tenets of the world's major religions and the real differences among them. Complete with a dictionary of the key beliefs, characters, and stories of Christianity, Islam, and other religions, Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves—now updated, with a new preface.

“The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”—The New York Times

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

It was on school ban lists five times over the previous school year.  

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"The Handmaid's Tale" shows the dystopian near-future of a patriarchal, totalitarian, theocratic society. The book, originally published in 1985, is now a successful television series. It is still controversial, and was removed from classroom and library bookshelves nine times over 2021-2022.

A special "unburnable" version of Margaret Atwood's famous book . . . was auctioned off in June 2022 to support PEN America in its goal to fight censorship.

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The #1 New York Times bestselling novel beloved by millions of readers the world over.

“A vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people [of Afghanistan] have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence—forces that continue to threaten them even today." –New York Times Book Review

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.

Since its publication in 2003 Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers, and launching the career of one of America's most treasured writers.

It is a controversial novel in Afghanistan, but is also the subject of many book challenges in American school districts. There is a particularly brutal rape scene in the book. It was subjected to 12 separate book bans in schools since 2021.  

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This collector’s edition of the acclaimed, award-winning novel contains a letter from the author, the meanings behind the names in the book, a map of Garden Heights, fan art, the full, original story that inspired the book, and an excerpt from On the Come Up.

8 starred reviews · Goodreads Choice Awards Best of the Best  ·  William C. Morris Award Winner · National Book Award Longlist · Printz Honor Book · Coretta Scott King Honor Book · #1 New York Times Bestseller!

"Absolutely riveting!" —Jason Reynolds

"Stunning." —John Green

"This story is necessary. This story is important." —Kirkus (starred review)

"Heartbreakingly topical." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A marvel of verisimilitude." —Booklist (starred review)

"A powerful, in-your-face novel." —Horn Book (starred review)

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Want more of Garden Heights? Catch Maverick and Seven’s story in Concrete Rose, Angie Thomas's powerful prequel to The Hate U Give.

"The Hate U Give" was released in 2017 and deals with the aftereffects of a Black girl who attends a predominantly white, elite private school. The movie adaptation premiered in 2018. 

Due to the race-based themes, profanity, and explicit content, the book has been regularly banned since its release. In the 2021-2022 school year, it was removed from school libraries or classrooms 17 times. 

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