Brown Ivy Books

08/21/2025

Happy Birthday to author of 20+ books, and owner of Avant-garde Books and its subsidiary Brown Ivy Books, C. Cherie Hardy [$CCherieHardy]!

08/04/2025

code: B2SCHOOL40

06/30/2025

☁️Quote of the Day☁️
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the Earth as though I had a right to be here."
—James Baldwin

06/30/2025

Throughout history, African-American musicians and artists have made a profound impact in music, they have given sound and voice through a wide variety of musical genres. Universally they have expressed emotions that is shared through faith, passion, joy, comfort, and injustice through songs that...

06/30/2025

06/27/2025

You might think you already know your family’s stories pretty well, Elizabeth Keating wrote in 2022. But do you really know as much as you think? https://theatln.tc/wDvF4Mat

As an anthropology professor, Keating has always been fascinated by the stories that families tell, and a few years ago, she started researching the tales that are passed down from generation to generation. “Our elders may share some familiar anecdotes over and over again, but still, many of us have no broader sense of the world they lived in, and especially what it was like before we came along. The people I interviewed knew so little about their grandparents’ or parents’ early lives, such as how they were raised and what they experienced as young people,” Keating explained. “Few could remember any personal stories about when their grandparents or parents were children. Whole ways of life were passing away unknown. A kind of genealogical amnesia was eating holes in these family histories as permanently as moths eat holes in the sweaters lovingly knitted by our ancestors.”

As Keating interviewed more people, she developed a set of questions designed to get a person talking about the past in a way they never had before. Some of the questions are basic background information, such as where someone was born, but some are more abstract inquiries, such as how someone conceives of their identity, what they believe in, and what they’ve noticed about the passage of time. Specificity is key, so after asking a relative about the home they grew up in, follow up with requests for details: What did their windows look out onto? What did they hear when they woke up in the morning? When you ask for descriptions of an elder’s childhood home and the neighborhoods they roamed around, you’ll hear stories that place you in a rich sensory world you’ve known little about. So ask what family dinners were like and what your relatives were taught about expressing emotion. Ask about their worst first dates and where they bought their clothes. And remember that the most important questions can also be the plainest. One of Keating’s favorites is just “What do you wish people knew about you?”

06/24/2025

Find Black therapists and wellness providers in your area.

06/19/2025

Happy Juneteenth ! Juneteenth Independence Day, Freedom Day, or Emancipation Day, marks the anniversary of Major General Gordon Granger ordering the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War on June 19, 1865.

06/19/2025

Meet Malcolm Hamilton. He is an eleven-year-old honor student who loves astronomy, the scientific study of stars, planets, and other objects in outer space. Learn about the amazing things he discovers after his grandparents give him a telescope for his birthday. This book includes a glossary of scie...

02/08/2025

: An anthropologist and African studies scholar, Dr. Marimba Ani is best known for coining the term 'Maafa' in “Yurugu” —her critical analysis of eurocentrism and its effects and affects on the African diaspora.