Patricia Hruby Powell Livres

The picture book highlights the life and achievements of civil rights activist Ella Baker, showcasing her significant contributions to the movement. Through engaging illustrations and storytelling, readers are inspired by Baker's dedication to grassroots organizing and her belief in empowering others. The collaboration between Patricia Hruby Powell and R. Gregory Christie brings Baker's legacy to life, making it accessible and impactful for young audiences.

Lil Hardin and her man, Louis Armstrong, were musical royalty--inventing a new kind of sound--makin' jazz. Believe it, baby! This is the true story of Lil Hardin Armstrong: pianist, composer, and bandleader in the early days of jazz. Ahead of her time, Lil made a career for herself--and for Louis Armstrong, her modest, unassuming husband. Louis might never have become the groundbreaking jazz player he was, if it hadn't been for Lil. Scat-inspired verse celebrates how Lil overcame race and gender barriers to become the first lady of the Chicago jazz scene. "Brimming with a contagious love of jazz and its first lady, this work brings down the house"--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

When Winston receives a telegraph from his mother informing him of his father’s imminent death, he reluctantly returns to Jamaica after 25 years of teaching history in the United States, having avoided contact with his family. Never considering how his relatives regarded his silence, mutual resentments cause a series of painful encounters and memories of an abusive father, a betraying mother, a favored brother, a sister lost in an accident, and a younger half-sister. Told from the perspectives of both Winston and his estranged brother, Septimus, this powerful tale combines psychological realism and magical elements as they seek to heal their longstanding breach. Absorbing and poignant, themes of forgiveness, transcendence, and human possibility are explored as death reverberates through each relationship.

Coretta Scott King Book Award, Illustrator, Honor Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award, Honor Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Nonfiction Honor Parent's Choice Award Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Children's Books of the Year List Bologna Ragazzi Nonfiction Honor 2014 In exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait for young people of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker, the woman who worked her way from the slums of St. Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by both author and artist, Josephine's powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself.

From a major voice in Caribbean literature—this is a story of Gwennie Glaspole, a schoolteacher trapped in an unhappy marriage, fighting to resist Jamaican cultural expectations and for her independence A new edition of the “remarkable first novel” from a major voice in Caribbean literature in the Celebrating Black Women Writers series. Written in modified Jamaican patois, Powell traces the life of Gwennie, a strong woman who plays the role of wife and mother while suffering through a loveless and violently abusive marriage to Walter. Faced with choice of remain a victim to her duties or flee from the cruelties of her everyday life, Gwennie decides to start anew and embrace the pressures of sudden and laudable change. Me Dying Trial ambitiously conveys what goes unspoken—issues regarding identity, homosexuality, religion, and personal afflictions, and how often that strong sense of community holds us back from growing. Powell’s debut solidified her status as “one of the most exciting writers living and writing on the island that is the Caribbean-American hyphen.” (Edwidge Danticat)