Lyah Beth Leflore Livres

Last Night a DJ Saved My Life takes readers behind the velvet rope and inside A-list nightlife. At thirty-five, Destiny Day is at the top of her game. Having escaped her hardscrabble beginnings in the small Midwestern town she calls "East Boogie, Illinois" she is the savviest sister walking around in a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. As New York's premiere party promoter, she has glitz, riches, and steers clear of any man who threatens to cramp her style. Her parties, held at the hippest clubs, are packed with hip-hop royalty; top celebs from the worlds of sports, film, and fashion; and New York's most successful power brokers. Destiny's personal life takes a backseat to her career, but she's got two best friends and a string of men to keep her satisfied. However, when she meets Taye Crawford, an independent financial advisor, at one of her own fantastic parties, Destiny finds herself moving in a direction she never anticipated.

The past four hundred years have seen unprecedented growth in virtually every conceivable realm of life, from medicine to the arts, technology to finance. Far too often, however, when we think of the movers, shakers, and innovators behind these transformations, we picture a host of men--and white men, at that. With Trailblazers, Gabrielle David remedies that. The first anthology of black female innovators published in more than fifteen years, Trailblazers introduces us to more than one hundred and fifty American black women who have been instrumental in creating our contemporary life. We learn about activists and politicians like Fannie Lou Hamer, who in 1964 changed the Democratic National Convention forever by protesting efforts to disenfranchise black voters in her native Mississippi, and Lelia Foley, a black woman who overcame racism and poverty to become the first female African American mayor in the United States in 1973. David also introduces us to entertainers, athletes, and businesswomen--though not always in predictable ways. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter makes an appearance, for example, not for her musical career, but as a businesswoman, reminding us of her multifaceted triumphs. David brings this volume together with a clarion call for recognition of the transformative work black women have done and continue to do. She reminds us of the debt we owe to these unsung heroes--and the place black women deserve at the table.

In Naked, Abiodun Oyewole unveils his thoughts on self-love, forgiveness, lost love, survival, and cultural identity. Known as a founding member of The Last Poets, Oyewole presents a straight-forward, engaging, and intense collection of poetry that takes on the shape of various emotions. Inspired by the "naked poetry" of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Naked is rooted in a striving for freedom, for an essential natural state devoide of all external adornment, turning sensations into concepts that express the concrete realization of nature itself. Written in free form, the brief transcendental poems of Naked convey the character of Abiodun Oyewole, who has evolved into a master poet of his generation.