A young black man’s funny and searing quest to learn to shoot, and a fascinating odyssey into race, guns, and self-protection in America. The most RJ Young knew about guns was that they could get him killed. Until, recently married to a white woman and in desperate need of a way to relate to his gun-loving father-in-law, Young does the unimaginable: he accepts Charles’s gift of a Glock. Despite, or because of, the racial rage and fear he experiences among white gun owners (“Ain’t you supposed to be shooting a basketball?”), Young determines to get good, really good, with a gun. Let It Bang is the compelling story of the author’s unexpected obsession—he eventually becomes an NRA-certified pistol instructor—and of his deep dive into the heart of America’s gun culture: what he sees as the domino effect of white fear, white violence, black fear, rinse, repeat. Young’s original reporting on shadow industries like US Law Shield, which insures and defends people who report having shot someone in self-defense, and on the newly formed National African American Gun Association, gives powerful insight into the dynamic. Through indelible profiles, Young brings us up to the current rocketing rise in gun ownership among black Americans, most notably women. Let It Bang is an original look at American gun culture from the inside and the other side—and, most movingly, the story of a young black man’s hard-won nonviolent path to self-protection. “We need more books like this: personal, emotional meditations on gun ownership…showing us all the ways in which guns take on meaning for people, and what happens when those meanings collide.”—Pacific Standard
NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of The Year With journalistic skill, heart, and hope, Requiem for the Massacre reckons with the tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one hundred years after the most infamous act of racial violence in American history More than one hundred years ago, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, perpetrated a massacre against its Black residents. For generations, the true story was ignored, covered up, and diminished by those in power and in a position to preserve the status quo. Blending memoir and immersive journalism, RJ Young shows how, today, Tulsa combats its racist past while remaining all too tolerant of racial injustice. Requiem for the Massacre is a cultural excavation of Tulsa one hundred years after one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. Young focuses on unearthing the narrative surrounding previously all-Black Greenwood district while challenging an apocryphal narrative that includes so-called Black Wall Street, Booker T. Washington, and Black exceptionalism. Young provides a firsthand account of the centennial events commemorating Tulsa's darkest day as the city attempts to reckon with its self-image, commercialization of its atrocity, and the aftermath of the massacre that shows how things have changed and how they have stayed woefully the same. As Tulsa and the United States head into the next one hundred years, Young’s own reflections thread together the stories of a community and a nation trying to heal and trying to hope.
First published in 1996. In this volume the author has collected several published works to explore the ideas of manhood in America, Sojourner Truth, ties of ordinary blacks to those still in slavery and a study of the Northern African American community; new information on black activities in Canada and begins with an essay on the five elements of black community activity before the Civil War: churches, newspapers, conventions, organizations, and emigration which looks at of these "platforms for change" going through developmental stages from experimentation, adjustment and reaching maturity in the 1850’s.
Jesse Baker, 16, fights for control of his life and his sanity in Jesses Escape. The first in a series of two young adult novels. Beaten and abused by his alcoholic, drug crazed father, Jesse first turns to alcohol and pot to cope. As things grow more violent at home a buddy offers him a taste of heroin. Soon his life begins to spiral out of control. After a tragic event he finds the courage to leave and seek out his mother whos been dead to him for over 12 years. Through his turmoils he grows in spirit and finds the strength to fight the demons that plague his life. I'm confident that Jesse's story will tug at your heart as you travel with him on his journey to freedom, and the discovery of what life has to offer if he keeps his faith and doesnt lose hope.
Neurotic newspaper reporter Mikey McNulty is in love with June Summers, and he has plans to marry her. But when fate and family have other plans, Mikey is forced to question what he wants and what he believes. Fans of Nick Hornby and Jennifer Weiner will love Young's penchant for humor in the most awkward and emotional situations.
The Pen & Cape Society, in conjunction with Local Hero Press, is proud to present The Good Fight, an anthology of superhero fiction from some of the best authors working in the genre. Collected within this volume are stories by Scott Bachmann, Frank Byrns, Marion Harmon, Warren Hately, Drew Hayes, Ian Thomas Healy, Hydrargentium, Michael Ivan Lowell, T. Mike McCurley, Landon Porter, R. J. Ross, Cheyanne Young, and Jim Zoetewey. After enjoying the stories in The Good Fight, please be sure to check out the works of the individual authors, because they're just super!
I don't know what made me do it, I don't know what was possibly going through my head. But I do know as she touched my skin with a caress so soft and genuine, I knew that she was the one for me. When our lips pressed together in the softest most wonderful moment I felt as though the world fell beneath my feet. I felt as though I was falling not in the bad way that you see in movies or reading any kind of book but the way it feels when the one that you love the most is holding you close and watching as though you are their whole world, their whole galaxy. I'm getting ahead of myself though my name is Tara LaRenge and this is my story of how I found myself.
For years Norma Lynn Bonesteel has put up with her husband beating her and tried to be a good wife to him. No one in her tiny Oklahoma town thinks she'd be capable of killing him, even when she does. But she's gone even further than that. In this riveting crime tale, Norma Lynn plans the downfall of her ruthless father-in-law and his meth empire. In the process, she becomes more than anyone could have ever expected. The Wild West has returned to eastern Oklahoma in the form of one woman who will stop at nothing until she exacted her revenge on all she feels complicit in her suffering.
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