We are excited to partner with Noname's Book Club to keep you up to date in finding all the selections free of charge.
Launched in the summer of 2019, Chicago rapper Noname's book club features two titles per month. The website describes the series as "Reading material for the homies" and elaborates, "From cult classics to the words of emergent authors, Noname’s Book Club highlights books that speak on human conditions in critical and original ways."
Noname's Book Club currently has meetups in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and New York City. At the end of the month, participants can attend an end-of-month program where they unpack each book.
Every month, we'll update this page with the book club's recommended titles.
This month's selection is: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney.
Noname Book Club Selections
Devil in a Blue Dress is Walter Mosely’s first published book and the introduction of his most popular character, the African American private detective Easy Rawlins. Set in 1940’s Watts, Devil in a Blue Dress looks at crime and racial politics of Los Angeles of the time. After being fired from his factory job, Rawlins is hired to find a young white woman named Daphne Monet. But he soon finds himself embroiled in something much deeper than a missing persons case. Starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Tom Sizemore and Jennifer Beals, the 1995 film adaptation can be checked out on DVD with your library card today.
The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David Walker is the Black Power history textbook of your dreams. It tells the nuanced and real story of the Black Panther party with engaging, clean-lined full-color art by Kwame Anderson that feels like photos, and propels this vibrant history through both well-known and lesser-known events. Notable in this graphic nonfiction are the artist's and author's finely-honed ability to balance image and text on the page; there's a lot of information in this book, but it never feels crowded or rushed. The Black Panther Party is both an excellent history and a great graphic novel. With three starred reviews, Library Journal recommended this title "for all adult and teen collections."
Laymon explores his early life as an overprotected and overachieving son of an accomplished university professor mother: his own academic prowess, his addictions to food, anorexia, and gambling, his self-image as a Black man, and where he fits in with his extended Southern family. Most touchingly, Laymon tells how he endeavored to be as perfect as his single mother wanted, wanted so that he would be safe.
Heavy was a best book of 2018 by the National Public Radio, New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. The book was awarded The Los Angeles Times - Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose for 2018, and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction for 2019
