African American Humor

After fourteen years in prison, Gerald “Stew Pot” Reeves, age thirty-one, returns home to live with his mom in Parkland, a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The residents are in a tailspin, dreading the arrival of the man they remember as a frightening delinquent. The anxiety only grows when Stew Pot announces that he experienced a religious awakening in prison.

When The Flip Wilson Show debuted in 1970, Black faces were still rare on television, Black hosts nonexistent. So how did Clerow “Flip” Wilson go from Jersey City grade-school dropout to national celebrity, heralded on the cover of Time as “TV’s first black superstar”? Flip is a candid, entertaining biography of a consummate comedian who changed the face of American popular culture.

Harry Sylvester Bird grows up in Edward, Pennsylvania, with his parents, Wayne and Chevy, whom he greatly dislikes. They’re racist, xenophobic, financially incompetent, and they have quite a few secrets of their own. To Harry, they represent everything wrong with this country. And his small town isn’t any better. He witnesses racial profiling, graffitied swastikas, and White Power signs on his walk home from school. He can’t wait until he’s old enough to leave. When he finally is, he moves straight to New York City, where he feels he can finally live out his true inner self.

Madeline Harper, an 87-year-old career-focused woman who spent her life chasing ambition, has a sudden accident while preparing for Thanksgiving. When she wakes, she is thrust into a vivid, dreamlike experience where she is hosting the Thanksgiving of her dreams—filled with family, love, and bittersweet humor. But reality hits hard when she wakes up in a hospital to find she has no one to take her home. What follows is a heartfelt, funny, and emotional journey as Madeline reconnects with the only person who ever held her heart, finding hope and love when she thought all was lost.

BlackWash: The Untold Stories of Reverse Racism produces this narrative using factual events of the past and present. It is a fictional twist on nonfiction that the world needs to heal. This novel aims to produce a mental shift within its listeners while alleviating systemic racism and oppression, without experiencing the same trauma lived by the subjugated.

Two estranged sisters, one father accused of murder, zero time to catch up. Ivy and Rose share only one thing: a father they don't know. Ivy, an on-leave FBI agent with a predilection for order, and Rose, a reformed hacker with a knack for chaos, are summoned to their father's private investigations office when he goes missing. The sisters come running and finally meet—over his assistant's corpse. With their dad the number-one suspect in this brutal murder, Rose hatches a plan to pose as his partners. She and Ivy tackle a wealthy client's case in a small town with big secrets, all the ...

Tosh Livingston, superstar student-athlete from small-town USA, thinks he's made it big as a rising freshman at Harvard University. Not so fast! Once on campus, he's ensnared in a frenzied competition to win a spot on Harvard's legendary humor magazine, the Harpoon. Tosh soon finds that joining the Harpoon is a weird and surprisingly dangerous pursuit. He faces off against a secret society of super-rich kids, gets schooled by a philosophy professor who loves flunking everyone, and teams up with a genius student-cartoonist with an agenda of her own.

The sudden death of Not Sidney Poitier's mother orphans him at age eleven. He is left with a name no one understands, an uncanny resemblance to an Oscar winning actor, and serious amount of shares in the Turner Corporation. Percival Everett's novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin colour with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not Sidney learns to navigate a world that doesn't know what to do with him.

Anastasia Moretti ran away from one bad situation only to free fall into another. Yikes! Now this witty mafia princess has to find a way to permanently sever corrupt family ties and establish a new life for herself among the mountains of Idaho. If only that new life didn't bring her face-to-face with racists, incels, and others who dwell in the dark underbelly of society. Among the Woodsman brothers, he carried the name David...though he was built more like Goliath. He specialized in keeping people and their things safe. And he did it well. Will David be able to keep Anastasia safe from ...

Born and raised in the heart of old Dixie, D'aron Davenport finds himself in unfamiliar territory his freshman year at UC Berkeley. Two thousand miles and a world away from his childhood, he is a small-town fish floundering in the depths of a large, hyperliberal pond. Caught between the prosaic values of his rural hometown and the intellectualized, multicultural cosmopolitanism of Berzerkeley, the 19-year-old white kid is uncertain about his place until one disastrous party brings him three idiosyncratic best friends.

In Knucklehead we meet Marcus Hayes, a Black law student who struggles, sometimes unsuccessfully, with the impulse to confront everyday bad behavior with swift and antisocial action. The cause of this impulse is unknown to him. When Marcus unexpectedly becomes involved with the brilliant and kind Amalia Stewart, her love and acceptance pacify his demons. But when his demons return, he is no longer inclined to contain them.

Framed as a reference work of humorous “entries” that offer trenchant social commentary, Everything Abridged presages a dark vision of the near future but tells jokes in the face of it: An intelligence agency operative uncovers a conspiracy to generate conspiracies and realizes his participation in the scheme. A Caribbean monarch meets four decades of American presidents and adjusts his country’s foreign policy accordingly. Experiment participants are asked to bring back a gun as quickly as possible.

Bearland Tales Boxed Set Books 1-3 invites you into a world where gay bears live their best lives, exploring love, friendship, and self-discovery. In this captivating collection, you'll encounter three heartfelt stories. Rough Cut Chris Hodak, a former college football defensive lineman, has carried a secret crush on his hunky teammate Rohan Moore for twenty years. When they reunite, Chris finds Rohan as a proud, out-and-proud bear who owns a barber shop catering to bears. The lingering spark between them ignites when Chris sits in Rohan's chair, but to win back Rohan's heart, Chris must ...

After spending better than two decades working in call centers, I cannot help but notice the glaring similarities shared by call centers in North Texas. The pay is rarely close to the industry standard for the frontline call-taker. Most of the call centers I hired into operated like poorly run daycare centers. Those individuals who were well-liked by management rarely found themselves targets of bathroom break micromanagement and the questionable practices and tactics which made Tina Faye's "Mean Girls" so infamously popular.

Within these pages are the musings, the revelations, the ruminations, and the reflections of the incomparable Larry Wilmore. Here, collected for the first time, all in one place, are his Black Thoughts. From why black weathermen make him feel happy (or sad) and why brothas don't see UFOs to his search for Black Jesus or his quest to replace "African-American" with "chocolate," Wilmore has finally relented, agreeing to share his unique (black) perspective.

William Melvin Kelley's final work, a Joycean, Rabelaisian romp in which he brings back some of his most memorable characters in a novel of three intertwining stories.

Cheena has NEVER BEEN KISSED! That’s right, she still has her lipginity, despite her great personality and voluptuous frame. Dillon, her special online friend, wants to know why and makes it his mission to find out. He finally discovers the harrowing truth when he meets Cheena in person. She discovers one of his big secrets, as well. By then it’s too late. They’re already in love. Now they have to figure out a way to be together that won’t destroy his vital business plans and her very soul.

Comedian Cameron B is a man with his back against the wall. The rent is due, his family needs food, and bill collectors are blowing up his phone. Since his career is stalled, he's faced with doing agricultural work to make ends meet...that is until fellow entertainer, Lance the Great, throws him a lifeline - two grand and a proposal. The loan and the opportunity changes Cameron's fortunes, but at what price?

Embark on a whirlwind adventure where unexpected connections and hidden desires collide. Dustin Garber, the blue-eyed epitome of innocence, harbors a secret that's about to test the bounds of friendship. Unbeknownst to his companions, Dustin is enamored with bears—big, hairy gay men. In a bold move, he surprises his friends by booking them for the annual Gay Bear Ski Week. Craig, captivating and diverse in his own right, remains indifferent to the idea of spending a week with these rugged men. He already has his own plans for a thrilling encounter, but little does he know that his chosen ...

An unambitious 22 year-old, Darren lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Manhattan office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya and eating his mother's home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC's hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the 36th floor.