Del Norte Public Library

Every holiday, aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and neighbors come over to eat, sing, and celebrate life. But all our main character can think about is the sweet potato pie Granny makes just for her. As tables fill with baked macaroni and cheese, chitlins, and other sides a-steaming, she and Granny move the pie to keep it intact. The task becomes tricker as the room grows with dancing and card games and pie cravings. Just when all seems lost...

In the 1970s, Tom Spader is an attorney who is determined to end what he has dubbed "the colored man's losing streak." When his winning of a high-profile case thrusts him into the limelight, he decides to move his family out of their mixed lower-middle-class town and into the posh enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut. The upscale and uptight residents of Greenwich aren't sure how to deal with their new neighbors.

Discusses the enduring appeal of soul food. Presents an overview of its history, covering its roots in Western Africa, its incarnation in the American South, and the role it plays in the health crisis in the African American community. Examines the socioeconomics of the modern American diet, and how the food industry profits from producing cheap calories while healthy options remain expensive and hard to find.

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years—good years—but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese...

Joe, a military policeman about to make officer, is infatuated with the flirtatious and sexy Carmen Jones. Their ill-fated romance comes to a grisly end by the conclusion of the drama but not before their liaison has wreaked havoc with their lives and all who cross their paths.

Little ballerinas dream of pirouettes and grand jetes, dreams of attending the best ballet schools and of dancing starring roles on stage. But in Harlem in the 1950s, dreams don't always come true; they take a lot of work. And sometimes hope is hard to come by. But the first African-American prima ballerina, Janet Collins, did make her dreams come true. And those dreams inspired ballerinas everywhere, showing them that the color of their skin couldn't...

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days--shortened now by the medical experiment--to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting...

"In The Louis Till File, John Edgar Wideman searches for Louis Till, a silent victim of American injustice. Wideman's personal interaction with the story began when he learned of Emmett's murder in 1955; Wideman was also fourteen years old. After reading decades later about Louis's execution, he couldn't escape the twin tragedies of father and son, and tells their stories together for the first time. Author of the award-winning Brothers and Keepers,...

"Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration,...

This video is the adaptation of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera stage production of the Gershwins' classic musical drama Porgy and Bess, which portrays the lives of the occupants of Catfish Row.