Joniece Abbott-Pratt

"A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system--a debut that announces a blazingly original voice. Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex that calls itself, optimistically, the Royal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus...

To gain leadership skills needed to run a cupcake-baking empire when she grows up, Brianna runs for president of the fifth grade--expecting little competition--until a new girl enters the race.

"The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-nineteenth century"-- They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors' tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own. In a world that would be allegorical if it weren't saturated in harsh truths,...

Eight interconnected stories follow the tenants in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone's mind, as they weave in and out of each other's lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and forge new paths forward.