By Christian Coleman | And the New Year’s category is . . . Transformation! As the oligarchs of the free world steer us on a rocky ride toward dire changes we didn’t want, we’ll be focused on changing ourselves for the greater good. What shall we work on? Expanding our minds about what Buddhism is and what it has to offer? Ditching the me-centric trend of girlboss feminism? Renegotiating our relationship with social media? Beefing up at the gym without the macho trappings? This handful of titles from Beacon’s catalog will set us on the runway of life to get tens across the board for progress and self-reinvention! Read more →

Whew! Now that we are shutting the door on that messy guest called 2024, we are officially in our unwind and imbibe era until further notice. Join us, won’t you? Because your books should be as good as your booze. We asked our staff members which beverage, cocktail, or mocktail they would pair with their favorite Beacon book, and they did not disappoint. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | If last Christmas, you gave someone your heart, and the very next day, they gave it away, this year, to save yourself from tears, you’ll give it to your TBR list! ALL our books are 30% off through December 31 during our holiday sale! Read more →

By Atef Abu Saif | All of a sudden, with the resumption of war, Khan Younis has become the Israeli’s primary target. It’s like they have followed me here. Last night, shelling and missile strikes could be heard on all sides. I hadn’t seen a ‘ring of fire’ style attack since I left the north, but as I lay on Mamoun’s floor, trying to sleep, the orchestra of war struck up again. Likewise, the old habits kicked in: counting the attacks, speculating on the types of rockets being used, wondering where each strike landed. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | It’s going to be another four years of accelerated survival mode. The results of the election greenlit the sequel of the orange demagogue franchise we didn’t want. And now we need to brace ourselves for it. However, the frustration, the anger, and the grief from the spoils of November 5 are still raw. As such, some recuperation is in order. Facing the sequel can wait. Read more →

By Atef Abu Saif | I spent three hours this morning walking the streets, just walking and reflecting on things. Last night was another violent one. The siege is closing in on al-Shifa. Yesterday the administrators had to excavate a mass grave in front of the building to bury all the dead in, whilst trying not to be shot in the process. Closer to home, we heard renewed attacks on the nearby Indonesian Hospital in the early hours. Many civilian houses were hit. People’s access to that hospital has become impossible. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | Here we are again with the nail-biting tension from four years ago. The neck-and-neck polls between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump alerted our attention to other issues at play in addition to the debate and rally talking points. Lies about voter fraud that distract us from how voter suppression at the systemic level threatens our voting rights. Read more →

By Atef Abu Saif | Last night was most violent. Some 600 people were killed in attacks on different parts of the Strip. At around 11pm I heard an explosion nearby. The usual sequence: the screech of a rocket, a flash in the darkness, then the explosion. I was lying on the mattress, in the middle of the flat (away from the windows), trying to sleep, and had almost dosed off when I noticed a dark and noxious cloud filling the street. No one seemed to be out there. Read more →

By Atef Abu Saif | I hardly slept last night. For the last two nights I’ve managed to keep a kind of routine: dinner at 8pm, smoke a narghile till 9pm, catch up with WhatsApp messages till 9.15; call Hanna and the kids and talk to them till about 10.45, after which I’m ready to sleep. For two nights it worked. Last night, though, it didn’t. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | A Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month unmarred by election-year drama would have been a miracle. No such luck in 2024. Not with anti-immigrant rhetoric regrowing its Hydra’s head when right-wing candidates take to the debate and rally stages. If that weren’t enough, Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month started off with news that Jeanine Cummins will release new novel next year about the aftermath of a hurricane in Puerto Rico. Read more →

By Remica Bingham-Risher | I met [Sonia] Sanchez at the second Furious Flower Conference in 2004, where she performed with her band Full Moon of Sonia, and interviewed her a few years later. As we had just begun to get to know each other and I was a young mostly unpublished poet, I was surprised to be invited to a gathering at her house that first evening we sat together. At Sanchez’s party, there was food spread from end to end on a large wooden table; people filled the house and were almost as interesting and varied as the art stationed in every room. Read more →

By Samira K. Mehta | Since Kamala Harris has become the Democratic candidate for president, her multiracial identity has returned to the news. Harris is the child of a Black Jamaican father and a South Asian mother. You can read that heritage as multiracial, as we are increasingly inclined to do now, but for most of American history, Harris would have been read more or less exclusively as Black. Vice-President Harris has explained that her mother knew this aspect of American race relations, and so she understood that Kamala and her sister Maya would be seen as Black girls and then as Black women. She is a Black woman, a graduate of Howard University. That said, she is Black with South Asian heritage, a multiracial presidential candidate in an increasingly multiracial world. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | Rainbow season is in full, fierce bloom, honeys! Take to the streets with your most fabulous fans and clack them with pride! Clack them to reflect, empower, and unite for queerness in all its joys and liberation! Clack back to the haters intimidated by queerness! Because this is your month. They all are, really. Read more →

By Remica Bingham-Risher | When I asked Forrest Hamer to autograph his books, I had never seen anyone so upset about such a small mistake. We were at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop where he was teaching and, like all the other students there, I became enamored with his work and unassuming nature, wanting nothing more than to spend the last few nights surveying his words. As he signed his books, he misspelled my name, and when I crossed out one letter for another, he apologized to no end. He held me there, despite the line forming behind us, repeating, “I’m so, so sorry about that. Names are important. Please let me take care of things.” Read more →

By Christian Coleman | This Sunday, it’s dad’s turn to be given his flowers—or tie or power tool or gift card. You get the idea. Our flowers come in the form of books, some of which are written by fathers. Books for the daddies and zaddies on their muscle-bound journey. For the House fathers taking the rejected queer kids under their wing. For the feminist dads who don’t want to go the way of the Kens in “Barbie.” For the fathers living from hustle to hustle to keep a roof over their loved ones’ heads. Read more →

A Q&A with Jonathan Rigsby | By the time I sat down to write “Drive,” I’d had to put a lot of thought into where I wanted to focus my energy. Working, parenting, and driving were taking up the majority of my time, and I had to choose how to spend the very small amount of free time I had. I’m very fortunate to have an incredibly supportive partner. When I decided to get serious about writing a book, she was with me every step of the way. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | “How do you teach a kindergartener about the histories and contemporary legacies of race and racism in a way that affirms her humanity and agency?” Dr. OiYan Poon poses herself this question in the introduction of “Asian American Is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family” after her three-year-old daughter Té Té broaches the topic of race. An answer to her question could be found by turning to this year’s theme for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Read more →

By Alana Lopez | One of the first ideas taught in my Literature of the Harlem Renaissance course last semester at Boston University was the concept of Harlem as a haven. In Claude McKay’s “Home to Harlem,” it was, as its name suggests, a motivating factor for its main character, like that of Ithaca for Odysseus. It was a hub of inventive and unorthodox expressions of self as shown by Louis Armstrong’s jazz or Gladys Bentley’s blues. For Rudolph Fisher, Harlem’s culture is familiar and, though often written off as a fad, rich with history and ultimately timeless in “The Caucasian Storms Harlem.” To James Baldwin, it is home and birthplace as well and, much like him, I’ve come to find that “home” and “haven” are vastly different things. Read more →

A Q&A with Amy Caldwell and Perpetua Charles | I’d worked with Ra Page, Atef Abu Saif’s editor at Comma Press in the UK, on a previous book, The Drone Eats with Me, which chronicled Abu Saif’s experiences on the ground in Gaza during the 2012 Israeli incursion. And then last fall, after the post-Oct 7 Israeli campaign and invasion of Gaza began, Ra reached out. I didn’t know Atef had been visiting Gaza on October 7, and it was, of course, distressing to hear. Read more →

By Mei Su Bailey | This year, Beacon Press is taking part in the nationwide celebration of James Baldwin’s hundredth birthday with the release of the James Baldwin Centennial Series! Originally published in “Notes of a Native Son,” these essay collections commemorate Baldwin’s legacy as an artist, an activist, a social critic, and a gifted writer. Read more →