Fiction
The Birds of Opulence
Crystal Wilkinson
Generations of women in a Kentucky community live with losses and knowledge that are carried through families.
Collection
Kentucky & Appalachian Voices
Explore work rooted in Lexington, the Bluegrass, and Black Appalachia.
The shelves
Books in this collection
Reference
The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia
Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, John A. Hardin
A reference work brings together people, institutions, and events in Black Kentucky history.
Poetry
Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
Walker’s poems insist on the visibility of Black lives in the language and geography of Appalachia.
Poetry
Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride
Frank X Walker
A poetry sequence approaches the life of the celebrated Black jockey through imagined voices.
Memoir
Bone Black
bell hooks
Fragmentary memories trace the making of a writer in a Black Southern family.
Essays
Teaching to Transgress
bell hooks
hooks brings classroom experience to questions about freedom, authority, and participation in education.
Oral history
Freedom on the Border
Catherine Fosl, Tracy E. K'Meyer
Kentuckians’ oral histories illuminate the work of challenging segregation across the state.
Essays
All About Love
bell hooks
hooks examines love as a practice that can shape personal relationships and public life.
Essays
Belonging: A Culture of Place
bell hooks
Essays on place, race, land, and return connect hooks’s Kentucky roots with a wider ethic of belonging.
Poetry
Buffalo Dance
Frank X Walker
A sequence of poems imagines the perspective of York, the enslaved participant in the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Poetry
Turn Me Loose
Frank X Walker
Poems use distinct voices to consider the killing of Medgar Evers and the persistence of public memory.
Poetry
Perfect Black
Crystal Wilkinson
Poems consider color, family, girlhood, and the landscapes that shaped Wilkinson’s sense of home.
Memoir
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts
Crystal Wilkinson
Recipes and recollections connect Appalachian foodways with the stories of Black women across generations.
Short stories
Water Street
Crystal Wilkinson
Linked stories enter the lives of neighbors in a small Kentucky community, revealing their private and shared histories.
Poetry
Head Off & Split
Nikky Finney
Finney’s poems move between family, public history, and the language that mediates what people see.
Poetry
Rice
Nikky Finney
Rice ties family stories and foodways to Black Southern histories of labor and survival.
Picture book
A is for Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
An illustrated alphabet introduces places, people, and traditions in Black Appalachia.
Memoir
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
William Wells Brown
Brown describes enslavement and escape, illuminating a life that began near Lexington and led into abolitionism.
Fiction
Clotel
William Wells Brown
Brown’s novel follows women navigating slavery and family separation in the early United States.