"A sixteen-year-old girl whose father is the leader of a Black liberation group discovers her own place in the world"-- Warrior Princess. That's what Nigeria's father calls her. He's raised her as part of the Movement, a Black separatist group based in Philadelphia. Nigeria is homeschooled and vegan and participates in traditional rituals that connect her and other kids from the group to their ancestors. But when her mother--the perfect matriarch...

For Ishmael Reed, Barack Obama, like Michelangelo's St. Anthony, is a tormented man, haunted by modern reincarnations of the demonic spirits used to break slaves. These were the "Nigger Breakers"—men like Edward Covey, who was handed the job of breaking Frederick Douglass. "Isn't it ironic," writes Reed: "A media that scolded the Jim Crow South in the 1960s now finds itself hosting the bird." In this collection, which includes several unpublished...