ABC News | February 22, 2022
Chef Alexander Smalls shares his oxtail fried rice recipe.
Watch the video here.
The Southern Bookseller Review | February 17, 2022
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 Southern Book Prize (SBP). The Prize, representing Southern bookseller favorites from 2021, is awarded to “the best Southern book of the year” as nominated by Southern indie booksellers and voted on by their customers. Winners were chosen by popular vote from a ballot of finalists in fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. Approximately 1500 ballots were cast making each Southern Book Prize winner a true Southern reader favorite.
This year’s winners are When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash in Fiction, Graceland, At Last by Margaret Renkl in Nonfiction, and Keep Your Head Up by Aliya King Neil and Charly Palmer (illus.) in Children’s. Winners receive a donation in their name to the charity or nonprofit of their choice.
“After twenty-years as a writer and author," said Aliya King Neil, "I published my first children’s book! What has made this process especially special is that it’s based on the true story of one of my students during my time as a teacher. When Denene Millner, Editorial Director of Denene Millner Books, chose to usher this book to life, I could not have felt more lucky. Children’s books have been a part of my life since the age of four and libraries and bookstores were always a constant treat. I hope Keep Your Head Up continues to inspire children like young D for many years to come.” She asked that her prize be donated to Conscious Kid in San Diego.
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Yes! Magazine | February 16, 2022
Patrisse Cullors’ new book offers guidance for personal, as well as systemic, change. Breaking the cycle of harm starts with us.
In her new book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World, Patrisse Cullors starts with courageous conversations. She says, “We have courageous conversations because our goal is to live inside of a healthy community that values the dignity of every single human being.” These conversations typically arise out of our lived experiences. They are conversations we have because we care. They are conversations that first start with us.
Like Cullors, I had one of my most formative courageous conversations with my mother. I wanted to know why child support was the reason my dad was in jail. I wanted to know what role each parent played in the process. I wanted to know what we could do to make things better. Unbeknownst to me, my mother had already decided that the costs of this punitive process far outweighed the benefits. She told the court she didn’t want court-ordered child support if this would be the outcome every time my father could not pay the full amount to my mother and my half-sister’s mother. Eventually, she told the court she didn’t want it at all.
Through Cullors’ own story, she demonstrates how hard courageous conversations can be, especially with family, friends, other organizers, or elders in our communities. She points out that “Many of us, including myself, were taught in homes, places of worship, schools and many other institutions to hold back our words, not necessarily because someone explicitly told us to be secretive but rather because we witnessed all the adults around us who lacked the courage to be honest with themselves and others. This is not a judgment; it is an observation.”
We replicate the behaviors around us. Challenging the status quo, even in conversation, even with our mothers, is hard and requires courage. To question deeply entrenched beliefs and values about each other and ourselves and to dismantle massive, violent systems requires tenacity and the readiness to understand the difference between responding to the world and reacting.
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Variety | February 13, 2022
Black History Month has always been about abolition for me.
I may not have known the word abolition as a young girl, but I understood abolition in my spirit. At my core, I witnessed a community ravaged and decimated by police and prisons, and I wanted more for us. I would stay up for hours in my bed, imagining a world where all of my loved ones were treated well and loved on. When I read books or watched television shows and films, I rarely saw Black communities surrounded with care, dignity and love.
The last twenty years of my work have focused on changing the material conditions for communities most impacted by a system that did not value our lives. And now, the next twenty years of my work will be about implementing and supporting life-affirming abolitionist storytelling and institutions that can help shape a new world. I believe abolition can chart a new vision and a new reality for all industries.
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CBS Mornings | February 9, 2022
For Black History Month, "CBS Mornings" is celebrating trailblazers who became leaders in their field and helped change the course of history. Among the trailblazers are two groundbreaking chefs, Alexander Smalls and Kwame Onwuachi. They caught up recently at chef Alexander's New York City apartment to talk about their childhoods, careers and advice for young Black aspiring chefs.
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Free Speech TV | January 31, 2022
Democracy Now! speaks with Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors about her new book, “An Abolitionist’s Handbook,” which lays out her journey toward abolition and 12 principles activists can follow to practice abolition, which she describes as the elimination of police, prisons, jails, surveillance, and the current court system.
“We have to imagine what we would do with these dollars, with these budgets, and they have to really be an imagination that’s grounded in care,” says Cullors. She also speaks about her community organizing in Los Angeles, which fought $3.5 billion worth of jail expansion, and her multi-year contract with Warner Bros. Television Group to create original storytelling content around abolition.
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Democracy Now! | January 31, 2022
We speak with Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors about her new book, “An Abolitionist’s Handbook,” which lays out her journey toward abolition and 12 principles activists can follow to practice abolition, which she describes as the elimination of police, prisons, jails, surveillance and the current court system. “We have to imagine what we would do with these dollars, with these budgets, and they have to really be an imagination that’s grounded in care,” says Cullors. She also speaks about her community organizing in Los Angeles, which fought $3.5 billion worth of jail expansion, and her multi-year contract with Warner Bros. Television Group to create original storytelling content around abolition.
Follow the link above to learn more.
Dazed | January 26, 2022
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, discusses her new book An Abolitionist’s Handbook
“These 12 principles or steps are about goal setting. They are about understanding who you are and how to bring the idea of abolition to the forefront in your life and in the lives of others,” writes Patrisse Cullors in An Abolitionist’s Handbook.
Cullors is a New York Times bestselling author, educator, artist and abolitionist from Los Angeles, as well as co-founder and former Executive Director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. In her latest book, Cullors outlines how abolition became part of her day-to-day life and how you can do the same. The book is filled with personal anecdotes of Cullors navigating her way through America, how the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement informed her work, the struggles she experienced – such as daily death threats and doxxing – and the people she met along the way. It contains instructions on how to practice accountability, unlearn toxic behaviours, build intentional abolitionist communities and, of course, dismantle the prison industrial system.
Here, Cullors chats to Dazed about what abolition means to her, how we can allow space to make the process a joyful one, and how we can push the movement forward here in the UK.
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PEN America | January 26, 2022
PEN America is honored to announce the Longlists for the 2022 Literary Awards. Our Awards are juried by panels of esteemed, award-winning authors, editors, translators, and critics. These authors are committed to recognizing their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have had a continuous, lasting impact on the literary landscape. You can learn more about the 2022 Judges PEN America Literary Awards judges here.
The 2022 Literary Awards will confer over $350,000 to writers and translators. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, translation, and more, these Longlisted books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence.
Finalists for all Book Awards will be announced in January 2022. Stay tuned for more.
PEN/Jean Stein Book Award ($75,000)
To a book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence.
Judges: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Angie Cruz, Maurice Manning, Steph Opitz
The President and The Frog, Carolina De Robertis (Knopf)
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Self | January 25, 2022
Patrisse Cullors was effecting change in her hometown of Los Angeles long before she became internationally known as a Black Lives Matter cofounder. As an L.A. native, Cullors led multiple nonprofit organizations, including Dignity and Power Now, JusticeLA, and Reform L.A. Jails. In 2013 she and fellow organizers Alicia Garza and Ayọ Tometi created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag after George Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges for the killing of Black teenager Trayvon Martin. In 2014, as protests spread across the U.S. in the wake of the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, the movement became the international campaign we know today.
In 2020, Cullors was named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and inked an overall production deal with Warner Bros. Studios. Last year she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Her latest book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World (out January 25), leans on her 20-plus years as an activist and organizer to offer sage advice for fellow changemakers.
Here, the 38-year-old activist shares some inspiring, practical advice with SELF on how to make a difference in the world—by starting with ourselves.
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BNC News | January 24, 2022
While many social justice advocates work within the established social structures to achieve gradual change, there are others who dare to advocate for a completely reimagined and radically different system all together. Penned by the co-founder and former executive director of Black Lives Matter movement Patrisse Cullors, “An Abolitionist’s Handbook” offers relatable teachings on the history of abolition and how it can be used in people’s lives as a source of collective care. She asks people to lead with love, fierce compassion and precision.
Follow the link above to learn more.
Hot 97 | January 24, 2022
Activist Patrisse Cullors sits down with Ebro, Laura Stylez, & Rosenberg to challenge our understanding of care, breaking down how to change culture in the world, and how to share the ideas and have dialog with those who don’t believe.
Her book: An Abolitionist’s Handbook 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World is available Jan 25!
Follow the link above to learn more.
Jemele Hill is Unbothered | January 24, 2022
Activist and artist Patrisse Cullors joins Jemele to discuss her departure from Black Lives Matter, the movement she co-founded in 2013. Patrisse shares how the constant barrage of right-wing attacks impacted her mental health, how she’s handled death threats and criticism from others within the black community. Patrisse also discusses her latest book, “An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World.”
Listen to the podcast on Spotify
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The Hollywood Reporter | January 22, 2022
Author of a new book on how to be a modern-day abolitionist, the L.A. native talks about how far-right attacks on her finances last year were attempts to "get me killed," how her stance on activism has shifted and the projects she has planned under her overall deal with Warner Bros.
There are few people in Los Angeles who straddle the worlds of political activism, Hollywood and art the way Patrisse Cullors does. A co-founder of Black Lives Matter — the movement that arose following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013, after he killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin a year earlier — she went on to write a best-selling 2018 memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, in 2018. “That was the height of when Black Lives Matter was being called a terrorist organization,” she says. Cullors also became a writer on the Freeform show Good Trouble that led to an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV Group in late 2020. That same year, Cullors — through her work as an artist, she has presented performance pieces at the Broad and Hammer museums — co-opened an art gallery, Crenshaw Dairy Mart, in a former convenience store in Inglewood.
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Grub Street | January 21, 2022
Over the course of his 28-year-long career the chef, cookbook author, and former opera singer Alexander Smalls has opened a string of Manhattan restaurants, starting with Café Beulah in 1994, that served what he called Southern-revival cooking. In 2013, he debuted the Cecil and a revamped Minton’s, the historic mid-century jazz club. (He is no longer involved in either.) Now, he’s busy with his most ambitious project: a string of African food halls called Alkebulan, including one in Harlem. For Smalls, hosting is what it’s all about. “That’s all a boy wants is a dinner party,” he says. “The rest of it, it’s a lot to go through just to host some people for dinner. But hey, we all have our ways to get there.”
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Dear Culture Podcast | January 20, 2021
Dear Culture, What does it mean to be an abolitionist? This week on the Dear Culture Podcast our hosts, Gerren Keith Gaynor and Shana Pinnock talk with Artist, Abolitionist and Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Cullors about her new book, An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and The World.
Follow the link above to learn more.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
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W Magazine | January 20, 2021
In 2019, the activist, artist, and author Patrisse Cullors wrote an article for the Harvard Law Review that fused abolitionist history and theory with her own abolition practice. As a cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation with years of experience working alongside at-risk youth, fighting for prison reform, and participating in social movements around the world, Cullors had plenty to say on the subject. But it was the first time the 39-year-old put on paper a step-by-step breakdown outlining the way she integrated abolition into her daily life. “I thought about what I would have wanted to see as a young abolitionist,” Cullors tells me on a recent phone call from her native Los Angeles. “I would’ve wanted to read someone say, These are the things that make abolition possible. So I said, Let me tell you how I do it.”
That article was the bones for what became Cullors’s latest book, An Abolitionist's Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World. Out January 25, the handbook is just that: a text that can be revisited as reference material for how to inject abolitionist theories into your life. Although An Abolitionist's Handbook contains instructions on how to enact Black liberation and the liberation of underserved communities; how to fight imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism, and details on dismantling the prison industrial system and other harmful structures, it’s also imbued with stories from Cullors’s upbringing as a young Black woman in the United States, her experiences in the Black Lives Matter movement, and the lessons she’s learned along the way. Additionally, Cullors ends each chapter of the book by spotlighting other activists and associates who have inspired the way she approaches abolition today.
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Black Girl Nerds | January 19, 2021
Activists are too often romanticized as infallible beings who are naturally courageous as they take on grandiose missions. However, just like others — maybe even more than others — they are vulnerable and need to practice mindfulness, introspection, healing, forgiveness, and joy. They are human. They aim to build a better world while simultaneously becoming better people.
Advocating for a new world is draining work, yet can also be liberatory if the right tools are used. Fortunately, activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Patrisse Cullors has crafted the framework for activists to create an abolitionist future in her book An Abolitionist’s Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World.
Follow the link above to learn more.