The whole world opened to me when I learned to read~Mary McCleod Bethune

Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free!~Frederick Douglass

REVIEW Qwantu Amaru has been writing since the age of 11. An avid reader, he always aspired to write suspenseful page turners and socially significant literature like those of his writing influences Richard Wright, Anne Rice, Harper Lee, Walter Mosley, Tananarive Due and Stephen King. Qwantu draws his inspiration from his modest upbringing in small towns and cities across the US.

In addition to his first novel, ONE BLOOD, Qwantu has published six volumes of poetry. Qwantu is an active member of the outstanding socially active poetry collective Black on Black Rhyme out of Tallahassee, FL. He has performed spoken word in poetry venues from New York to Los Angeles. He is also part owner and one third of The Pantheon Collective, an independent publishing venture dedicated to bringing high quality independent books to the masses while empowering and inspiring other authors to follow their dreams. For more information visit his website www.qwantuamaru.com, follow him on twitter @onebloodbook, join his fanpage: www.facebook.com/onebloodbook, or e-mail him at qwantuamaru@gmail.com. Qwantu currently resides in Jersey City, NJ.

REVIEW Jessie B. Ramey, Ph.D., is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in Women’s Studies and History at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her doctorate in history from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.A. in women’s history from Sarah Lawrence College. Her study, “Childcare in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages” (University of Illinois Press, 2012), received the John Heinz Award from the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Lerner-Scott Prize in women’s history from the Organization of American Historians, and the Herbert G. Gutman Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association.