Meet the unforgettable Janie Crawford, an articulate black woman in the 1930s. Traces Janie's quest for identity, through three marriages, on a journey to her roots.

"Calling to mind the best works of Paul Beatty and Junot Diaz, this collection of moving, timely, and darkly funny stories examines the concept of black identity in this so-called post-racial era. A stunning new talent in literary fiction, Nafissa Thompson-Spires grapples with black identity and the contemporary middle class in these compelling, boundary-pushing vignettes. Each captivating story plunges headfirst into the lives of new, utterly original...

Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz’s story of growing up in a typical upper-middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity — despite the open questions from those around her about how a white girl could have such dark skin. She believes her family’s explanation that her looks were inherited from her dark-skinned Sicilian grandfather. But when her parents abruptly split, her gut...

One Drop Rule explores a recurring and divisive issue in African American communities - skin color. Candid, sometimes painful, but also often funny, it picks up where California Newsreel's earlier release A Question of Color leaves off. The film inter-cuts intimate interviews with darker skinned African Americans, lighter skinned African Americans and inter-racial children of Black and white parents. In the process it investigates color consciousness,...

To come to terms with who she is and what she wants, Ailey, the daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, embarks on a journey through her family's past, helping her embrace her full heritage, which is the story of the Black experience in itself.

"From a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a powerful account of Derek Black's journey from white supremacist hero to apostle of tolerance"--

Ning, a Chinese American girl, struggles to find her place in the world and is forced to leave her home in Shanghai to go to America with a father she barely knows.

The final film by filmmaker Marlon Riggs, Black is ... black ain't, jumps into the middle of explosive debates over Black identity. Black is ... black ain't is a film every African American should see, ponder and discuss. White Americans have always stereotyped African Americans. But the rigid definitions of "Blackness" that African Americans impose on each other, Riggs claims, have also been devastating. Is there an essential Black identity? Is there...

Sixty years ago, the "projects" were considered to be the most desirable housing stock for low-to-low-middle-income Americans. Today, this same housing has become stigmatized, beset by financial and social problems, and may be phased out. This film, made in the 1980s, remains the classic portrait of a government program besieged on all sides. In two 30-minute sections, the film presents a concise social history of a housing movement and its opponents,...

This poignant and powerful documentary explores the complex history of interracial cooperation, urban change, and social conflict in Brownsville, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, from the 1930s to the 2000s. A case study of the tragedy of urban American race relations, the film recounts the transformation of Brownsville from a poor but racially harmonious area made up largely of Jews and blacks to a community made up almost entirely of people...