Serena Williams Reveals Touching Notes She And Naomi Osaka Sent Each Other

Serena Williams is serving all kinds of empowerment in the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

The 37-year-old tennis superstar not only stuns in untouched photos for the magazine, but she also wrote a candid first-person essay in which she opens up about her controversial championship match at the 2018 U.S. Open against Naomi Osaka.

“You know why this is my favorite tree?…‘Cause it’s tipped over, and it’s still growing.”  

“Ahaṃkāra”

I’ve been thinking and researching a lot about the (Black) Southern Gothic style/aesthetic and African American folklore, so I put together a list of books for myself and thought it might be helpful to someone else. 

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FOLKTALE COLLECTIONS

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales by Virginia Hamilton | Thrift Books Amazon

Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales by Virginia Hamilton | Amazon

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston | Amazon Thrift Books

Every Tongue Got to Confess : Negro Folk-Tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston | Thrift Books Amazon

Go Gator and Muddy the Water : Writings by Zora Neale Hurston from the Federal Writers Project by Zora Neale Hurston | Thrift Books Amazon

Lies and Other Tall Tales by Zora Neale Hurston and Joyce Carol Thomas | Thrift Books Amazon

FOLKLORE AND STORYTELLING

Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom by Lawrence W. Levine | Thrift Books

Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans | Thrift Books Amazon

A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Recollections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of Peoples of African American Descent in the Americas by Harold Courlander | Amazon

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young | Amazon

Talk That Talk: An Anthology on African-American Storytelling by Linda Goss | Amazon

African American Folktales: Stories from Black Traditions in the New World by Roger Abrahams | Amazon

Deep Down in the Jungle: Black American Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia by Roger Abrahams | Amazon

Singing the Master : The Emergence of African-American Culture in the Plantation South by Roger D. Abrahams | Thrift Books Amazon

From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom by John W. Roberts | Amazon

Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Shirley Moody-Turner | Amazon

Black Folktales by Julius Lester | Amazon

Folk beliefs of the southern Negro (1926) by Newbell Niles Pucket | Amazon

Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Shirley Moody-Turner | Amazon

HUMOR

African American Humor: The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today (The Library of Black America series) by Mel Watkins, Dick Gregory | Amazon

Honey, Hush!: An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor by Daryl Cumber Dance, Nikki Giovanni | Amazon

STYLE

The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora by Carol Tulloch | Amazon

 Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness by Rebecca Walker, Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Amazon

MAGIC/MYSTICISM

African American Female Mysticism: Nineteenth-Century Religious Activism by Joy R. Bostic | Amazon

Working Conjure: A Guide to Hoodoo Folk Magic by Hoodoo Sen Moise | Amazon

Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Ifalaye Books | Amazon

FOLK HEALING

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee | Amazon

African American Slave Medicine: Herbal and nonHerbal Treatments by Herbert C. Cove | Amazon

African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem | Amazon