race relations

Celebrating Black History Month 2025 in the UK

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

The Significance of October

Black History Month (BHM) in the UK, observed every October, is a vital annual affirmation of the continuous and profound contributions of people of African and African Caribbean descent to British life. This month provides a crucial, focussed period to move beyond narrow, often fragmented historical narratives and instead highlight the sprawling, centuries-long legacy of Black individuals who have shaped society, culture, and intellectual life globally. While this annual celebration is necessary, its deeper purpose is to seed the knowledge and understanding that must take root all year long.

Celebrating the Sung and Unsung

The history recognised during BHM is one defined by both immense resilience and extraordinary creativity. We rightly honour the legacies of the Windrush generation and literary voices like Bernardine Evaristo and Zadie Smith. Yet, the crucial task is to move beyond the surface and uncover the foundational stories that support them. This commitment to wide recognition is central to Funmilayo’s mission, perfectly embodied by titles such as The Need for Heroes, which powerfully advocates for recognizing aspirational Black leadership, and Heroes Sung and Unsung, which is dedicated to illuminating the pioneering figures often overlooked by mainstream history. These works remind us that heroism and talent exist at all levels of society, waiting to be acknowledged.

The Global and Transatlantic Thread

BHM demands that we understand Black history not just as a British concern, but as a global, interconnected force. We must look beyond national borders to grasp the full scope of Black intellectual achievements. For instance, Funmilayo’s scholarship on the Afro-Brazilian polymath, Manuel Querino (1851–1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism, demonstrates how pioneering thought emerged in the face of brutal institutional racism. Further expanding this view is Black Atlantic Crossings, which emphasizes the vital transnational dialogues between figures separated by geography, challenging us to see Black experiences as an integral thread within the fabric of global history.

A Promise of Year-Round Learning

Ultimately, the dedicated month of October serves as a powerful catalyst for a broader cultural shift. By promoting the rigorous recovery and visibility found in publications like Black Atlantic Crossings and Heroes Sung and Unsung, we fulfill BHM’s promise. The month is a joyous celebration, but it is also a renewed promise to maintain a year-round focus where the accomplishments and heritage of all Black people, from the famous to the previously forgotten, are recognized, valued, and taught without end.

The Roots of Black Dandies and Fashion at the Met Gala

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

In 2025, the theme of the Met Gala was “Black dandies,” a phenomenon believed to date back 400 years, since the Black diaspora forcibly began. I was struck by the connection with chapter 5 of Black Atlantic Crossings, which focusses on the anti-racist tactic of portraying Black people in “gala dress.” Booker T. Washington was very careful to depict the faculty and students of the Tuskegee Institute (now an historically Black university) in a dignified manner and suppressed any images that might reinforce negative stereotypes. Manuel R. Querino went even further, by publishing photographs of Black people who practised a then-stigmatised and proscribed (read, illegal) religion and enslaved people who were clearly proud of their appearance. I particularly love the photographs of two iyalorishas (high priestesses) of one of Brazil’s best known Afro-Brazilian religious communities, the Gantois terreiro in Salvador, Bahia. Here is one of those photos:

HIgh priestess of the Gantois Afro-Brazilian religious community

Note her regal pose, not unlike the cartes de visite produced by royalty, as well as her gorgeous jewellery and sumptuous clothing. The African wrapper draped over her shoulder is an insignia of her rank. Her name was Maria Júlia da Conceição Nazaré, the founder of the Ilê Axé Iyá Omin Iyamassê, better known as Gantois.

“Destined to become a Classic”: Esteemed Scholars on Black Atlantic Crossings

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

I am delighted to share these blurbs from highly respected scholars:

As promised, Sabrina Gledhill’s research does, in fact, expand the Black Atlantic by putting into dialogue the ideas and activism of two giants of the African Diaspora in the Americas. The legacy of Booker T. Washington has been well known, including in Brazil, since the turn of the twentieth century. However, in addition to reinterpreting his legacy in a broader context, this book introduces the English-speaking reader to Manuel Querino, an insightful and multifaceted Afro-Brazilian thinker who is little known outside Brazil. Enjoy reading this original work, which is destined to become a classic.

João José Reis, Universidade Federal da Bahia, author of Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia

Black Atlantic Crossings is a timely reflection on the challenges that African American intellectuals faced in the aftermaths of slavery in Brazil and the United States. While not always understood or accepted by later commentators, the anti-racist activism of Manoel Raimundo Querino and Booker T. Washington, ably analyzed by Sabrina Gledhill, profoundly challenged the emerging post-slavery hierarchies. She demonstrates that there is much to learn from these two men’s lives and the evolution of their historical memory in the century since their deaths.

Hendrik Kraay, University of Calgary, author of Bahia’s Independence: Popular Politics and Patriotic Festival in Salvador, Brazil, 1824-1900

Crossing the Atlantic requires navigating a sea of stories through rough and calm waters, amidst fleeting encounters and enduring dialogues. In this insightful work, Sabrina Gledhill offers more than just a theoretical compass. Her sophisticated approach reveals the profound oceanic connections that shaped Booker T. Washington and Manuel R. Querino, revisiting them as original Atlantic characters, without borders, but with transnational margins.

Flavio dos Santos Gomes, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, co-author of The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic

Great news! Black Atlantic Crossings is officially here in Kindle e-book. paperback, and hardcover editions. Find your copy today at Amazon, Waterstones, and other booksellers.

Cover of Black Atlantic Crossings, by Sabrina Gledhill

Fighting Historical Erasure, One Book at a Time

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

Preface to Black Atlantic Crossings

This is an updated and expanded translation of Travessias no Atlântico Negro: reflexões sobre Booker T. Washington e Manuel R. Querino, released by the Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia (EDUFBA) in 2020. That year also saw the birth of my grandson John Benjamin, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the beginning of the global Black Lives Matter movement, which transformed what was once considered “niche” research into a highly relevant study. I now see this book as a weapon against historical erasure and a staunch defence of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which are facing unprecedented assaults in the USA.

According to Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” any book (fiction or non-fiction) that makes White people feel uncomfortable about their country’s slaveholding past should be suppressed. Florida’s State Academic Standards—Social Studies (2023) even recommend teaching middle-school students how enslaved people benefited from slavery because, “in some instances,” it enabled them to learn useful skills.[1] Also, as I was translating the original Portuguese edition, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively gutted affirmative action in that country.

On January 21, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order dismantling DEI initiatives across federal agencies, urging similar action in the private sector. This resulted in the removal of references to Black, Brown, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women, from government websites. That decree, followed by criticism of the Smithsonian Museum’s efforts to debunk pseudoscientific racism, further amplified this book’s relevance.

In Brazil, former president Jair Messias Bolsonaro attempted to gut higher education—particularly the Humanities—and expressed hostility towards Black civil rights and affirmative action. As a result of his policies, many Black Brazilian students dropped out or simply stopped aspiring to a university degree. Now that Bolsonaro is out of office and may even go to prison for an alleged coup attempt, the Lula administration is undoing some of the damage wrought during Bolsonaro’s time in office. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go.

The landscape of Brazilian academia and publishing has changed substantially since I defended my PhD in Salvador, Bahia, in 2014. Initially, researching Booker T. Washington in Brazil posed considerable challenges, requiring reliance on international sources and archival research at the US Library of Congress. However, my thesis and the Portuguese edition of this book have helped establish Washington’s presence within Brazilian scholarly discourse, as demonstrated by their increasing citation and use in post-graduate programmes. Graciliano Ramos’s bowdlerised translation of Up from Slavery, Memórias de um negro (retitled Memórias de um negro americano), is back in print for the first time since the 1940s (Washington’s best-known autobiography still awaits a fresh and more objective rendering).

Efforts to reverse the erasure of Black people from history should never abate, and sometimes, they are rewarded. I wish I had made a note of the date, but the moment I felt that Manuel Querino had finally regained his rightful place in Brazilian history was when Lula—then a presidential candidate—mentioned his name along with the usual pantheon of illustrious Black Brazilians, such as Machado de Assis, Teodoro Sampaio, and Luiz Gama.

The year 2020 saw two publications on Querino—a book on his studies of Bahian cuisine by Jeferson Bacelar and Carlos Alberto Dória, published in Brazil, and Manuel Querino (1851-1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism, an anthology of essays by several authors which I edited and published in Portuguese and English in Brazil (through the Sagga Editora publishing house) and the UK.

Gláucia Maria Costa Trinchão and Suely dos Santos Souza published the edited volume Os saberes em desenho do professor Manuel Raymundo Querino, on his geometric design textbooks, in 2021. It includes reproductions of those illustrated works—an invaluable contribution, as the original editions are rare.

The Afro-Brazilian polymath’s profile was raised significantly in 2022 by the Projeto Querino podcast. Inspired by The New York Times’s 1619 Project, it follows in Querino’s footsteps by increasing awareness of Black people’s role in Brazilian history—including Querino’s own contributions.[2]

In 2023, the 100th anniversary of his death, Querino received several tributes. The video maker Isis Gledhill produced a documentary on his life, including interviews with leading Querino scholars, and with the organisers and presenters of the Projeto Querino podcast, the journalist Tiago Rogero and the historian Ynaê Lopes dos Santos. The conductor and composer Fred Dantas wrote a piece for brass band called “Dobrado Manuel Querino” that was first performed during the celebrations of the bicentennial of Bahia’s Independence on the 2nd of July, a date that was particularly dear to Querino’s heart.

In 2024, I edited and published more two edited volumes inspired by Querino and including translations of his work: The Need for Heroes: Black Intellectuals Dig Up Their Past, and Heroes Sung and Unsung: Black Artists in World History. Along with Manuel Querino (1851-1923) and this monograph, they form part of Funmilayo’s Unsung Heroes in Black History series.

Although I began researching this book in the early 2000s, and some of its contents date back to my MA studies on Brazilian race relations in the 1980s, its message feels more urgent than ever. I hope this comparison of the lives and anti-racist tactics of Booker T. Washington and Manuel R. Querino will point up the fact that reparations are still due to the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States and Brazil. Affirmative action remains a crucial tool for addressing the enduring legacy of racial injustice.

Sabrina Gledhill

Black Atlantic Crossings will be available as a Kindle e-book on 14 April 2025 and on Amazon and other booksellers as a paperback and hardback on 1 May 2025.

[1] Florida’s State Academic Standards—Social Studies, 2023. SS.68.AA.2.3 “Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation). Benchmark Clarifications: Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/06/brazil-history-african-brazilians-tiago-rogero-querino-project. The podcast is available (in Portuguese) at https://projetoquerino.com.br/podcast/

On People, Ideas, and Crossings

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

Foreword to Black Atlantic Crossings, by Sabrina Gledhill (forthcoming)

In recent decades, social scientists have been studying connections, links and dialogues involving intersecting ideas, people and circuits. Transnational perceptions of intercultural movements have been revealed. At different times and in different spaces, from the fifteenth century to the first half of the twentieth, the populations of diasporic societies and their social, political and economic structures were linked in the four corners of the Atlantic. Using pieces of what was invented as Europe and designed as Africa, the parts called Cuba, Brazil, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Haiti, Martinique, Mexico, Guadeloupe, the USA, Barbados and others were linked together and redefined. Fundamentally, experiences and people produced events that were transformed into narratives.

Above all, intellectual constructs and the elaboration of ideas were processed in different contexts, reconnecting different projects and expectations. We can see the emergence of ideas around modernity and liberalism, engaging in dialogue with racism, forced labour, exclusion, and vectors of citizenship under construction.

In this complex process, we can think about intellectual roots, their agents, and the circulation of ideas, reframing ideologies and bringing together colonial, slavocratic, post-colonial and post-emancipation societies.

Today, however, it is the people involved in these processes who are mobilizing scholars and research the most. How did ideas circulate? What were the vectors? And what were the levels of reception, transformation and influence? We still need to take a careful look at the literate circulation and oral unfolding of Atlantic ideas. Books and translations came into people’s hands. International news abounded in the nineteenth-century press. Since the 1830s, debates on emancipation in the British Caribbean and its consequences were closely followed, gaining shape in the mid-nineteenth century in the French and Dutch Caribbean, Spanish America and, after the US Civil War, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.

How did Black intellectuals—albeit immersed in slavocratic societies— interpret and re-elaborate these processes? Not just by receiving ideas, but by producing and circulating them in an elaborated way. Sabrina Gledhill’s research, presented in this book, opens paths for us to get to know this adventure of ideas and its Black Diaspora characters. It begins with Manuel Querino, an outstanding intellectual and working-class leader at the turn of the twentieth century. Born on the fringes of the Bahian hinterland, amid slavery and the cholera epidemic that made him an orphan, Querino crossed some boundaries of exclusion. He learned to read and write at a very young age. This guaranteed him a brief military career as a clerk during the Triple Alliance War (1865-70). Still pursuing his studies, he entered the School of Fine Arts, studying geometric design, architecture, and later working as a teacher at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios (School of Arts and Crafts) and the Colégio dos Órfãos de São Joaquim (St. Joachim Orphans’ College) in the city of Salvador. In the 1870s and 1880s, he was active in the abolitionist movement, joining anti-slavery societies and founding at least two newspapers. His political life was extended at the end of the century when he joined the Workers’ Party. He produced technical writings on geometric drawing and the arts, as well as humanist essays on Africans and the Black presence in Bahia.

Some of the highlights of Querino’s life and work, which are explored in Gledhill’s study, are precisely the Afro-Atlantic dimensions of his thinking, particularly his dialogues and interlocution with the ideas of Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). Thus, this is both a biography and an intellectual history with an Atlantic perspective. Receptions, appropriations, translations and resignifications reveal different roots of the Brazilian social thinking that was emerging in the first decades of the twentieth century. Urban development, exclusion, access to education, trade unions, elections, political parties, African scenarios and debates on race and colonization are the subjects of intersecting elaboration and dialogue that this pan-Africanist Bahian intellectual established.

However, we also need to know more about the intellectual landscapes framed by Querino. We will certainly find generations of Black intellectuals and literati who tried to turn skills, education and expectations of mobility into weapons in a society that was still aristocratic in Bahia, amid tremendous arrogance due to the social invisibility and economic exclusion of the Black population. More than learning about his life and chapters of tremendous personal determination, it is essential to read Querino himself. The subjects he analysed and the intellectual worlds he expanded demonstrate the Black social thinking that was made invisible at the dawn of the twentieth century. We know that these processes of intellectual erasure were recurrent. It is not a matter of being absent, non-existent or invisible. Silencings have been verified. But not just that. We have identified other Black Diaspora thinkers among Querino’s interlocutors. Not just Du Bois or Marcus Garvey, and even other non-Americans with the same origins. In Brazil, we know very little about the activities and legacy of Booker T. Washington. Why is that? On what basis did Querino establish the dialogue? What were the universes of the influences he saw? Making these connections and dialogues emerge takes us on an Atlantic voyage to the intersecting circuits of ideas and people. It is important to use stronger lenses in our observations. Querino and his work were guided by religious expressions with African roots, political parties, elections, representations, workers’ conferences and intellectual affirmation.

More than pointing out the shores of the Black Atlantic from analytical ships on calm seas, we must disembark, locating unstable and improvised territories. This study not only offers a safe haven, but, above all, charts the way forward.

Flavio dos Santos Gomes

Flavio Gomes is a Brazilian historian and author. His writings include books and articles on maroons published in Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish. The winner of the prestigious Jabuti Prize and a Guggenheim Fellow, he has been a professor of History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) since 1998.

Resistance takes many forms – including books!

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

As white supremacy resurges and attempts to erase Black history intensify, our publications stand as an act of resistance. They showcase essays by Black intellectuals, demonstrating the enduring strength and resilience of Black people in the face of prejudice. Our books amplify Black voices from the US and Brazil, clearly showing that Africans and their descendants in the diaspora have always defied racist stereotypes. Ironically, even proponents of scientific racism acknowledged Black artistic talent–a rare point of agreement with the intellectuals whose work we champion.

Manuel Querino: A Legacy Rediscovered (Again and Again)

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment

For decades, I’ve been fighting to bring Manuel Querino, a pioneering Afro-Brazilian scholar, out of the shadows. Last week, I found a new ally in that fight: a PhD student at the prestigious University of São Paulo (USP), who has made Querino the focus of his thesis. His name is Fernando Filho, he is a sociologist, and his approach to what I call “Querinology” is to answer three questions:

  • how can Querino’s theses contribute to Brazilian social thinking?
  • what led to his “invisibility” in social theory?
  • to what extent are the subjects Querino dealt with also addressed by renowned authors like Gilberto Freyre and Florestan Fernandes?

Speaking on Google Meet, we spent over an hour discussing our approaches to Querino. Fernando told me how he struggled to get his PhD accepted by a university – being turned down by more than one before getting accepted at USP. He also said that he has been speaking about Querino at conferences in several Latin American countries and finding that the Afro-Brazilian polymath is still a complete unknown there.

I shared some sources, including the collection of essays in Manuel Querino (1851-1923), and explained how I began researching his life and work – thanks to my MA supervisor at UCLA, the late great E. Bradford Burns. I also observed that when I first arrived in Brazil in 1986, Querino had been largely forgotten or, worse, dismissed as an unreliable source. It took years of effort and many publications to change that.

What I took away from our conversation was

(a) despite the fact that I and other scholars, including Jeferson Bacelar, Luiz Freire, Maria das Graças de Andrade Leal, and Jaime Nascimento, have been writing and lecturing about Querino for decades, he is still largely unknown in Brazil’s elite universities; and

(b) ensuring that his life and legacy are not forgotten is a generational task.

Clearly, there is still much work to be done in bringing Querino the recognition he deserves. But with passionate scholars like Fernando Filho taking up the mantle, I’m hopeful for the future of ‘Querinology.'”

A luta continua (the fight goes on).

Sabrina Gledhill

From One Book to a Celebration: The Accidental Birth of the Unsung Heroes Series

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Three books in the Unsung Heroes in Black History Series

It all started with a deep dive into the life of Afro-Brazilian scholar Manuel Querino. I was fascinated by his work, but quickly realised one book couldn’t do justice to his vast contributions. That’s when the idea struck: an anthology, a collection of voices to paint a fuller picture.

That first book, published during the enforced idleness of lock-down, opened the door to something bigger. I found myself drawn to other forgotten heroes, their stories echoing Querino’s own. Carter G. Woodson, Arthur Schomburg, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington – these giants and others had also paved the way, challenging the same tired narratives about Black people.

One book became two, then three. The “Unsung Heroes” series was born, not from a grand plan, but from a genuine curiosity about the lives history tried to erase. These weren’t just stories about Black soldiers or maroons or artists; they were about resilience, about brilliance pushing back against erasure.

Querino himself was a target of this erasure, his legacy twisted to fit a convenient narrative. But we’re setting the record straight. The “Unsung Heroes” series isn’t just about remembering; it’s about reclaiming, about amplifying voices that have been silenced for far too long.

So, whether you’re discovering Querino for the first time or exploring the works of other trailblazers, I invite you to join me on this journey. Let’s rewrite the past, together.

Explore the Series:

NEW: Heroes Sung and Unsung: Black Artists in World History

Manuel Querino (1851-1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism

The Need for Heroes: Black Intellectuals Dig Up Their Past

Unsung Heroes: The Legacy of Manuel Querino and Beyond

/ Sabrina Gledhill, PhD / Leave a comment
The next addition to the
Unsung Heroes series

I launched the Unsung Heroes in Black History series without realising it was a series at all. It started with an anthology on Manuel Querino, the Afro-Brazilian scholar I have been studying and writing about since the 1980s. I realised that Querino’s activities were so varied, covering a gamut of specialisms, that it is impossible for one person to write authoritatively about them all. Fortunately, I had access to writings by E. Bradford Burns (the first bibliographic essay on Querino published in English), Jeferson Bacelar and Carlos Doria (on his pioneering study of Bahian cuisine), Eliane Nunes (on his contributions to art history), Jorge Calmon (on his involvement in labour mobilisation and politics), and Christianne Vasconcellos (on his use of photographs in anthropology) to add to essays of my own that had appeared in Brazilian peer-reviewed journals and books over the years. The result was a compendium that has been published in Portuguese (without Burns’s essay, due to translation right issues) and English, and has been very well received.

That book was published in 2021, during the Covid pandemic. Lockdown was a wonderful opportunity to focus on organising and translating the anthology. In the years since, I have worked on translating and updating a monograph based on my PhD thesis, which has been in peer review since September of last year. The Unsung Heroes series began with the second volume, which I first approached as “something to do” while awaiting the verdict on my own book. It all started with Querino, naturally. I had originally intended to publish my translation of one of his most significant works (for me), O colono preto como fator da civilização brasileira, translated as The African Contribution to Brazilian Civilisation.

First, I was intrigued by parallels between Querino’s story and that of Arthur (born Arturo) Schomburg. Then, I started wondering which works by W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Booker T. Washington, and other Black thinkers were comparable to Querino’s essay, which demands recognition for the achievements of Africans and their descendants. Instead of being seen as passive sources of manual labour, Querino asserted that they contributed knowledge they brought from their homelands, like mining and metalworking, as well as helping protect Brazil’s territorial integrity as soldiers. He also emphasised their ingenuity and courage in breaking free from the bonds of slavery to form their own communities, known as quilombos in Brazil.

That initial curiosity led to a gold mine of works on Black soldiers and maroons, which I added to Querino’s essay to produce The Need for Heroes: Black Intellectuals Dig Up their Past, published in June 2024. I realised that the concept of Unsung Heroes, inspired by the title of Elizabeth Ross Haynes’s book of children’s stories, extended to the anthology on Querino. He was well known in life, having achieved such renown in Brazil that several newspapers published his obituary in his home state (Bahia), Rio de Janeiro, and other parts of the country. Representatives of trade unions and academia attended his funeral, which was also covered by the press. But since the 1930s, he had been gradually forgotten, and if remembered at all, thought of as a lightweight scholar, the minor author of a few pamphlets, and even illiterate. There seemed to have been a deliberate effort on the part of the “hegemonic narrative” to rewrite his story as that of a poor, ill-educated Black man who made a stab at anthropology but didn’t quite succeed. This disinformation was convenient because he already contradicted the commonly held notion that all Blacks in Brazil were enslaved until Abolition in 1888, and since then had been nothing but vagrants, thieves, and scoundrels – an image still maintained in the media.

While the eminent Brazilian historian Flavio Gomes was writing the afterword for The Need for Heroes (it was worth the wait), I started putting together works that hadn’t quite fit in that collection and adding many more. Once again, I started with Querino, who is considered the Brazilian Vasari because his pioneering works on the history of art in Bahia were based on biographies of artists. The result was Heroes Sung and Unsung: Black Artists in World History, a compendium of works by Arthur Schomburg, W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Benjamin Brawley, James M. Trotter, and others, with a foreword and afterword by two brilliant contemporary artists, respectively Mark Steven Greenfield and Ayrson Heraclito. It is due for publication in September 2024. In the meantime, Manuel Querino (1851-1923): An Afro-Brazilian Pioneer in the Age of Scientific Racism and The Need for Heroes are available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle e-book editions through Amazon and other online booksellers.

Sabrina Gledhill