New book explores contributions of African Americans to settling of the West

‘Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation’By Bitter Kallic.2025, Amistad$22/192 pages One thousand, two hundred pounds and four legs.

Put that between your knees and you’ll find out what real horsepower is. You’re five feet off the ground, moving as fast as a car on a downtown street, hooves pounding as hard as your heart.

Dangerous? Maybe. But as you’ll see in “Mounted” by Bitter Kalli, your ancestors did it and so can you. When they were a young child, “around the age of six or seven,” someone gave Bitter Kalli a set of “pony books,” the kind that appeal to young girls, mostly white ones.

Kalli wasn’t entirely comfortable identifying as a girl then but they adored the books, in part because the stories featured the kinds of friendships and acceptance Kalli wanted.

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