“I am because you are.”
Shamon Lawrence
Literature, leadership, and witness.
Ubuntu Books was founded in 2025 as a home for mission-driven literature rooted in the belief that the past can help us build more humane and sustainable futures.
Shamon Lawrence is an educator, writer, and advocate for equity in public education whose work lives at the intersection of pedagogy, identity, and literary witness.
A former student of Long Island classrooms and now a teacher in New York City, he writes from the conviction that schools are not merely sites of instruction, but places where memory, imagination, and moral formation converge.
In 2025, he founded Ubuntu Books in response to a clear calling: to publish mission-driven literature shaped by the ethic of “I am because you are.” Rooted in that philosophy, the press looks to the past not as a static archive, but as a living inheritance that can help build more humane and sustainable futures.
NYU-trained educator with a background in English education and literary study.
Classroom teacher, educational leader, and writer working across pedagogy and culture.
Building books and institutions worthy of the people they are meant to serve.
Lawrence holds a Bachelor of Science in English Education from New York University, where he pursued intellectual pathways beyond the limits of a traditional curriculum and developed a broad literary repertoire spanning Near Eastern, Arabic, Black American, and American literary traditions.
He is a poet, novelist, and essayist whose work is informed by the Black Baptist tradition, the literary canon, and the quiet moments that make school more than just a place to learn. He also contributes to the literary conversation through essays published on his blog, The Desk Was Already Here, where he reflects on education, culture, history, and the enduring life of the classroom.
As an educational leader, Lawrence has helped support more than a thousand students toward high school completion, measurable middle school literacy gains, and college matriculation at some of the nation’s most selective universities.
Across classroom teaching, educational leadership, and literary work, his vocation remains the same: to help build institutions, books, and futures worthy of the people they are meant to serve.
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