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Vital Novels by Black Authors
Critics and readers rave about these new and classic stories.
Опубликовано 15 июня 2023
Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel
Zora Neale HurstonAuthor Ibram X. Kendi recommends this classic to reflect on black culture in this time of tragedy. “Of course, the black body exists within a wider black culture — one [Zora Neale] Hurston portrayed with grace and insight in this seminal novel. She defies racist Americans who would standardize the cultures of white people or sanitize, eroticize, erase or assimilate those of blacks,” writes Kendi in his New York Times article “An Antiracist Reading List.”
Patsy: A Novel
Nicole Dennis-BennIn this 2020 Lambda Award winner, many tough choices face the titular Patsy: She decides to leave Jamaica, her daughter, and her husband looking for a better life in America and her first love, Cicely. While she grabs the reins of her life, it doesn’t stay on course, and she’s left trying to navigate through her desired dreams and harsher reality. A bold exploration of immigration and motherhood.
Friday Black
Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahA searing debut short story collection that delivers on both style and substance. It skillfully weaves together elements of satire and magical realism with today’s most pressing, politically-charged issues to create otherworldly tales that are haunting and achingly relevant. Forbes named author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah as one of the top 30 “young, creative and bold minds” of 2020.
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” author Marlon James won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2015 for this inventive and poetic novel. It explores the chaotic streets of Kingston, Jamaica, using an assassination attempt on Bob Marley as a jumping-off point. The CIA, crack wars, gang violence, and reggae fill a book that, in the judges’ words, “just keeps coming.”
Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
Bernardine EvaristoAuthor Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to win the prestigious Booker Prize in 2019 for her brilliant novel, “Girl, Woman, Other.” (She tied with Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments,” the follow-up to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”) Evaristo describes her book as “a readable experimental novel.” Each chapter follows a different character as their stories intertwine in an absorbing exploration of the lives of black British women today.
Queenie
Candice Carty-WilliamsSmart and funny, this debut novel uses witty charm to fearlessly lay bare the messiness of race and dating, family and mental health, and the struggle to keep it together. Timely and lively, it’s “Bridget Jones” meets “Americanah.”
The Intuitionist
Colson WhiteheadColson Whitehead has had a stunning career writing vastly different books (from “Sag Harbor” to “Zone One”) and constantly reaching new levels of success (he won the Pulitzer Prize for both “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”). But it was Whitehead’s debut novel, “The Intuitionist,” that made it onto PBS’s “The Great American Read,” a list of America’s favorite books.
Kindred
Octavia E. ButlerReaders can’t go wrong with anything by Octavia Butler, but a good place to start is with “Kindred,” one of many treasures from the godmother of science fiction. A young black woman travels back and forth in time between 1970s California and a pre-Civil War plantation in a story that’s foundational for feminist, sci-fi/fantasy, and Afrofuturism works.
An American Marriage: A Novel
Jones, TayariCelebrated both by traditional critics and by some high-profile ad-hoc reviewers (cough cough, Barack Obama and Oprah), this stirring story is at once an examination of race and the state of the criminal justice system, and a deeply intimate portrait of two people struggling to keep their love alive as external circumstances drive them apart.
Salvage the Bones: A Novel
Jesmyn WardJesmyn Ward won her first National Book Award for “Salvage the Bones” in 2011. The novel begins as Hurricane Katrina barrels toward the rural Mississippi home of a tight-knit but troubled family. While 14-year-old Esch and her three siblings scramble to prepare their home for nature’s oncoming sledgehammer, she struggles to keep her pregnancy hidden from her widowed father. A hauntingly beautiful story that’s as powerful as the storm it depicts.
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Jesmyn WardWard won her second National Book Award for “Sing, Unburied, Sing” in 2017. She draws on Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Greek myths to play with the classic American road novel, weaving magical realism into the modern, rural South. Her sentences rise together to form a penetrating story that lingers like fog on the Mississippi bayou where the novel is set.
Another Brooklyn: A Novel
Jacqueline WoodsonThis 2016 National Book Award finalist by beloved author Jacqueline Woodson has been compared to contemporary classics like “The Bluest Eye,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” and “The House on Mango Street.” Vanity Fair raved: “In Woodson’s soaring choral poem of a novel … four young friends … navigate the perils of adolescence, mean streets, and haunted memory in 1970s Brooklyn, all while dreaming of escape.”
Native Son
Richard WrightA classic that was one of the first stories to fully capture how systemic racism leads to horrific consequences. An enduring, thought-provoking book still pushing forward the discussion about race relations today, especially with the HBO film’s modern retelling of the story starring Ashton Sanders (“Moonlight”) as Bigger Thomas.
The World Doesn't Require You: Stories
Rion Amilcar ScottThis inventive and exhilarating story collection is humming with adventure, fantasy, magical realism, fresh prose, and horror. The stories take place in an alternate history in the fictional town of Cross River, made up of descendants of the only successful slave revolt in the United States.
Heads of the Colored People: Stories
Nafissa Thompson-SpiresThis short story collection racked up accolades left and right. As a winner at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes awards ceremony in 2019, author Nafissa Thompson-Spires said, “I wrote this book because I felt like as a kid, and even as a grad student, I didn’t see books that reflected the kind of black person I was. … I wanted to write about weird black people.”
Freshwater
Akwaeke EmeziSurreal and enthralling, Akwaeke Emezi’s fictionalized autobiography immerses readers in the mind of Ada, a young Nigerian woman, as her sense of self splinters into multiple, conflicting spirits. As Ada grows up and moves to America to attend college, the spirits grow more controlling with devastating consequences for Ada’s relationships. Emezi’s debut is a powerful and poetic portrait of mental illness rooted in the Igbo cosmology of Nigeria.
All American Boys
Jason ReynoldsA story ripped from news headlines about racial profiling and police brutality. This award-winning joint effort between authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is technically YA, but it’s a moving novel for people of all ages.
Lakewood: A Novel
Megan GiddingsFans of Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” will find much to love in Megan Giddings’ chilling debut. Desperate to help her financially struggling family, Lena drops out of college and accepts a well-paying gig as a research subject in a secret government study.
The Coldest Winter Ever
Sister SouljahLauded as the best book of the “hip hop generation,” Sister Souljah’s first novel is a raw, honest look at what inner city life is like. Souljah’s more recent novels follow characters from this favorite, and the massive popularity of each one continues to fuel what she told Time magazine is “a renaissance, or what Chuck D of Public Enemy would call a revolution, of reading.”
Welcome to Braggsville: A Novel
T. Geronimo JohnsonA satirical gem that sets its eye on campus activism. T. Geronimo Johnson challenges literary norms in this cutting work about white racial anxiety, bringing to mind some of the greatest American writers, from Mark Twain to Colson Whitehead.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
Zora Neale Hurston“Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick” brings together 21 of the “Their Eyes Were Watching God” author’s short stories, including eight “lost” tales dug up in dusty old archives and long-forgotten periodicals. Seasoned with the perfect blend of sarcasm, lively dialogue, and wicked humor, these stories serve up a sharp (and entertaining) look at racism and sexism, the country versus the city, and love gone sour.