Displaying books 1-48 of 61 in total

The City We Became

2020

by N.K. Jemisin

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power. In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her. In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels. And they're not the only ones.

How to Be an Antiracist

2019

by Ibram X. Kendi

At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves.

In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism.

This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

2022

by Gabrielle Zevin

In this exhilarating novel, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

Binti

2017

by Nnedi Okorafor

The thrilling sequel to the Hugo and Nebula-winning Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and a finalist for the 2018 Hugo and Nommo Awards.

It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places. And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders. But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace. After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?

The Vanishing Half

2021

by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. 


The Vanishing Half explores the intricacies of identity, family, and race in a provocative, but compassionate way.

There There

2018

by Tommy Orange

 A wondrous and shattering novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism. 

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

Girl, Woman, Other

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity among an interconnected group of Black British women.

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years. Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.

The Namesake

2003

by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world -- conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail — the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase — that opens whole worlds of emotion.

Transcendent Kingdom

2020

by Yaa Gyasi

A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief.

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. 

Caste

Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. 

She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

A Place for Us

A moving portrait of what it means to be an American family today, a novel of love, identity and belonging that eloquently examines what it means to be both American and Muslim.

An Indian-Muslim family is preparing for their eldest daughter's wedding. But as Hadia's marriage - one chosen of love, not tradition - gathers the family back together, there is only one thing on their minds- can Amar, the estranged younger brother of the bride, be trusted to behave himself after three years away? A Place for Us tells the story of one family and all family life- of coming to terms with the choices we make, of reconcingly past and present and of how the smallest decisions can lead to the deepest betrayals.

The Sympathizer

The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong.

 The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story.

The Sentence

2021

by Louise Erdrich

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

The Prophets

A novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

Isaiah was Samuel’s and Samuel was Isaiah’s. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master’s gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel’s love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation’s harmony.

With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr. fiercely summons the voices of slaver and the enslaved alike to tell the story of these two men.

An Unkindness of Ghosts

2017

by Rivers Solomon

Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster.

Embattled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.

The Arsonists' City

2021

by Hala Alyan

The Arsonists' City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga. In Alyan's hands, one family's tale becomes the story of not just a nation--Lebanon and Syria--but also the United States. It's a rich family story that gives a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home.

The Nasr family is spread across the globe--Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. With a Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children, they have all lived a life of migration. Yet, they've always had their ancestral home in Beirut--a constant touchstone--and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. However, following his father's recent death, Idris, the new patriarch, has decided to sell. This decision brings the family to Beirut, where they unite against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets--lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame--that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, these secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold the family together.

In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us that fiction often provides the best filter for the real world around us.

Bad Feminist

2014

by Roxane Gay

In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years and commenting on the state of feminism today. The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.

Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

Biased

Biased by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt is a compelling examination of unconscious racial bias and its profound impact on society and criminal justice. Eberhardt, a leading expert in the field, offers both a scientific and personal perspective on one of the most challenging issues of our time.

Despite our best intentions, racial bias can infiltrate our perception, attention, memory, and actions, leading to disparities in various aspects of life, including education, employment, and housing. These disparities, in turn, perpetuate the bias. Eberhardt's work extends beyond the laboratory, engaging with law enforcement, courtrooms, and the streets, offering a comprehensive view of how bias operates in real-world settings.

The book is informed by Eberhardt's research, including analysis of police body camera footage, and is enriched with interviews, personal anecdotes, and practical suggestions for reform. Biased confronts the uncomfortable reality that racial bias is a pervasive human problem, one that all individuals have the power to address and overcome.

Becoming

2018

by Michelle Obama

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. 

Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Kindred

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him.

Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Turncoat

2023

by TÄ«hema Baker

Daniel is a young, idealistic Human determined to make a difference for his people. He lives in a distant future in which Earth has been colonised by aliens. His mission: infiltrate the Alien government called the Hierarch and push for it to honour the infamous Covenant of Wellington, the founding agreement between the Hierarch and Humans.

Turncoat explores the trauma of Maori public servants and the deeply conflicted role they are expected to fill within the machinery of government. From casual racism to co-governance, Treaty settlements to tino rangatiratanga, Turncoat is a timely critique of the Aotearoa zeitgeist, holding a mirror up to Pakeha New Zealanders and asking: What if it happened to you?

MĂ©xico racista

Con un afán polémico y un tono irreverente, este libro busca despertar el debate y denunciar la prevalencia de nuestras costumbres racistas y las formas de pensar que las acompañan.

A partir de ejemplos cercanos y actuales, el historiador Federico Navarrete realiza un original análisis de los vínculos entre el racismo y graves casos que han cimbrado a México desde los feminicidios en Juárez, pasando por la matanza de migrantes en San Fernando, hasta la desaparición forzada de los normalistas de Ayotzinapa.

El racismo impera en MĂ©xico. Es un hecho cotidiano que cobra forma lo mismo en una charla privada que en anuncios de tintes "aspiracionales" o en polĂ­ticas pĂşblicas excluyentes. Desafortunadamente, una gran parte de la poblaciĂłn es indiferente ante el fenĂłmeno.

Amén de ofrecer un examen de los orígenes históricos del racismo en México, vinculados con lo que llama la "leyenda del mestizaje", Federico Navarrete nos ofrece una serie de posibles caminos para liberarnos de esta lacerante situación en busca del respeto a las diferencias y la convivencia sensata. Su aviso es claro y estamos a tiempo de hacer de la pluralidad un germen de convivencia y esperanza.

Generation Dread

2022

by Britt Wray

Generation Dread offers an impassioned perspective on maintaining mental well-being amid the growing concerns of climate change. Climate and environment-related fears, often leading to eco-anxiety, are becoming more prevalent globally. Britt Wray combines scientific understanding with emotional insight to demonstrate that such intense emotions are a natural reaction to the world's current state.

Connecting with our climate emotions is essential for becoming an active steward of the planet, Wray argues. Recognizing and valuing eco-anxiety is the first step to overcoming the widespread denial that has contributed to the current ecological crisis. With the climate situation deteriorating, the need for compassion and care is becoming more critical than ever.

Wray's book intertwines perspectives from climate-aware therapists, discussions on race and privilege, innovative ideas for mental health, and creative coping mechanisms. Generation Dread highlights the importance of learning from the past, our emotions, and one another to not only survive but thrive in our ever-changing environment.

Praying to the West

2021

by Omar Mouallem

Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas is an insightful and perspective-shifting journey by celebrated journalist Omar Mouallem. In the book, Mouallem explores his personal connection with Islam, delving into its influence on his values, politics, and heritage. Having grown up in a Muslim household, he later adopted atheism and used his voice to critique organized religion. However, as a father, Mouallem is confronted with the challenges his children may face due to their heritage in an increasingly nativist Western world.

Mouallem embarks on a quest to uncover the untold history of Islam across the Americas, visiting thirteen unique mosques from California to Quebec, and Brazil to Canada's icy north. Through his travels, he encounters diverse Muslim communities, each providing varied perspectives on what it means to be Muslim in the Americas. This exploration reveals the significant role Islam has played in shaping the continent, influencing everything from industrialization to political shifts.

Ultimately, Praying to the West uncovers a hidden narrative of home and belonging. It highlights the ongoing struggle for acceptance in towns and cities across the Americas, advocating for a more inclusive future for all.

No, Really, Where Are You From?

2012

by Nancy Ng

No, Really, Where Are You From? by Nancy Ng offers an insightful glimpse into the lives of eight Chinese individuals who navigate the complexities of being a visible minority in Canada. Through vivid storytelling, Ng explores the experiences of these individuals with their Chinese culture from childhood to adulthood, painting a portrait of the diverse ways in which they connect with their heritage.

The book delves into the broader themes of global migration and its significant impact on ethnic identity. It presents the nuanced and often challenging journey of ethnic identity retention and loss, which is not a matter of absolutes but is in a constant state of evolution and redefinition. Nancy Ng's work is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the human spirit in the face of cultural shifts and societal pressures.

Indian Horse

Saul Indian Horse is a child when his family retreats into the woods. Among the lakes and the cedars, they attempt to reconnect with half-forgotten traditions and hide from the authorities who have been kidnapping Ojibway youth. But when winter approaches, Saul loses everything: his brother, his parents, his beloved grandmother—and then his home itself. Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul is surrounded by violence and cruelty.

At the urging of a priest, he finds a tentative salvation in hockey. Rising at dawn to practice alone, Saul proves determined and undeniably gifted. His intuition and vision are unmatched. His speed is remarkable. Together they open doors for him: away from the school, into an all-Ojibway amateur circuit, and finally within grasp of a professional career.

Yet as Saul's victories mount, so do the indignities and the taunts, the racism and the hatred—the harshness of a world that will never welcome him, tied inexorably to the sport he loves. Spare and compact yet undeniably rich, Indian Horse is at once a heartbreaking account of a dark chapter in our history and a moving coming-of-age story.

The Skin We're In

2020

by Desmond Cole

The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power is a bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. This work is set to spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists.

In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.

Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.

The year also witnessed the profound personal and professional ramifications of Desmond Cole’s unwavering determination to combat injustice. In April, Cole disrupted a Toronto police board meeting by calling for the destruction of all data collected through carding. Following the protest, Cole, a columnist with the Toronto Star, was summoned to a meeting with the paper’s opinions editor and informed that his activism violated company policy. Rather than limit his efforts defending Black lives, Cole chose to sever his relationship with the publication. Then in July, at another police board meeting, Cole challenged the board to respond to accusations of a police cover-up in the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by an off-duty police officer and his brother. When Cole refused to leave the meeting until the question was publicly addressed, he was arrested. The image of Cole walking out of the meeting, handcuffed and flanked by officers, fortified the distrust between the city’s Black community and its police force.

Month-by-month, Cole creates a comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality. Urgent, controversial, and unsparingly honest, The Skin We’re In is destined to become a vital text for anti-racist and social justice movements in Canada, as well as a potent antidote to the all-too-present complacency of many white Canadians.

White Fragility

White Fragility is an in-depth exploration of the counterproductive reactions white people exhibit when their assumptions about race are challenged. This phenomenon, known as white fragility, is characterized by a variety of emotions and behaviors, such as anger, fear, guilt, argumentation, and silence, which serve to reinstate white racial equilibrium and obstruct meaningful cross-racial dialogue.

Anti-racist educator Dr. Robin DiAngelo delves into the development of white fragility, how it upholds racial inequality, and provides insights on how to engage in more constructive conversations about race. Through this examination, DiAngelo sheds light on the societal and individual patterns that contribute to the persistence of racial tension and inequality.

Race After Technology

2019

by Ruha Benjamin

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era.

Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.

This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.

The Sum of Us

2021

by Heather McGhee

Heather McGhee's specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?

McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world's advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.

But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can't do on our own. McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint a story of racism's costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy's collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

The Illegal

2017

by Lawrence Hill

Keita Ali is on the run. Like every boy on the mountainous island of Zantoroland, running is all Keita’s ever wanted to do. In one of the poorest nations in the world, running means respect. Running means riches—until Keita is targeted for his father’s outspoken political views and discovers he must run for his family’s survival. He signs on with notorious marathon agent Anton Hamm, but when Keita fails to place among the top finishers in his first race, he escapes into Freedom State—a wealthy island nation that has elected a government bent on deporting the refugees living within its borders in the community of AfricTown. Keita can stay safe only if he keeps moving and eludes Hamm and the officials who would deport him to his own country, where he would face almost certain death. This is the new underground: a place where tens of thousands of people deemed to be “illegal” live below the radar of the police and government officials. As Keita surfaces from time to time to earn cash prizes by running local road races, he has to assess whether the people he meets are friends or enemies: John Falconer, a gifted student struggling to escape the limits of his AfricTown upbringing; Ivernia Beech, a spirited old woman at risk of being forced into an assisted living facility; Rocco Calder, a recreational marathoner and the immigration minister; Lula DiStefano, self-declared queen of AfricTown and madam of the community’s infamous brothel; and Viola Hill, a reporter who is investigating the lengths to which her government will go to stop illegal immigration. Keita’s very existence in Freedom State is illegal. As he trains in secret, eluding capture, the stakes keep getting higher. Soon, he is running not only for his life, but for his sister’s life, too. Fast moving and compelling, The Illegal casts a satirical eye on people who have turned their backs on undocumented refugees struggling to survive in a nation that does not want them. Hill’s depiction of life on the borderlands of society urges us to consider the plight of the unseen and the forgotten who live among us.

Americanah

From the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Half of a Yellow Sun, the story of two Nigerians making their way in the U.S. and the UK, raising universal questions of race, belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. 

Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion--for each other and for their homeland.

Killers of the Flower Moon

2017

by David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon delves into the haunting true-life murder mystery of one of the most monstrous crimes in American history. In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma were the wealthiest people per capita in the world, thanks to oil discovered beneath their land. They lived opulently with chauffeured automobiles, mansions, and European-educated children. However, a sinister series of events unfolded as they began to be systematically murdered.

The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, was a prime target, with relatives being shot and poisoned. As the body count grew, the newly formed FBI stepped in, with the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, assigning former Texas Ranger Tom White to the case. White assembled an undercover team, including a Native American agent, to work with the Osage and uncover a chilling conspiracy.

Author David Grann presents a masterful work of literary journalism that captures the urgency of the mystery. Killers of the Flower Moon is not only a riveting account but also a searing indictment of the era's racial injustice.

An American Marriage

2018

by Tayari Jones

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.

Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.

Unearthing

2023

by Kyo Maclear

An unforgettable memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the indelible power of love.

Three months after Kyo Maclear’s father dies in December 2018, she gets the results of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her are not biologically related. Suddenly Maclear becomes a detective in her own life, unravelling a family mystery piece by piece, and assembling the story of her biological father. Along the way, larger questions arise: what exactly is kinship? And what does it mean to be a family? Thoughtful in its reflections on race and lineage, unflinching in its insights on grief and loyalty, Unearthing is a captivating and propulsive story of inheritance that goes beyond heredity. What gets planted, and what gets buried? What role does storytelling play in unearthing the past and making sense of a life? Can the humble act of tending a garden provide common ground for an inquisitive daughter and her complicated mother? As it seeks to answer these questions, Unearthing bursts with the very love it seeks to understand.

Happiness Falls

2023

by Angie Kim

Happiness Falls is a thrilling page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis. This riveting book about a biracial Korean American family in Virginia is upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. But as time progresses, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong. Eugene returns home bloody and alone, with their father nowhere to be found. The only witness to the father's disappearance is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the father's whereabouts and an emotionally rich exploration of family dynamics. Angie Kim turns the missing-person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must understand one another to uncover the truth.

Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence

2022

by R. F. Kuang

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

Babel is a profound exploration of the complexities of language, power, and colonialism, set against the backdrop of the British Empire's expansion.

When orphan Robin Swift is brought from Canton to London by Professor Lovell, he embarks on an intense education in languages and translation, aiming for a bright future at Oxford University's Royal Institute of Translation, known as Babel. This institution stands at the heart of the Empire's superiority, harnessing the mystical power of silver working to manifest the elusive meanings lost in translation.

As Robin becomes entrenched in the scholastic utopia of Babel, his ties to his heritage pull him into an inner conflict. When an aggressive war threatens China over silver and opium, Robin is torn between the comfort of academia and the call for justice. He must confront a crucial question: Can change come from within, or is violence an inevitable part of revolution?

Honey and Spice

2022

by Bolu Babalola

Introducing Bolu Babalola's dazzling debut novel, Honey and Spice, a story that brings together passion, humor, and heart, revolving around Kiki Banjo, a young Black British woman who has deliberately steered clear of love. However, she finds herself in an unexpected fake relationship with Malakai Korede, the very man she cautioned others about.

Sharp-tongued and secretly tender-hearted, Kiki is an expert in avoiding relationships. She's the voice behind the popular student radio show Brown Sugar, where she empowers the women of the African-Caribbean Society at Whitewell University to navigate away from the pitfalls of 'situationships', players, and heartbreak. But after a public mishap involving Malakai, dubbed 'The Wastemen of Whitewell', Kiki's show and reputation are at risk.

A novel that captures the essence of young love and self-discovery, Honey and Spice is a delightful blend of laughter, tension, and the thrill of romantic possibilities.

Yellowface

2023

by R.F. Kuang

Yellowface has been described as 'A riot' by PANDORA SYKES, 'Razor-sharp' by TIME, 'A wild ride' by STYLIST, 'Darkly comic' by GQ, and 'Satirical and humorous' by COSMOPOLITAN. It introduces us to Athena Liu, a literary darling, and June Hayward, literally nobody.

When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. With a blend of dark humour, as evidence threatens June's stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves, leading to deadly consequences. What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault.

Disorientation

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou is an outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel that captures a Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness amid chaos on a college campus.

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is on a mission to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and move away from reading about 'Chinese-y' things. However, years of grueling research have left her with nothing but a junk food addiction and stomach pain. When Ingrid stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives, she believes she's found her escape from academic hell. But she's about to discover she's in over her head. Her attempts to decipher the note's message lead to a shocking revelation that turns her academic life and her understanding of the world outside upside down.

Joined by her friend Eunice Kim and pursued by her rival Vivian Vo, Ingrid finds herself on a wild ride of mishaps and misadventures, ranging from book burnings and hallucinations to protests and propaganda. As Ingrid's life spirals out of control, she begins to question her relationships with white men and white institutions, and ultimately, she must confront herself.

Disorientation is a searing satire of privilege and power in America, a deep dive into personal complicity, and a compelling story of unspoken rage. Elaine Hsieh Chou presents a provocative question: Who gets to tell our stories, and how does the narrative shift when we take the reins?

All Our Kin

1973

by Carol B. Stack

All Our Kin: Strategies For Survival In A Black Community is a landmark study by Carol B. Stack that challenges the misconception of poor families as unstable and disorganized. The book provides an in-depth chronicle of a young white woman's sojourn into The Flats, an African-American ghetto community, where she studies the support systems that family and friends form to cope with poverty.

Eschewing the traditional methods used by anthropologists, which often involve approaching through authority figures and community leaders, the author enters the community via an acquaintance from school. This approach allows her to become one of the first sociologists to explore the black kinship network from the inside.

The result is a revealing study that shows how families in The Flats adapt to their poverty conditions by forming large, resilient, lifelong support networks based on friendship and family. These networks are shown to be powerful, highly structured, and surprisingly complex. The book also serves as an indictment of a social system that reinforces welfare dependency and chronic unemployment.

Queenie

Queenie is a disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that speaks to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places—including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.

As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?"—all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

With fresh and honest prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today's world.

The Grass Is Singing

1950

by Doris Lessing

Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm work their slow poison, and Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of an enigmatic and virile black servant, Moses. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses -- master and slave -- are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion. Their psychic tension explodes in an electrifying scene that ends this disturbing tale of racial strife in colonial South Africa.

The Grass Is Singing blends Lessing's imaginative vision with her own vividly remembered early childhood to recreate the quiet horror of a woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.

To Kill a Mockingbird

1960

by Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless classic that delves into the heart of a sleepy Southern town, exposing the moral dilemmas that shake its foundation. First published in 1960 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, Harper Lee's novel captures the essence of innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.

This compelling narrative is told through the eyes of a young girl named Scout, whose father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer tasked with defending a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime. Set against the backdrop of the mid-1930s Depression in Alabama, the story is a profound commentary on the virulent prejudice that plagues the town. Atticus's quiet heroism and the events that unfold challenge the conscience of a community steeped in hypocrisy and violence.

Lee herself described the book as a simple love story, yet it resonates with readers as much more—a reflection on human behavior and societal norms.

Stay True

2022

by Hua Hsu

Stay True is a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu. In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to.

The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them. But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left off one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.

Mind of My Mind

A young woman harnesses her newfound power to challenge the ruthless man who controls her, in this brilliant and provocative novel from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower.

Mary is a treacherous experiment. Her creator, an immortal named Doro, has molded the human race for generations, seeking out those with unusual talents like telepathy and breeding them into a new subrace of humans who obey his every command. The result is a young black woman living on the rough outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1970s, who has no idea how much power she will soon wield. Doro knows he must handle Mary carefully or risk her ending like his previous dead, either by her own hand or Doro's. What he doesn't suspect is that Mary's maturing telepathic abilities may soon rival his own power. By linking telepaths with a viral pattern, she will create the potential to break free of his control once and for all-and shift the course of humanity.

Home

2017

by Nnedi Okorafor

It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she abandoned her family in the dawn of a new day.

And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.

But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.

After generations of conflict, can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?

Horse

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

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