September: Reading Black Literature

Guest Speakers: 

• Jamillah Gabriel

• Stacey Robinson

• Damien Duffy

Literary fiction: 

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Set in the deep American south between the wars, this is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls 'father', she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, a singer and rebellious black woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.

Waiting to Exhale, by Terri McMillan

Four African-American women console and support one another in a complex friendship that helps each of them face the middle of her life as a single woman.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning work -- first published in 1987 -- brought the wrenching experience of slavery into the literature of our time, enlarging our comprehension of America's original sin. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has withstood savagery and not gone mad.

If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

We are in Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin?s novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo

Welcome to Britain and twelve very different people - mostly women, mostly black - who call it home. Teeming with life and crackling with energy, Girl, Woman, Other follows them across the miles and down the years. With vivid originality, irrepressible wit and sly wisdom, Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

First published in 1959, this novel tells the story of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community who is banished for accidentally killing a clansman. The novel covers the seven years of his exile to his return, providing an inside view of the intrusion of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society in the 1890s

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. 

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead  

After Cora, a slave in pre-Civil War Georgia, escapes with another slave, Caesar, they seek the help of the Underground Railroad as they flee from state to state and try to evade a slave catcher, Ridgeway, who is determined to return them to the South.

Passing, by Nella Larsen

Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past. Clare s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, but refuses to acknowledge the racism that continues to constrict her family's happiness.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

At the age of 16, Janie is caught kissing the shiftless Johnny Taylor, so her grandmother quickly marries her off to an old man with 60 acres. Refusing to compromise in spite of society's expectations, Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams.

Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. 

The Vanishing Half, 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 sixteen, 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. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape.

Native Son, by Richard Wright

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

An Untamed State, by Roxanne Gay

Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate.

Red at the Bone, by Jaqueline Woodson

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony -- a celebration that ultimately never took place

Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jessmyn Ward

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

Romance: 

Rebel (Women who Dare, #1), by Beverly Jenkins

Valinda Lacey's mission in the steamy heart of New Orleans is to help the newly emancipated community survive and flourish. But soon she discovers that here, freedom can also mean danger. When thugs destroy the school she has set up and then target her, Valinda runs for her life—and straight into the arms of Captain Drake LeVeq.

A Prince on Paper, by Alyssa Cole

Nya Jerami fled Thesolo for the glitz and glamour of NYC but discovered that her Prince Charming only exists in her virtual dating games. When Nya returns home for a royal wedding, she accidentally finds herself up close and personal--in bed--with the real-life celebrity prince who she loves to hate.

A Girl Like Her (Ravenswood #1), by Talia Hibbert

In Ruth Kabbah’s world, comic books are king, silence is golden, and human contact is a pesky distraction. She doesn’t like people, which works out just fine, because the people in this small town don’t like her. The exception to that rule? Evan Miller, her way-too-charming next-door neighbour…

A Cowboy to Remember, by Rebekah Weatherspoon

With a headline spot on a hit morning show and truly mouth-watering culinary skills, chef Evie Buchanan is perched on the edge of stardom. But at an industry party, a fall lands Evie in the hospital--with no memory of who she is. Scrambling to help, Evie's assistant contacts the only "family" Evie has left, close friends who run the luxury dude ranch in California where Evie grew up. Evie has no recollection of them--until former rodeo champion Zach Pleasant walks into her hospital room, and she realizes his handsome face has been haunting her dreams. 

Science fiction, Fantasy, and Afrofuturism: 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James.

In the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. 

Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler

In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

Kindred, by Octavia Butler

On her 26th birthday, Dana and her husband are moving into their apartment when she starts to feel dizzy. She falls to her knees, nauseous. Then the world falls away. She finds herself at the edge of a green wood by a vast river. A child is screaming. Wading into the water, she pulls him to safety, only to find herself face to face with a very old looking rifle, in the hands of the boy's father. She's terrified. The next thing she knows she's back in her apartment, soaking wet. It's the most terrifying experience of her life ...until it happens again.

The Fifth Season (Broken Earth Trilogy, Book #1), by N.K. Jemisin

A season of endings has begun. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.

Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor

In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor 

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

The Changeling, by Victor LaValle

The wildly imaginative story of one man's thrilling odyssey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after having seemingly committed an unforgivable act of violence.

The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle

Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping.

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, by Samuel R. Delaney

The only survivor when his home is utterly destroyed, Rat Korga is transported to a new life on the planet Velm. Escaping a society that suppressed and enslaved him, Korga joins a vast, rich interstellar culture and finds himself sharing a world with Marq Dyeth, the person this civilization's officials have calculated to be his perfect partner.̀Sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase, Delany invites the reader to collaborate in the process of creation. 

Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delaney

A young man arrives in the anarchic city of Bellona, in a near future USA. This world has two moons but could otherwise be our own. The man, known only as 'the Kid' begins to write a novel called Dhalgren that begins where it ends. Dhalgren is about the possibilities of fiction and about the special demands and pleasures of youth culture.

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, by Kwame Mbalia

Seventh-grader Tristan Strong tumbles into the MidPass and, with allies John Henry and Brer Rabbit, must entice the god Anansi to come out of hiding and seal the hole Tristan accidentally ripped in the sky.

Mystery, Thriller, and Horror: 

My sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away.

The Last Final Girl, by Stephen Graham Jones

A suburban town in Texas. Everyone's got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You're from this town. Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She's just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask.

Manga, Graphic Novels, Comics, and Anime:

Shuri, by Nnedi Okorafor 

T'Challa has disappeared, and everyone is looking at the next in line for the throne. Wakanda expects Shuri to take on the mantle of Black Panther and lead their nation -- but she's happiest in a lab, surrounded by her own inventions.

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, by Ta-Nehesi Coates

When a superhuman terrorist group that calls itself The People sparks a violent uprising, the land famed for its incredible technology and proud warrior traditions will be thrown into turmoil.

Truth: Red, White, and Black, by Robert Morales

In every war, people demand their champion. In World War II, that hero was Captain America. Truth is the controversial, declassified story of the African American men involuntarily subjected to the U.S. War Department's "super soldier" project, in a race to develop a serum that might turn the tide against the Axis powers...if the Nazis didn't get to it first. An epic spanning the time just before the attack on Pearl Harbor into the present day, Truth finally reveals the tragic sacrifice that a black infantry unit made for its country--and what those sacrifices meant to a white man named Steve Rogers

Hot Comb, by Ebony Flowers

Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women’s lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon. The titular story “Hot Comb” is about a young girl’s first perm - a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming “too white” in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to.

Kindred, a Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Damian Duffy

Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that is suddenly transformed into the frightening world of the antebellum South. Dana, a young black writer, can't explain how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does quickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder - and her progenitor. Her survival, her very existence, depends on it. This searing graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's science fiction classic is a powerfully moving, unflinching look at the violent, disturbing effects of slavery on the people it chained together, both black and white - and made kindred in the deepest sense of the word

Parable of the Sower, a Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Damian Duffy

In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

I am Alfonso Jones, by Tony Medina (Illustrated by Stacey Robinson)

The ghost of fifteen-year-old Alfonso Jones travels in a New York subway car full of the living and the dead, watching his family and friends fight for justice after he is killed by an off-duty police officer while buying a suit in a Midtown department store.

Bounce, by Chuck Collins

Chuck Collins is a former bouncer, and creator of the action-comedy webcomic Bounce.

Blue Hand Mojo: Hard Times Road, by John Jennings

1931. Bronzeville. Chicago. The mage, Frank "Half Dead" Johnson, is a marked man. Literally. A drunken decision fueled by tragedy has left him with half a soul, sorcerous powers, and two centuries to work off his debt to Scratch (aka The Devil) himself. This graphic novel chronicles three adventures with this tragic conjure man. Watch as "Half Dead" attempts to save his own soul, pay his debt, and help as many people as he can along the way

Historical fiction

The Known World, by Edward P Jones

When a plantation proprietor and former slave--now possessing slaves of his own--dies, his household falls apart in the wake of a slave rebellion and corrupt underpaid patrollers who enable free black people to be sold into slavery.

The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

This book is based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family, by Alex Haley

As the first black American writer to trace his origins back to their roots, he has told the story of 25,000,000 Americans of African descent. He has rediscovered for an entire people a rich cultural heritage that slavery took away from them, along with their names and their identities. But Roots speaks, finally, not just to blacks, or to whites, but to all people and all races everywhere, for the story it tells is one of the most eloquent testimonials ever written to the indomitability of the human spirit.

Poetry and short stories: 

Your Silence Will Not Protect You, by Audre Lorde

Over and over again, in the essays, speeches and poems collected in Your Silence Will Not Protect You, Lorde emphasises how important it is to speak up. To give witness: “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

And Still I Rise, by Maya Angelou

In this inspiring poem, Maya Angelou celebrates the courage of the human spirit over the harshest of obstacles. An ode to the power that resides in us all to overcome the most difficult circumstances, this poem is truly an inspiration and affirmation of the faith that restores and nourishes the soul.

All Aunt Hagar’s Children, by Edward P. Jones

Here Jones turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them in the city, people who in Jones's masterful hands emerge as fully human and morally complex. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw behind them and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

Blacks, by Gwendolyn Brooks

Here is a necessary collection of poetry for admirers of words and treasurers of literary beauty. Spanning more than 30 years, this collection of literary masterpieces by the venerable Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, arguably Illinois' most beloved Poet Laureate and Chicago's elder black literary stateswoman, Blacks includes all of Ms. Brooks' critically acclaimed writings. Within its covers is the groundbreaking "Annie Allen," which earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. 

I, Too, Am America, by Langston Hughes

Presents the popular poem by one of the central figures in the Harlem Renaissance, highlighting the courage and dignity of the African American Pullman porters in the early twentieth century.

Young adult: 

The Hate you Give, by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor

Twelve-year-old Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, by M.T. Anderson

Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. It sounds like a fairy tale.

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orisha Series), by Tomi Adeyemi

Seventeen-year-old Zélie, her older brother Tzain, and rogue princess Amari fight to restore magic to the land and activate a new generation of magi, but they are ruthlessly pursued by the crown prince, who believes the return of magic will mean the end of the monarchy.