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My Soul to Keep My Soul to Keep is a 1997 novel by American writer Tananarive Due. It is the first book in Due's African Immortals Series and was followed by "The Living Blood" (2001). The third book in the series, "Blood Colony", was published in 2008. Adaptation. In 2004, it was announced that a film version of this book is in production with actor Blair Underwood.

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The Color Purple The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film and musical of the same name. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence. In 2003, the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novels." Plot. Celie is a poor, uneducated 14-year-old girl living in the Southern United States in the early 1900s. She writes letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once, which resulted in the birth of a boy named Adam, whom Alphonso abducted. Celie thinks Alphonso killed Adam. Celie then has a second child, and Celie's ailing mother dies after cursing Celie on her deathbed. The second child is a girl named Olivia, but Alphonso takes the baby away shortly after birth. Celie and her younger sister, 12-year-old Nettie, learn a man identified only as Mister wants to marry Nettie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, instead arranging for Mister to marry Celie. Mister, a widower, needing someone to care for his children and keep his house, eventually accepts the offer. Mister physically, sexually, and verbally abuses Celie, and all his children mistreat her as well. Shortly thereafter, Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie's house, where Mister makes sexual advances toward her. Celie then advises Nettie to seek assistance from a well-dressed black woman that she saw in the general store a while back; the woman has unknowingly adopted Olivia and is the only black woman Celie has ever seen with money of her own. Nettie is forced to leave after promising to write. Celie, however, never receives any letters and concludes her sister is dead. Time passes, and Harpo, Mister's son, falls in love with an assertive girl named Sofia, who becomes pregnant with Harpo's baby and, despite initial resistance from Mister, marries Harpo. Harpo and Sofia have five more children in short order. Celie is amazed by Sofia's defiant refusal to submit to Harpo's attempts to control her. As Harpo is kinder and gentler than his father, Celie advises him not to dominate Sofia. Harpo temporarily follows Celie's advice but falls back under Mister's sway. Celie, momentarily jealous of Harpo's genuine love of Sofia, then advises Harpo to beat her. Sofia fights back, however, and confronts Celie. A guilty Celie apologizes and confides in Sofia about all the abuse she suffers at Mister's hands. She also begins to consider Sofia's advice about defending herself against further abuse from Mister. Shug Avery, a jazz and blues singer and Mister's long-time mistress falls ill, and Mister takes her into his house. Celie, who has been fascinated by photos of Shug she found in Mister's belongings, is thrilled to have her there. Mister's father expresses disapproval of the arrangement, reminding Mister that Shug has three out-of-wedlock children, though Mister implies to him he is those children's father. Mister's father then leaves in disgust. While Shug is initially rude to Celie, who has taken charge of nursing her, the two women become friends, and Celie soon finds herself infatuated with Shug. Frustrated by Harpo's domineering behavior, Sofia moves out, taking her children with her. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where a fully recovered Shug performs nightly. Shug decides to stay when she learns Mister beats Celie when she is away. Shug and Celie grow closer. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets into a fight with Harpo's new girlfriend, Squeak, knocking Squeak's teeth out. In town one day, while Sofia is enjoying a day out with her new boyfriend, a prizefighter, and their respective children, she gets into a physical fight with the mayor after his wife, Miss Millie, insults Sofia and her children. The police arrive and brutally beat Sofia, leaving her with a cracked skull, broken ribs, her face rendered nearly unrecognizable, and blind in one eye. She is subsequently sentenced to 12 years in prison. Squeak, mixed-race and Sheriff Hodges' illegitimate niece, attempts to blackmail the sheriff into releasing Sofia, resulting in her being raped by her uncle. Squeak cares for Sofia's children while she is incarcerated, and the two women develop a friendship. Sofia is eventually released and begins working for Miss Millie, which she detests. Despite being newly married to a man called Grady, Shug instigates a sexual relationship with Celie on her next visit. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister, and Shug helps Celie recover letters from Nettie that Mister has been hiding from her for decades. The letters indicate Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, the well-dressed woman Celie saw in the store. Nettie eventually accompanied them to Africa to do missionary work. Samuel and Corrine have unwittingly adopted both Adam and Olivia. Corrine, noticing her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Samuel fathered the children with her. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie's role in her family. Through her letters, Nettie reveals she has become disillusioned with her missionary work. Corrine became ill with a fever, and Nettie asked Samuel to tell her how he adopted Olivia and Adam. Realizing Adam and Olivia are Celie's children, Nettie then learned Alphonso is actually her and Celie's stepfather. Their actual father was a store owner that white men lynched because they resented his success. She also learned their mother suffered a mental collapse after her husband's death and that Alphonso exploited the situation to control their mother's considerable wealth. Nettie confessed to Samuel and Corrine she is the children's biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refused to believe her until Nettie reminds her of her previous encounter with Celie in the store. Later, Corrine died, finally having accepted Nettie's story. Meanwhile, Celie visits Alphonso, who confirms Nettie's story. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, which she confides to Shug, who explains to Celie her own unique religious philosophy. Shug helps Celie realize God is not someone who has power over her like the rest of the men in Celie's life. Rather, God is an “it” and not a “who." Having had enough of her husband's abuse, Celie decides to leave Mister along with Shug and Squeak, who is considering a singing career of her own. Celie puts a curse on Mister before leaving him for good, settling in Tennessee and supporting herself as a seamstress. Alphonso dies, Celie inherits his land and moves back into her childhood home. Around this time, Shug falls in love with Germaine, a member of her band, and this news crushes Celie. Shug travels with Germaine, all the while writing postcards to Celie. Celie pledges to love Shug even if Shug does not love her back. Celie learns that Mister, suffering from a considerable decline in fortunes after Celie left him, has changed dramatically, and Celie begins to call him by his first name, Albert. Albert proposes that they marry "in the spirit as well as in the flesh," but Celie declines. Meanwhile, Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Adam marries Tashi, an African girl. Following an African tradition, Tashi undergoes the painful rituals of female circumcision and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual. As Celie realizes that she is content in her life without Shug, Shug returns, having ended her relationship with Germaine. Nettie, Samuel, Olivia, Adam, and Tashi all arrive at Celie's house. Nettie and Celie reunite after 30 years and introduce one another to their respective families. Critical reception. "The Color Purple" won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983, making Walker the first black woman to win the prize. Walker also won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. Mel Watkins of the "New York Times Book Review" wrote that it is a "striking and consummately well-written novel", praising its powerful emotional impact and epistolary structure. Though the novel has garnered critical acclaim, it has also been the subject of controversy. It is 17th on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged or banned books. Commonly cited justifications for banning the book include sexual explicitness, explicit language, violence, and homosexuality. The book received greater scrutiny amidst controversy surrounding the release of the film adaptation in 1985. The controversy centered around the depiction of black men, which some critics saw as feeding stereotypical narratives of black male violence, while others found the representation compelling and relatable. On November 5, 2019, the "BBC News" listed "The Color Purple" on its list of the 100 most influential novels. Adaptations. The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1985. It was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Danny Glover as Albert, and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia. Though nominated for eleven Academy Awards, it won none. This perceived snubbing ignited controversy because many critics considered it the best picture that year, including Roger Ebert. On December 1, 2005, a musical adaptation of the novel and film with lyrics and music by Stephen Bray, Brenda Russell and Allee Willis, and book by Marsha Norman opened at The Broadway Theatre in New York City. The show was produced by Scott Sanders, Quincy Jones, Harvey Weinstein, and Oprah Winfrey, who was also an investor. In 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio adaptation of the novel in ten 15-minute episodes as a "Woman's Hour" serial, with Nadine Marshall as Celie, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Nina Sosanya and Eamonn Walker. The script was by Patricia Cumper, and in 2009 the production received the Sony Radio Academy Awards Silver Drama Award. Boycotting Israel. As part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), the author declined publication of the book in Israel in 2012. This decision was criticized by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, who argued that Walker "resorted to bigotry and censorship against Hebrew-speaking readers of her writings". Walker, an ardent pro-Palestinian activist, said in a letter to Yediot Books that Israel practices apartheid and must change its policies before her works can be published there. References. Singh, Sonal, and Sushma Gupta. “Celie’s Emancipation in the Novel The Color Purple.” International Transactions in Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec. 2010, pp. 218–221.Humanities International Complete. Tahir, Ary S. “Gender Violence in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Journal of Language and Literature Education, no. 11, 2014, pp. 1–19. Literature Resource Center, doi:10.12973/jlle.11.243.

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Pym (novel) Pym is the third novel by American author Mat Johnson, published on March 1, 2011. A satirical fantasy inspired by "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, the book explores racial politics and identity in America, and Antarctica. The novel was written over a period of nine years and has been well received by critics, who have praised its lighthearted and humorous style of social criticism. Development history. "Pym" takes its title from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", "a strange tale of shipwrecks, mutiny and a mysterious island inhabited by black-skinned people whose teeth are even black, and it ends abruptly at the South Pole with Pym facing haunting white figures". Poe's only novel, it is the favorite book of Johnson's protagonist, Chris Jaynes, an African-American professor of literature, and his obsession with it leads him on his own journey to Antarctica. According to Johnson, creating the book involved "9 years of writing, 16 drafts, [and] 3 deletion attempts". While working on "Pym", Johnson also finished four critically acclaimed graphic novels – "Hellblazer: Papa Midnite" (2005), "Incognegro" (2008), "Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story" (2010), and "Right State". In an interview with Mike Emery, Johnson stated that there were many times when he thought that "Pym" "was taking too much of my time, and it was taking me in the wrong direction". He credits his wife, journalist Meera Bowman Johnson (to whom he dedicated "Pym"), and friends with persuading him to continue with the novel. Johnson's website features a list of books by other notable writers inspired by Poe's open-ended novel since its publication in 1838, including Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", and Jules Verne's "An Antarctic Mystery" – "the most pragmatic and literal sequel to "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" and also the worst sequel […] Come for the novelty, stay for the unbridled racism". The narrative of "Pym" also includes elements from Verne's and Lovecraft's Poe-inspired works. In "Pym", Johnson's protagonist named a course on Poe he was teaching in reference to Toni Morrison's 1992 collection of essays "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination", in which she explores the theory that for Poe, whiteness equaled perfection. Professor Jaynes's course, "Dancing With the Darkies: Whiteness in the Literary Mind", attempted to trace the roots of America's failure to become a post-racial society to classic white texts, with a focus on Poe. Synopsis. Chris Jaynes is the only African-American professor of literature at a liberal Manhattan college. Refusing to limit his teaching to the African-American canon and serve on the college diversity committee, he is denied tenure. His obsession with Poe's novel comes to a head when his ancient book dealer introduces him to a copy of "The True and Interesting Narrative of Dirk Peters. Coloured Man. As Written by Himself.", "an unpublished 19th-century manuscript that suggests Poe's novel, which was partially set in Antarctica, was drawn closely from truth." Jaynes assembles an all-black mining crew, and embarks on an expedition to the South Pole in search of Poe's fabled island of Tsalal, the "great undiscovered African Diasporan homeland ... uncorrupted by whiteness." The quest is led by the protagonist's older cousin Captain Booker Jaynes, "the world's only civil rights activist turned deep-sea diver", who is planning on mining blocks of Antarctic ice to melt and sell as expensive bottled water. Garth Frierson, Jaynes's childhood best friend with a fondness for Little Debbie snack cakes, joins the team in the hope of finding landscape painter Thomas Karvel, "Master of Light" (a parody of Thomas Kinkade, "Painter of Light"), and in part, "Pym" is laid out as "a road story/bromance between Jaynes and his childhood pal." Other members of the expedition include water treatment engineers Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter, a gay couple documenting the trip for their "Afro-adventure blog." Angela Latham, a lawyer and Jaynes's "much-pined-for" ex-wife, brings along her new husband Nathaniel, treating the venture as a honeymoon. But instead of the black inhabitants described by Poe, Jaynes and his friends come across "a prehistoric world of giant white people, or 'Snow Honkies', who enslave them." Garth is the only one spared from the enslavement, since he trades his Little Debbie snack cakes for freedom but does not have enough to free the rest of the mining crew. For a number of days, Jaynes is forced to labor for his master Augustus by cleaning his ice cave and kneading "krakt" (the Snow Honkies' word for whale blubber). Augustus eventually gestures to Jaynes that he wants Little Debbie cakes by showing him an empty wrapper, which leads them back to the campsite and Garth. Jaynes and Garth then plot an escape plan for the enslaved crew as Augustus eats out of a bag of sugar and eventually falls ill and vomits. Jaynes and Garth drag the Snow Honkie back to the mouth of the ice caves, where they secretly plan to meet with the others. After returning, Augustus (who is translated by Pym) drunkenly announces to Jaynes that he has been sold to Sausage Nose, an abusive master who owns both Jeffree and Carlton. Jaynes realizes that he must escape with the crew soon or they will be enslaved forever. He attempts to convince Booker Jaynes to escape with him and Garth, but fails to persuade him as Booker is in an intimate relationship with his mistress, Hunka. Jaynes manages to escape by himself to the mouth of the cave, but sees that both snowmobiles have been destroyed by Pym. Garth and Jaynes tie Pym up and begin to walk away from the ice caves with a ration of seasoned krakt from Booker as their own source of food. Garth unfortunately eats it all and leaves everyone to starve. Jaynes and Garth wake up in a saturated paradise and are greeted by Thomas Karvel, the Master of Light, and his wife, Mrs. Karvel. They are given a tour of the Biodome and are given three-fifths of a home, and the Karvels agree to let them stay only if they raise crops in the plot of land they are given. Because the Biodome uses so much energy, the heat from its machinery is melting the ice caves of the Snow Honkies. Both Pym and Nathaniel arrive with all of the Snow Honkies and attempt to persuade the Karvels into using less energy and relinquishing Jaynes and Garth, as they are property of Sausage Nose. Mrs. Karvel invites the Snow Honkies to a feast, which takes place on the rooftop of the Biodome. The mining crew (except Nathaniel), Jaynes, and Mrs. Karvel cook all of the remaining instant food, and cover the dessert with rat poison, calling them "sprinkles". During the feast, Mrs. Karvel asks Jaynes to bring out more dessert, and Sausage Nose and a child follow him inside the Biodome. The child dies in a river from the rat poison, and Sausage Nose realizes the trick that is being played on the Snow Honkies. He charges at Jaynes and is killed by an ax to the head, courtesy of Garth. To avoid suspicions of Sausage Nose going missing, Jaynes forces Garth into a robe and smears toothpaste on his face and hands. The Snow Honkies discover that something is amiss and that Garth is not Sausage Nose at all. The Snow Honkies begin to attack the humans when an earthquake occurs, killing all except Jaynes, Garth, and Pym. The novel then becomes a number of journal entries about the journey to Tsalal by raft, in which Pym dies. Jaynes covers Pym's face with a black cloth, and they arrive at Tsalal, which is not an island of blackness, as Poe describes, but instead of a place of color and most notably of people with brown skin. Reception. "Pym" has been well received by critics, with "Kirkus Reviews" referring to it as "an acutely humorous, very original story that will delight lovers of literature and fantasy alike" and NPR's Maureen Corrigan calling it "loony, disrespectful, and sharp" and "a welcome riff on the surrealistic shudder-fest that is Poe's original." According to Associated Press writer Jennifer Kay, "Pym" is a swiftly paced satire which "skewers Edgar Allan Poe, race in America, the snack-food industry, academia, landscape painting and abominable snowmen." She concluded, "A commentary on racial identity, obsessions and literature should not be as funny as "Pym", but Johnson makes light work of his heavy themes." Adam Mansbach, writing for "The New York Times", similarly stated, "It's no easy task to balance social satire against life-threatening adventure, the allegory against the gory, but Johnson's hand is steady and his ability to play against Poe's text masterly." Michael Dirda, for "The Washington Post", called the novel "exuberantly comic", concluding that "in its seemingly effortless blend of the serious, comic and fantastic, Johnson's "Pym" really shouldn't be missed". Maggie Galehouse, book editor of the "Houston Chronicle", called "Pym" "… funny. And erudite, without condescension", stating that while there is "no shortage of thought and scholarship and experience underpinning "Pym"", reading it "is like opening a big can of whoop-ass and then marveling – gleefully – at all the mayhem that ensues." Joe M. O'Connell, in the "Austin American-Statesman", called Johnson "a wizard", stating that the novel cast a "magical spell", and described it as "a rumination on America's ongoing problem of race, and an excellent modern picaresque sprinkled liberally with comic book action. Most of all, it's a sublimely written comic novel and a lot of fun." "Publishers Weekly", in a starred review, described "Pym" as a "high-concept adventure" which provides "a memorable take on America's 'racial pathology' and 'the whole ugly story of our world'".

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The Secret Life of Bees (novel) The Secret Life of Bees is a fiction book by the American author Sue Monk Kidd. Set in 1964, it is a coming-of-age story about loss and betrayal. The book received critical acclaim and was a "New York Times" bestseller. It won the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards (Paperback), and was nominated for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. The book was later adapted into a film directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Plot. Set in 1964 in the fictitious town of Sylvan, South Carolina, "The Secret Life of Bees" tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl, Lily Melissa Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. Lily lives in a house with her abusive father, whom she refers to as T. Ray. They have a no-nonsense maid, Rosaleen, who is a mother figure for Lily. The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom. Then, after Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of "snuff juice" on three white men, Lily breaks her out of the hospital and they decide to leave town. The two begin hitch-hiking toward Tiburon, South Carolina, a place written on the back of an image of the Virgin Mary as a black woman, which Deborah, Lily's mother, had owned. They spend a night in the woods with little food and little hope before reaching Tiburon. There, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily recognizes a picture of the same "Black Mary" but on the side of a jar of honey. Rosaleen and Lily receive directions to the origin of the honey, the Boatwright residence. They are introduced to the Boatwright sisters, the makers of the honey: August, May, and June, who are all black. When Lily meets the sisters she makes up a story about being an orphan. Believing Lily's Story, August, June, and May invite Lily and Rosaleen to stay with them. They learn the ways of the Boatwrights, as well as the ways of bee keeping. With a new home and a new family for the time being, Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working as August's bee keeping apprentice to repay her for her kindness, while Rosaleen works around the house. Lily finds out that May had a twin sister, April, who died by suicide with their father's shotgun when they were younger. She watches June's ongoing flirtations with, and refusals of marriage to, her boyfriend Neil. Lily and Rosaleen also get to see the sisters' religious ceremonies. The sisters hold service at their house which they call "The Daughters of Mary." They keep a statue of the "Black Mary", or "our lady of chains", which was actually a figurehead from the bow of an ancient ship, and August tells the story of how a man by the name of Obadiah, who was enslaved, found this figure. The enslaved men and women thought that God had answered their prayers asking for rescue, and "to send them consolation" and "to send them freedom". It gave them hope, and the figure had been passed down for generations. Lily eventually meets Zach, August's godson. They soon develop intimate feelings for each other. They share goals with each other while working the hives. Both Lily and Zach find their goals nearly impossible to meet but still encourage each other to attempt them. Zach wants to be the "ass-busting lawyer", which means he would be the first black attorney in the area. Lily wants to be a short story writer. Lily attempts to tell August the truth but is interrupted by Zach, who takes her for a honey run. They stop at a store to pick up a few things. Zach gets arrested after one of his friends, who they had met at the store, throws a coke bottle at a white man and none of them will tell who did it. Zach and his friends are arrested and put in jail. The Boatwright house decides not to tell May in fear of an unbearable emotional episode. The secret does not stay hidden for long and May becomes catatonic with depression. May leaves the house and goes missing. August, June, Lily and Rosaleen go looking to find her and end up find her lying dead in the river with a rock on her chest. It looks to be a suicide, due to May's depression from Zach being arrested. A vigil is held that lasts four days. In that time, Zach is freed from jail with no charges, and black cloth is draped over the beehives to symbolize the mourning. May's suicide letter is found and in it she says, "It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up." August interprets this as urging June to marry Neil. May is later buried. Life begins to turn back to normal after a time of grieving, bringing the Boatwright house back together. June, after several rejections, agrees to give her hand in marriage to Neil. Zach vows to Lily that they will be together someday and that they will both achieve their goals. Lily finally finds out the truth about her mother. August was her mother's nanny, and helped raise her. After her marriage to T. Ray began to sour, Deborah left and went to stay with the Boatwrights. She eventually decided to leave him permanently and returned to their house to collect Lily. While Deborah was packing to leave, T. Ray returned home. Their ensuing argument turned into a physical fight during which Deborah got a gun. After a brief struggle, the gun fell to the floor, which Lily picked up and the gun accidentally discharged, killing Deborah. While Lily is coming to terms with this information, T. Ray shows up at the Boatwright residence, also known as the pink house, to take her back home. Lily refuses, and T. Ray flies into an enraged rampage. He has a violent flashback which brings him around. August steps in and offers to let Lily stay with her. T. Ray gives in and agrees. However, right before T. Ray leaves the Boatwright house, Lily asks him what really happened the day her mother died. T. Ray confirms that Lily was the one to, accidentally, kill her mother Deborah. Themes. The novel has many themes, including religion, labour, nature, racism, orphanhood and abandonment, mental health issues and suicide. Lily's search for a mother figure is a part of the greater journey into her own identity. The Bildungsroman showcases Lily's struggle to understand her role in her family and the world and work through her trauma. Another theme is the historical setting and the racism in 1960s southern United States. The novel mentions police mistreatment of Black people, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the controversy of interracial relations. April and May, as well as Lily's mother, are affected by various mental illnesses. Although this is not stated directly, May exhibits symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (hyperempathy, restricted and stereotyped behaviour, speech abnormalities). Symbolism. There are a couple big symbols and motifs in “The Secret Life of Bees." One major symbol is the bees and bee-related objects. Bees are a main symbol and motif in the novel. Bees are a symbol of two main things: Guidance and the power of a female community. This is seen in the theme. A major theme is that Lily is looking for a connection to her mother or some mother figure. In the story, there are many strong women she meets. She not only grows up with Rosalee, who is a surrogate mother to Lily, but she also meets the Boatwright Sister and the Daughters of Mary who enhance this symbol of power in a female community in relation to bees. Bees can also symbolize organization or “living in a civilized community.” This can be connected to the black community and specifically the Boatwright sisters in this novel. Bees are very organized, and every bee needs to do its job. In the novel, there is a quote which says, “when a queen bee is taken from a hive, the other bees notice her absence” and it is very similar with the Boatwright sisters. Once May’s twin, April, died, May was never the same. She was emotionally sensitive after her twin passed. Once May took her own life, the Boatwright sisters, once again, had to learn how to move on and live with a loss and “missing bees.” Honey represents wisdom and knowledge. In the plot, Lily is looking for the black Mary that is on a honey jar, and after finding the source of this honey, The Boatwright Sisters take Lily and Rosaleen in, and begin to share their wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge about bees, life, Lily’s dad, T. Ray, and Lily’s mother, Deborah. Reception and adaptations. The reception of the book was generally positive. Although the novel does include the underlying theme of the civil rights movement, "USA Today" felt the novel focused more on Lily's journey towards "self-acceptance, faith and freedom". The novel was originally published in 2001, and has since sold more than six million copies and has been published in 35 countries. It also stayed on the "New York Times" best seller list for two and a half years. In 2004, it was named the "Book Sense Paperback of the Year". It was also one of "Good Morning America"'s "Read-This" Book club picks, and was nominated for the Orange Prize in England. The book was adapted into a film in 2008, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and produced by Will Smith, with Jada Pinkett Smith as the executive producer. Queen Latifah played August Boatwright, Dakota Fanning played Lily, Alicia Keys played June Boatwright, Jennifer Hudson played Rosaleen, and Sophie Okonedo played May Boatwright. The book has been adapted as a musical. A workshop was produced by New York Stage and Film & Vassar in 2017. The world premiere musical adaptation of "The Secret Life of Bees" was held at the Off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company on May 12, 2019 in previews, with the official opening on June 13. The musical's book is written by Lynn Nottage, with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. The musical is directed by Sam Gold and features Saycon Sengbloh as Rosaleen, Elizabeth Teeter as Lily, and LaChanze, Eisa Davis and Anastacia McCleskey as the Boatwight beekeeping sisters.

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The Living Blood The Living Blood is a novel by writer Tananarive Due. It is the second book in Due's "African Immortals Series". It is preceded by "My Soul to Keep", which was published in 1997, and is followed by "Blood Colony", which was published in 2008.

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The Sellout (novel) The Sellout is a 2015 novel by Paul Beatty published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the UK by Oneworld Publications in 2016. The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and muses about the state of racial relations in the U.S. today. In October 2016, it won the Man Booker Prize, making Beatty the first US writer to win that award. Background. Published in 2015, "The Sellout" was the latest in Paul Beatty’s body of work that explores racial identity in America and the pervasive historical effects of racism. Beatty’s other notable works include "The White Boy Shuffle", "Tuff", and "Slumberland". Beatty has stated his motivation for writing the novel was that "[he] was broke". Although "The Sellout" was not written in response to any specific event, the novel was released during a time of racial reckoning surrounding multiple instances of police brutality and the Ferguson, Missouri protests. Plot Summary. The story begins with the narrator (referred to as either “me” or “Bonbon”) standing trial before the Supreme Court for crimes related to his attempt to restore slavery and segregation in his hometown of Dickens, an “agrarian ghetto” on the outskirts of Los Angeles, California. Sitting before the court, Bonbon starts to reflect on what led up to this moment and recounts his upbringing. Bonbon had a tenuous relationship with his father, an unorthodox sociologist who performed numerous traumatizing social experiments on him as a child and held lofty expectations for Bonbon to become a  respected community leader in Dickens. A few years before the Supreme Court case, Bonbon’s father is murdered by the police, and an ambivalent Bonbon struggles to find his purpose in life. At first, Bonbon is content to withdraw from the community and continue his agricultural endeavors of growing artisanal watermelons and marijuana without his father’s judgement. One day, however, the town of Dickens spontaneously disappears from the map and becomes unincorporated, a change that Bonbon attributes to Dickens’ undesirable socioeconomic and racial demographics. Bonbon sets out to restore Dickens’ existence through any means possible. Bonbon enlists the help of Hominy Jenkins, an old man and former child actor, to paint provocative road signs and boundary lines that draw attention to Dickens’ existence. After those attempts are fruitless, Bonbon continues a step further and attempts to reinstitute both slavery and segregation in Dickens and bring back what he believes to be a unifying power structure in the town. He first attempts to re-segregate a public bus driven by his ex-girlfriend by posting “white-only signs” in the front of the bus. He later tries to open an all-white school next to the local high school. Meanwhile, Hominy offers to become Bonbon’s slave, to which a reluctant Bonbon eventually agrees. As the absurdity of Bonbon’s actions are noticed on a wider scale, Hominy causes a large accident that ultimately leads to the supreme court case. Genre. "The Sellout" is a fictitious, satirical novel about racial relations in the U.S. Beatty utilizes stereotypes and parody throughout the story to inject social commentary. Beatty’s other works are mostly humorous as well, but Beatty has claimed that he does not view himself as a satirical author. Analysis. "The Sellout" has been seen by many as a critique of the idea that American society is post-racial. According to literary scholar Henry Ivry, the satirical devices used throughout the book bring attention to the current issues of systemic racism and mock the conventional approaches that American society has taken to remedy these issues. Similarly, University of Albany professor Steven Delmagori notes that the pointed comedy in the novel establishes white privilege as a central issue facing American society, but Beatty simultaneously pokes fun at the overly individualistic view that has dominated the discourse around white privilege. Another scholar, Judit Friedrich, stipulates that Beatty’s writing may seem taboo at first, but his flippant treatment of serious racial issues -- from segregation to economic inequality -- call out society’s unwillingness to discuss and substantively address these issues. Reception. The novel was well received by critics, who praised its humor, ostensibly satirical content, and rich social commentary. In "The Guardian", Elisabeth Donnelly described it as "a masterful work that establishes Beatty as the funniest writer in America", while reviewer Reni Eddo-Lodge called it a "whirlwind of a satire", going on to say: "Everything about "The Sellout"s plot is contradictory. The devices are real enough to be believable, yet surreal enough to raise your eyebrows." The "HuffPost" concluded: ""The Sellout" is a hilarious, pop-culture-packed satire about race in America. Beatty writes energetically, providing insight as often as he elicits laughs." Historian Amanda Foreman, chair of the judges of the Man Booker prize, said: ""The Sellout" is one of those very rare books that is able to take satire, which is in itself a very difficult subject and not always done well, and it plunges into the heart of contemporary American society and, with absolutely savage wit, of the kind I haven't seen since Swift or Twain, both manages to eviscerate every social taboo and politically correct, nuanced, every sacred cow, and while both making us laugh, making us wince. It is both funny and painful at the same time and it is really a novel of our times." Beatty has indicated surprise that critics refer to the novel as a comic one, indicating his belief that discussing the comic aspects of the novel prevents critics from having to discuss its more serious themes. Awards and honors. "The Sellout" was the first American book to win the prestigious Man Booker prize, an award traditionally reserved for English-language literature not from the U.S. The contest began considering American literature in 2002. Publication. "The Sellout" was published in 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and UK publishing house Oneworld Publications.

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The Land (novel) The Land is a novel written by Mildred D. Taylor, published in 2001. It is the fifth and penultimate book of the Logan Family saga that began with "Song of the Trees" (1975). It is a prequel to the whole series that recounts the life of Cassie Logan's grandfather Paul-Edward as he grows from a nine-year-old boy into a man in his mid-twenties. This book won the 2002 Coretta Scott King Author Award and the 2002 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. This was originally the final book in the series before the release of "All the Days Past, All the Days to Come" in 2020 which continues the story of the Logan family chronologically from the last book, "The Road to Memphis" set twenty years later. Synopsis. "The Land" follows the life of Paul-Edward Logan. Paul is the child of a white man and a woman with Black and Native American ancestry. Paul has three entries from Paul's journal, after the main story ends. The dialogue uses the Southern dialect from the 1870s and 1880s. Childhood. The novel begins with Paul-Edward, as a nine-year-old. It describes how Paul's life has been different from that of most freed slaves. The book is narrated from Paul's perspective, and quickly introduces his three brothers, his sister, and Mitchell Thomas, a black boy whose father works for Paul's father and who becomes a vital member of the story-line. In the beginning, Mitchell continually bullies Paul for being multiracial. Paul's father and brothers' only advice for Paul is to "use his head," and come up with a solution by himself. In "Childhood," Paul's parents are constant reminders of the trials of being born biracial. After several months of incessant bullying, Paul strikes a deal with Mitchell. Their deal states that if Paul teaches Mitchell to "read English, write English, and figure," then Mitchell will teach Paul how to fight and to fend for himself; but as he reminded Paul, Mitchell "can't teach him how to win." Paul and Mitchell soon grow tired of obeying Edward Logan (Paul's Father). Paul comes across the opportunity to race another man's horse. Edward Logan forbids it, saying that it would be unwise of Paul to ride, let alone race, a horse with whom he is not acquainted. Paul wins the race but has trouble collecting his pay. The owner of the horse will not give Paul his pay. Due to Paul being of mixed heritage, the owner of the horse doesn't even have to give Paul his earned money. If Mitchell hadn't used violent force to ensure that the white man kept his word by paying Paul his money, Paul would have never seen any dime of "four times a rider's pay." After this incident, the two flee aboard a train with the help of a white woman. Manhood. Paul and Mitchell are working in a lumber camp and wish to escape. The pair start their journey together, but they decide to separate to avoid drawing attention to themselves. While they are separated, Mitchell goes to more lumber camps, and Paul's eyes land upon J. T. Hollenbeck's land. Upon seeing this land, Paul knows that this is "The Land". His land. The book then goes on to describe life in different types of work camps. The story follows Paul as he works at a general store owned by Luke Sawyer, and as a woodworker in a small town called Vicksburg. Eventually, Paul and Mitchell meet a man by the name of Filmore Granger and make a deal to work for the possession of 40 acres. Although it is not The Land, clearing the forty will help Paul obtain the money needed for J.T. Hollenbeck's land. A deal was struck between Paul and Mr. Granger that stated, if Paul could clear the forty within about two years, Paul and Mitchell would own the forty. After a few months of working hard at the forty, Paul realizes that he needs the help of some hired hands. Mitchell suggests Tom Bee, with whom he had worked a lumber camp. A white boy Paul had met before, and a young black boy named Nathan Perry, who later becomes Paul's brother-in-law are also hired hands. For a while, a white boy by the name of Wade Jamison helps Paul clear the forty. Mitchell marries Caroline, who soon becomes pregnant, while Paul continues to work for his land. To disrupt this happiness, Digger Wallace fulfills his promise to get Mitchell back for embarrassing him. One day while Mitchell is working on Filmore Granger's land, the drunken Digger shoots Mitchell from behind. Mitchell was in the middle of felling a tree when shot. Being paralyzed with searing pain, Mitchell is crushed by the tree. When Paul gets back from The Land, he arrives on the scene; Mitchell is almost dead. Mitchell's last request of Paul is that he marry Caroline and take care of their unborn child. After Mitchell dies, Paul tries to hunt down Digger, but is unsuccessful. Later, Digger is found dead, face down in a river, with a bottle of moonshine floating next to him. Later that year, their work of clearing the forty is almost completed and should soon be in Paul's possession, even with all of the extra conditions that Granger adds to the deal in a last-ditch attempt to keep his land. When Granger claims that they cut trees outside of the perimeter, he declares that he wants Paul off of the land; unless he wishes to sharecrop. Cassie, Paul's sister, sends their brother Robert up to deliver an envelope with the money he needs to purchase J. T. Hollenbeck's land. His brother tells Paul of the family's condition and gives Paul the envelope. Enclosed is the money and two letters. Paul's sister explains in her letter that their mother owned the patch of land that they lived on as children, and that ten years after their mother's death, she sold the land to their father for $500, much more than it was worth. This combined with his sister's savings made more than enough money to pay for the land. After burying Mitchell's body, Paul asks Caroline to marry him, and confessing that she too, loves him, Caroline says yes. From this point in the story, Paul purchases the land, moves onto it, and lives the life he wants. Legacy. In Legacy, Paul's father was sick when Paul takes his boys back to see his family. He saw Robert, Hammond, Cassie, and Cassie's husband Howard. Though Paul had visited Hammond in his store several times over the years, Paul had never heard from brothers Robert and George. No one had heard from George in years. The day after Paul arrived home, his father died. Paul then bought the other 200 acres of Hollenbeck land, from Wade Jamison. Autobiographical elements. Mildred D. Taylor's novels are often based on stories that she read, heard, or was told about her family's history. "I remember my grandparents' house, the house my great-grandfather had built at the turn of the century, and I remember the adults talking about the past. As they talked, I began to visualize all the family who had once known "The Land" and I felt as if I knew them too," Taylor explained. Bibliography. Mildred Taylor, "The Land". Penguin: New York, 2001.

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Operation Burning Candle Operation Burning Candle is a novel by Blyden Jackson published in 1973. It was his debut novel. It describes a political conspiracy led by a group called the Black Warriors, whose leader is Vietnam War veteran and Harlem native Captain Aaron Rogers. The conspiracy does not appear clear until more than halfway through the novel and refers to a traumatic event to galvanize the black community in the US to take control of their own destiny. The novel culminates with a series of killings at a political convention held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Title. The title of the book refers to the three part plan initiated by the Black Warriors. No matter where they go, they will be welcomed in to the homes of members of the black community who burn candles in their home as a sign of solidarity and refuge. Plot summary. The novel begins with the death of Harlem native and Vietnam War veteran Captain Aaron Rogers. He has supposedly been killed in Vietnam and his body has been flown back to the US for burial. Suspicion is created when Rogers' sister Sissy (Janice) claims to have seen Aaron in a car in lower Manhattan. She and her brother Tommy go to the funeral parlor where the body of Aaron is in a coffin. They discover that the body is not of their brother at all, but someone else entirely. While Sissy and Tommy are discovering the truth about their brother, Police detective Dan Roberts, former Korean War veteran and current law school student as well as member of the NYPD's Special Operations Unit is investigating a series of seemingly unrelated yet unusual crimes, including a number of bank robberies and a subway malfunction and shutdown. Meanwhile, firebrand governor of Mississippi Josiah Brace is getting ready for the Democratic National Convention scheduled to occur in just a few days in Madison Square Garden. Brace is a divisive figure who is opposed to the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s as well as school busing. He is ambitious and hopes to be nominated as his party's presidential candidate at the convention. At this point, there are flashbacks to the Vietnam War from Aaron Rogers' point of view. We see the racism prevalent during the war from white officers against black regulars. It was not uncommon for black soldiers to engage in "fracking" against their white superiors. There are additional flashbacks to Rogers' time as a student in graduate school where he studied psychology at New York University. He is the only black student in his class and he feels isolated and ostracized by the rest of the class. He is intrigued by Carl Jung's theory of the collective unconsciousness which he hopes to apply to his study of the black community. He comes to the realization that the only thing that can transform the black community's standing in the United States is a monumental traumatic event that will alter the predominant white community's power dynamic. Ultimately, using well trained black Vietnam War soldiers, Aaron Rogers formulates a plan that will culminate in a monumental event of political violence that will transform American society. Main themes. The novel which was written during the late 1960s and early 1970s reflects many of the themes prevalent in US society during the time period. Written in the aftermath of the civil rights movement, urban riots, the Vietnam War, the political assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, it reflects the political paranoia of the period. At the same time the novel is a call to black unity and cooperation in order to transform the political power structure. Many of the novel's themes were addressed in films of the period including Uptight and The Spook Who Sat By the Door. Its treatment of the black soldier's experience during the Vietnam War is reflected in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods.

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Romiette and Julio Romiette and Julio is a young adult novel by Sharon Draper, published in 1999 by Atheneum Books. It is an updated version of "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare. Many of the characters in Draper's novel closely parallel those in Shakespeare's play. The plot updates the family feud between the Capulets and Montagues to reflect modern racial tensions between African-Americans and Hispanics in the United States. The book received mixed reviews. Plot summary. This story begins with African American teenager Romiette Cappelle awaking from a recurring nightmare in which she is drowning in fire and water. Just before waking she hears an unknown male voice speaking to her. Although frightened by the nightmare, she wonders whether the voice could be the voice of her soulmate. Meanwhile, Julio Montague, a Hispanic teenager has just moved to town (Cincinnati, Ohio) from Corpus Christi, Texas, and the following day is his first day attending the same school as Romiette. On his first day he is involved in an altercation with Ben, a local boy, and the two end up becoming friends after Ben declines to implicate Julio when questioned by the school's principal. When Julio gets home that afternoon, he logs into a chatroom with the screen name "spanishlover" and starts to chat anonymously with "afroqueen," who he later finds is Romiette. Meanwhile, Romiette excitedly tells Destiny, her best friend, about her online chat with "spanishlover." Romiette and Julio continue to chat online, have a lunch date, and eventually fall in love with each other. Their relationship provokes the ire of a local gang—the "Devil Dogs"—who disapprove of an African American girl dating a Hispanic boy. Makala, a member of the gang, threatens Romiette on several occasions. Julio tells his parents about the relationship, and although his mother, Maria, approves, his father, Luis, dislikes his son dating an African American girl because his first girlfriend was killed by gang members who were African American. Romiette and Julio struggle with the pressure of their environment's disapprobation, reaching a crisis when the gang threaten them at gunpoint. The two of them meet with Ben and Destiny and concoct a plan to deal with the gang: Romiette and Julio will show their affection in public in order to draw the gang member's attention, while Ben and Destiny will be nearby and armed with a gun, ready to step in and confront them. The plan fails at a critical juncture when the car breaks down, and Romiette and Julio are abducted by the Devil Dogs. Ben and Destiny go to the Cappelle's home and explain what has happened to Romiette's parents, Lady and Cornell. Lady asks Malaka where the teens are, but Malaka denies knowing where they are. She eventually reveals their location when questioned by the police. Romiette and Julio turn out to be stranded at the bottom of a boat in London Woods Lake. When lightning strikes, they are separated. Having fallen into the lake, unable to swim, Romiette blacks out and experiences once again her recurring dream. When Julio finds her floating face down, he pulls her to land and finds she is not breathing. As Julio tries to wake her, Romiette recognizes the unknown male voice in her dream as Julio's voice. Reception. In a mixed review for "The New York Times", Simon Rodberg wrote: "Pick a hot-button issue, and you can bet that Sharon M. Draper's "Romiette and Julio" gives it at least a passing mention. School safety. Immigration. Internet stalkers. Even recycling." and "The two main characters are likable but bland, and in a book so concerned with contemporary ethical instruction, their gender roles come far too directly from the 16th century." "Rolling Stone", however, included it on a list of the 40 best young adult novels, and at review website Teen Reads, Cassia Van Arsdale writes that "Draper writes as if she's on the phone with a long lost friend, with informality, intimacy and ease. Both Romi and Julio are so likable I really wanted them to get together, which is always important in a romance." In their review, Kirkus Reviews wrote: "The parallels to Shakespeare’s play are often self-conscious and belabored, drawn at odd moments in the story. Still, a straightforward, uncluttered narrative will hook readers into the well-paced plot and sympathetic characters; loose ends are tied more neatly than a package, prettying up the ending by putting a happily-ever-after spin on the lovers’ fates."

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Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe is a children's novel written by Bette Greene that was awarded a Newbery Honor in 1975. The book was published in 1974 by Puffin Books. It is the first of three novels to feature protagonist Beth Lambert and her friend Philip Hall. The sequels are titled "Get On Out of Here, Philip Hall", and "I've Already Forgotten Your Name, Philip Hall". The book is set in rural Arkansas in the late 20th century. Eleven-year-old Beth Lambert is second-best at almost everything in school, from math to sports. She doesn't mind, though, because she's second only to Philip Hall. Over the course of the novel, she begins to grapple with the idea that perhaps she's letting Philip beat her so he'll remain her friend.

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What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day is the 1997 debut novel by Pearl Cleage. It was published by Avon on December 1, 1997 and was selected for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club in 1998 and was a New York Times Best Seller for nine straight weeks."What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day" marks Pearl Cleage's first published novel and it is followed by the 2001 novel "I Wish I Had a Red Dress". The novel depicts the life of a young African-American woman named Ava Johnson in the following months after being diagnosed with HIV; in addition to the realities of living with a retrovirus, Cleage's work addresses issues involving race, sexuality, gender, class, and ability in American society. Plot summary. The novel is separated into five parts: June, July, August, September, and November. June. Ava Johnson, a young black woman living in Atlanta, is diagnosed with HIV which she contracted from an unknown source through sexual intercourse. Upon her HIV-positive diagnosis, she is alienated by her community in Atlanta and loses her clients at her hair salon on the basis of people's fear of the virus and their association of it with AIDS. Ava decides to move to Idlewild, Michigan, her hometown, to live with her widowed sister Joyce before fulfilling her dream to start a new life in San Francisco, California. When Ava arrives at the Grand Rapids airport, Joyce's close friend Eddie Jefferson comes to pick her up because Joyce is busy taking care of a young woman in labor. At Ava's request, Eddie and Ava stop at a liquor store on the way home from the airport. While in the parking lot of the liquor store, Eddie and Ava witness a violent dispute between a young man, Frank, and his girlfriend who have a young son together. Eddie manages to deescalate the fight by punching Frank in the Adam's apple, a skill which is revealed he learned from serving in the Army. After witnessing the fight and dropping the woman and the baby back off at their house, Eddie reveals to Ava that there is a budding crack problem within Idlewild. Once Ava and Eddie arrive at Joyce's house, Ava discovers that Joyce redecorated the entire house with shades of blue because of a magazine article she read that claimed it was a healing color. Once Joyce returns home, she tells Ava that the woman she was assisting in labor was a crack addict and that the baby will be tested for HIV. The following day, Ava and Joyce, find out that the baby tested negative for HIV; however, the mother left the hospital without the baby. Since the baby is orphaned, Joyce decides that she wants to personally care for the baby; upon making this decision, her and Ava head to Mattie's house, the aunt of the baby, to receive permission. Once the two reach the house, they are met by siblings Mattie and Frank, who tell Joyce that they do not wish to keep the baby. Joyce decides that she wants to find the baby a temporary home; in the meantime, the baby is taken back to the hospital. Joyce reveals to Ava that she leads a group of young teenage mothers at the local church in a weekly group meeting called the Sewing Circus. While the group was initially formed in order to offer Sunday morning nursery care for the mothers, the group evolved into being a group discussion of any issue the girls are struggling with in their daily lives. As a social worker, Joyce uses the Sewing Circus as an opportunity to empower and especially educate young women. While the group is a positive outlet for young women in the community, the topics discussed in the group, such as birth control, do not sit well with the Reverend and the Reverend's wife, Gerry Anderson. The hospital decides that Joyce is allowed to take temporary custody of the baby; once Joyce brings the baby home, she decides to name the baby Imani meaning "faith" in Swahili. Eddie and Ava continue to deepen their friendship; however, Ava fears that any sort of romantic relationship is off-limits due to her HIV-positive diagnosis. July. Come July, Joyce is met with the news from Gerry Anderson that the Sewing Circus is not allowed to meet at the Church anymore because it does not align with their conservative values. Although upset by Gerry and the Reverend's decision, Joyce is unsurprised by its removal from the Church grounds. When Ava goes to the town pharmacy to pick-up her HIV medication, she finds out that the pharmacist revealed her diagnosis to some members of the town including Gerry. In turn, Ava is faced with ridicule and judgement from some of the community upon the news from the pharmacist. In response to the banning of the Sewing Circus from the Church, Joyce holds the meeting at her house and the turn-out is higher than it ever was at the Church leading Joyce to the idea that the group will need a larger meeting space. Later that night, Ava goes to Eddie's house where he tells her about his past serving in the army in Vietnam. The following night, Ava and Eddie begin to watch Menace II Society together until Eddie decides that he can't watch it anymore; upon telling Ava this, he reveals to her his violent past involving drugs and a ten year sentence to prison for murder. While shaken up by the news of Eddie's past, she maintains her relationship with him and decides to reveal her HIV-positive diagnosis to him a few nights later. Eddie is accepting of Ava's diagnosis and the two begin a romantic relationship together; however, they must take certain precautions during sex to protect Eddie from contracting HIV. August. With the news that an old man in Idlewild is putting his house up for sale for ten thousand dollars cash, Eddie proposes that the house would be a good relocation for the Sewing Circus meetings. From money she saved up at the salon, Ava pays for the house and her Joyce and Eddie begin renovations. However, Joyce receives a letter from the state government that the Sewing Circus will no longer receive funding. The state's decision to discontinue funding resulted from a letter Gerry Anderson sent the government with false information about the Sewing Circus. While Joyce heads to defend the right to funding for the Sewing Circus, Ava cares for Imani. One night while Joyce is away, Ava witnesses Frank and Tyrone pull into Joyce's driveway and have sex with Frank's girlfriend on top of the car. Before they drive away, Frank throws a beer bottle at Joyce's house, shattering her window. Although Eddie wants to put Frank and Tyrone in their place, Ava urges him to not do anything drastic. After Ava and Eddie file a complaint at the sheriff's office, Tyrone and Frank tell the sheriff that Ava intentionally tried to seduce them; the sheriff does not believe Ava's story. In an effort to resolve the issues between Joyce and the Anderson's, Ava and Joyce go to the Anderson's house to talk about their issues with the Sewing Circus; however, Ava and Joyce are only met by the Reverend who is unable to have a proper discussion due to his drunkenness. While painting the new house for the Sewing Circus, Eddie proposes to Ava unto which Ava decides to take a few days to process this possibility of a new life. When Mattie arrives to Joyce's house with a social worker, Joyce reluctantly agrees to give Imani back to Mattie for the weekend prior to a hearing on the following Monday to determine Imani's official home. September. While Imani is at Mattie's house for the weekend, Joyce convinces Ava to go with her to the house in case there are signs that Imani is in trouble. After hearing Imani's screams from outside the house, Ava and Joyce break in to find out that Frank twisted Imani's legs and broke them. After being rushed to the hospital, Imani's legs are put into casts and the doctors assure Joyce and Ava that she will be okay. Upon meeting a woman who was a member of the Anderson's old Church in Chicago, Ava finds out that Reverend Anderson fled the city after allegations of sexual interactions with young boys of the parish arose. With this information, Ava confronts Gerry Anderson and threatens to publicize the allegations in Idlewild; with this threat, both Gerry and the Reverend leave town. November/Epilogue. In the epilogue, Ava reveals that Imani's casts were removed and she's doing well. Frank and Mattie finally get caught by the police after committing several drug-related robberies. Since the Anderson's left town, the church inducts a new pastor, Sister Judith, who is received well by the community. With Sister Judith officiating, Eddie and Ava get married. Setting. The majority of the plot takes place in Idlewild, Michigan during the 1990s. The novel features social issues that were consistent with the time period and the type of story; these issues include violence, drug abuse, sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and an increased lack of access to education. Reception. Author Bryan Aubrey has noted that the novel showcases the empowerment of women in the face of undeniably difficult life challenges and that Cleage's focus on the challenges associated with AIDS, drug addiction, and domestic violence offer an intuitive look into the realities of social issues that are dealt with at surface level by traditional societal institutions. He has further noted that it could be seen as a self-help book as it depicts Ava steadily making positive life changes in her diet, exercise, spiritual presence, and substance use. Frances Henderson in turn felt that Cleage's portrayal of Ava taking part in a reverse migration, returning to one's homestead, had a connection to longstanding traditions in African American Literature of characters returning to their roots in order to sort out the challenges in their lives. Concerning Cleage's discussion of gender relations, Barbara Valle has highlighted the portrayal of "cosmic confusion" between men and women In the same vein, Loverlie and Erin King interpret the novel as a "healing romance" because of its insistence on the idea that the healing of the challenges faced by African-American people require the cooperation of both men and women. Authors, Erin King and Lovalerie King, praised Cleage's work for depicting a story about HIV/AIDS in a humorous way. Timothy Lyle commends Cleage's work for bringing awareness to HIV positive African-American women. In a feature in "Voice from the Gaps" at University of Minnesota, Cleage's work is praised for depicting an alternative representation of motherhood and the struggles that come along with it. The novel received some critical response by Bryan Aubrey on the basis of Ava's character transitioning from an outspoken, unpredictable character to one who makes predictable decisions based on political and spiritual correctness. Aubrey compares the representation of Ava's newfound happiness in life to the ideology of magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour which assert that people's lives will drastically improve once they start performing "anti-stress" activities. The novel has been critically compared to "Animal Dreams" (1990) for characterizing a male protagonist as having very little flaws. Aubrey Bryan argues that the portrayal of Eddie Jefferson as a near perfect individual lends the novel to be more instructional rather than realistic with multi-dimensional characters. Timothy Lyle critiques the novel's reliance on responding to adverse life situations with the response of heteronormative practices, "gender compliance," and "able-bodied productivity." Lyle also argues that Cleage's work reinforces problematic interpretations of blackness which set rigid expectations for what blackness is and what it is not; Lyle argues that Cleage controversially asserts that Ava's character, an HIV positive black woman, must show "signs of potential rehabilitation" and maintain a likable personality in order to regain acceptance in the black community. Themes. Coming-home. The novel closely associates rehabilitation with the idea of "coming-home" to one's place of origin in order to find love, community, and purpose amidst a threatening life situation. Adversity. The novel emphasizes finding happiness in the face of adversity. With Joyce experiencing the loss of a husband, Ava receiving an HIV positive diagnosis, Eartha's tragic loss of both her parents, and Eddie's struggle with violence and PTSD, the novel works to depict characters finding purpose and happiness in the face of adverse life situations. In order to find happiness in light of these situations, Cleage implies the importance of the use of "spiritual practices" in order to reform one's personal issues into acceptance and find peace in the practice of compassion for others. Depiction of HIV/AIDS. Cleage's portrayal of Ava's HIV diagnosis as well as its inclusion of sex-education has received some criticism for its inaccurate depiction of the realities of the disease as well as the logistics of preventing its contraction in HIV-discordant relationships, which are relationships where one partner is HIV-positive and one is not In an analysis of Cleage's work, Timothy Lyle proposes that Cleage takes part in cultural sanitizing, a practice in which an author problematically molds a taboo subject into a socially acceptable narrative. Lyle attributes the success of the novel to Cleage's depiction of a heterosexual African-American with HIV into a pleasurable narrative in which Ava's "threatening" diagnosis is ultimately accepted back into able-bodied heteronormativity. Cleage's depiction of an HIV inflicted African-American is criticized by Lyle as it alludes to the idea that an HIV inflicted individual must "soap up" and "scrub down" in order to regain acceptance in general society. Ayana Weekley argues that respectability politics, the phenomenon of dominant figures in marginalized groups aligning their values with the dominant values of the majority, mold the discourse of race, gender, and sexuality in relation to the interrogation of the HIV/AIDs epidemic in Cleage's work.

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Mama Day Mama Day is the third novel by Gloria Naylor. The story focuses upon the tragic love affair of "star-crossed" lovers Ophelia "Cocoa" Day and George Andrews. The setting of the novel is split between New York City, where George was born and raised and Ophelia has recently moved, and Willow Springs, a fictional community situated on a coastal island on the border of Georgia and South Carolina where Ophelia's family has lived for several generations. The novel takes place within the same fictional universe as some of Naylor's other novels, indicated through its passing references to events and characters from both "Linden Hills" and "Bailey's Cafe". Plot. "Mama Day" centers around the characters George and Cocoa. Cocoa, whose real name is Ophelia, is a young southern woman living in New York who is still deeply connected to her family and ancestry, even though her family's history is fraught with pain and tragedy. George grew up an orphan, overcoming a multitude of challenges in order to finally graduate from Columbia engineering school and co-found his own engineering company. Cocoa and George meet when Cocoa interviews for a job at George's firm. George is unable to hire Cocoa because the job starts immediately and she is obligated to visit Willow Springs every August to spend time with Mama Day and her family. Prior to returning to New York from her trip to Willow Springs, Cocoa writes a letter to George saying that she still wants the job. Mama Day intervenes and puts a mysterious substance on the envelope, which causes George to remember Cocoa and soon later recommend her to someone for another job. George and Cocoa begin to date and marry suddenly, but George doesn't visit Willow Springs with Cocoa for four years, during which time Cocoa never shares with him the more unusual and even supernatural aspects of Willow Springs. After several years they return to Willow Springs together. When George finally does accompany her, being a practical minded engineer with no family history or special convictions to help him relate to the people of Willow Springs, he has a hard time believing in or understanding some of the events that take place. When he discovers that Cocoa is dying because of a hex put on her by the deeply jealous and hateful Ruby, who is a conjure woman and Mama Day's wicked counterpart, George wants to use practical means to save her life. Just as Cocoa begins to fall ill, a hurricane knocks out the bridge that is connected to the "outside" world, making entering or leaving the island impossible. George and Cocoa are now stuck in Willow Springs, and forced to use the remedies available through Mama Day and the mysticism of the island rather than modern treatment. The only person that can save Cocoa is George, by following the instructions of Mama Day. However, he is unable to surrender to and believe in the mystical forces that Mama Day has described to him. In desperation, he submits to Mama Day's directions because Cocoa is near death, and he is desperate for something to help her. In performing the ritual needed, he dies and ultimately saves Cocoa's life. Characters. Sapphira Wade – Mama Day's great-grandmother, who is known on the Island as the mystical "great, great, grand mother." The legend of her life is murky, but she is known to have been a slave woman who married Bascombe Wade, bore seven sons, and by some mysterious means gained the deed to the island of Willow Springs from her husband before he died in 1823, from which point the island became a community of free African Americans during the pre-Civil War era. Miranda (Mama) Day – Mama Day is a witty old lady and the matriarch of Willow Springs. Mama Day is Cocoa's great-aunt and the sister of Abigail. She is a woman who believes in heritage, family, and a deep understanding of the power of nature. Mama Day is often meddling in Cocoa's life and truly wants to see her happy. Mama Day uses magic, nature, wit, and wisdom to help the people of Willow Springs. Abigail Day – Cocoa's grandmother and Mama Day's sister. She is respectful, even-tempered and the peace maker of the family. Abigail Day is a doting grandmother who spoils Cocoa. Ophelia (Cocoa) Day – The last living Day of her generation. She is headstrong and stubborn. When the novel opens she has been living in New York City since leaving Willow Springs to go to school seven years earlier, but she goes back to visit for two weeks every August. It is in New York that she meets George Andrews. George Andrews – Cocoa's husband. George is an orphan who grew up in a shelter and knows nothing about his family or ancestry. Hardened by life he takes everything one day at a time, and carefully calculates all of his decisions and actions. He doesn't rely on anyone but himself to do things for him. He works at an engineering firm, and is fanatical about football because he's drawn to its detailed strategies. He also has a heart condition that he must monitor closely, which contributes to his need to regulate every aspect of his life. Dr. Buzzard – The charlatan of Willow Springs. He brews moonshine and creates other "remedies" for various problems and ailments which he sells to the people of Willow Springs. Dr. Buzzard thinks that he and Mama Day are rivals, but Mama Day does not believe that they hold similar powers, or even that his powers are real. Ruby – Ruby is a family friend who is overweight, insecure, jealous and practices voodoo. She uses her powers to manipulate Junior Lee into marrying her. Junior Lee – Married to Ruby. Likes to drink and party, a shiftless individual. Style and structure. "Mama Day" is a novel whose subgenres include legend, folklore, mystery, and fantasy. It contains a multitude of narrative voices that include the following: 1st person plural narration – The communal voice of the people from Willow Springs is an example of this style. It is also the first one introduced to readers. This voice is best described as an omniscient voice that has been around to see everything. The introduction and sections throughout the book are written in this voice as the different stories of Bascombe Wade, Sapphira Wade, and what exactly "18 and 23" is. An example of this communal voice is in this sentence from the introduction that states, "And he coulda listened to them the way you been listening to us right now." Rita Mae Brown states that "The different voices are beautifully realized but confusing to read." As well as the communal voice, Mama Day offers both a first-person narration and occasionally a free indirect discourse that gives readers direct access to Mama Day's thoughts. Mama Day's section is preceded by three diamonds. In her narration she often speaks about what is taking place at present or events from her past. 1st person narration – Cocoa's and George's first person narration, which is displayed as a conversation to one another about events that have occurred, is the other narrative voice. It switches between the two characters without any evidence other than a brief space between the two sections. It is read as if the readers are overhearing the conversation. Because of these different narrative viewpoints the novel is filled with dramatic irony. Readers see this with the reoccurring imagery and symbolism of the "chicken", and "chicken coup". Because of what Rita Mae Brown feels is a lack of "self-restraint" in Mama Day, keeping up with the plot of the novel and who is speaking, the reader is suggested to "press on doggedly….[So they can realize] that a plot is developing through these fragmented viewpoints." Mama Day includes allusions to classical Shakespeare plays such as "King Lear" which is referred to many times by both Cocoa and George; "Hamlet", which houses a female character by the name of Ophelia; and "The Tempest", which includes a female character with the same name as Mama Day – Miranda. Like Miranda from the Shakespeare play, Mama Day also deals with magic or supernatural powers and is set on a secluded island. Bharati Mukherjee states that the storyline in "Mama Day", like Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", "concerns star-crossed lovers." Reception. Upon its publication, the novel received generally favorable reviews from a number of writers and critics. Rita Mae Brown's review for the "Los Angeles Times" found the multiple voices in the novel to be "beautifully realized" and suggested that readers willing to work through the confusions brought about by its fragmented narrative style would ultimately be rewarded by the book's "dazzling sense of humor, rich comic observation and that indefinable quality we call 'heart.'" Bharati Mukherjee, writing for "The New York Times," registered disappointment with the love story between George and Cocoa, which she suggested fell short of Naylor's grand Shakespearean ambitions, but nevertheless commended the work as "a big, strong, dense, admirable novel." Rosellen Brown's review for "Ms." was lukewarm, describing the plot as "alternately affecting and silly, though never less than interesting" and taking issue with Naylor's "need to elevate by making symbolic, or by fitting everything into a larger scheme" as well as the author's attempts at "didactically fostering our spiritual instruction." Linda Simon of "Women's Review of Books" commended the originality of Naylor's characters and the book's "amplitude and wit", but her review mainly focused on chiding Naylor for evading important questions about race and gender the novel implicitly raises.

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Liliane (novel) Liliane: Resurrection of The Daughter is a novel by Ntozake Shange. It was originally published by St. Martin's Press in 1994. The novel tells the coming-of-age story of a young Black woman, Liliane Parnell, through the numerous voices of childhood friends, family, lovers, acquaintances, conversations between Liliane and her psychoanalyst, and Liliane herself. Liliane is the daughter of a wealthy and prominent African-American judge, Lincoln Parnell, and his beautiful wife Sunday Bliss Parnell who is working towards reconciling her life as an artist in the present with both the secrets and the expectations of class ascendance from her family's past. Plot summary. The novel opens with a conversation between Liliane and her psychoanalyst. These conversations become regular interval points within and throughout the novel as the story unfolds. Liliane expresses concern about her current situation, professing that she cannot breath and that she is looking for somebody and it does not matter who, she says, "as long as he won't hurt me". As the novel continues, Liliane's character is developed through the lens of those around her with whom she is close. The reader learns that Liliane grew up within a wealthy and prominent Black family that was part of the Talented tenth. Liliane's father pushes her to pursue a husband who will "'...have the backbone to fight for what's never happened, or for dreams.'" These comments lead Liliane to eventually leave her first boyfriend, Danny, and pursue another man, named Granville, who better conforms to her father's ideal of a suitable match. As Liliane and her close friends grow older, however, they begin to face significant conflicts within their lives. One of Liliane's close friends, Hyacinthe, begins to have mental health troubles early in her adolescence and depends heavily on her brother, Sawyer Malveaux III for support. When he is unexpectedly shot, however, Hyacinthe's mental condition becomes worse and she eventually enters care in a mental health facility. For Liliane, a major hurdle is the disappearance of her mother from her life and the breakdown of her nuclear family. As Liliane transitions to adulthood, the pressures from her father to be the ideal Black woman and mate to a powerful Black leader begin to have less of an impact on her life decisions. While the relationships with the women that Liliane formed throughout her early childhood and adolescence remain deeply important to her (and are maintained throughout the novel), Liliane begins to make romantic, sexual, and platonic connections with men and women from all walks of life. The desires of her father, and the mysterious disappearance of her mother, however, are never far from her mind. Structure. The novel's form is seemingly unique as it is divided into chapters narrated by important persons in Liliane's life and conversations between Liliane and her psychoanalyst that occur in between each chapter. These chapters feature anecdotes about the narrating character's interactions with Liliane, usually providing illumination of the conversations Liliane has with her psychoanalyst that are featured prior to the chapter. Because of the multiplicity of narrators throughout the novel, the reader is often forced to make a decision about which narrator to believe. This unique episodic structure allows for the novel to cover a wide range in time periods. Major themes. Racial uplift. A central theme in the novel concerns the project of Racial Uplift within the African-American and Black community. Liliane's social standing within an upper middle class prominent Black family seemingly conforms to the model of racial uplift promoted by figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who advocated for the instruction of Liberal Arts education to Black people in the United States in order to create a leadership elite often referred to as the Talented Tenth. Liliane's father, a prominent Black judge, is highly invested in maintaining the image of his family as a part of that leadership elite. However, Liliane's contact and social relations with Black individuals who are outside of her own class seemingly problematizes this philosophical project to a certain extent. Mother–daughter relationships. The broken relationship between Liliane and her mother, Sunday "S." Bliss operates in the novel as a point of deep internal conflict in Liliane's life. Early on in Liliane's life, Sunday Bliss serves as a role model to Liliane, however, after Sunday "S." Bliss has an affair and marries a white man, Liliane's father, ashamed of his wife's choice to pursue her own happiness over the project of racial uplift, lies to Liliane telling her that her mother is dead. Unable to reconcile her adoration of her mother with her mother's sudden and unexplained absence in her life, Liliane develops a sense of self that is fragmented and, at times, deeply conflicted. Once Liliane recognizes that her mother is, in fact, not dead, she is unable to make sense of the fact that her mother would abandon her to pursue a romantic relationship with a white man. Female sexuality. The exploration of Female Sexuality is featured heavily in the novel. Despite her father's attempts to instill Liliane with a sense of obligation to the project of Racial Uplift, and his encouragement of Liliane to become the wife of someone who has the potential to be a powerful leader in the Black community, Liliane's romantic and sexual relationships are varied, diverse, and bridge interpersonal gaps of both class and race throughout the novel. The novel portrays Liliane as a decisive agent in the context of her sexual relationships. Psychoanalysis. Liliane is very much emotionally conflicted as a result of her family's past secrets, her desires for herself, and her father's desires for her. Like her mother, Liliane struggles with choosing between honoring herself and the project of Racial Uplift that her father is heavily invested in. Additionally, Liliane is heavily affected by the existential pain of anti-black racism. As a result, Liliane's conversations with her psychoanalyst are often turbulent and disjointed as she struggles to build her sense of self in her transition to adulthood and her growth as a painter. Reception and literary criticism. Initial reviews of "Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter" were mostly positive. In her "New York Times" book review, Valerie Sayers characterized the novel as a work that is "moving and evocative" as well as "dense, ambitious" and "a worthy song". Other reviewers have described the novel as somewhat frustrating. In a "Booklist" review, Donna Seaman writes of "Liliane", "You admire it, learn from it, desire it, and resist it all at the same time." While little critical scholarship of "Liliane" exists, Ntozake Shange has spoken about the novel in interviews that have been featured in literary journals, including an interview published in "Black American Literature Forum", in which Shange remarks of Liliane's character as a woman who, "goes all over the world, and all over the world she is confronted with sexism".

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Elijah of Buxton Elijah of Buxton is a children's novel written by Christopher Paul Curtis and published in 2007. The book won critical praise and was a Newbery Honor book and the winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. It also was a children's book bestseller Summary. "Elijah of Buxton" is about an eleven-year-old boy, Elijah Freeman, who lives in Buxton, Canada. It was started as the Elgin Settlement, a refugee camp for African-American slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad to gain freedom in Canada. Elijah is the first free-born child in the settlement, and has never lived under slavery. He has only heard of it. He goes into the United States to help stop a man from his settlement from stealing money from his friend, and learns there that it is a privilege to be free. Reception. "Elijah of Buxton" has been well received. "School Library Journal" called it "an example of everything Curtis does well. His historical research is superior. His characters heartwarming. His prose funny and heart-wrenching in turns." and "A great book and well deserving of any buzz it happens to achieve." "Kirkus Reviews" gave a starred review, declaring "This is Curtis’s best novel yet, and no doubt many readers, young and old, will finish and say, "This is one of the best books I have ever read."" "Publishers Weekly" wrote, "The arresting historical setting and physical comedy signal classic Curtis (Bud, Not Buddy), but while Elijah's boyish voice represents the Newbery Medalist at his finest, the story unspools at so leisurely a pace that kids might easily lose interest." and "The powerful ending is violent and unsettling, yet also manages to be uplifting." Common Sense Media awarded it five stars, calling it a "humorous, powerful, masterful escape-slave tale" and asserted "This wonderful, moving novel is sure to become a staple of discussion groups in schools and libraries across the country." Awards. It has won a number of awards including a 2008 Newbery Honor, the 2008 Coretta Scott King Award, the 2008 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and the 2008 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award

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The Forged Note Oscar Micheaux's The Forged Note: A Romance Of The Darker Races is a 528-page novel published in 1915. It was republished in 2008 by Kessinger Publishing, LLC. The story pertains to a racially motivated lynching in Atlanta.

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Blackout (young adult novel) Blackout is a young adult novel written by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon. The book follows six interlinked stories about Black teen love during a power outage in New York City. The book is set to be released on June 22, 2021. Development and publication. Dhonielle Clayton is credited with the initial idea for the book. The authors expressed their desire to write a book about Black love and joy rather than about police brutality. The book was announced via Twitter in November 2020. Clayton described the novel as "our love letter to love, to New York City, and to Black teens. Our reminder to them that their stories, their joy, their love are valid and worthy of being spotlighted." Thomas also described the novel as a love letter to Black teens. The North American rights to the book were secured by HarperCollins after a twelve-way auction. The novel was also acquired by Egmont in the U.K. for six figures. Plot. "Blackout" follows thirteen teenagers in six interlinked stories which celebrate Black love. After a summer heatwave causes a citywide power outage in New York City, Black teens explore love, friendships, and hidden truths over the course of a single day. Among the characters are exes who have to bury their rivalry to walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn for a block party, two boys who get trapped on the subway, and best friends who get stuck in the library.

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Middle Passage (novel) Middle Passage (1990) is a historical novel by American writer Charles R. Johnson about the final voyage of an illegal American slave ship on the Middle Passage. Set in 1830, it presents a personal and historical perspective of the illegal slave trade in the United States, telling the story of Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave who unknowingly boards a slave ship bound for Africa in order to escape a forced marriage. The novel received critical acclaim, winning the 1990 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Plot summary. The protagonist is Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave, who flees from New Orleans on a ship called the "Republic" to escape being blackmailed into marriage by Isadora Bailey, a schoolteacher who convinces Calhoun's creditor, Papa Zeringue, that she will pay Calhoun's debts if he will marry her. Drinking to forget his troubles, Calhoun meets the drunken cook of the "Republic" and decides to escape Isadora and Zeringue by stowing away aboard the ship, where he is quickly discovered and put to work without pay. The ship travels to Africa to capture members of the Allmuseri tribe to take back to America to sell as slaves. Although an educated man, Calhoun is at first self-absorbed and thus initially unable to grasp the hardships of slave life. During the voyage, he is humbled by the conditions he observes, learning lessons that teach him to value and respect humanity, which includes identification with his own country, America. Calhoun discovers that the Allmuseri are not the only cargo on board: the captain of the "Republic", a philosophical but tyrannical man named Ebenezer Falcon, also uses his voyages to plunder cultural artifacts that could be sold to museums, and on this trip he has purchased what he claims to be the Allmuseri's god. The other sailors, already believing the Allmuseri to be sorcerers, begin to worry that their voyage is doomed; when they send down a young man to check out the secret cargo, he returns insane. Shortly after the ship sets back for the States, a violent storm hits, worse than any the sailors have seen. Barely escaping with their lives, several of the sailors decide to mutiny, but they are preempted when the Allmuseri get the keys to the shackles and take over the ship first. Calhoun convinces the Allmuseri to leave alive the few remaining white sailors in order to navigate the ship back to Africa, but Falcon commits suicide rather than help them. The first mate, Peter Cringle, tries to steer the ship, but cannot figure out where in the ocean they are, claiming that since the storm, none of the constellations are where they are supposed to be. During this time, Calhoun takes his turn going down to the cargo hold to feed the creature, who gives him a mystical vision of his life and family that renders him unconscious for three days. When he awakens, he learns that Cringle has been murdered and cannibalized, reportedly on Cringle's own suggestion, leaving only himself, the cook, and several Allmuseri on board the ship, which is rapidly falling apart. Before completely disintegrating into the ocean, the ship is seen by another vessel, the "Juno", which manages to rescue five survivors: Calhoun, the cook, and three Allmuseri youth. Calhoun discovers that Isadora is aboard the "Juno" and is being forced to marry Papa Zeringue, who partially owns the "Republic". Papa learns that Calhoun has the ship's log, documenting Zeringue's immoral and illegal dealings, and he bargains with Calhoun to get possession of it. Calhoun mentions that the ship was illegally dealing in the slave trade and uses the ties of Santos, Papa's black servant, to the Allmuseri to get Zeringue to let Santos and Isadora go free. Calhoun has been profoundly changed by his experience during the Middle Passage. Falcon, the Allmuseri, his mystical encounter with the god, and the ship's ultimate sinking have caused him to reflect deeply on his own life and attitude, and he is able to resolve many of his internal conflicts (such as his anger toward his runaway father and his over-accommodating brother); he is now able to care for other people, including Isadora as well as one of the Allmuseri children who had adopted him as her surrogate parent on the ship. Isadora, who is knitting booties for her cats and dogs whom Papa is making her give up, leaves Papa and marries Rutherford. References. Johnson, Charles R. Middle Passage. New York, NY: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1998.

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The Known World The Known World is a 2003 historical novel by Edward P. Jones. Set in Virginia during the antebellum era, it examines the issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by both white and black Americans. The book was published to acclaim, which praised its story and Jones's prose. In particular, his ability to intertwine stories within stories received great praise from "The New York Times". The narration of "The Known World" is from the perspective of an omniscient figure who does not voice judgment. This allows the reader to experience the story without bias. Awards and nominations. The novel won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004. In 2005 it won the International Dublin Literary Award, one of the richest literary awards for a novel in the English language. It was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award. In 2009, website "The Millions" polled 48 critics, writers, and editors; the panel voted "The Known World" the second best novel since 2000. External links. Interviews Reviews Misc

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The Women of Brewster Place (novel) The Women of Brewster Place (1982) is the debut novel of American author Gloria Naylor. It won the National Book Award in category First Novel. It was adapted as the 1989 miniseries "The Women of Brewster Place" and the 1990 television show "Brewster Place" by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. "The Women" explores the lives of both men and women in an urban setting and examines relationships, both in terms of friendship and romantic love, including homosexual relationships. In each of the "Seven Stories" of its subtitle, one or more of the seven women are involved with the main character of that particular story, such as Mattie appearing in Etta Mae's story or Kiswana showing up in Cora Lee's. Plot summary. The women of Brewster Place are "hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased". Their names are Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Lucielia "Ciel" Turner, Melanie "Kiswana" Browne, Cora Lee, Lorraine, and Theresa. Each of their lives are explored in several short stories. These short stories also chronicle the ups and downs many Black women face. Musical adaptation. A new musical adaptation of "The Women of Brewster Place" was commissioned for the stage. The musical premiered at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA on September 12, 2007, the same theatre that also co-produced the show itself. It was directed by Molly Smith. "The Women of Brewster Place" toured several cities, opening to several positive reviews.

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Dark Princess Dark Princess, written by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in 1928, is one of his five historical novels. One of Du Bois's favorite works, the novel explores the beauty of people of color around the world. This was part of Du Bois' use of fiction to explore his times in a way not possible in non-fiction history. He expressed fully imagined lives of his characters, using them to explore the richness and beauty of black culture. The novel was not well received when published. It was criticized for its expression of eroticism as well as for what some critics thought was a failed attempt at social realism. Structure. The book is divided into four large chapters: "The Exile," "The Pullman Porter," "The Chicago Politician," and "The Maharaja of Bwodphur". The sections deal with different stages in the protagonist's life, moving from his self-imposed exile in Germany late in life, to his early employment as a porter on the railroads, based in New York, then to his career as a politician in Chicago, and his return to Virginia, the land of his birth. While the sections trace the protagonist's growth as a revolutionary figure, they are not directly connected. Plot. The plot follows a character named Matthew Townes, a college student in his junior year at the University of Manhattan studying to be an obstetrician. Early in the novel, Townes is told that not only is he barred from pursuing his career aspirations, he is not allowed to finish his academic studies. His status as an African American disqualifies him in the early 20th century from completing required courses at a white obstetrics hospital, where he would be caring for white female patients. Townes is devastated and goes to Germany in a kind of exile. There he meets Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur, India, daughter of a maharajah. She reassures Towns of the importance of the history of people of color in the world, and of their presence and impact of their beauty worldwide. The Princess takes him from his dreary American world with its strict binary divide by race. She introduces him to a vibrant world of prominent world leaders of color, while acknowledging some with negative influence on the progress of blacks in the United States. Du Bois is believed to be referring to the leader Marcus Garvey in his character Perigua. The relationship between Townes and the princess develops; she bears his child, who by birthright is the Maharajah of Bwodpur. Townes had not thought it possible that an African American man might have such a connection to royalty. Major themes. Du Bois explores internationalism and international racial solidarity, as well as corruption and violent radicalism within African-American culture. "Dark Princess"’s subtitle, "A Romance", points to the narrative’s double valence. As Michèle Mendelssohn argues, "it is the story of a love affair, as well as the story of an ideological romance that challenges one of the United States’ most cherished ideas about itself, the notion that it is a land of progress and possibility for all. The love lost between the hero and the U. S. is the spur for the novel’s political reorientation." Historical contexts. Some critics believe that the book was inspired by the 1911 First Universal Races Congress in London, which Du Bois had attended. In developing the character of Kautilya, Du Bois has been discussed as possibly drawing inspiration from a few historical figures. Scholars have speculated that these may include an unnamed Indian princess at the Universal Races Congress, the Indian independence activist Bhikaji Cama, and the Pan-African Congress organizer Ida Gibbs Hunt, wife of diplomat William Henry Hunt. Late in life, Du Bois described this as his favorite work.

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One Crazy Summer (novel) One Crazy Summer is a historical fiction novel by American author Rita Williams-Garcia, published by Amistad in 2010. The novel is about Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern, three sisters, visiting their mother in Oakland, California, during the summer of 1968. In the year of its inception, the book was a National Book Award finalist for young people's literature. In 2011 it won the Coretta Scott King Award for its author, the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and was a Newbery Medal Honor Book. Plot. Delphine, aged eleven, Vonetta, nine, and Fern, seven, live with their father and grandmother in Brooklyn, New York. However, the girls’ father sends them to Oakland, California one summer to stay with their estranged mother, Cecile, who refers to herself as Nzilla. Cecile never calls Fern by her name, but always referring to her as "little girl." This makes Delphine believe what her grandmother has always said to be true—that Cecile abandoned her children because their father objected to her giving the baby the name of Afua. Cecile makes Delphine hand over the money her father gave them for expenses in California, giving them a small allowance to get Chinese food every day and forbidding them to enter her kitchen, which is Cecile's workplace where she writes and prints poetry. During the day, the three sisters go to The People's Center run by the Black Panther Party for breakfast and day camp, where they meet Sister Mukumbu. Here the three sisters get taught about the movement, which she explains what the movement does like feeding the poor, helping poor African Americans, and protecting African American communities. The Black Panther member Bobby Hutton has been shot and killed by police, and one of their founding members, Huey Newton, has been wrongfully jailed. The children at the center will soon participate in a rally to protest these injustices. After a day trip to San Francisco, the sisters return home to find their mother Cecile and two members of the Black Panther Party being arrested. Cecile tells the police she has no children, for she doesn't want the girls to be involved, so the girls pretend to live next door. Soon a friend from the Center, Hirohito, comes for the girls and allows them to stay with him and his mother until Cecile returns home. The time of the rally arrives. During the talent show portion, the girls perform a poem their mother wrote, which they found while cleaning the kitchen after her arrest. After their recital, Fern takes the microphone and tells the Black Panthers how she saw one of their most vocal members, (Crazy) Kelvin, interacting agreeably with the police, which gets him in trouble with the party members. At the rally, the sisters see their mother has been released from jail, and return home with her. Though Delphine and Cecile's relationship remains strained, Cecile tells Delphine how she lost her mother at the age of eleven and had a rough life thereafter. She tries to explain why she left her children, but Delphine is still too young to understand. The next day, the girls return home, after finally hugging their mother. Themes. There is a multitude of themes to be found in this book. 1968 is a radical time for black history, and the portrayal of the Black Panther ideals helps to prompt discussions of Civil Rights, injustice, black pride, and racial prejudice. The power of names is another strong idea in the book. Cecile changes her name to Nzila, a Yoruba name meaning "the path." It is also suggested that Cecile left her children because she could not name Fern "Afua." Delphine ponders why her mother would want to change her name since names are how we identify ourselves. The theme of women's liberation and advancement in society is also presented in this book. After one of the younger sisters gets a stomach ache, Delphine goes to the store with their Chinese food allowance and cooks real food in the previously forbidden kitchen. This causes an exchange between Delphine and Cecile in which Cecile accuses Delphine of trying to "tie herself to the yoke" and tells her she should not be so quick to "pull the plow." Other themes include family, forgiveness, and growth. Sequels. "One Crazy Summer" is the first book in the Gaither Sisters Series. The second book, "P.S. Be Eleven" was published in 2013, and features the girls returning to their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The third book, "Gone Crazy in Alabama" was published in 2015 and features the sisters visiting their relatives in Autauga County, Alabama. The two sequels were also winners of the Coretta Scott King Award. Level. This book is recommended for ages 9–12. It has a Lexile of 750L. Critical reception. According to the critics, "One Crazy Summer" is a powerful and humorous story that is highly recommended. Teri Markson, writing for "School Library Journal",states that it is "emotionally challenging and beautifully written" for children about ethnic identity and personal responsibility. Tricia Melgaard from "School Library Journal" states that this story is delightful and told through the eyes of Delphine, a "sensitive and intuitive" young girl. C. J. Morales, writing for the "New York Amsterdam News", states that it is written to teach black history in a meaningful and amusing way, and "it will keep you laughing out loud."

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The Street (novel) The Street is a novel published in 1946 by African-American writer Ann Petry. Set in World War II era Harlem, it centers on the life of Lutie Johnson. Petry's novel is a commentary on the social injustices that confronted her character, Lutie Johnson, as a single black mother in this time period. Lutie is confronted by racism, sexism, and classism on a daily basis in her pursuit of the American dream for herself and her son, Bub. Lutie fully subscribes to the belief that if she follows the adages of Benjamin Franklin by working hard and saving wisely, she will be able to achieve the dream of being financially independent and move from the tenement in which she lives on 116th Street. Franklin is embodied in the text through the character Junto, named after Franklin's secret organization of the same name. It is Junto, through his secret manipulations to possess Lutie sexually, who ultimately leads Lutie to murder Junto's henchman, Boots. Junto represents Petry's deep disillusionment with the cultural myth of the American dream. Plot summary. Shifting between multiple perspectives, The Street uses extensive flashbacks to reveal its plot. Lutie Johnson has an eight-year-old son, Bub, to support. Separated but not legally divorced from Bub's father, Jim, Lutie feels that Jim's inability to find employment, her decision to work as a domestic for a wealthy white family in Connecticut, and Jim's subsequent infidelity ruined her marriage. Lutie moves into a small apartment on 116th Street in Harlem. Taking an immediate dislike to the super, Jones, she decides to take the apartment, agreeing to pay about thirty dollars a month in rent. Jones becomes sexually obsessed with Lutie; recalling his youth in the Navy, Jones remembers his feelings of loneliness and sexual frustration while aboard ship, a condition that worsened as he began working and living in basement apartments and boiler rooms. Jones resents his live-in girlfriend, Min, due to her lack of physical attractiveness, venting his aggressions on her. Jones befriends Bub in hopes of getting Lutie to pay attention to him. Sensing Jones' intentions, Mrs. Hedges, the madame of a brothel, tells Jones not to bother as a wealthy white man has already taken an interest in her. Mrs. Hedges, a heavy-set woman who is bald and badly disfigured from a fire, is referring to Junto, the proprietor of a local bar as well as the owner of several pieces of real estate. Junto has been friends with Mrs. Hedges for many years, striking up her acquaintance as she rummaged through the trash for food. Junto, who, at that time collected cans and scraps for a living, employs her then makes her a partner of sorts, putting her in charge of maintenance and rent collection once he buys his first building. After surviving the fire, Mrs. Hedges starts running a brothel out of her apartment. Acutely sensing the desperation and boredom of the young people who live in the neighborhood, Mrs. Hedges suggests that Junto open up dance halls, bars, and brothels, which Junto does. Junto, who has developed feelings for Mrs. Hedges by this point, makes an overture to her but is rejected. Min, meanwhile, increasingly fearful of Jones, seeks out a practitioner of hoodoo. After getting a referral from Mrs. Hedges, Min finds David The Prophet. Surprised and comforted by how closely David listens to her, Min pays for a cross, some powder, some drops for Jones' morning coffee, and some candles to burn at night. Feeling reassured, Min hangs the cross over the bed as David suggested. When Min defiantly refuses to tell Jones where she had been, he advances on her angrily until he sees the cross over the bed. Feeling a superstitious dread, Jones retreats. One night, Lutie has drinks at Junto's. After entertaining the crowd with a song, Lutie makes the acquaintance of Boots Smith, a bandleader and an employee of Junto's. Insincerely promising to help her establish a singing career, Boots convinces Lutie to take a ride with him. Lutie, who has already decided not to sleep with Boots, agrees to sing with his band. After returning home, she discovers that Bub has let Jones into the apartment while she was out and that Jones had rifled through her things. Sometime after Lutie begins singing, Jones attacks her in the hallway, attempting to drag her into the basement. Lutie screams for help and Mrs. Hedges comes to her rescue. After inviting her inside for tea, Mrs. Hedges tells her of Junto's interest in her. Junto also tells Boots the same thing, making him promise not to pursue a romance with Lutie. Boots, indebted to Junto for helping him evade the draft, reluctantly agrees. He also agrees not to pay Lutie for her singing and to arrange a meeting between Lutie and Junto. After Mrs. Hedges tells him yet again that he can't have Lutie, Jones angrily decides to get even with her. He convinces Bub to steal mail, paying Bub a few dollars. Bub, who initially refused Jones' offer, is eager to work; after hearing Lutie (who has just realized that she won't be paid for her singing) loudly cursing their poverty, Bub decides to help out by getting a job. Jones also implicates Min in the scheme by tricking her into getting copies of the mailbox keys made for him. Bub is caught stealing the mail and sent to the Children's Shelter until he can be seen in Children's Court. Desperate to get Bub out of custody, Lutie consults a lawyer. Not knowing that she doesn't need a lawyer for the upcoming hearing, she agrees to pay two hundred dollars for the man's services. Despairing of coming up with the money on her own, Lutie decides to ask Boots for help. Boots promises to get the money for her the next night. The next day, Lutie visits Bub at the Children's Shelter but is unable to ask him about the letters. That night, Mrs. Hedges once again reminds her that Junto is interested in her. Feeling apprehensive, Lutie makes her appointment with Boots. Junto is there. Realizing Boots, Mrs. Hedges, and Junto have been working in concert, she yells at Boots to get Junto out of the apartment. After conferring with Boots, Junto leaves, warning Boots once again not to make any romantic overtures to Lutie. It is then that Boots decides to take Lutie for himself whether Junto approves or not. After a half-hearted attempt to convince Lutie to become Junto's mistress, Boots makes a sexual advance on her, kissing her and grabbing her breast. He slaps her twice when she pulls away. Lutie grabs a heavy candlestick and beats Boots to death with it. Lutie steals Boots' wallet, deciding to use the money inside to pay the lawyer's fees. Realizing that she would be caught, however, Lutie puts half the money back and flees the apartment. Knowing that she will never be able to rescue her son, Lutie buys a one-way ticket to Chicago and boards a train.

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Parable of the Talents (novel) Parable of the Talents is a science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, published in 1998. It is the second in a series of two, a sequel to "Parable of the Sower". It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel. Plot. "Parable of the Talents" is told from the points of view of Lauren Oya Olamina and her daughter Larkin Olamina/Asha Vere. The novel consists of journal entries by Lauren and passages by Asha Vere. Five years after the events of the previous novel "Parable of the Sower", Lauren has founded a new religious community called Acorn, which is centered around her religion Earthseed, which is predicated around the belief that humanity's destiny is to travel beyond Earth and live on other planets in order for humanity to reach adulthood. The novel is set against the backdrop of a dystopian United States that has come under the grip of a Christian fundamentalist denomination called "Christian America" led by President Andrew Steele Jarret. Seeking to restore American power and prestige, and using the slogan "Make America Great Again", Jarret embarks on a crusade to cleanse America of non-Christian faiths. Slavery has resurfaced with "shock collars" being used to control slaves. Virtual reality headsets known as "Dreamasks" are also popular since they enable wearers to escape their harsh reality. During the course of the novel, Acorn is attacked and taken over by Christian American "Crusaders" and turned into a re-education camp. For the next year and a half, Lauren and the other adults are enslaved and forced to wear "shock collars". Their Christian American captors exploit them as forced labor under the pretext of "reforming" them. Lauren and several of the women are also regularly raped by their captors, who regard them as "heathen". In 2035, Lauren and her followers eventually rebel and kill their captors. To avoid retribution, they are forced to disperse into hiding. By 2036, President Jarret is defeated after a single term due to public dissatisfaction with the "Alaska–Canada War" and revelations of his role in witch burnings. Meanwhile, Larkin is adopted by an African American Christian America family and renamed "Asha Vere Alexander" after a popular Dreamask hero. Unloved and abused by her adoptive parents, Asha grows up never knowing who her biological parents are. As an adult, Asha reunites with her uncle Marcus "Marc" Duran, who was believed to have perished in the events of the previous novel and has since become a Christian America minister. With Uncle Marc's help, Larkin becomes an academic historian but leaves the Christian faith. Unknown to Asha, Uncle Marc had previously re-established contact with his long-lost half-sister Lauren. Marc claimed that the "Crusaders" were rogue elements who do not represent Christian America. He tells Asha that her mother is dead, and never told Lauren he had found her daughter. With Jarret's legacy in disgrace, Lauren's Earthseed religion grows in popularity in a post-war United States, funding scholarships for needy university students and encouraging humanity to leave Earth and settle in Alpha Centauri. After Asha learns that Lauren is her biological mother, she manages to meet with her mother. Though Asha is unable to forgive her mother for choosing Earthseed over her, Lauren tells her daughter that her door is always open to her. After learning that her half-brother Uncle Marc hid the fact that Asha was related to Lauren, Lauren severs all ties with her estranged brother. Lauren dies at the age of 81 while watching the first shuttles leaving Earth for the starship "Christopher Columbus", which carries settlers in suspended animation to Alpha Centauri. Reception. Jana Diemer Llewellyn regards "Parable of the Talents" as a harsh indictment of religious fundamentalism and compares the novel to Joanna Russ' "The Female Man" and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". The "Los Angeles Times" op-ed editor Abby Aguirre has likened the religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism of President Jarret to the "Make America Great Again" rhetoric of the Trump Administration. Proposed third "Parable" novel. Butler had planned to write a third "Parable" novel, tentatively titled "Parable of the Trickster", which would have focused on the community's struggle to survive on a new planet. She began this novel after finishing "Parable of the Talents", and mentioned her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point encountered a writer's block. She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in "Fledgling", her final novel. The various false starts for the novel can now be found among Butler's papers at the Huntington Library, as described in an article at the "Los Angeles Review of Books".

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Invisible Man Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity. "Invisible Man" won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African American writer to win the award. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Invisible Man" 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. "Time" magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century," rather than a "race novel, or even a bildungsroman." Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize an existential vision with a "Kafka-like absurdity." According to "The New York Times", Barack Obama modeled his 1995 memoir "Dreams from My Father" on Ellison's novel. Background. Ellison says in his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition that he started to write what would eventually become "Invisible Man" in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont, in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine. The book took five years to complete with one year off for what Ellison termed an "ill-conceived short novel." "Invisible Man" was published as a whole in 1952. Ellison had published a section of the book in 1947, the famous "Battle Royal" scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly, the editor of "Horizon" magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters. In his speech accepting the 1953 National Book Award, Ellison said that he considered the novel's chief significance to be its "experimental attitude." Before "Invisible Man", many (if not most) novels dealing with African Americans were written solely for social protest, most notably, "Native Son" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin". By contrast, the narrator in "Invisible Man" says, "I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either," signaling the break from the normal protest novel that Ellison held about his work. Likewise, in the essay 'The World and the Jug,' which is a response to Irving Howe's essay 'Black Boys and Native Sons,' which "pit[s] Ellison and [James] Baldwin against [Richard] Wright and then," as Ellison would say, "gives Wright the better argument," Ellison makes a fuller statement about the position he held about his book in the larger canon of work by an American who happens to be of African ancestry. In the opening paragraph to that essay Ellison poses three questions: "Why is it so often true that when critics confront the American as Negro they suddenly drop their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of confident superiority to quite primitive modes of analysis? Why is it that Sociology-oriented critics seem to rate literature so far below politics and ideology that they would rather kill a novel than modify their presumptions concerning a given reality which it seeks in its own terms to project? Finally, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro life never bother to learn how varied it really is?" Placing Invisible Man within the canon of either the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Arts Movement is difficult. It owes allegiance to both and neither at the same time. Interestingly enough, Ellison's own resistance to being pigeonholed by his peers bubbled over into his statement to Irving Howe about what he deemed to be a relative vs. an ancestor. He says, to Howe: "...perhaps you will understand when I say that he [Wright] did not influence me if I point out that while one can do nothing about choosing one's relatives, one can, as an artist, choose one's 'ancestors.' Wright was, in this sense, a 'relative'; Hemingway an 'ancestor.' " And it was this idea of "playing the field," so to speak, not being "all-in," that lead to some of Ellison's more staunch critics. The aforementioned Howe, in "Black Boys and Native Sons," but also the likes of other black writers such as John Oliver Killens, who once denounced "Invisible Man" by saying: “The Negro people need Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man like we need a hole in the head or a stab in the back. ... It is a vicious distortion of Negro life." Ellison's "ancestors" included, among others, "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot. In an interview with Richard Kostelanetz, Ellison states that what he had learned from the poem was imagery, and also improvisation techniques he had only before seen in jazz. Some other influences include William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Ellison once called Faulkner the South's greatest artist. Likewise, in the Spring 1955 "Paris Review", Ellison said of Hemingway: "I read him to learn his sentence structure and how to organize a story. I guess many young writers were doing this, but I also used his description of hunting when I went into the fields the next day. I had been hunting since I was eleven, but no one had broken down the process of wing-shooting for me, and it was from reading Hemingway that I learned to lead a bird. When he describes something in print, believe him; believe him even when he describes the process of art in terms of baseball or boxing; he’s been there." Some of Ellison's influences had a more direct impact on his novel as when Ellison divulges this, in his introduction to the 30th anniversary of "Invisible Man", that the "character" ("in the dual sense of the word") who had announced himself on his page he "associated, ever so distantly, with the narrator of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground". Although, despite the "distantly" remark, it appears that Ellison used that novella more than just on that occasion. The beginning of "Invisible Man", for example, seems to be structured very similar to "Notes from Underground": "I am a sick man" compared to "I am an invisible man". Arnold Rampersad, Ellison's biographer, expounds that Melville had a profound influence on Ellison's freedom to describe race so acutely and generously. [The narrator] "resembles no one else in previous fiction so much as he resembles Ishmael of Moby-Dick." Ellison signals his debt in the prologue to the novel, where the narrator remembers a moment of truth under the influence of marijuana and evokes a church service: "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness.' And the congregation answers: 'That blackness is most black, brother, most black...'" In this scene Ellison "reprises a moment in the second chapter of Moby-Dick", where Ishmael wanders around New Bedford looking for a place to spend the night and enters a black church: "It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there." According to Rampersad, it was Melville who "empowered Ellison to insist on a place in the American literary tradition" by his example of "representing the complexity of race and racism so acutely and generously" in Moby-Dick.[12] Other most likely influences to Ellison, by way of how much he speaks about them, are: Kenneth Burke, Andre Malraux, Mark Twain, to name a few. Political influences and the Communist Party. The letters he wrote to fellow novelist Richard Wright as he started working on the novel provide evidence for his disillusion with and defection from the Communist Party for perceived revisionism. In a letter to Wright on August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger toward party leaders for betraying African-American and Marxist class politics during the war years: "If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well-chosen, well-written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell." Plot summary. The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years. The narrator lives in a small Southern town and, upon graduating from high school, wins a scholarship to an all-black college. However, to receive it, he must first take part in a brutal, humiliating battle royal for the entertainment of the town's rich white dignitaries. One afternoon during his junior year at the college, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus. By chance, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, who has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep. Trueblood's account horrifies Mr. Norton so badly that he asks the narrator to find him a drink. The narrator drives him to a bar filled with prostitutes and patients from a nearby mental hospital. The mental patients rail against both of them and eventually overwhelm the orderly assigned to keep the patients under control, injuring Mr. Norton in the process. The narrator hurries Mr. Norton away from the chaotic scene and back to campus. Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, excoriates the narrator for showing Mr. Norton the underside of black life beyond the campus and expels him. However, Bledsoe gives several sealed letters of recommendation to the narrator, to be delivered to friends of the college in order to assist him in finding a job so that he may eventually re-enroll. The narrator travels to New York and distributes his letters, with no success; the son of one recipient shows him the letter, which reveals Bledsoe's intent to never admit the narrator as a student again. Acting on the son's suggestion, the narrator seeks work at the Liberty Paint factory, renowned for its pure white paint. He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room, whose chief attendant, Lucius Brockway, is highly paranoid and suspects that the narrator is trying to take his job. This distrust worsens after the narrator stumbles into a union meeting, and Brockway attacks the narrator and tricks him into setting off an explosion in the boiler room. The narrator is hospitalized and subjected to shock treatment, overhearing the doctors' discussion of him as a possible mental patient. After leaving the hospital, the narrator faints on the streets of Harlem and is taken in by Mary Rambo, a kindly old-fashioned woman who reminds him of his relatives in the South. He later happens across the eviction of an elderly black couple and makes an impassioned speech that incites the crowd to attack the law enforcement officials in charge of the proceedings. The narrator escapes over the rooftops and is confronted by Brother Jack, the leader of a group known as "the Brotherhood" that professes its commitment to bettering conditions in Harlem and the rest of the world. At Jack's urging, the narrator agrees to join and speak at rallies to spread the word among the black community. Using his new salary, he pays Mary back the rent he owes her and moves into an apartment provided by the Brotherhood. The rallies go smoothly at first, with the narrator receiving extensive indoctrination on the Brotherhood's ideology and methods. Soon, though, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a youth leader within the Brotherhood, is particularly swayed by his words. The narrator is later called before a meeting of the Brotherhood and accused of putting his own ambitions ahead of the group. He is reassigned to another part of the city to address issues concerning women, seduced by the wife of a Brotherhood member, and eventually called back to Harlem when Clifton is reported missing and the Brotherhood's membership and influence begin to falter. The narrator can find no trace of Clifton at first, but soon discovers him selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood. Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest; at his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech that rallies the crowd to support the Brotherhood again. At an emergency meeting, Jack and the other Brotherhood leaders criticize the narrator for his unscientific arguments and the narrator determines that the group has no real interest in the black community's problems. The narrator returns to Harlem, trailed by Ras's men, and buys a hat and a pair of sunglasses to elude them. As a result, he is repeatedly mistaken for a man named Rinehart, known as a lover, a hipster, a gambler, a briber, and a spiritual leader. Understanding that Rinehart has adapted to white society at the cost of his own identity, the narrator resolves to undermine the Brotherhood by feeding them dishonest information concerning the Harlem membership and situation. After seducing the wife of one member in a fruitless attempt to learn their new activities, he discovers that riots have broken out in Harlem due to widespread unrest. He realizes that the Brotherhood has been counting on such an event in order to further its own aims. The narrator gets mixed up with a gang of looters, who burn down a tenement building, and wanders away from them to find Ras, now on horseback, armed with a spear and shield, and calling himself "the Destroyer". Ras shouts for the crowd to lynch the narrator, but the narrator attacks him with the spear and escapes into an underground coal bin. Two white men seal him in, leaving him alone to ponder the racism he has experienced in his life. The epilogue returns to the present, with the narrator stating that he is ready to return to the world because he has spent enough time hiding from it. He explains that he has told his story in order to help people see past his own invisibility, and also to provide a voice for people with a similar plight: "Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" Reception. Critic Orville Prescott of "The New York Times" called the novel "the most impressive work of fiction by an American Negro which I have ever read," and felt it marked "the appearance of a richly talented writer." Novelist Saul Bellow in his review found it "a book of the very first order, a superb book...it is tragi-comic, poetic, the tone of the very strongest sort of creative intelligence." George Mayberry of "The New Republic" said Ellison "is a master at catching the shape, flavor and sound of the common vagaries of human character and experience." In "The Paris Review", literary critic Harold Bloom referred to "Invisible Man", along with Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God", as "the only full scale works of fiction I have read by American blacks in this century that have survival possibilities at all." Anthony Burgess described the novel as "a masterpiece". Adaptation. It was reported in October 2017 that streaming service Hulu was developing the novel into a television series.

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Quicksand (Larsen novel) Quicksand is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1928. This is her first novel and she completed the first draft quickly. The novel was out of print from the 1930s to the 1970s. "Quicksand" is a work that explores both cross-cultural and interracial themes. Larsen dedicated the novel to her husband. Discussing the novel, Jacquelyn Y. McLendon called it the more "obviously autobiographical" of Larsen's two novels. Larsen called the emotional experiences of the novel "the awful truth" in a letter to her friend Carl van Vechten. About The Author Nella Larsen. Nella Larsen was many things other than a writer, working also as a nurse and a librarian amongst other vocations. She was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 13, 1891. Her mother was Danish and her father was Black West Indian. They lived in the city of Chicago which was a rapidly growing city. By mostly appearance, her family seemed white, but Nella Larsen was somewhat different which had a great affect in her fiction. She studied at Fisk University, which was her first experience in a black community and university. Nella is very well known during her writing during the Harlem Renaissance time period, and she wrote Quicksand during an intense American cultural nationalism, where the nation shared one culture. This period had a variety of a release of books and essays just devoted to this large period of cultural nationalism going on and interpretations of African American modernism going on. Larsen herself worked on various orientations of her writing and was never quite consistent. She published two novels and various short stories, and people said she disappeared from public life and assimilated and passed for white. Many biographies published about Larsen contained information that was not correct, which is why George Hutchinson, wrote a research examination of her life and debunking some of the things falsely stated in previous biographies written about Larsen. In George Hutchinson's piece about the life of Nella Larsen called, "In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line""," he used things such as taxes and schools within Copenhagen, New York, and Chicago access aspects of Larsen's life such as things like her birth through adult life. Larsen was portrayed as a revolutionist writer in this piece written by Hutchinson, he analyzes her choices in life and personality. Most of her writings address heavy topics such as passing for white, relationships between black middle-class men and women, and even the suppression of female sexuality. There is a discussion of Quicksand and how it does not deal with race directly, but that the characters are driven by race. He goes into great depth of the strength and complexity of Nella Larsen herself. She longed to be welcomed among African Americans but was also proud of her Danish heritage. Larsen eventually won the Guggenheim Fellowship, and was the first African American woman to receive it. She eventually died of a heart attack at the age of seventy two on March 30, 1964. Historical Context and The Harlem Renaissance. The majority of Quicksand by Nella Larsen took place in Harlem, New York City. The story was written and published in 1928, meaning that the infamous 1920’s were almost completed by the time Nella Larsen had published this fictional autobiography. Many major events took place during the 1920’s. Right on Wall Street in 1920, America experienced a horrible terrorist attack that killed nearly 40 civilians, and injured hundreds. With more gruesome things happening, the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) was scaring the whole nation. On the more positive side of 1920, the “Lost Generation” began its transformation of American literature. The term was "coined from something Gertrude Stein witnessed the owner of a garage saying to his young employee, which Hemingway later used as an epigraph to his novel "The Sun Also Rises" (1926): "You are all a lost generation." This accusation referred to the lack of purpose or drive resulting from the horrific disillusionment felt by those who grew up and lived through the war, and were then in their twenties and thirties." Another positive note about the 1920’s was that the first ever licenced radio station was created. This was a huge hit for everyone during this time, it allowed for people to listen in real time about news, sports, or whatever else. By 1926, there were over 700 radio stations nationwide. The creation of radio stations sparked the formation of mass media. During 1910-1930’s Harlem was in the “golden period” or the "Roaring 20's" and was shaping the path for many African Americans to display their art of music, dance, literature, and much more. Many famous artists we still know today, were born in the Harlem Renaissance. For example, Langston Hughes and his writing, Countee Cullen and her poetry, Louis Armstrong and his jazz music, Josephine Baker and her musicals, and Aaron Douglas who was a sculptor. These are only just a few of the major names that resemble the Harlem Renaissance, many more African artists came forward as time went on. Plot summary. Nella Larsen introduces the educated mixed-race protagonist, Helga Crane who struggles to find her identity in a world of racialized crisis in the 1920s. The novel begins with Helga teaching at a southern black school in Naxos which is meant to be a fictional mirroring of the Tuskegee Institute. Helga is the Daughter of a Danish mother who died when she was an adolescent and West Indian father who is absent. Her early years were spent with her Danish mother and White step-father who loathed her and there began her torn relationship with her split identity. The novel gives us a glimpse into the dichotomy of being mixed raced and the divergence into two vastly different worlds as the protagonist travels through uniquely different cultural spaces from 1920’s Jazz Age Harlem, NY to Copenhagen, Denmark. In Naxos, where the novel begins Helga Crane is a teacher suffering from social angst as she is discontented with the social uplift philosophy delivered by a white preacher. The theme of mainstream white influence is developed throughout the novel, but makes it debut at the very beginning while she is in Naxos. She is repelled by the subjugate demeanor of her superiors with consideration to their attempts to white wash her black counterparts and she criticizes the Booker T. Washington inspired sermon that reinforces racial segregation and warns black students that striving for social equality will lead them to become avaricious. This incites her first endeavor of escapism where she quits her job and moves to chicago. There, her white maternal uncle, now married to a bigoted woman, shuns her. The inimical encounter instigates her move to Harlem. When in Harlem NY, Helga Crane becomes the secretary to a refined, but often hypocritical, black middle-class woman who is obsessed with the "race problem." She is then launched into her now third hankering to flee. Crane visits her maternal aunt in Copenhagen. Although she enjoys the lavishness of her new voyage, she is treated as a highly desirable racial exotic which forces her to return to New York City. Close to a mental breakdown, Crane happens onto a store-front revival and has a charismatic religious experience. After marrying the preacher who converted her, she moves with him to the rural Deep South. There she is disillusioned by the people's adherence to religion. In each of her moves, Crane fails to find fulfillment. She is looking for more than how to integrate her mixed ancestry. She expresses complex feelings about what she and her friends consider genetic differences between races. Throughout the development of the novel, though driven by the search for racial identity, Helga also rejects intimate relationships with every man she encounters at each destination. It isn’t until she fully indulges in an intimate relationship that she becomes forced to exist in a space (Deep South) and becomes stuck. Characters. Helga Crane. The story’s protagonist. Helga’s mother was born in Denmark and her father was of west-Indian descent. Helga is a young, biracial woman whose journey’s purpose is finding a place where she belongs. She struggles with insecurities. The story begins where she is a teacher at Naxos, a white-imposing school, where she then quits her job that prompts her to spend her time travelling for other jobs and visiting relatives. The story closes with the knowledge that Helga marries a man from the deep south where she ends up being a serial-mother. James Vayle. Helga’s fiancé when she is at Naxos. She ends their relationship when she moves away. James comes off as a serious and boring young man. Mrs. Hayes-Rore. Helga’s employer that enables Helga to move to Harlem after she leaves Naxos. The protagonist is hired to help Mrs. Hayes-Rore write a speech. Dr. Robert Anderson. A 35 year old handsome man with grey eyes. He is known as the principal of Naxos at the beginning of the story, but then becomes someone that Helga thinks of romantically. Anne Grey. Helga’s friend that ultimately influences her to the Harlem Culture. Is a socialite and widow that is utterly obsessed with the race problem brought up in the novel. Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green. When Helga returns to New York again in the story, she meets this southern reverend after bumping into him at church. The two then get married and move to Alabama where they have 5 children. Herr Axel Olsen. Danish artist that proposes to Helga and ultimately gets turned down because he objectifies her. Fru Dahl (Aunt Katrina). Helga’s white aunt in Copenhagen, her mother’s sister. Herr Dahl (Uncle Poul). Helga’s white uncle that lives in Copenhagen. His only wish is for Helga to be happy and get married. Racial Imposter Syndrome. Throughout Quicksand By Nella Larsen, You time and again recognize the leading character Helga Crane accepting a battle with Racial Imposter Syndrome. Racial Imposter Syndrome is when typically a biracial person or someone with multiple ethnicities feels like imposters. They do not experience a sense of belonging or identity because they don't fit perfectly into one of their races or ethnicities (Donnella, 2020). This frequently comes up within their everyday lifestyles. Whether they go visit extended family and realize they do not exactly have the same traditions, practices. Even having different features than them. Periodically this comes up in their lives in society. Meaning when society tries to sometimes put people into one box. For example when they ask what race you are in questionnaires and they have only Black, White, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Other. Many mixed-race people feel they can not just choose one because it will be denying another part of them. That if they choose just one they might question it because physically their features may resemble features you would see more in one race. They have a different skin complexion, so they feel obligated to decide on one that matches their skin color. Some people of our mixed-race identity but their parents themselves are not biracial often feel this is another strain on them. People's first sense of connection is within the family unit. For people struggling with racial imposter syndrome, this often can cause anxiety. They can not turn to their parents for advice. They do not know the experience of having two identities. Some people of our mixed-race identity but their parents themselves are not biracial often feel this is another strain on them. Biracial people frequently feel they have to adopt one identity and then have to try to gain a sense of belonging and inclusion within the racial community they use (Hall, 2019). Essentially meaning that to discover a place where they can fit in, connect with people, or even have people to go to merely for healthy human interaction. Many Biracial people tend to choose whichever race matches their visible features and go with it. Helga Crane throughout the book you can see battling this issue. Representing a Biracial woman having a white mother and black father, having beautiful brown skin. Yet often having people categorize her into one box. Only seeing her as one race often put a strain on her and her emotions. She constantly never felt she belonged when she was around her white family or counterparts because she physically did not look like them. Her hair, skin, and body features were different. When her mother dies, her uncle takes her in then sends her to an all-black school. She did feel more comfortable because on the outside she looked like them and didn’t have to necessarily deal with racial discrimination. She though still battled with still not feeling like she completely belonged with her black peers, and their experiences, and felt she was disowning part of her. She also had to deal with complexities around colorist views from women in the black community. She still did not perfectly fit into a stereotypical idea or look of a black woman. Oftentimes Helga in her adult life when she felt issues around her race, identity and complexities around it. She would tuck those emotions away, pack up and leave somewhere else. It was not until she went to Paris when she started having more confidence in who she was. Themes. Race, Segregation, and Society. Helga struggles with race are emphasized due to society’s attitude toward her. Helga’s mental and physical expedition is to find a place where she doesn’t draw attention to., or take away from her differences. However, society and social order play a role in which people are viewed, if they are culturally different. Helga’s racial identity has been constructed by others inability to accept her own differences.   Mixed Race Identity. Helga is a young biracial woman; a half white, half black woman. For Helga, identifying as a biracial woman means she has less restrictions when it comes to racial labels. Her struggles with her identity come from the reluctance of others and how they view themselves and others. Helga’s understanding of herself is constructed through cultural artifacts created by others. Helga follows a biracial identity by refusing to follow a strict racial lifestyle but she still acknowledges her black culture. Race and Gender. Helga’s future is determined by her sex and her race. Her fascination with clothing and color is a way for Helga to build a female identity for herself. Helga dressed in styles unique to herself and others as a way to stand out from the rest. The way she dressed also goes against the way Naxos wanted their teachers to look. She was meant to stand out.

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Hogg (novel) Hogg is a novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was written in San Francisco in 1969 and completed just days before the Stonewall Riots in New York City. A further draft was completed in 1973 in London. At the time it was written, no one would publish it due to its graphic descriptions of murder, child molestation, incest, coprophilia, coprophagia, urolagnia, anal-oral contact, necrophilia and rape. "Hogg" was finally published – with some further, though relatively minor, rewrites – in 1995 by Black Ice Books. The two successive editions have featured some correction, the last of which, published by Fiction Collective Two in 2004, carries a note at the end stating that it is definitive. Content. Preface. The preface to the novel is titled "The Scorpion Garden". It is not included in the hardback edition from 1995, although it was written in 1973. It is included in "The Straits of Messina" (1989). Description. As described in the book "Inventory" by The A.V. Club, These acts include a substantial amount of "rape, violence, and murder", such as "scenes of Hogg and his gang brutally raping various women" and other "extensive scenes involving consumption of bodily waste." Every chapter in the novel contains graphic sexual or violent acts. Setting. The main events of the novel take place on June 26, 27, and 28, 1969, in an unspecified city. The narrator mentions various nearby areas—"Crawhole," "Frontwater," and "Ellenville"—apparently fictional neighborhoods. The nameless city is described as an industrial wasteland. The events take place at docks, garbage barges, truck-stops, bars, as well as within Hogg's truck. Many of the characters are described as workmen or wear work clothes. In an interview with TK Enright, Delany states ""[Hogg's]" action takes place in Pornotopia—that is the land where any situation can become rampantly sexual under the least increase in the pressure of attention. Like its sister lands, Comedia and Tragedia, it can only be but so realistic." In the same interview Delany also states, ""Hogg" is another of my stories that takes place in the city of Enoch." Delany's "Neveryóna" takes place, in part, in Enoch. Plot summary. At the start, the narrator is living with a Hispanic boy named Pedro and performing sex acts with older men in the basement of the dwelling for money, along with Pedro's teenage sister Maria. He engages in sex with Maria, Pedro, a gang of bikers, and a group of Black men. The narrator consistently assumes the bottom role in these sex acts. One out of the group of Black men chooses the narrator specifically, remarking that he appears of possible part-Black ancestry. The second chapter takes place sometime after the narrator has left Pedro's. It introduces Hogg, first seen raping a woman in an alley. Hogg calls the narrator to him to "finish him up" orally. Hogg takes the narrator to his truck where he explains that while he is a trucker by trade, he prefers getting paid to rape women. Hogg also reveals a bit about himself and his personal history, painting a picture of his overall persona, which is one of extreme sociopathy, violence, and sexual sadism. They drive to meet Mr. Jonas, who despite his apparent wealth answers his own door and later is revealed to drive his own limousine. Mr. Jonas is Hogg's current client. After Mr. Jonas describes Hogg's next assignment Hogg states his intention to bring along several other men, and the narrator as well, to participate. At this point the narrator's place as Hogg's companion is solidly established. Hogg and the narrator meet the other men—Nigg, Wop, and Denny—at the Piewacket bar. Nigg turns out to be the black man who the narrator first encountered at the beginning of the story. Wop is a violent Italian-American workman. Denny is a rather shy teenage boy, older than the narrator but quite a bit younger than the other men. The quintet of rapists set out to complete their jobs, which grow in succession from a single woman, a woman and her wheelchair-bound daughter, and a nuclear family—mother, father and son. Each successive job increases in violence, and the victims' young children (male and female) are also descended on by the pack. During the third rape scene, Denny absconds to the family's kitchen where he decides to pierce his own penis using a nail. Soon Denny's penis begins to bleed, swell and pus, seemingly infected. At this point he begins repeating the phrase "it's all right." When their last job is completed, the group retires to the Piewacket bar, where they fraternize with members of the Phantoms—the same biker gang encountered in the beginning of the novel. Nigg and one of the bikers, Hawk, hatch a scheme to sell the narrator to a black tugboat captain called Big Sambo. Without consulting Hogg, all three ride away on Hawk's motorcycle to meet Big Sambo at the docks in Crawhole. Big Sambo talks down the price and pays Nigg and Hawk fifteen dollars for the narrator. Big Sambo is a large, physically-powerful tugboat operator who keeps his twelve-year-old daughter, Honey-Pie, around as a sex object for his own pleasure. The narrator goes walking around the docks at night, where he overhears a radio on the deck of a garbage scow. The newscaster on the radio reports on a series of murders that has occurred recently—as it turns out, the suspect is Denny. This is confirmed to the reader when it is noted that the phrase "it's all right" is written in blood at the crime scenes. The Piewacket bar, where the gang had previously hung out, was attacked by Denny with gunfire. Several people including the bartender and some bikers were killed. On the docks the narrator then meets two garbagemen: Red, a red-headed white man, and Rufus, a black man. While having sex with the narrator outside, they plan to "borrow" the narrator from Big Sambo and keep him at their scow on a collar and leash. They are interrupted by Whitey, a cop who patrols the area, who also has sex with the narrator. Whitey is called down to the waterfront to help investigate the murders of Mona, Harry and their year-old baby. Rufus, Red and the narrator return to the waterfront where a radio crew has recently arrived and reports live from the scene. Big Sambo sees the narrator by the docks and tells him to return to his scow. Hogg arrives at Big Sambo's scow and assaults Big Sambo. Hogg and the narrator leave the docks in Hogg's truck, in which Denny was hiding from the police. After driving out of the Crawhole area and getting clear of the law, Hogg commands Denny to bathe himself, dress in clean clothes, and hitch a ride to Florida. While driving back from the truck stop Hogg declares his intentions to spend the next few months with the narrator and expresses his happiness that they are reunited. However, the narrator is formulating a plan to leave Hogg at the next opportune moment. Hogg finally asks him "What's the matter?" to which he responds, "Nothin,"—his only line of dialog in the novel. The off-stage murder spree by Dennis "Denny" Harkner is described by radio reporter Edward Sawyer as "an afternoon and evening long rampage...that threatens to outdo Starkweather, Speck, and Manson together." Later in the novel it is revealed that the spree took place on June 27th, 1969, more than a month before the Tate murders were perpetrated by the Manson Family on August 8th, 1969. Character analysis. Franklin "Hogg" Hargus. Michael Hemmingson wrote in the journal "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" that Hogg, Literary significance and criticism. Despite the book's infamous reputation, several respected authors have given it their endorsement. Norman Mailer, for instance, said "There is no question that "Hogg" by Samuel R. Delany is a serious book with literary merit." J.G. Ballard, prolific speculative fiction author and elder statesman of transgressive literature, also praised Delany's work, citing the medium of pornography as being the "most political form of fiction." Author Dennis Cooper said in his collection "Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries" that ""Hogg" is tiresome and indulgent" and that the "pace is molasses-slow". However, he also goes on to say that "the book is a highly charged object...[and] that's reason enough to recommend it." In the Preface to a later edition of "Smothered in Hugs," Cooper writes, "I now think Samuel Delany's "Hogg" is a great novel, and I don't know why I didn't realize that upon first reading." Jeffrey A. Tucker, associate professor of English at the University of Rochester, comments in his critical study "A sense of wonder: Samuel R. Delany, race, identity and difference" that "Hogg" "gave expression to the author's hostility toward a heterosexist society, an anger that had no socially constructive outlet prior to the modern Gay Rights movement."

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Cane (novel) Cane is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a result, the novel has been classified as a composite novel or as a short story cycle. Though some characters and situations recur between vignettes, the vignettes are mostly freestanding, tied to the other vignettes thematically and contextually more than through specific plot details. The ambitious, nontraditional structure of the novel – and its later influence on future generations of writers – have helped "Cane" gain status as a classic of modernism. Several of the vignettes have been excerpted or anthologized in literary collections; the poetic passage "Harvest Song" has been included in multiple Norton poetry anthologies. The poem opens with the line: "I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown." Writing "Cane". Jean Toomer began writing sketches that would become the first section of "Cane" in November 1921 on a train from Georgia to Washington D.C. By Christmas of 1921, the first draft of those sketches and the short story “Kabnis” were complete. Waldo Frank, Toomer’s close friend, suggested that Toomer combine the sketches into a book. In order to form a book-length manuscript, Toomer added sketches relating to the black urban experience. When Toomer completed the book, he wrote: “My words had become a book…I had actually finished something.” However, before the book was published, Toomer’s initial euphoria began to fade. He wrote, “The book is done but when I look for the beauty I thought I’d caught, they thin out and elude me.” He thought that the Georgia sketches lacked complexity and said they were “too damn simple for me.” In a letter to Sherwood Anderson, Toomer wrote that the story-teller style of “Fern” “had too much waste and made too many appeals to the reader.” In August 1923, Toomer received a letter from Horace Liveright asking for revisions to the bibliographic statement Toomer had submitted for promotions of the book. Liveright requested that Toomer mention his “colored blood,” because that was the “real human interest value” of his story. Toomer had a history of complex beliefs about his own racial identity, and in the spring of 1923 he had written to the Associated Negro Press saying he would be pleased to write for the group’s black readership on events that concerned them. However, when Toomer read Liveright’s letter he was outraged. He responded that his “racial composition” was of no concern to anyone except himself, and asserted that he was not a “Negro” and would not “feature” himself as such. Toomer was even willing to cancel the publication of the book. Structure. Toomer spent a great deal of time working on the structure of "Cane". He said that the design was a circle. Aesthetically, "Cane" builds from simple to complex forms; regionally, it moves from the South to the North and then back to the South; and spiritually, it begins with “Bona and Paul,” grows through the Georgia narratives, and ends in “Harvest Song.” The first section focuses on southern folk culture; the second section focuses on urban life in Washington D.C. and Chicago; and the third section is about the racial conflicts experienced by a black Northerner living in the South. In his autobiography, Toomer wrote: “I realized with deep regret, that the spirituals, meeting ridicule, would be certain to die out. With Negroes also the trend was towards the small town and then towards the city—and industry and commerce and machines. The folk-spirit was walking in to die on the modern desert. That spirit was so beautiful. Its death was so tragic. Just this seemed to sum life for me. And this was the feeling I put into "Cane". "Cane" was a swan-song. It was a song of an end.” Contents. Preamble First section: Second section: Third section: Critical reception. "Cane" was largely ignored during the Harlem Renaissance by the average white and African American reader. Langston Hughes addressed this in his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" by saying, “'O, be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are,' say the Negroes. 'Be stereotyped, don’t go too far, don’t shatter our illusions about you, don’t amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,' say the whites. Both would have told Jean Toomer not to write "Cane". The colored people did not praise it. Although the critics gave it good reviews, the public remained indifferent. Yet (excepting the works of Du Bois) "Cane" contains the finest prose written by a Negro in America. And like the singing of Robeson it is truly racial." Hughes suggests that "Cane" failed to be popular among the masses because it did not reinforce white views of African Americans. It did not fit the model of the “Old Negro” and did not depict the lifestyle of African Americans living in Harlem that whites wanted to see. "Cane" was not widely read when it was published but was generally praised by both black and white critics. Montgomery Gregory, an African American, wrote in his 1923 review: "America has waited for its own counterpart of Maran—for that native son who would avoid the pitfalls of propaganda and moralizing on the one hand and the snares of a false and hollow race pride on the other hand. One whose soul mirrored the soul of his people, yet whose vision was universal. Jean Toomer…is the answer to this call." Gregory criticized Toomer for his labored and puzzling style and for Toomer’s overuse of the folk. Gregory believed that Toomer was biased towards folk culture and resented city life. W. E. B. Du Bois reviewed "Cane" in 1924, saying: "Toomer does not impress me as one who knows his Georgia but he does know human beings." Du Bois goes on to say that Toomer does not depict an exact likeness of humans but rather depicts them like an Impressionist painter. Du Bois also wrote that Toomer’s writing is deliberately puzzling—"I cannot, for the life of me, for instance, see why Toomer could not have made the tragedy of Carma something that I could understand instead of vaguely guess at." In his 1939 review "The New Negro", Sanders Redding wrote: ""Cane" was experimental, a potpourri of poetry and prose, in which the latter element is significant because of the influence it had on the course of Negro fiction." White critics who reviewed "Cane" in 1923 were mostly positive about the novel, praising its new portrayal of African Americans. John Armstrong wrote: "It can perhaps be safely said that the Southern negro, at least, has found an authentic lyric voice in Jean Toomer…there is nothing of the theatrical coon-strutting high-brown, none of the conventional dice-throwing, chicken-stealing nigger of musical comedy and burlesque in the pages of "Cane"." He goes on to say, “the Negro has been libeled rather than depicted accurately in American fiction” because fiction typically portrays African Americans as stereotypes. Cane gave white readers a chance to see a human portrayal of blacks—“[blacks] were seldom ever presented to white eyes with any other sort of intelligence than that displayed by an idiot child with epilepsy.” Robert Littell wrote in his 1923 review that ""Cane" does not remotely resemble any of the familiar, superficial views of the South on which we have been brought up. On the contrary, Mr. Toomer’s view is unfamiliar and bafflingly subterranean, the vision of a poet far more than the account of things seen by a novelist." Modern criticism. Alice Walker said of the book, "It has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately, could not possibly exist without it." In "The Negro Novel in America", Robert A. Bone wrote: "By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, "Cane" ranks with Richard Wright’s "Native Son" and Ralph Ellison’s "Invisible Man" as a measure of the Negro novelist’s highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style." Gerald Strauss points out that despite "critical uncertainty and controversy," he finds that "Cane"'s structure is not without precedent: "it is similar to James Joyce’s "Dubliners" (1914) and Sherwood Anderson’s "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919), two other thematically related story collections that develop unified and coherent visions of societies. It also echoes Edgar Lee Masters’s poetry collection "Spoon River Anthology" (1915) ... Toomer surely was familiar with the Joyce and Masters books, and he knew Anderson personally." Legacy. In 1973, Alice Walker and fellow Zora Neale Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered a grave they thought was Hurston's in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker had it marked with a gray marker stating ZORA NEALE HURSTON / "A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH" / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. The line "a genius of the south" is from Toomer's poem "Georgia Dusk", which appears in the novel. Hurston, who could be deceptive about her age, was actually born in 1891, not 1901. The novel inspired the Gil Scott-Heron song "Cane", in which he sings about two main characters of the novel: Karintha and Becky. The novel inspired Marion Brown in his "Georgia" trilogy of jazz albums, especially on "Geechee Recollections" (1973), where he put "Karintha" to music, recited by Bill Hasson. Critical studies (since 2000). as of March 2008:

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The Bluest Eye "The Bluest Eye," published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio (Morrison's hometown), and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression. Set in 1941, the story tells that she is consistently regarded as "ugly" due to her mannerisms and dark skin. As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness". The novel is told from Claudia MacTeer's point of view. She is the daughter of Pecola's foster parents at different stages in her life. In addition, there is an omniscient third-person narrative that includes inset narratives in the first person. The book's controversial topics of racism, incest, and child molestation have led to numerous attempts to ban the novel from schools and libraries. Morrison was an African-American novelist, a Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize winner whose works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States. Plot summary. In Lorain, Ohio, nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer and her 10-year-old sister Frieda live with their parents, a tenant named Mr. Henry, and Pecola Breedlove, a temporary foster child whose house was burned down by her unstable, alcoholic, and sexually abusive father. Pecola is a quiet, passive young girl who grows up with little money and whose parents are constantly fighting, both verbally and physically. Pecola is continually reminded of what an "ugly" girl she is by members of her neighborhood and school community. In an attempt to beautify herself, Pecola wishes for blue eyes. Additionally, most chapters' titles are extracts from the "Dick and Jane" paragraph in the novel's prologue, presenting a white family that may be contrasted with Pecola's. The chapter titles contain sudden repetition of words or phrases, many cut-off words, and no interword separations. The novel, through flashbacks, explores the younger years of both of Pecola's parents, Cholly and Pauline, and their struggles as African Americans in a largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community. Pauline now works as a servant for a wealthier white family. One day in the novel's present time, while Pecola is doing dishes, drunk Cholly rapes her. His motives are largely confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate. After raping her a second time, he flees, leaving her pregnant. Claudia and Frieda are the only two in the community that hopes for Pecola's child to survive in the coming months. Consequently, they give up the money they had been saving to buy a bicycle, instead planting marigold seeds with the superstitious belief that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will survive. The marigolds never bloom, and Pecola's child, who is born prematurely, dies. In the aftermath, a dialogue is presented between two sides of Pecola's deluded imagination, in which she indicates conflicting feelings about her rape by her father. In this internal conversation, Pecola speaks as though her wish for blue eyes has been granted, and believes that the changed behavior of those around her is due to her new eyes, rather than the news of her rape or her increasingly strange behavior. Claudia, as narrator a final time, describes the recent phenomenon of Pecola's insanity and suggests that Cholly (who has since died) may have shown Pecola the only love he could by raping her. Claudia laments on her belief that the whole community, herself included, has used Pecola as a scapegoat to make themselves feel prettier and happier. Author's intentions. When asked about her motivations for writing "The Bluest Eye" in an interview, Morrison claimed that she wanted to remind readers "how hurtful racism is" and that people are "apologetic about the fact that their skin [is] so dark." Reminiscing about her own experience, she recalled: "When I was a kid, we called each other names but we didn't think it was serious, that you could take it in." Expanding on this point of self-esteem, Morrison elaborated that she "wanted to speak on behalf of those who didn't catch that [they were beautiful] right away. [She] was deeply concerned about the feelings of ugliness." As seen throughout "The Bluest Eye", this idea of "ugliness" is conveyed through a variety of characters. For example, Pecola, the main character, wishes for blue eyes as a way to escape the oppression that results from her having dark skin. Through Pecola's characterization, Morrison seeks to demonstrate the negative impact racism can have on one's self-confidence and worth. As she concluded in her interview, she "wanted people to understand what it was like to be treated that way." Morrison commented on her motivations to write the novel, saying, "I felt compelled to write this mostly because in the 1960s, black male authors published powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or nonfiction, and they had positive racially uplifting rhetoric with them that were stimulating and I thought they would skip over something and thought no one would remember that it wasn't always beautiful." Symbolism. The Tooth. In an article titled “Decay and Symbolic Impotence in Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE,” the author examines how several critics have studied the significance of the loss of one of Pauline’s front teeth in The Bluest Eye. Parker argues that Pauline’s missing front tooth symbolizes the “destructive nature” of white beauty standards. Blue Eyes. Blue eyes symbolize the attractiveness and contentment that Pecola associates with the middle class. To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize beauty and associates it with whiteness. Marigolds. The marigold flowers symbolize the overall safety of Pecola’s baby.

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The Blacker the Berry (novel) The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) is a novel by American author Wallace Thurman, associated with the Harlem Renaissance. The novel tells the story of Emma Lou Morgan, a young black woman with dark skin. It begins in Boise, Idaho and follows Emma Lou in her journey to college at USC and a move to Harlem, New York City for work. Set during the Harlem Renaissance, the novel explores Emma Lou's experiences with colorism, discrimination by lighter-skinned African Americans due to her dark skin. She learns to come to terms with her skin color in order to find satisfaction in her life. Plot summary. Born in Boise, Idaho, Emma Lou Morgan is an African-American girl who has extremely dark skin. Her mother's family have lighter skin that shows European ancestry; the "blue-black" hue came from her father, who left her and her mother soon after her birth. Believing that her color will reduce her marriageability, her mother's people try to help her lighten her skin with bleaching and commercially available creams, but nothing works. When her mother says "a black boy could get along but a black girl would never know anything but sorrow and disappointment," Emma Lou wishes she had been a boy. The only "Negro pupil in the entire school," she feels extra conspicuous at graduation among the white faces and white robes. Emma Lou's Uncle Joe encourages her to go to the University of Southern California (USC), where she'll be among black students, and he encourages her to study education and move South to teach. He believes that smaller towns like Boise "encouraged stupid color prejudice such as she encountered among the blue vein circle in her home town." Emma Lou’s maternal grandmother was closely associated with the "blue veins", black people whose skin was light enough to show veins. Uncle Joe thought life would be better for Emma Lou in Los Angeles, where people had more to think about. At USC, Emma Lou intends to meet the "right" crowd among other Negro students. On registration day she meets a black girl named Hazel Mason; unfortunately, when she speaks Emma Lou decides that she is the "wrong" sort, definitely lower-class. Other girls, though pleasant, never invite her into their circles or sorority, especially when they recognize that they've seen her with Hazel, whose "minstrel" demeanor is not good for the black image. When Hazel drops out of school, Grace Giles become Emma Lou's friend but informs her that the sorority only accepts wealthy, light-skinned girls. Emma Lou begins to notice that black leaders tend to have light skin or light-skinned wives. By summer vacation, she feels more trapped by her skin. Back in Boise, Emma Lou meets Weldon Taylor at a picnic. Although darker than her ideal, he attracts her, and she ends up going too far with him that night, thinking she is in love. Over the next two weeks, she is thrilled to be with Taylor, for "his presence and his love making." He had been to college but temporarily dropped out to build up his tuition fund, traveling from town to town, finding work and a new girl each time. When he announced that he was leaving Boise to become a Pullman porter, Emma Lou blamed her color. She puts in the rest of her college time, then moves to New York City to find work—and hopefully, a better life. In Harlem, Emma Lou meets a young man named John whom she decides is "too dark." She heads to an employment agency seeking work as a stenographer; lacking experience, she pads her account of her skills. She is sent to a real-estate office for an interview, only to be told that they have someone else in mind. She returns to the agency and the manager, Mrs. Blake, invites her to lunch, and Emma Lou is "warmed toward any suggestion of friendliness" and excited to have the chance "to make a welcome contact." Mrs. Blake tells her about work prospects, saying that black businessmen preferred to hire light-skinned, pretty girls; she advises Emma Lou to go to Columbia Teachers' College and train for a job in the public-school system. After lunch, Emma is walking on Seventh Avenue and while stopping to check her reflection, she notices a few young black men nearby and hears one comment, "There’s a girl for you ‘Fats’", to which the reply is: "Man, you know I don’t haul no coal." Determined to stay in New York, Emma Lou finds a job as a maid to Arline Strange, an actress "in an alleged melodrama about Negro life in Harlem." She thinks all the characters are caricatures. Arline and her brother from Chicago take Emma Lou to her first cabaret one night, where he makes her a drink from his hip flask. Emma Lou, entranced by the dancing, gets to be part of it when a man from another table, Alva, invites her. When the lights go up, he returns her to sit with Arline and her brother. The next morning, Alva and his roommate Braxton discuss the previous evening, agreeing that Alva did Emma Lou a favor in dancing with her. Intrigued by the cabaret, Emma Lou talks to the stage director about being in the dance chorus. He tells her plainly the girls are chosen in part for appearance, and notes they all have lighter skin than hers. She decides to look for a new place to live, hoping to meet "the right sort of people." One evening she goes to a casino, where she recognizes Alva. When she approaches him and asks if he remembers her, he politely acts like he does: he talks to her, dances with her, and even gives her his phone number. She calls him a couple of times before they make plans. Braxton is critical of Alva's seeing her, but he thinks, "She’s just as good as the rest, and you know what they say, ‘The Blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.’" After avoiding taking Emma Lou to parties or dances, not wanting his friends to meet her (preferring to be seen with light-skinned Geraldine), Alva finally takes her to a "rent party. Used to manipulating young women for money, Alva liked Geraldine for herself. Emma Lou was very excited about the party, and worried that she would encounter more discrimination. Once there, they happened on to a conversation revolving around race: the differences between being a mulatto and a Negro, and individuals who are prejudiced or "color struck." At the rent party, Emma had consumed more alcohol than usual, and the next morning her landlady demands that she find somewhere else to stay. As the woman speaks, Emma Lou remembers a little more about Alva bringing her home after the party and realizes that the woman might be right that her behavior hadn't met the boardinghouse's respectable standards. Emma Lou thought more about Alva, who seemed kinder than others in her life, but she was aware of his manipulation. Alva has his own trouble with Braxton: he has no job and pays no rent. When Braxton finally moves out, Alva doesn't want Emma Lou to move in. One night the couple goes to a theatre, but Emma Lou doesn't have a good time: "You’re always taking me some place, or placing me in some position where I’ll be insulted." One night, after an argument with Emma Lou, Alva returns to his room to find Geraldine sleeping in his bed; when she wakens, she announces that she's pregnant by him. Two years later, Emma Lou works as a personal maid/companion to Clere Sloane, a retired actress married to Campbell Kitchen, a white writer very interested in Harlem. He encouraged Emma Lou to seek more education in order to achieve economic independence. She has few friends and still feels very out-of-place. When she tries to see Alva after they had stopped seeing each other for a time, Geraldine answers the door and Emma Lou leaves without comment. Geraldine and Alva's son has been born disfigured and possibly retarded and seems to bring them endless trouble; they often wish he would die. Geraldine blames Alva—another man would have made a better baby—and her mother blames both of them for not bothering to marry before his birth (or conception). Alva has become a money-wasting alcoholic; Geraldine works hard, trying to build up an escape fund. Having moved to the Y.W.C.A., Emma Lou has found some new friends and is studying teaching. She continues to work hard but to feel no better about her appearance, although her friend Gwendolyn Johnson tries to help her. She starts seeing Benson Brown, a light-skinned man described as a "yaller nigger." His appearance seems reason enough to see him. But when she learns that Geraldine had abandoned Alva and their son, she goes to check on them and he soon has her taking care of little Alva Jr. After 6 months, she begins teaching at a Harlem public school, wearing much dark-skin-concealing makeup but being teased for it by colleagues. She nurtures the child better than his parents ever did, but she and Alva have a rocky relationship. As Emma Lou gains more economic independence, she discovers that it isn't everything; she's still not happy. She decides to leave Alva and his son. When she returns to the Y.W.C.A. she contacts Benson, who announces that he and Gwendolyn have been dating and have decided to marry. They even invite her to the wedding. Emma Lou realizes she has spent her life running: she ran from Boise's color prejudice; she left Los Angeles for similar reasons. But she decides never to run again. She knows there are many people like her and that she has to accept herself. Influence. Thurman's novel has been widely discussed. Through Emma Lou Morgan, he expressed the idea that dark skin presented more problems for a woman than a man. The young woman struggles with people's reactions to her. In 2004 Daniel Scott III published an article noting that Thurman was interested in Harlem in the 1920s as a place for personal transformation. He was aware that people were attracted there from all over the United States, and brought expectations with them. The experience of living there opened them to new possibilities, which he expressed in his first novel. People were stimulated by meeting many new strangers, and by opportunities afforded by clubs, cabarets, concert halls, theatres and other venues. The novel's line "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" is referenced in Tupac Shakur's 1993 song Keep Ya Head Up, as well as Pharoahe Monch's 2007 song Let's Go and "Run and Tell That" from the musical Hairspray. Kendrick Lamar's 2015 song The Blacker the Berry is named after the novel.

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Hip Hop High School Hip Hop High School (2006) is a novel by American author Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It's the second in the Hoopster Trilogy. Summary. The book takes place about five years after the events in "The Hoopster". It is a story about Andre's younger sister, Theresa Anderson. Theresa begins her sophomore year at a ghetto high school. Her best friend, Cee-Saw, is constantly getting her into trouble, and due to the events of the prequel, Theresa's mother doubts Theresa's potential and expects her to fail. While in school, Theresa faces many challenges, such as her teacher, Mr. Wardin, and her friends dropping out of school due to poor grades, and family issues. During the summer, she does a report on Malcolm X that changes how she thinks about school. Theresa is then forced to make new friends, such as Devon, a tough but intelligent guy that everyone respects. A few weeks before school starts, however, Devon is attacked by a gang, which leaves Theresa to fill out all of his college applications. Characters. Theresa Anderson: the main protagonist of the story. She goes through a lot throughout her high school years Cee-Saw: Tee-Ay’s best friend who gets pregnant and drops out Sonia Rodriguez: Tee-Ay’s other best friend who’s Mexican-American Devon: another friend whom she works with on the SAT Mr. Wardin: her strict teacher

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Homeboyz (novel) Homeboyz is a 2007 young adult fiction novel written by California teacher Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It is the third and final book of the Hoopster Trilogy. The book won the Top Ten Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers award from the American Library Association in 2008. Summary. The events of "Homeboyz" takes place four to five years after the events in Hip Hop High School. The book's main character is 17-year-old Dixon Theodore Anderson, nicknamed Teddy. Teddy is a computer hacker and a very intelligent young man, and also very tough. Teddy's entire neighborhood is overrun by gangsters and his 14-year-old sister, Tina Anderson, is killed in a crossfire. While the Anderson family mourns her death, Teddy goes to his car to seek vengeance. He is unsuccessful in getting revenge and is arrested. He then spends time in a California juvenile prison waiting for a judge to hear his case. During this time, Teddy is treated as if he was a gangster. He is set free, but is put under house arrest and is enrolled in a probation program run by Officer Mariana Diaz. Teddy is forced to spend five days each week mentoring a 12-year-old kid named Micah. Teddy has difficulty tutoring Micah because he wants to be a gangster. But through Micah, Teddy is taught how to love someone and see how people can change. The killer of his little sister is found, but he is not from the 0-1-0 gang. The shooter responsible for the murder of his little sister is Mumzy B.

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Homegoing (Gyasi novel) Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below. Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations. The novel was selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. Plot. Effia's line. Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but when her mother tells her to hide her menstrual cycle, rumours spread that she is barren. As a result she married a British man, James Collins, the governor of Cape Coast Castle. He and Effia have a happy marriage. She returns to her family village one time, when her father dies, where her brother tells her that Baaba is not Effia's mother and that Effia is the daughter of an unknown slave. Effia and James have a son called Quey who is raised in the Cape Coast Castle. His parents, worrying that he is friendless, eventually have him befriend a local boy named Cudjo. When they are teenagers Quey and Cudjo realize that they are attracted to one another. In fear of their relationship James sends Quey to England for awhile. When he returns, Quey is assigned to help to strengthen the ties between his familial village, who sell slaves, and the British. He is frustrated by his uncle Fiifi, who seems evasive about trade relations. Eventually Fiifi along with Cudjo, raid the village of the Asante people and bring back the daughter of an Asante chief. Realizing that to marry her would join his people, the Fantes, with the Asantes, Quey resolves to forget Cudjo and marry the Asante girl. Quey's son, James, learns that his Asante grandfather died and returns to Asante land where he meets a farmer woman, Akosua Mensah. Growing up with his parents dysfunctional political marriage, and promised since childhood to the daughter of the Fante chief, Amma, James longs to run away and marry Akosua. With help from Effia, James runs away from Amma and lives among the Efutu people until they are raided and killed by the Asantes. He is saved by a man who recognizes him though James makes him promise to tell everyone he has died. He then travels to reunite with Akosua. James's daughter Abena only knows her father as a rural farmer called Unlucky for his inability to grow crops. By the time she is twenty-five she is still unmarried. Her childhood best friend, Ohene promises to marry her after his next successful season and the two begin an affair which coincides with the start of a famine. The village elders, discovering the affair, tell them that if Abena conceives a child or the famine lasts more than seven years Abena will be cast out. In the sixth year Ohene successfully farms cocoa plants. Rather than marry Abena he tells her that he promised to marry the daughter of the farmer who gave him the seeds. Abena, now pregnant, decides to leave her village rather than wait for Ohene to marry her. Akua grows up among white missionaries after her mother dies early in her childhood. When an Asante man proposes, she accepts and marries him and the couple have several children. Before the birth of her third child Akua begins to have nightmares about a woman on fire with burning children. Her nightmares cause her to avoid sleep and enter a trance-like state while awake, and as a result her mother-in-law locks her in the hut to prevent other village people seeing her in her strange state. At the same time war breaks out and her husband goes to war. He, returns missing one leg, in time for the birth of their son, Yaw. The nightmares continue to haunt Akua and, while sleepwalking during a trance at night, she murders her daughters by setting a fire that consumes them. Her husband is able to save Yaw and successfully prevent Akua from being burned herself by the townspeople. Yaw grows up to be a schoolteacher who is highly educated but angry about his facial burn scars. His friends encourage him to marry even though he is near the age of fifty, as his self-consciousness has kept him alone until that point. After his friends go through a difficult pregnancy he decides to take on a house girl, Esther. The two of them speak Twi together; Esther is unfazed by Yaw's anger and asks him constant questions about his way of life, and he realizes he loves her. To please Esther he goes to see his mother, now known as the Crazy Woman, for the first time in over forty years in Edweso where they reconcile, and she tells him that there is evil in their line and that she regrets causing the fire that burned him. Marjorie grows up in Alabama, which she hates, and spends summers in Ghana visiting her grandmother, who has moved from Edweso to the Gold Coast. In her mostly-white high school she struggles to fit in as the black students mock her for acting white and the white students don't want to have anything to do with her. She feels left out as although she is black, she doesn't identify with the African American stereotype that all blacks in America are lumped into. While reading in the library she meets a German born army brat, Graham, and develops a crush on him hoping he will ask her to prom. Instead his father and the school ban them from attending together and he instead goes with a white girl. She reads a poem about her Ghanaian origin and ancestors during an African American cultural day at her high school, which her father attends. Her grandmother dies shortly after, before Marjorie is able to make it back to Ghana. Esi's line. Esi is the beloved and beautiful daughter of a Big Man and his wife, Maame. Her father is a renowned and successful warrior and he eventually captures a slave who asks Esi to send a message to her father about where she is. Esi complies out of pity as her mother was formerly enslaved. As a result her village is raided and her father and mother are killed. Before she leaves Esi learns that her mother had a child before her, while she was enslaved. She is then captured and imprisoned in the dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle where she is raped by a drunk British officer before being sent to America. Esi's daughter, Ness, is raised in America. Her mother teaches her some Twi but she and her mother are eventually beaten for it and separated. In her new, more lenient plantation, Ness is forbidden from becoming a house slave because of the deep scars on her back. Before arriving at the plantation Ness was forcibly married by her master to Sam, a Yoruba man and fellow slave on the same plantation. Although he spoke no English, they eventually came to love one another and have a child, whom she named Kojo. After a woman heard her speaking Twi, Ness was offered the opportunity to escape north. Ness, the woman, Sam, and Kojo escaped but in an effort to protect her son, she and her husband allowed themselves to be caught and then claimed their child died, allowing the woman to escape with Kojo. Ness was severely whipped, causing her brutal scars, and forced to watch as Sam's head was hanged. Kojo is raised in Baltimore where he goes by the name Jo Freeman and marries a freeborn black woman Anna. Kojo works on the ships in the Baltimore Harbor while Anna cleans for a white family, and the entire family lives with Ma, the woman who helped Kojo escape when he was a baby. When Anna is pregnant with their eighth child, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is passed. Jo is warned that he should go further North but he decides to stay. The white family Anna works for helps Kojo and Ma forge papers saying they were born free, but Kojo still worries he or his family will be kidnapped. His oldest daughter marries the pastor's son, and soon after Anna disappears while pregnant. Kojo looks for her for weeks but is unable to find her, only hearing that a white man asked her to enter a carriage with him at the last sighting. The kidnapping destroys Jo's family. H, the last son born to Anna and Kojo, is freed during the Reconstruction era, and has never known his parents, with Anna dying shortly after childbirth. Sometime after, as an adult man, he is arrested and wrongly accused of assaulting a white woman. Unable to pay the ten dollar fine he is sentenced to work in a coal mine for ten years. One day a white convict is assigned as his partner and he is unable to shovel any coal, so H shovels the twelve-ton daily quota for the both of them with two hands simultaneously, earning him the nickname "Two-Shovel H". When H is released from his sentence he settles in Pratt City in Birmingham, Alabama, made up of other convicts both black and white, and works in the coal mine as a free agent. Unable to read or write, he asks his friend's son Joecy to write a letter to his ex-girlfriend Ethe, whom he cheated on shortly before being arrested. She eventually comes to join him. Willie marries Robert, her childhood sweetheart who is light-skinned with light eyes, and they have a son named Carson. After her parents die Robert suggests they move away and Willie asks that they go to Harlem as she wants to start a career as a singer. As they look for work Willie realizes that her dark skin will prevent her from being a professional singer while Robert is able to pass for white. The two grow farther apart as Robert finds a job in white Manhattan while Willie cleans bars in Harlem. They begin keeping secrets from one another, and Robert returns home less and less. One night, Willie sees Robert vomiting in the men's bathroom during her job at a bar, and Robert's white co-workers find out their relationship. One of the co-workers have the two of them touch each other and he sexually pleasures himself, and then fires Robert. That night, Robert leaves her. Willie eventually begins a new relationship with Eli and has a daughter, Josephine. One day, when Carson is ten, Willie sees Robert in Manhattan with a white wife and their white child. The two make eye contact, but both continue walking in their own direction. Carson, who as an adult goes by the name Sonny, tries to find meaning in marching for civil rights and working for the NAACP but instead becomes demoralized by his work. Like his own father he becomes an absentee parent to three children by three different women, often dodging their requests for alimony. He meets a young singer named Amani and after she introduces him to drugs he becomes addicted to heroin as well. He spends all of his money on drugs and realizes he never loved Amani, but only wanted her. When Willie finally reveals details about his father and offers him a choice between her money or getting clean he chooses to stay with his mother and get clean. Sonny and Amani's son Marcus goes on to become an academic at Stanford University. At a party near campus, he meets Marjorie, also a graduate student at Stanford, and the two form an intimate bond. The two of them go to Pratt City so Marcus can research his African American history thesis, and Marcus realizes there is nothing there for him; Marjorie's parents have also both passed away. Marjorie suggests that they go to Ghana and while they are there visiting the villages of Marjorie's grandmother, they go to the Cape Coast Castle which Marjorie has never visited. While seeing the "Door of No Return" in the slave dungeon, Marcus has a panic attack and flees through the door to the beach. He and Marjorie swim in the water where she gives him Effia's stone, which has been passed to her through the generations, and which unbeknownst to both of them, was given to Effia by their mutual ancestor, Maame. Esi's stone remains unrecovered, buried in the dungeons of the Castle. Major themes. The novel touches on several notable historical events, from the introduction of cacao as a crop in Ghana and the Anglo-Asante wars in Ghana to slavery and segregation in America. Because of the novel's scope, which covers several hundred years of history and fourteen characters, it has been described as "a novel in short stories" where "each chapter is forced to stand on its own." Development history. In the summer of 2009, following her sophomore year at Stanford University, Gyasi took a trip to Ghana sponsored by a research grant. Although Gyasi was born in Ghana, she moved to the United States as an infant, and this was her first trip back. On a friend's prompting, they visited the Cape Coast Castle, where she found her inspiration in the contrast between the luxurious upper levels (for colonists and their local families) and the misery of the dungeons below, where slaves were kept. She relates: "I just found it really interesting to think about how there were people walking around upstairs who were unaware of what was to become of the people living downstairs." Gyasi says the family tree came first, and each chapter, which follows one descendant, is tied to a significant historical event, although she described the research as "wide but shallow." "The Door of No Return" by British historian William St Clair helped to form the descriptions of life in and around the Castle in the first few chapters. One of the final chapters, entitled "Marjorie", is inspired by Gyasi's experiences as part of an immigrant family living in Alabama. Reception. Before the official publication in June 2016, "Time"'s Sarah Begley called it "one of the summer’s most-anticipated novels". Critics have reviewed Gyasi's first novel with almost universally high acclaim. "The New York Times Book Review" listed it as an Editor's Choice, writing, "This wonderful debut by a Ghanaian-American novelist follows the shifting fortunes of the progeny of two half-sisters, unknown to each other, in West Africa and America." Jennifer Maloney of "The Wall Street Journal" noted the author received an advance of more than US$1,000,000 and praised the plot as "flecked with magic, evoking folk tales passed down from parent to child", also noting the novel has "structural and thematic similarities to Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 book, "Roots"". Christian Lorentzen of "New York Magazine" said, "Each chapter is tightly plotted, and there are suspenseful, even spectacular climaxes." Anita Felicelli of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said that Gyasi is "a young writer whose stellar instincts, sturdy craftsmanship and penetrating wisdom seem likely to continue apace — much to our good fortune as readers". Isabel Wilkerson of "The New York Times" described her as "a stirringly gifted young writer""." Wilkerson also commented on the difference between the lyrical language of the West African passages and the "coarser language and surface descriptions of life in America". Wilkerson expressed some disappointment: "It is dispiriting to encounter such a worn-out cliché — that African-Americans are hostile to reading and education — in a work of such beauty." Steph Cha, writing for the "Los Angeles Times", notes "the characters are, by necessity, representatives for entire eras of African and black American history [which] means some of them embody a few shortcuts" in advancing the narrative and themes, but overall, "the sum of "Homegoing"'s parts is remarkable, a panoramic portrait of the slave trade and its reverberations." Laura Miller, writing for "The New Yorker", said that while parts of "Homegoing" show "the unmistakable touch of a gifted writer, [the novel] is a specimen of what such a writer can do when she bites off more than she is ready to chew," noting the "form [of the novel] would daunt a far more practiced novelist" as the form, composed of short stories linked by ancestors and descendants, "[isn't] the ideal way to deliver the amount of exposition that historical fiction requires." Maureen Corrigan, reviewing for National Public Radio noted the plot was "pretty formulaic" and it "would have been a stronger novel if it had ended sooner," but "the feel of her novel is mostly sophisticated," and she concluded that "so many moments earlier on in this strong debut novel linger." Michiko Kakutani noted in her "New York Times" review the novel "often feels deliberate and earthbound: The reader is aware, especially in the American chapters, that significant historical events and issues ... have been shoehorned into the narrative, and that characters have been made to trudge through experiences ... meant, in some way, to be representative," but it also "makes us experience the horrors of slavery on an intimate, personal level; by its conclusion, the characters' tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight." Other reviewers were not as critical of the novel's structure. Jean Zimmerman, also writing for National Public Radio, praised the novel as "a remarkable achievement," saying the "narrative [...] is earnest, well-crafted yet not overly self-conscious, marvelous without being precious." Leilani Clark at KQED Arts wrote: "Until every American embarks on a major soul-searching about the venal, sordid racial history of the United States, and their own position in relation to it, the bloodshed, tears, and anger will keep on. Let "Homegoing" be an inspiration to begin that process." In 2019, the book was listed in 'Paste' as the third-greatest novel of the 2010s. On November 5, 2019, the "BBC News" listed "Homegoing" on its list of the 100 most influential novels. Awards and nominations. Ta-Nehisi Coates selected "Homegoing" for the National Book Foundation's 2016 "5 under 35" award, announced in September 2016. "Homegoing" was shortlisted for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, which eventually went to "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" by Kia Corthron. The novel was subsequently awarded the John Leonard Award for publishing year 2016 by the National Book Critics Circle for outstanding debut novel in January 2017. In February 2017, Swansea University announced "Homegoing" had made the longlist for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize for the best published literary work in the English language written by an author aged 39 or younger. The novel was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction in 2017, a nominee for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a nominee for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2018.

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Leaving Atlanta Leaving Atlanta is the first novel by the American author Tayari Jones. The book was published by Warner Books in 2002. Jones's experiences through the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981 largely inspired the book. During the time of the murders, Jones attended Oglethorpe Elementary School, which is located in Athens, Georgia. The book focuses on the lives and experiences of three fictional fifth graders at Oglethorpe Elementary: Tasha Baxter", Rodney" "Green," and Octavia Fuller"." The book is dedicated to "twenty-nine and more," of the children who were kidnapped and killed before, during, and after the Atlanta Child Murders. Background. "Leaving Atlanta" focuses on three fictional students at Oglethorpe Elementary School: Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Fuller. Jones chose to use children's perspectives for her novel, "to make a record of how life was for those of us who were too young to understand the complicated social and political landscape of Atlanta, the 'city too busy to hate.'” "Leaving Atlanta" explores the interconnectedness of age, race, class, and politics in the proclaimed ‘Black Mecca’ during the Atlanta Child Murders. In her "Author's Note," Jones mentions she made some alterations to the historic chronology of the Atlanta Child Murders to suit the novel. Author. When the Child Murders began, Jones was nine years old, attending Oglethorpe Elementary School. She writes in the "Reader's Guide" for the book, "but the time had come for someone of my generation, to tell the tale from the vantage point of the playground. This novel is a memorial to twenty-nine (or more) who did not survive and it the testimony of the thousands who will never forget." While Jones is from Atlanta, writing about Atlanta is not intentional. Jones has noted that she writes what she knows, which is her hometown of Atlanta and the people in it. This has led her contemporaries to consider her a Southern writer, a label that she does not reject but recognizes it as one part of who she is as a writer. Point of view. Each part of the novel is written from a different narrative point of view. “Part One: Magic Words” is written in the third-person through LaTasha Baxter’s perspective; “Part Two: The Opposite Direction of Home” is written in the second-person through Rodney Green’s perspective; and “Part Three: Sweet Pea” is written in the first-person through Octavia Fuller’s perspective. Because the story is told through the perspective of children it focuses on the experience of humanity instead of humanity fighting against oppressive forces. The innocence of children is taken into perspective, and the reader sees the world through the eyes of pure-hearted children. Synopsis. Part One: Magic Words. LaTasha Baxter returns to school after summer vacation, having practiced jacks and jump rope, as she tries to fit into the social structure of her fifth grade classroom. At the same time, she is dealing with her parents' separation, and the reality that children are going missing and turning up dead. In the novel, the murders are initially introduced when nine photos of children are shown while Tasha Baxter and her family watch the news, which Monica Kaufman, the first black woman to anchor the Atlanta evening news, delivers. One night Tasha goes to the roller rink with her best friend. At the roller rink, she runs into her crush, Jashante. He buys her M&Ms and gives her a pine scented air freshener, which he usually sells for cash. When Jashante disappears, Tasha blames herself for his disappearance and subsequent death, since she cursed him after he pushed her on the playground, ripping the pink coat her father gave her. At the end of part one, Tasha gives her little sister, DeShaun, Jashante's air freshener, telling DeShaun it is a protective charm. In Part One, Octavia Fuller and Rodney Green are introduced as the social outcasts of Tasha's fifth grade classroom. Tasha briefly befriends Octavia but ultimately does not pursue their friendship because Tasha is afraid of becoming a social outcast through association with Octavia, who many of their classmates bully because of her dark skin. Part Two: The Opposite Direction of Home. Rodney Green, a fifth grader at Oglethorpe Elementary, is introduced with a scene highlighting Rodney's fear of his father. Throughout Part Two, Rodney and Octavia begin to develop a friendship, in part as a result of both being ignored or made fun of by the rest of their classmates. This section also shows Rodney's habit of stealing candy from a local gas station, which he shares with his little sister and Octavia. However, Rodney has a good relationship with Mrs. Lewis, the gas station owner. Mrs. Lewis is a parental figure for Rodney. Because of the events of Part One, Rodney's class receives a visit from a police officer named Officer Brown, to speak about "personal safety". Rodney expresses that, because of the visit, he's more nervous about the murders because Officer Brown is the only protection they have against being attacked and murdered. At the end of the visit, Officer Brown shows the class a genuine police badge, stating that a person pretending to be an officer will not have one, specifying that only genuine officers' badges have raised lettering. One day, Rodney gets caught stealing candy from Mrs. Lewis after trying to help his classmate Leon, and she tells him to be careful of who he hangs around with. The section ends with Rodney running away after his father beats him in front of his classmates for stealing candy. As he is running away, a man in a blue sedan stops him and claims to be a police officer. The police badge he shows to Rodney is an obvious fake because of its shape and smooth surface. Although Rodney states that he knows the man is not a real police officer, Rodney gets into the van anyway because he wants to go in the opposite direction of home and away from his abusive father. Part Three: Sweet Pea. Part Three of "Leaving Atlanta" focuses on Octavia Fuller, who is called Sweet Pea by her loved ones. In this section of the novel, Octavia deals with the grief of Rodney's kidnapping and assumed death. Octavia also deals with the guilt of feeling like it is her fault that her Uncle Kevin was kicked out of their house. Octavia's intentions were to "save" her uncle from the doctor turning away medical treatment, after her mother told her needles found on the ground and being picked up will result in a doctor refusing to help. Octavia innocently informs her mother that her uncle had needles in bag while he was living with them. Octavia is also trying to navigate her relationship with her mother. While walking to school one day, Octavia and her neighbors come across a Guardian Angel from New York that was acting as a neighborhood watch — guarding the children in the neighborhood. On their way to school, Delvis, Octavia's friend and neighbor asks the Guardian Angel, “They don’t have no black Angels in New York that they could have sent down here?” Octavia says, “Delvis, them Angels alright. When I saw them on the news they were with Miss Camille Bell. They work the evenings with the Bat Patrollers.” Ultimately, Octavia's mother sends her to away from Atlanta to live with her father, who works for a university, in South Carolina, step mother, and step baby sister. Octavia's mother, Yvonne, wants her daughter to have better life opportunities than she feels she can provide her daughter. Further, Yvonne wants Octavia to avoid the kidnappings and child murders happening in Atlanta, especially after Octavia gave scared her mother by deliberately going to a park close to home one day while her mother was at work. Octavia knew not to leave her house when her mother was working considering all the child disappearances that were occurring. Publishing history. "Leaving Atlanta" was first published by Warner Publishing on August 1, 2002. When Time Warner Book Group was sold to Hachette Book Group in 2006 the company became Grand Central Publishing under Hachette Book Group, which "Leaving Atlanta" is now published under. Genre. The publisher, Grand Central Publishing, describes "Leaving Atlanta" as fiction and coming-of-age. As the book was inspired by and focuses on the Atlanta child murders of 1979 - 1981, the novel is also historical fiction. Movie. In 2007, Aletha Spann of 30Nineteen Productions sought to renew the film rights for the novel. The film rights for the novel were officially bought by Spann in 2011. However, there is no known movie currently in production. Atlanta's racial history. Maurice J. Hobson analyzes the rise of the 'Black Mecca' and explores the reasoning behind the Atlanta Child Murders. In his analysis, Hobson discusses the racial disparity between white and black elites and the poor and working-class black communities. During the 1960s Atlanta's black population grew exponentially, landing Maynard Jackson the role of Atlanta's first Black Mayor. The first black Mayor excited black Atlantan's because they were ready to see a change in the black communities; however, this wasn't the case. Maynard Jackson becoming Mayor enlarged the pockets of white and black elites, leaving the poor and working-class black communities worse. The 'city too busy to hate' projected an image of equality and opportunity; unfortunately, this came at the cost of the most vulnerable people in society. The Atlanta Child Murders lasted from 1979 to 1982. Furthermore, the 'Black Mecca' exceeded expectations educationally, economically, and politically while simultaneously experiencing atrocities such as the Atlanta Child Murders. Analysis. Eric Gary Anderson, an English professor, analyzes "Leaving Atlanta" from an ecosocial perspective of the child murders. Anderson's analysis asserts that "Leaving Atlanta" is as much a story about the murders as it is about how Atlanta was a ripe ground for the murders. Comparing the factual locations of the victims bodies to how Jones uses landscape and aspects of the physical environment to evoke specific reactions to what the characters are experiencing, Anderson argues that the environment itself feels diseased with the complex social and political issues that were in Atlanta at the time. Jones creates this picture with specific scenes relating to the environment: Rodney breathing in the fumes of the car belonging to his kidnapper, Octavia breathing in her mother's perfume as she prepares to leave Atlanta, and the increasingly empty playground as both Jashante and Rodney go missing. Melanie Benson Taylor addresses the diasporic effect of the specific brand of racially motivated murder: leaving via death or leaving to escape death in the case of Octavia. Jones and Toni Cade Bambara through "Those Bones are Not My Child", create a fictional picture of the very real diaspora post and pre Child Murders. James Baldwin also explores this in his essay, "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". In GerShun Avilez’s analysis of "Leaving Atlanta", he highlights the premonition of doom that Rodney encounters domestically. Avilez analyzes Rodney and his family dynamics by delving into the terrors birthed from his abusive father. The narrative broadens how the lack of intimacy and warmth in Rodney’s family develops his fears and coerces him into succumbing to parental terror. Rodney’s fear of the ongoing abductions and murders in the city gets blurred by the constant thought that his father will kill him before the murderer ever reaches him. Avilez’s analysis explains that Rodney’s internalized fear of his father is why he chooses to get into the car of the fake police officer. Since his biggest threat was living in his house, Rodney chooses the possibility of getting murdered by being with the fake police officer and heading in the opposite direction of home. In Trudier Harris' analysis of "Leaving Atlanta", it is brought to attention how the novel’s point of view shifts in alignment with the personality of the chapter's respective child: LaTasha, Rodney, and Octavia. Readers are introduced to the narrative through Tasha’s section, by a traditional third person limited point of view. The third person limited point of view is representative of her comforting nuclear family dynamic and represents a well protected child during the period of the Atlanta Child Murders. The second chapter introduces Rodney’s section through a second person point of view which produces a distanced narration. His narrative is enhanced using second person narration and distances the reader in the same way Rodney distances himself from his own life, particularly his father (out of fear) and grade school tribulations. Lastly, we are introduced to Octavia, a child with a single mother, who narrates her own story in a first person point of view which emphasizes her independence, maturity, and sensitivity. These point of views are broken down as the chapters go on and present how a child's vulnerability changes with their familial structures and home life, especially within the context of the Atlanta Child Murders. Reception. "Leaving Atlanta" has received several awards and accolades including being chosen in 2013 by Brazos Valley Reads, an organization lead by Texas A&M University’s Department of English. The program provided Jones an opportunity to travel to College Station for a public reading and attend other literary events. After "Leaving Atlanta" was initially released, Bookpage acknowledged, as one of the best twenty-five debut novels of the decade in 2002. The Hurston/Wright Foundation also awarded the novel its award for Debut Fiction. Local to the events, "Leaving Atlanta" was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine and the “"Best Southern Novel of the Year" by Creative Loafing Atlanta. Reviews. Jane Dystel, describes the novel as a “strongly grounded tale” that “hums with the rhythms of schoolyard life” in her 2002 Publishers Weekly review. In 2002, Kirkus Reviews described the novel as “technically ambitious, but not a story otherwise out of the ordinary. Leslie Marmon Silko called the book, "[a] wonderful novel," adding: "I look forward to reading Jones's work for years to come." In a 2002 Book Page review Arlene McKanic accounts for Jones' writing by saying "but this powerful new novel isn’t what you might think. To her credit, Jones doesn’t present us with the point of view of the murderer," "What’s more remarkable is that she presents the voices of these children with rare precision." McKanic further goes on to say "The book’s ending is one of the most quietly devastating this reviewer has ever read. Leaving Atlanta, which deals with the effects of serial murder, is simply brilliant a gentle and beautiful book on a horrific subject. "

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A Gathering of Old Men A Gathering of Old Men is a novel by Ernest J. Gaines published in 1983. Set on a 1970s Louisiana cane farm, the novel addresses racial discrimination and a bond that cannot be usurped. Plot summary. One afternoon, Candy Marshall, a white plantation owner, discovers that a white Cajun farmer, Beau Boutan, has been shot in the yard of a black man named Mathu. She enlists the help of seventeen other old black men by having them come to Mathu's yard, each with a shotgun and one empty number 5 shell. She and the men all claim to be responsible for the murder in an effort to protect the guilty party. Meanwhile, Sheriff Mapes arrives to the scene to arrest the real murderer, most likely Mathu (as he was the only black man who stood up against racism and the Boutans, and is capable of shooting a shotgun). The sheriff also wishes to keep Beau's father, Fix Boutan, from coming to lynch Mathu, who he presumes killed Beau. Meanwhile, Fix's son Gil, who happens to be a standout football player at LSU, arrives at his house to try to convince Fix not to go to Marshall to seek revenge. Film adaptation. In 1987 Volker Schlöndorff, a famous German director, made a film, also titled "A Gathering of Old Men" (aka "Murder on the Bayou"), which adheres closely to the novel. It stars Richard Widmark (as Sheriff Mapes), Louis Gossett Jr. (as Mathu), Holly Hunter (as Candy), Joe Seneca (as Clatoo), and Will Patton (as Lou Dimes).

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The Vanishing Half The Vanishing Half is a historical fiction novel by American author Brit Bennett. It is her second novel and was published by Riverhead Books in 2020. It debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list. HBO acquired the rights to develop a limited series with Bennett as executive producer. "The Vanishing Half" garnered acclaim from book critics, and was found by Emily Temple of Literary Hub to be the 2020 book most frequently listed among the year's best, making 25 lists. Synopsis. The novel is a multi-generational family saga set between the 1940s to the 1990s and centers on identical twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes. The two light-skinned black sisters were raised in Mallard, Louisiana, and witness the lynching of their father in the 1940s. In 1954, at the age of 16, the twins run away to New Orleans. However, Stella disappears shortly thereafter. In 1968, Desiree leaves an abusive marriage in Washington, D.C. and returns to Mallard with her eight-year-old dark-skinned daughter, Jude. Jude grows older and moves to Los Angeles through a track scholarship at University of California, Los Angeles. While working part time as a caterer in Beverly Hills, Jude sees a woman who appears to be her mother's doppelgänger. The woman is actually Stella, who has been passing as white. The novel has a nonlinear narrative structure. Reception. The novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list. As of the week ending February 20, 2021, the novel has spent 38 weeks on the list. At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "Rave" rating based on 38 reviews, with only one "mixed" review. "Publishers Weekly" wrote, "Bennett renders her characters and their struggles with great compassion, and explores the complicated state of mind that Stella finds herself in while passing as white." In its starred review, "Kirkus Reviews" wrote, "The scene in which Stella adopts her white persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion." "The Washington Post" called "The Vanishing Half" a "fierce examination of contemporary passing and the price so many pay for a new identity". "The New York Times" wrote, "Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterisation with the historical and social realities of her subject matter." It was selected for the "New York Times Book Review"s "10 Best Books of 2020" list. Television adaptation. Within a month of publication it was reported that HBO had acquired the rights for "low seven-figures" to develop a limited series with Brit Bennett as executive producer.

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Queen Sugar (novel) Queen Sugar is the debut novel of American writer Natalie Baszile, published by Penguin in 2014. Set in contemporary Louisiana, it tells the story of Charley Bordelon, a young African-American widow from Los Angeles, California, who moves to a rural town to manage a sugarcane farm she had unexpectedly inherited there from her father. Plot. Charley Bordelon is a young mother in Los Angeles, California, who has recently been widowed. After the death of her father, she learns that rather than inheriting his local rental properties, she has inherited a sugarcane farm in St. Joseph, Louisiana, where he was born and raised. Against her mother's wishes, Charley moves to St. Joseph, taking her 11-year-old daughter, Micah, with her and moving in with her paternal grandmother, Miss Honey. Shortly after arriving, Charley learns that her property manager has been neglecting the farm and is about to quit to work an oil rig. She is hard pressed to find another property manager so late in the season but Prosper Denton, a retired farmer recommended by Miss Honey, reluctantly agrees to come out of retirement to help her. Charley's estranged older half-brother Ralph Angel, a former drug addict and the child of their father's relationship with his high school sweetheart in St. Joseph, returns to town with his son, Blue. Angel is deeply embittered that his father left him nothing, and he also resents Charley for having been raised by a man who essentially abandoned him. Charley struggles to keep the farm going, quickly realizing that it takes more money than was earmarked for maintenance. She believes that wealthy white farmers in the area, such as Jacques Landry and Samuel T. Baron, are conspiring against her and ready to take over the land if she fails. She learns from Miss Honey that her father once worked as a cane cutter on the farm she now owns. In the days of segregation and Jim Crow, he was beaten by an overseer for drinking from a water pail first instead of giving way to the white workers. She renews her determination to keep the farm running, as a way of continuing her father's struggle. She and Denton hire a retired white farmer, Alison Delcambre, to help manage the farm. They recover from a hurricane that flattens the crops. Charley refuses to hire Angel. He finds low-paying menial labor in the rural community and slides back to drug abuse. Charley meets a white farmer, Remy Newell, a divorcé who seems attracted to her. Their courtship is short lived after Remy makes insensitive racial comments. But after some encouragement from her aunt Violet, Charley decides to give Remy another chance. He asks his goddaughter, elected as Queen Sugar for the annual festival, to invite her daughter Micah to be an honorary member of her court and ride on the parade float with her, and the young girl is thrilled. Miss Honey forces Charley to give Angel a job. He is resentful of the menial assignment and later tells Charley she should be ashamed of dating a white man. Charley fires him. To get revenge Angel steals the money Miss Honey keeps in her house and a statue. Charley's father had given her "The Cane Cutter", and she planned to sell it at auction to raise money to complete the cane harvest. On Micah's birthday, Charley discovers "The Cane Cutter" is gone, and believes that she faces financial ruin. The rest of the family immediately thinks that Angel stole the statue but Miss Honey denies it; nonetheless, she refuses to let anyone call the police. A few days later Angel returns and confesses he stole the piece. During an altercation with his cousin, John, a correctional officer, Angel shoots and wound him. He is soon caught by police who, seeing his gun, fatally shoot him. Charley is devastated by the loss of the artwork and the death of her brother. Preparing to meet with Landy and Baron to accept their offer for her farm, she happens to tell Hollywood, a former friend of Angel, her predicament. He offers to give her the $50,000 she needs to complete harvesting. He has saved a small fortune through mowing lawns for $5 an hour. Charley completes the harvest and prepares for the following season. She and Remy continue their relationship, and she starts the process of adopting her nephew Blue. She learns that Angel never sold "The Cane Cutter", and kept it in his trunk. After the statue is returned to Charley, she promises it to Blue when he grows up. Reception. "Queen Sugar" received mostly positive reviews. Critics praised its characters, conflict, use of its setting, and prose style, while some criticized its pacing. The novel was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's best books of 2014. Adaptation. In 2014, the Oprah television network OWN negotiated a deal for the rights to adapt the book as a television series. It was created, directed, and executive produced by Ava DuVernay. Oprah Winfrey served as an executive producer. The series airs on Oprah Winfrey Network and premiered on September 6, 2016. It was still running in 2021. Biography. Baszile attended local schools. She initially studied finance and economics in college, as her father wanted her to go into his family business. She felt she most came alive in her English classes. She started working with her father in his business after college, but also continued her writing. Baszile eventually changed fields and graduated from UCLA with an M.A. in Afro-American Studies and a MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She started writing what became "Queen Sugar" inn the 1990s, exploring an African-American-themed tale of endurance and hope in the American South. She worked on the text for ten years. She sent her manuscript to publishers in 2009 but without any success. After revising the book for two years, she resubmitted the text, and one agent agreed to represent her. Baszile attended a women writer's retreat in Hedgebrook. Her friend and novelist Sarah Manyika, who also attended, suggested that Baszile read part of a chapter from "Queen Sugar" to the group. Attendee Leigh Haber, book editor for "O, The Oprah Magazine", loved the novel and passed it to people at Harpo for their review. A few months after that, Harpo called Baszile to say they wanted to option the book for a project.

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Salvage the Bones Salvage the Bones is a novel by American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Bloomsbury in 2011. The novel explores the plight of a working-class African-American family in Mississippi as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina and follows them through the aftermath of the storm. Ward, who had lived through Katrina, wrote the novel, after being very "dissatisifed with the way Katrina had receded from public consciousness". The novel was the 2011 recipient of the National Book Award for Fiction. In an interview with the "Paris Review", Ward said she drew inspiration from "Medea" and the works of William Faulkner. Plot summary. The novel follows a working-class African-American family living in southern Mississippi in 2005. The family consists of Daddy, his daughter Esch (the narrator), and his sons Randall, Skeetah, and Junior. The mother died while giving birth to Junior. Skeetah has a close relationship with his dog China, who gives birth to a litter of puppies at the beginning of the novel. Esch finds out she is pregnant by Manny, a friend of the family's who is dating another girl. Skeetah and Manny have an altercation at one of Randall's basketball games, and they agree to resolve it with a dog fight. China prevails over Manny's cousin's dog after a vicious fight. Soon afterwards, Hurricane Katrina hits. The family is forced into the attic and eventually onto the roof as water begins to flood the house. As the water continues to rise, they make a desperate bid to swim to another house on a hill, but in the maelstrom China and her puppies are lost. After the end of the storm, the entire town has been leveled, Manny refuses to take responsibility for Esch's baby, and Skeetah still holds out hope that he will find China. Reception. As a winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, the novel received a largely positive reception. The "LA Times" described it as an "under-the-radar" second novel, which deserves the award. The reviewer described the book as a successful depiction of Southern life and culture and "an intense book, with powerful, direct prose that dips into poetic metaphor." Similarly the "New York Times Sunday Book Review" called the novel "a taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written." "The Washington Post" wrote that "it’ll be a long time before its magic wears off" and that the novel has the "aura of a classic about it."

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Iola Leroy Iola Leroy, "or Shadows Uplifted", an 1892 novel by Frances E. W. Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century writing about women, it also deals with serious social issues of education for women, passing, miscegenation, abolition, reconstruction, temperance, and social responsibility. Characters. Iola Leroy and family. Iola Leroy, the principal character of the novel. Harriet Johnson, Iola Leroy's grandmother. While a slave of Nancy Johnson, she resists a whipping. As a punishment, she is sold. Robert Johnson. He is still a child when separated from his mother Harriet. His enslaver, Nancy Johnson, sees him as a "pet animal" and teaches him to read. As a young man, he becomes the leader of a group of slaves who decide to seek refuge with the Union army during the Civil War. He enlists in a colored regiment and is promoted to lieutenant. On account of his white skin, his superiors council him to change to a white regiment for better chances of promotion, but he refuses. After the war, he successfully runs a hardware store. Marie Leroy, Iola's mother. A small child when brutally separated from her mother Harriet Johnson, she finally becomes the slave of wealthy Eugene Leroy. When Eugene becomes seriously ill, she nurses him back to health. He sets her free, has her educated and marries her in a secret ceremony. Although she is so white that "no one would suspect that she has one drop of negro blood in her veins", the marriage results in the Leroy family becoming social outcasts. Harry Leroy, Iola's brother. Like Iola, he is educated in a North. The African ancestry of their mother is concealed from the children, and they are not allowed to pass their vacations at home, spending that time instead together with the parents in a northern holiday resort. When he learns that his father has died and his mother and sister are enslaved, he becomes seriously ill from the shock. When he recovers, the Civil War has begun and he decides to enlist in a colored regiment, making the recruiting officer wonder why a white man should want to do that. Dr. Frank Latimer, the man who Iola finally marries. He was born into slavery as the son of an enslaved mother of predominantly European ancestry and a white man. After emancipation, his mother invested her hard earnings to pay for his studies. He graduated as a medical doctor and afterwards met his white grandmother, the rich mother of his deceased father, who offered to "adopt him as her heir, if he would ignore his identity with the colored race". Although no trace of his African ancestry was visible in his appearance, he declined the offer. Lucille Delany, a black woman with apparently no European ancestry, the founder of a school for "future wives and mothers", and the woman who Harry finally marries. Other black characters. Tom Anderson, friend of Robert Johnson. He seeks refuge with the Union army together with Johnson, causes the commander to set Iola free, joins the army and dies in Iola's care from wounds he received while knowingly sacrificing himself in order to save his comrades. Aunt Linda, enslaved cook of Nancy Johnson who has a special liking for Robert. She is illiterate and speaks in black dialect, yet she is among the black female characters of the novel who are intelligent, loyal to each other and of central importance to their community. Uncle Daniel, elder friend of Robert Johnson. When Robert and his group seek refuge with the Union army, he stays behind because he doesn't want to break his promise to his absent master. White characters. Dr. Gresham, military physician. He falls in love with Iola while he still thinks that she is white. When informed that she is "colored", his love helps him to overcome his prejudice, and he proposes to Iola at two different points of the story. When rejected for the second time, "sympathy, love, and admiration were blended in the parting look he gave her". Dr. Latrobe, physician from the South. He is mentioned only in chapters 26, "Open Questions", and 28, "Dr. Latrobe's Mistake". In a discussion, he voices the view of southern white supremacists. Plot summary. In a North Carolina town which is only identified as "C—", a group of slaves led by Robert Johnson seek refuge with the Union army that is approaching in the course of the Civil War. Robert's friend Tom Anderson then informs the Union commander of a beautiful young woman held as slave in the neighborhood who is subsequently set free by the commander. In a retrospective, the narrative turns to the story of that woman, Iola Leroy. Her father, Eugene Leroy, was a wealthy slaveholder, who had survived a serious illness through the care of a young slave, Marie. He set Marie free, married her and had three children, whose African ancestry was not visible in their outward appearance. The elder children, Ioala and Harry, were educated in the North and their African ancestry (called "negro blood" in the book) was hidden from them. When Eugene suddenly died of yellow fever, his cousin, Alfred Lorraine, had a judge declare Marie's manumission illegal. Hence, Marie and her children were legally considered slaves and the heritage fell to Lorraine and other distant relatives. Lorraine sent his agent to the northern seminary where Iola was preparing for her graduation and defending the institution of slavery in discussions with her fellow students. Deceitfully being told that her father was dying, Iola followed the agent to her home, where she learned that she was a slave and was sold away from her mother. The narrative then returns to the events following Iola's rescue by the Union army: Robert Johnson and Tom Anderson join the army "to strike a blow for freedom", while Iola becomes a nurse in a military hospital. When Robert is entrusted to her care after being wounded, they tell each other their stories which indicate that Robert is the brother of Iola's mother. After the war, they return to "C—" to search for Robert's mother, who they recognize when she tells her story during a prayer meeting. The family is reunited when they locate Harry who had been fighting in the Union army and met with his and Iola's mother during the war. Themes. Much space is given to discussions in which the characters talk about themes such as temperance, religion, the position of women in society, alleged white superiority, racism and lynchings, and the color line. Temperance: The damaging effects of alcohol are often discussed in the book. For example, after the war the black characters tell each other of two former masters who took to drink and ended up in the "pore-house" (chapters 18, 19). After Robert Johnson has found his long-lost mother, Aunt Linda pours three glasses of her home-made wine so they can celebrate the event. Robert refuses the wine stating, "I'm a temperance man", causing the conversion of Aunt Linda to the temperance idea. Religion: Prayer plays an important role in the life of the black characters: Iola and Robert discover the first clue of their kinship when Iola sings a special hymn at the bedside of the wounded Robert, which he has learned from his mother (chapter 16). Both find Harriet, their lost grandmother and mother, during a prayer meeting (chapter 20). When Iola's brother Harry learns that his mother and sister have been reduced to slavery, he asks how such a thing is possible in a "Christian country". The principal of his school gives the answer: "Christian in name" (chapter 14). After the war and the abolition of slavery, in a discussion with her uncle Robert and Dr. Gresham, Iola states that a "fuller comprehension of the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and their application to our national life" is the only "remedy by which our nation can recover from the evil entailed upon her by slavery", to which both Robert and Gresham agree (chapter 25). In the course of their discussions, the characters also mention Islam. The black pastor, "Rev. Carmicle", speaks of the "imperfect creed" of "Mohammedanism". In another discussion, "Prof. Gradnor", a black professor from North Carolina, sees Islamic countries as "civilized" and compares them favorably to the southern United States, referring to lynchings and stating, "I know of no civilized country on the globe, Catholic, Protestant, or Mohammedan, where life is less secure than it is in the South". Women in society: The female characters who exert strong influence on the men in their roles as "moral forces owe something to Stowe and the cult of true womanhood", but they are neither "patterned after the white model" nor are they silent or submissive. On the contrary, "Harper shows the necessity for women's voice". In a "conversazione" among educated blacks, Iola and Lucille, the only female participants "dominate the discussions. ... Their outspoken, sometimes feminist remarks are readily accepted by the men". After Iola and her uncle Robert have moved to the North, Iola tells her uncle that she wants to apply for a job as saleswoman. Robert earns enough so that she doesn't have "to go out to work", but she tells him, Alleged white superiority: In chapter 17, Iola is teaching black children, when a "gentleman" asks to address the class. He talks about the "achievements of the white race" and then asks "how they did it." Positive view of black history: In chapter 30, Lucille Delany says, "Instead of forgetting the past, I would have [our people] hold in everlasting remembrance our great deliverance." Historian David W. Blight quotes this as an example for Harper's work "to forge a positive view of black history", an aim she shared with fellow black writer Pauline Hopkins. Literary significance and criticism. "Iola Leroy" "may well have [been] influenced" by Harriet Jacobs's 1861 autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl". The novel was "awarded more blame than praise" by literary critics, but "initial readers responded positively", causing the novel to be reprinted until 1895. From then on, however, it was not re-published until 1971. "Iola Leroy" was for some time cited as the first novel written by an African-American woman. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s 1982 discovery of Harriet Wilson's "Our Nig" (1859) displaced it from that spot. Still, it remains important as "the first black vision of black women's roles in reshaping post-Civil War America" and as a fictional work dealing with complex issues of race, class, and politics in the United States. Recent scholarship suggests that Harper's novel provides a sophisticated understanding of citizenship, gender, and community, particularly the way that African Americans developed hybrid forms of "gemeinschaft and gesellschaft" before, during, and after slavery. The African-American journalist Ida B. Wells took up the pen name "Iola" when she first started writing articles about racism in the South. According to J. F. Yellin, "Iola Leroy" "helped shape the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and other foremothers of black women writing today."

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Sing, Unburied, Sing Sing, Unburied, Sing is a novel by American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Scribner in 2017. It is about a family's dynamics in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and was named by "The New York Times" as one of the 10 Best Books of 2017. Publication history. Ward's third novel, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" was published on September 5, 2017, by Scribner. Characters. Joseph (Jojo) is one of the main characters, and also one of the three narrators of the book. He is the child of Michael who is White, and Leonie, who is Black. The story starts on his thirteenth birthday at his maternal grandparents' house in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. Jojo throughout the book is often acting like the parent to Kayla because his mother Leonie was not always there. Jojo looks up to his grandfather, and wishes to be like him. Throughout the book, Jojo has many conversations with spirits while helping them move on. Leonie is the daughter of River and Philomene, and mother to Jojo and Kayla. She is one of the three narrators of the story. Leonie got pregnant at a young age, not certain of wanting to be a mother, since then she has been a mentally absent mother who focused mostly on her love for Michael. Leonie becomes a drug addict, which the high allows her to see her dead brother, Given. Leonie is consumed by her love for Michael and is inattentive to the needs of her children. She is also jealous of her children's relationship because it reminds her of the brother she lost too early in life. River (Pop) is Jojo's and Kayla's maternal grandfather. He is the Father to Leonie and Given. He is the main parental figure in Jojo's life, which makes him the role model JoJo looks up to. He is quietly dignified and capable. Pop spent some time in Parchman prison when he was young and developed a "care giver" relationship with another inmate, Richie. Often shares stories about his time in Parchman with Jojo. Philomene (Mam) is Jojo and Kayla's maternal grandmother. She is the mother to Leonie and Given. She comes from a long line of women who have been able to heal and communicate with dead people. Mam steps up to look after Jojo and Kayla when she realizes Leonie does not care enough about her children. Mam is sick with cancer when the novel begins. This causes her to be stuck inside the bedroom from chemo treatments, ultimately forcing Leonie to try stepping up as a motherly figure. Misty who is Leonie's white friend from work. Misty and Leonie are bound to each other by their drug addiction. Misty joins Leonie on the road trip to Parchman to pick up Michael after his release. Michael is Leonie's boyfriend and the father of Jojo and Kayla. He is white and comes from a racist family that doesn’t accept his relationship with Leonie or their kids. Michael, however, is not racist. At the beginning of the novel, he is in the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, for drug trafficking. He then joins his family after Leonie and their children pick him up. Like Leonie, Michael is an absent parent who also does drugs. Michaela (Kayla) is Jojo's three-year-old little sister. She interacts with Jojo as a parental figure and prefers him to her mother, Leonie. Kayla, like Jojo, is able to see ghosts. Kayla is given the final word of "shh" to her brother. Kayla is emblematic of the future. Through Kayla's voice in the final scene, Ward ends this novel on an optimistic note. Given is Leonie's older brother who was shot on a hunting trip by Michael's cousin when he was a senior in high school. Leonie sees Given's ghost throughout the novel, especially after she uses drugs. It is not until the second to last chapter when Given's ghost is freed, and Leonie does not see him anymore. Richie knows River from their time spent together in Parchman. He was placed in Parchman at twelve years old for stealing food for his nine siblings. He tried to escape later with an inmate named Blue and both were killed. His ghost follows JoJo back to Pop after JoJo arrives to pick up his father from Parchman because he does not know how he died. Richie is one of the three narrators of the story and struggles to understand and accept his death. Big Joseph is Michael's father. He does not have a healthy relationship with his son and the rest of the family because Michael decided to be in a relationship with Leonie, an African-American woman. Big Joseph was present at the trial for his nephew shooting Leonie’s brother prior to her and Michael’s relationship which adds to Leonie’s discomfort with Big Joseph. When Michael, Leonie, Jojo, and Kayla visit him, it results in Big Joseph and Michael physically fighting. Maggie is Michael's mother. She, also, does not have a healthy relationship with her son. Unlike her husband, she is seen wanting to make an effort with her son. She inhospitably welcomes Michael, Leonie, Jojo, and Kayla into their home, in an effort to salvage her relationship with her son. Plot. It is Jojo's thirteenth birthday. To step into his new role as a man, Jojo tries to bravely help his grandfather, Pop, kill a goat. Jojo ends up throwing up at the sight although Pop is sympathetic. Pop uses the goat to make stew and while the food is cooking, he tells Jojo about his family. Pop tells Jojo about how he was sent to Parchman when he was 15. Pop's older brother, Stag, got into a bar fight with some white navy officers. The officers came after Stag and also took Pop, who was home at that time. They were both sent to Parchman prison. It was there that Pop met Richie, a 12-year-old inmate. But Leonie gets a call during the birthday celebration. It is Michael, Jojo and Kayla's father, informing Leonie that he is coming home from prison where he has been for three years. The next day, Leonie argues with Pop about whether she should take Jojo and Kayla with her on the trip. At Mam's suggestion, she invites her coworker Misty, whose boyfriend is also in Parchman. While she talks to her mom, Leonie realizes that Mam's cancer is getting worse. During the car ride, Jojo finds a gris-gris bag from Pop with instructions to keep it close. He also recalls Pop telling him about Kinnie Wagner, a white inmate who looked after the dogs at Parchman (based on the real-life Kenny Wagner). Because of Pop's affinity with animals, Kinnie chooses him to help look after the dogs. Leonie's party arrives at the house of a white woman, and Jojo walks around and finds a man cooking meth. Misty leaves the woman's house with a bag of meth which she tries to hide from Jojo and Kayla. Back in the car, Kayla starts to get sick and throw up. Leonie remembers Mam teaching her about plants that help with an upset stomach. Leonie needs wild strawberries but is only able to find wild blackberries. Jojo holds Kayla and tries to comfort her by telling her stories. Eventually, they pull over to Al, Michael's lawyer's house. Leonie cooks the blackberry leaves. Jojo doesn’t trust Leonie and doesn’t think the wild blackberries will help but he is afraid Leonie will hit him if he says anything. After Leonie, Misty, and Al leave the room, Jojo forces Kayla to throw up Leonie's mixture. Instead of sleeping, Jojo recalls Pop telling him about when Richie got whipped for breaking his hoe and Kinnie escaped from Parchman. In the morning they drive to Parchman and check Michael out of prison. When Michael comes out, he embraces Leonie. He tries to hold Kayla but she doesn’t recognize him. Kayla throws up again. Jojo looks outside the car and sees the ghost of a dark skinned boy, Richie. The next chapter is narrated by Richie. He recognizes Jojo as Pop's child. He recalls how Pop protected him while they were in Parchman. No one in the car but Jojo and Kayla can see Richie. On the drive back, they are pulled over by a police officer. There is no time to hide the meth Al gave them, so Leonie swallows it. Leonie, without thinking, tells the officer that they are coming back from Parchman. The officer handcuffs Leonie. He also handcuffs Michael. Jojo walks out of the car with Michael and the officer handcuffs him too. Jojo reaches into his pocket to grab the gris-gris bag Pop gave him and the officer pulls out his gun on him. Misty drops Kayla, who runs to Jojo and wraps herself around him. Kayla throws up on the officer and he lets them go. Back in the car, Leonie, who is high from the meth she swallowed, becomes sick. Michael pulls over at a gas station and gives Jojo money to buy milk and charcoal. Leonie drinks the mixture and throws up. Richie tells Jojo that he tried to run from Parchman but died in the process. He doesn’t remember what happened and he needs Pop to tell him so he can go home. Richie was only able to leave Parchman when Jojo showed up. When they arrive back at the house, they realize that Mam and Pop are not in the house. Michael wants to go to his parents' house but Leonie doesn’t want to. She eventually gives in. When they arrive at Michael's parents' house, at first Michael's mother, Maggie, is civil and urges Michael's dad, Big Joseph, to do the same. Big Joseph is unable to restrain himself and calls Leonie a slur. Michael head-butts Big Joseph and they start fighting. They drive back home where Pop and Mam have returned. Leonie goes and she tells Leonie to gather necessary items to perform a ritual to summon Maman Brigitte, a death loa in voodoo. Once they get back home, Richie sees Pop and tries to talk to him, but Pop can’t see him. Jojo asks Pop about what happened to Richie and Pop finally tells Jojo. A man named Blue raped one of the female inmates at Parchman. Richie catches Blue in the act and escapes Parchman with him. While they are running, Blue happens upon a white girl and rips her dress. Because of this, the local white population is looking for revenge through lynching. Pop knows that the white men won't make a distinction between Blue and Richie. When the white men catch up with Blue and Richie, they skin Blue alive and cut off parts of his body. To protect Richie from the same fate, Pop stabs him in the neck. Pop has been haunted by this action ever since. After he tells Jojo the story, he breaks down into tears and Jojo consoles him. Richie screams and disappears. Leonie enters Mam's room to find her in a terrible state. Her room smells like rot. Mam tells Leonie that it is too late. Mam sees Richie on the ceiling. He is vengeful. Richie shouts at Mam, urging her to come with him, but Given shouts at him that Mam is not his mother. Jojo and Pop run in and Leonie jumps into action and begins saying the litany to summon Maman Brigitte. Jojo tells Richie to leave because nobody owes him anything anymore. Richie leaves and Given takes Mam with him. Mam dies. Michael comes back and he and Leonie leave. In the final chapter, Jojo explains that he sleeps in Leonie's bed now. Leonie and Michael only come back for two days out of every week, and then they leave again. Pop sleeps in Mam's room now and he talks to himself at night, searching for Mam. Although he hoped he will, Jojo is not able to see Mam and Given, he only sees Richie. He also sees other ghosts who have all died through violent means. Kayla tells the ghosts to go home but they don’t listen to her. She begins to sing and they all smile with relief. Themes. "Sing, Unburied, Sing" is the first of Ward's novels to introduce a supernatural element. A dead boy, Ritchie, is one of the narrators, and other ghosts are found throughout the novel as they tie the past to the present and future. Likewise, Mam and Pop project the belief in spirituality through gris-gris bags, which contain objects of nature that are assumed to administer power for humans. In the novel, the spiritual connection between nature and man is prevalent through their African-based traditions. The novel demonstrates the afterlife of slavery in America. Songs and story-telling play a role in building resilience. Singing to the unresting spirits at the end of the story, Kayla represents hope for the future. Another theme is of family, for it offers differing insights into the roles of parenting. Though they care for Jojo and Kayla, Leonie and Michael are absent mother and father figures. They tend to dissociate themselves from their responsibilities through drug usage. Thus, Jojo looks to his Pop and Mam as the family's caretakers. Jojo also takes on the task of being Kayla's guardian, protecting her in any way he can. Racial relations is also discussed in this novel through the family's interracial dynamics. Though Michael appears to love Leonie despite their differing skin colors, his family sternly disapproves of the life he leads. The character of Michael's father, Big Joseph, showcases the lingering tensions of white supremacy in the South. He protects Michael's cousin after killing Given, since the cousin was upholding Southern ideals of Black inferiority. In the same manner, Big Joseph rejects his own son, Michael, for defying this tradition with his bi-racial children. Finally, the theme of water offers much significance in the novel. Water symbolizes the processes of nurturing and developing. Those with water, like River and Mam (who is referred to as the saltwater woman), are able to bloom. Meanwhile, those without water, like those in "Parchman," are withering away without such subsistence, unable to find peace and stability. Even the setting in the Mississippi Delta may suggest the importance of water in the novel. Reception. Reviewing the novel for "The Washington Post", Ron Charles compared it to George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved"; at NPR, Annalisa Quinn found it "reminiscent of "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner. "Sing, Unburied, Sing" was the winner of the 2017 National Book Award for fiction. This was her second time winning this award. Ward is the first woman and first person of color to receive this honor twice. The novel was selected by "Time" magazine and "The New York Times" as one of the top ten novels of 2017. It is also acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year by the "New Statesman", the "Financial Times", and BBC, all of which are located in London. Former U.S. President Barack Obama included the novel in a list of the best books he read in 2017. It was ranked in Literary Hub as the second best book of the 2010s, behind only Claudia Rankine’s "" (2014). The novel also won Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction in 2018 and the Mark Twain American Voice In Literature Award in 2019.

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Annie John Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985, details the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, lesbianism, racism, clinical depression, poverty, education, and the struggle between medicine based on "scientific fact" and that based on "native superstitious know-how". Plot summary. Annie John, the protagonist of the book, starts out as a young girl who worships her mother. She follows her everywhere, and is shocked and hurt when she learns that she must someday live in a different house from her mother. While her mother tries to teach her to become a lady, Annie is sent to a new school where she must prove herself intellectually and make new friends. She then falls in love with a girl by the name of Gwen. She promises Gwen that she will always love her. However, Annie later finds herself admiring and adoring a girl that she called the "Red Girl". She admires this girl in all aspects of her life. To Annie this girl is the meaning of freedom because she does not have to do any daily hygienic routines like the other girls. Annie John is then moved to a higher class because of her intelligence. For this reason, Annie is drawn away from her best friend Gwen, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. The book ends with her physically distancing herself away from all that she knows and loves by leaving home for nursing school in England. Publication history. The book's chapters were originally published separately in "The New Yorker", before being combined and published as the novel "Annie John", the stories connected by Kincaid's use of Annie John as the narrator. Major themes, symbolism, and style. Children growing apart from their parents while becoming adolescents is the major theme in the novel. Annie and her mother share common personalities, goals and even look exactly alike, though they grow apart through the narrative. Barbara Wiedemann writes that Kincaid's fiction is not specifically aimed at a young adult audience, but the readers will benefit from insight evident in Kincaid's description of coming of age. "Annie John" has been noted to contain feminist views. Asked if the relationship between Annie and Gwen was meant to suggest “lesbian tendencies,” Kincaid replied: "No…I think I am always surprised that people interpret it so literally." The relationship between Gwen and Annie is really a practicing relationship. It's about how things work. It's like learning to walk. Always there is the sense that they would go on to lead heterosexual lives. Whatever happened between them, homosexuality would not be a serious thing because it is just practicing” (Vorda 94). In the story, the theme of colonization is conveyed. England has colonized Antigua, and has reconstructed its society. This is seen when the reader is introduced to Miss George and Miss Edward, teachers at Annie's school, who are both named after English kings. Antigua in return, strongly dislikes England for disposing of its native culture. Water is consistently used throughout the novel to depict the separation between Annie John and her mother. Symbolic references to water (including the sea, rain, and other forms) illustrate Annie's development from childhood to maturity. Near the start of the novel, the reader learns that Annie has both a normal baby bottle and one shaped like a boat - and that is only the beginning of her water-connected choices in life. Kincaid's writing form is not in the traditional paragraph form, but run-on sentences and paragraphs with little fragments. Jan Hall, a writer for Salem Press Master Plots, Fourth Edition book states in an article about "Annie John" that “because the novel has no years, months, or dates the story has a sense of timelessness.” Connections to other works. There are clear echoes to themes and events from Kincaid's books "Lucy" and "My Brother". "My Brother" is a non-fiction story, yet "Annie John" has some of the same events and facts placed in her own family as if Annie was Kincaid when she was younger. In "My Brother", Kincaid's father had to walk after he ate because he had a bad digestive tract and heart, their family ate fish, bread, and butter, a six-year-old died in her mother's arm going over the same bridge that her father had recently walked on after eating, and the character of Miss Charlotte dies in both books. Lucy can be cited as a continuation of "Annie John "being that Annie John has moved off of her Caribbean island of Antigua and is starting a new life in England, even though Lucy is in America, because hypothetically Annie John will have to learn how to adjust to England. Jan Hall writes: “the themes of "Annie John", Jamaica Kincaid’s first novel, are continued in "Lucy" (1990), a novel about a young woman’s experiences after leaving her Caribbean island.”

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Dear Martin Dear Martin, published in 2017 by Crown Publishing Group, is a young adult novel by Nic Stone. It is Stone's debut novel, written as a reaction to the murder of Jordan Davis. The book appeared as #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list. Development and publication. Stone began writing the book after a series of racially-charge events, including the 2012 murder of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old who was killed by man who shot several rounds into a car of teenagers over a dispute about loud rap music, and the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown. Stone was also inspired to write the book for her sons. Stone sold her book as a proposal, resulting in her writing and researching simultaneously over an eight-week period to develop a draft. Stone described the experience as "excruciating" and stated that she was not interested in repeating it. "Dear Martin" has been published and translated in Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, The Netherlands, UK, Turkey, and Romania. Plot. "Dear Martin" follows Justyce McAllister, a high school student living in Atlanta and attending a predominantly white preparatory high school on a scholarship. Justyce is thrown to the ground and handcuffed by a white police officer. After the incident, Justyce attempts to make sense of life as a black teenager in the current political climate and begins writing letters to the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, asking himself, "What would Dr. King do if he were alive today?". Reception. The book received a starred review from Booklist. In February 2020, two years after it was first published, "Dear Martin" again hit the New York Times bestseller list, as the #1 Young Adult Paperback. "Dear Martin" received the following accolades: Sequel. Stone wrote a sequel, "Dear Justyce," which was published in October 2020. The book is about an incarcerated teen, Quan, who is on trial for murder charges. Quan first appears in "Dear Martin" as the cousin of Justyce's best friend. Stone was not planning on writing a sequel, but was encouraged by her publisher and decided to write a book about a "black boy that everybody is afraid of."

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs's life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away. In the book, Jacobs addresses white Northern women who fail to comprehend the evils of slavery. She makes direct appeals to their humanity to expand their knowledge and influence their thoughts about slavery as an institution. Jacobs composed "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" after her escape to New York, while living and working at Idlewild, the home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis. Historical context. Biographical background. Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813. When she was a child, her mistress taught her to read and write, skills that were extremely rare among slaves. At twelve years old, she fell into the hands of an abusive owner who harassed her sexually. When he threatened to sell her children, she hid in a tiny crawlspace under the roof of her grandmother's house. After staying there for seven years, spending much of her time reading the Bible and also newspapers, she finally managed to escape to New York in 1842. Her brother, John S. Jacobs, who had also managed to escape from slavery, became more and more involved with the abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison, going on several anti-slavery lecturing tours from 1847 onwards. In 1849/50, Harriet Jacobs helped her brother running the "Anti-Slavery Office and Reading Room" in Rochester, New York, being in close contact with abolitionists and feminists like Frederick Douglass and Amy and Isaac Post. During that time she had the opportunity to read abolitionist literature and become acquainted with anti-slavery theory. In her autobiography she describes the effects of this period in her life: "The more my mind had become enlightened, the more difficult it was for me to consider myself an article of property." Urged by her brother and by Amy Post, she started to write her autobiography in 1853, finishing the manuscript in 1858. During that time she was working as a nanny for the children of N. P. Willis. Still, she didn't find a publisher until 1860, when Thayer & Eldridge agreed to publish her manuscript and initiated her contact with Lydia Maria Child, who became the editor of the book, which was finally published in January 1861. Abolitionist and African American literature. When Jacobs started working on "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" in 1853, many works by abolitionist and African American writers were already in print. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison had started the publication of his weekly "The Liberator". In 1845, Frederick Douglass had published his first autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself", which became a bestseller and paved the way for subsequent slave narratives. The white abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, artfully combining the genres of slave narratives and sentimental novels. Although a work of fiction, Stowe based her novel on several accounts by eyewitnesses. However, the relationship between black and white abolitionist writers was not without problems. Garrison supplied a preface to Douglass' "Narrative" that would later be analyzed as latently racist, and the relationship between the two male abolitionists deteriorated when Garrison was less than supportive to the idea of Douglass starting his own newspaper. That Stowe's book became an instant bestseller was in part due to the fact that she shared her readers' racist mindset, explicitly stating that black people were intellectually inferior and modeling the character of her protagonist, Uncle Tom, accordingly. When Jacobs suggested to Stowe that Stowe transform her story into a book, Jacobs perceived Stowe's reaction as a racist insult, which she analyzed in a letter to her white friend Amy Post. Cult of True Womanhood. In the antebellum period, the Cult of True Womanhood was prevalent among upper and middle-class white women. This set of ideals, as described by Barbara Welter, asserted that all women possessed (or should possess) the virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Venetria K. Patton explains that Jacobs and Harriet E. Wilson, who wrote "Our Nig", reconfigured the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, claiming the titles of "woman and mother" for black females, and suggesting that society's definition of womanhood was too narrow. They argued and "remodeled" Stowe's descriptions of black maternity. They also showed that the institution of slavery made it impossible for African-American women to control their virtue, as they were subject to the social and economic power of men. Jacobs showed that slave women had a different experience of motherhood but had strong feelings as mothers despite the constraints of their position. Jacobs was clearly aware of the womanly virtues, as she referred to them as a means to appeal to female abolitionists to spur them into action to help protect enslaved black women and their children. In the narrative, she explains life events that prevent Linda Brent from practicing these values, although she wants to. For example, as she cannot have a home of her own for her family, she cannot practice domestic virtues. Character list. Linda Brent is Harriet Jacobs, the narrator and protagonist. Aunt Martha is Molly Horniblow, Linda's maternal grandmother. After briefly talking of her earliest childhood, her parents and her brother, Jacobs begins her book with the history of her grandmother. At the end of the book, Jacobs relates the death of her grandmother in 1853, soon after Jacobs had obtained her legal freedom, using the very last sentence to mention the "tender memories of my good old grandmother." Molly Horniblow obtained her freedom in 1828, when Jacobs was about 15 years old, because friends of hers bought her with the money she had earned by working at night. Benjamin is Joseph Horniblow, Aunt Martha's youngest child and Linda's uncle. Chapter 4, "The Slave Who Dared to Feel like a Man", is largely dedicated to his story: Being only a few years older than Linda, "he seemed more like my brother than my uncle". Linda and Benjamin share the longing for freedom. When his master attempts to whip him, he throws him to the ground and then runs away to avoid the punishment of a public whipping. He is caught, paraded in chains through Edenton, and put into jail. Although his mother entreats him to ask forgiveness of his master, he proudly refuses and is finally sold to New Orleans. Later, his brother Mark (called "Philipp" in the book), unexpectedly meets him in New York, learning that he has escaped again, but is in a very poor physical condition and without support. After that meeting, the family never heard from him again. Linda and her brother see him as a hero. Both of them would later name their son for him. William is John S. Jacobs, Linda's brother, to whom she is close. Benny is Joseph Jacobs, Linda's son. Ellen is Louisa Matilda Jacobs, Linda's daughter. Dr. Flint is Dr. James Norcom, Linda's master, enemy and would-be lover. J. F. Yellin, after researching his surviving private letters and notes, writes about his personality: "Norcom was a loving and dominating husband and father. In his serious and sophisticated interest in medicine, his commitment as a physician, and his educated discourse, he appears unlike the villain Jacobs portrays. But his humorlessness, his egoism, his insistently controlling relationships with his wife and children ... suggest the portrait Jacobs draws. This impression is supported by ... his unforgiving fury against those he viewed as enemies. It is underscored by his admitted passionate responses to women." Mrs. Flint is Mary "Maria" Norcom, Linda's mistress and Dr. Flint's wife. Emily Flint is Mary Matilda Norcom, Dr. Flint's daughter and Linda's legal owner. Mr. Sands is Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, Linda's white sexual partner and the father of her children, Benny and Ellen. Mr. Bruce is Nathaniel Parker Willis. The second Mrs. Bruce is Cornelia Grinnel Willis. Overview. Chapters 1 and 2 describe the narrator's childhood and the story of her grandmother until she got her freedom. The narrator's story is then continued in chapters 4 to 7, which tell of the longing for freedom she shares with her uncle "Benjamin" and her brother "William", "Benjamin's" escape, the sexual harassment by "Dr. Flint", the jealousy of his wife, and the lover who she is forbidden to marry. Chapters 10 and 11 tell of her affair with "Mr. Sands" and the birth of her first child. Chapters 14 to 21 tell of the birth of her second child, her removal from the town to "Flint's" plantation, her flight and her concealment in her grandmother's garret. The nearly seven years she had to spend in that narrow place are described in chapters 22 to 28, the last chapters of which concentrate on the fate of family members during that time: the escape of her brother "William" (chapter 26), the plans made for the children (27), and the cruel treatment and death of her aunt "Nancy" (28). Her dramatic escape to Philadelphia is the subject of chapters 29 and 30. Chapters 31 to 36 describe her short stay in Philadelphia, her reunion with the children, her new work as nanny for the "Bruce" family, and her flight to Boston when she is threatened with recapture by "Flint". Chapter 35 focusses on her experiences with northern racism. Her journey to England with "Mr. Bruce" and his baby "Mary" is the subject of chapter 37. Finally, chapters 38 to 41 deal with renewed threats of recapture, which are made much more serious by the Fugitive Slave Law, the "confession" of her affair with "Mr. Sands" to her daughter, her stay with Isaac and Amy Post in Rochester, the final attempt of her legal owner to capture her, the obtaining of her legal freedom, and the death of her grandmother. The other chapters are dedicated to special subjects: Chapter 3 describes the hiring out and selling of slaves on New Year's Day, chapter 8 is called "What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North", chapter 9 gives various example of cruel treatment of slaves, chapter 12 describes the narrator's experience of the anti-black violence in the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion, and chapter 13 is called "The Church And Slavery". Themes. Resistance. A turning point in the youth of Frederick Douglass, according to his autobiographies, was the fight against his brutal master. In Jacobs's autobiography there are two slaves who dare to resist their masters physically, although such an act of resistance normally is punished most cruelly: Her uncle Joseph (called "Benjamin" in the book) throws his master to the ground when he attempts to whip him, and then runs away to avoid the punishment of a public whipping. Her brother John (called "William") is still a boy, when the son of his master tries to bind and whip him. John puts up a fight and wins. Although the "young master" is hurt, John gets away with it. Other slaves mentioned in the book, women as well as men, resist by running away, although some have to pay dearly for that. Jacobs's uncle Joseph is caught, paraded in chains through Edenton and put in jail, where his health suffers so much that he has to be sold for a very low price. Jacobs also tells of another fugitive who is killed by the slave catchers. While physical resistance is less of an option for enslaved women, they still have many ways of resisting. Molly Horniblow, Jacobs's beloved grandmother, should have been set free at the death of her owner in 1827. But Dr. Norcom, Jacobs's abusive master and the son-in-law and executor of the will of Molly Horniblow's owner, wants to cheat her out of her freedom, citing debts which have to be settled by selling the deceased's human property. Norcom tells the enslaved woman that he wants to sell her privately in order to save her the shame of being sold at public auction, but Molly Horniblow insists on suffering that very shame. The auction turns out according to Molly Horniblow's plans: A friend of hers offers the ridiculously low price of $50, and nobody among the sympathizing white people of Edenton is willing to offer more. Soon after, Jacobs's grandmother is set free. Both Harriet Jacobs and her brother John frustrate the threats of their master by simply choosing what was meant as a threat: When Dr. Norcom throws John into the jail, which regularly serves as the place to guard slaves that are to be sold, John sends a slave trader to his master telling him he wants to be sold. When Norcom tells Harriet to choose between becoming his concubine and going to the plantation, she chooses the latter, knowing that plantation slaves are even worse off than town slaves. Harriet Jacobs also knows to fight back with words: On various occasions, she doesn't follow the pattern of submissive behavior that is expected of a slave, protesting when her master beats her and when he forbids her to marry the man she loves, and even telling him that his demand of a sexual relationship is against the law of God. Pro-slavery propaganda and cruel reality. Jacobs's employer, N. P. Willis, was the founding editor of the "Home Journal". Some years before she started working on her book, he had published an anonymous story called "The Night Funeral of a Slave" about a Northerner who witnesses a funeral of an old slave which he interprets as a sign for the love between the master and his slaves. The story ends with the conclusion drawn by the northern narrator, "that the negroes of the south are the happiest and most contented people on the face of the earth". In 1849, that story was republished by Frederick Douglass, in order to criticize pro-slavery Northerners. In her autobiography, Jacobs includes a chapter about the death and funeral of her aunt Betty (called "Nancy" in the book), commenting that "Northern travellers ... might have described this tribute of respect to the humble dead as ... a touching proof of the attachment between slaveholders and their servants", but adding that the slaves might have told that imaginative traveller "a different story": The funeral had not been paid for by aunt Betty's owner, but by her brother, Jacobs's uncle Mark (called "Philipp" in the book), and Jacobs herself could neither say farewell to her dying aunt nor attend the funeral, because she would have been immediately returned to her "tormentor". Jacobs also gives the reason for her aunt's childlessness and early death: Dr. and Mrs. Norcom did not allow her enough rest, but required her services by day and night. Venetria K. Patton describes the relationship between Mrs. Norcom and Aunt Betty as a "parasitic one", because Mary Horniblow, who would later become Mrs. Norcom, and aunt Betty had been "foster-sisters", both being nursed by Jacobs's grandmother who had to wean her own daughter Betty early in order to have enough milk for the child of her mistress by whom Betty would eventually be "slowly murdered". Church and slavery. At some places, Jacobs describes religious slaves. Her grandmother teaches her grandchildren to accept their status as slaves as God's will, and her prayers are mentioned at several points of the story, including Jacobs's last farewell to her before boarding the ship to freedom, when the old woman prays fervently for a successful escape. While Jacobs enjoys an uneasy freedom living with her grandmother after her first pregnancy, an old enslaved man approaches her and asks her to teach him, so that he can read the Bible, stating "I only wants to read dis book, dat I may know how to live, den I hab no fear 'bout dying." Jacobs also tells that during her stay in England in 1845/46 she found her way back to the religion of her upbringing: "Grace entered my heart, and I knelt at the communion table, I trust, in true humility of soul." However, she is very critical regarding the religion of the slaveholders, stating "there is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south." She describes "the contemptuous manner in which the communion [was] administered to colored people". She also tells of a Methodist class leader, who in civil life is the town constable, performing the "Christian office" - as Jacobs calls it in bitter irony - of whipping slaves for a fee of 50 cents. She also criticizes "the buying and selling of slaves, by professed ministers of the gospel." Jacobs's distinction between "Christianity and religion at the south" has a parallel in Frederick Douglass's "Narrative", where he distinguishes the "slaveholding religion" from "Christianity proper", between which he sees the "widest, possible difference", stating, "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land." "Incidents" as a feminist book. According to Yellin, "Incidents" has a "radical feminist content." Yellin states that "Incidents" is linked to the then popular genre of the seduction novel. That genre, examples of which include "Charlotte Temple" (1791) and "The Quadroons", written in 1842 by M. Lydia Child, who would later become the editor of "Incidents", features the story of a virtuous, but helpless woman seduced by a man. Her failure to adhere to the standard of sexual behaviour set by the "white partriarchy", "inevitably" leads to her "self-destruction and death". Although Jacobs describes her sexual transgression (i.e. the liaison with Sawyer) in terms of guilt and sin, she also sees it as a "mistaken tactic in the struggle for freedom". Most important, the book does not end with self-destruction, but with liberty. According to Yellin, "a central pattern in "Incidents" shows white women betraying allegiances of race and class to assert their stronger allegiance to the sisterhood of all women": When Jacobs goes into hiding, a white woman who is herself a slaveholder hides her in her own house for a month, and when she is threatened with recapture, her female employer's plan to rescue her involves entrusting her own baby to Jacobs. Jacobs presents herself as struggling to build a home for herself and her children. "This endorsement of domestic values links "Incidents" to what has been called 'woman's fiction'", in which a heroine overcomes hardships by finding the necessary resources inside herself. But unlike "woman's fiction", ""Incidents" is an attempt to move women to political action", thus stepping out of the domestic sphere at that time commonly held to be the proper sphere for women and joining the public sphere. Jacobs discusses "the painful personal subject" of her sexual history "in order to politicize it, to insist that the forbidden topic of sexual abuse of slave women be included in public discussions of the slavery question." In telling of her daughter's acceptance of her sexual history, she "shows black women overcoming the divisive sexual ideology of the white patriarchy". Reception. 19th century. The book was promoted via the abolitionist networks and was well received by the critics. Jacobs arranged for a publication in Great Britain, which appeared in the first months of 1862, soon followed by a pirated edition. ""Incidents" was immediately acknowledged as a contribution to Afro-American letters." The publication did not cause contempt as Jacobs had feared. On the contrary, Jacobs gained respect. Although she had used a pseudonym, in abolitionist circles she was regularly introduced with words like "Mrs. Jacobs, the author of Linda", thereby conceding her the honorific "Mrs." which normally was reserved for married women. The "London Daily News" wrote in 1862, that Linda Brent was a true "heroine", giving an example "of endurance and persistency in the struggle for liberty" and "moral rectitude". "Incidents" "may well have influenced" "Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted", a 1892 novel by black author Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "which in turn helped shape the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and other foremothers of black women writing today." Still, "Incidents" was not republished, and "by the twentieth century both Jacobs and her book were forgotten". 20th and 21st centuries. The new interest in women and minority issues that came with the American civil rights movement also led to the rediscovery of "Incidents". The first new editions began to appear at the end of the 1960s. Prior to Jean Fagan Yellin's research in the 1980s, the accepted academic opinion, voiced by such historians as John Blassingame, was that "Incidents" was a fictional novel written by Lydia Maria Child. However, Yellin found and used a variety of historical documents, including from the Amy Post papers at the University of Rochester, state and local historical societies, and the Horniblow and Norcom papers at the North Carolina state archives, to establish both that Harriet Jacobs was the true author of "Incidents," and that the narrative was her autobiography, not a work of fiction. Her edition of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was published in 1987 with the endorsement of Professor John Blassingame. In 2004, Yellin published an exhaustive biography (394 pages) entitled "Harriet Jacobs: A Life". In a New York Times review of Yellin's 2004 biography, David S. Reynolds states that "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" "and "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" are commonly viewed as the two most important slave narratives." In the "Acknowledgments" of his best selling 2016 novel, "The Underground Railroad (novel)", Colson Whitehead mentions Jacobs: "Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, obviously." The heroine of the novel, Cora, has to hide in a place in the attic of a house in Jacobs's native North Carolina, where like Jacobs she is not able to stand, but like her can observe the outside life through a hole that "had been carved from the inside, the work of a previous occupant" (p. 185). In 2017 Jacobs was the subject of an episode of the Futility Closet Podcast, where her experience living in a crawlspace was compared with the wartime experience of Patrick Fowler. According to a 2017 article in "Forbes" magazine, a 2013 translation of "Incidents" by Yuki Horikoshi became a bestseller in Japan. The garret. The space of the garret, in which Jacobs confined herself for seven years, has been taken up as a metaphor in black critical thought, most notably by theorist Katherine McKittrick. In her text "Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle", McKittrick argues that the garret "highlights how geography is transformed by Jacobs into a usable and paradoxical space." When she initially enters her "loophole of retreat," Jacobs states that "[its] continued darkness was oppressive…without one gleam of light…[and] with no object for my eye to rest upon." However, once she bores holes through the space with a gimlet, Jacobs creates for herself an oppositional perspective on the workings of the plantation—she comes to inhabit what McKittrick terms a "disembodied master-eye, seeing from nowhere." The garret offers Jacobs an alternate way of seeing, allowing her to reimagine freedom while shielding her from the hypervisibility to which black people—especially black women—are always already subject. Katherine McKittrick reveals how theories of geography and spatial freedom produce alternative understandings and possibilities within Black feminist thought. By centering geography in her analysis, McKittrick portrays the ways in which gendered-racial-sexual domination is spatially organized. McKittrick writes, "Recognizing black women's knowledgeable positions as integral to physical, cartographic, and experiential geographies within and through dominant spatial models also creates an analytical space for black feminist geographies: black women's political, feminist, imaginary, and creative concerns that respatialize the geographic legacy of racism-sexism." In analyzing the hiding place of Harriet Jacobs (Linda Brent) – the space of her grandmother's garret - McKittrick illuminates the tensions that exist within this space and how it occupies contradictory positions. Not only is the space of the garret one of resistance and freedom for Brent, but it is also a space of confinement and concealment. That is, the garret operates as a prison and, simultaneously, as a space of liberation. For Brent, freedom in the garret takes the form of loss of speech, movement, and consciousness. McKittrick writes, "Brent's spatial options are painful; the garret serves as a disturbing, but meaningful, response to slavery." As McKittrick reveals, the geographies of slavery are about gendered-racial-sexual captivities – in these sense, the space of the garret is both one of captivity and protection for Brent.

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Clotel Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867. The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America." Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families. Background. The novel played with known 19th-century reports that Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered several children with her. Of mixed race and described as nearly white, she was believed to be the half sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, the youngest of six children by her father John Wayles with his slave Betty Hemings. Members of the large Hemings family were among more than 100 slaves inherited by Martha and Thomas Jefferson after her father's death. Martha died when Jefferson was 40 and he never remarried. Although Jefferson never responded to the rumors, some historians believe that his freeing of the four Hemings children as they came of age is significant: he may have let Beverly (a male) and certainly let his sister Harriet Hemings "escape" in 1822 from Monticello, and freed two by his will in 1826, although he was heavily in debt. His daughter gave Hemings "her time"(meaning that she freed her), so she may have been able to live freely in Charlottesville with her two youngest sons, Madison and Eston Hemings, for the rest of her life. Except for three other Hemings men whom Jefferson freed in his will, the rest of his 130 slaves were sold in 1827. A 1998 DNA study confirmed a match between the Jefferson male line and Eston Hemings' direct male descendant. Based on this and the body of historic evidence, most Jeffersonian scholars have come to accept that Jefferson did father Hemings's children over an extended period of time. As an escaped slave, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, William Wells Brown was at risk in the United States. While in England on a lecture tour in 1849, he decided to stay there with his two daughters after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, as he was at risk of being taken by slave catchers. He published "Clotel" in 1853 in London; it was the first novel published by an African American. In 1854 a British couple purchased freedom for Brown, and he returned with his daughters to the US. Plot summary. The narrative of "Clotel" plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young mixed-race slave Currer and her two light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Because the mother is a slave, according to partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662, her daughters are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery. Currer, described as "a bright mulatto" (meaning light-skinned) gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa. After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold as slaves. Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife. They cannot legally marry under state laws against miscegenation. Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever, shortly before Peck's daughter was preparing to emancipate her. Althesa marries her white master, Henry Morton, a Northerner, by passing as a white woman. They have daughters Jane and Ellen, who are educated. Although supporting abolition, Morton fails to manumit Althesa and their daughters. After Althesa and Morton both die, their daughters are enslaved. Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement, and Jane dies in slavery from heartbreak. Green and Clotel have a daughter Mary, also mixed race of course, and majority white. When Green becomes ambitious and involved in local politics, he abandons his relationship with Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child." Clotel is sold to a planter in Vicksburg, Mississippi. There she meets William, another slave, and they plan a bold escape. Dressing as a white man, Clotel is accompanied by William acting as her slave; they travel and gain freedom by reaching the free state of Ohio. (This is based on the tactics of the 1849 escape by Ellen Craft and William Craft). William continues his flight to Canada (an estimated 30,000 fugitive slaves reached there by 1852). Clotel returns to Virginia to try to free her daughter Mary. After being captured in Richmond, Clotel is taken to Washington, DC for sale at its slave market. She escapes and is pursued through the city by slave catchers. Surrounded by them on the Long Bridge, she commits suicide by jumping to her death in the Potomac River. Mary is forced to work as a domestic slave for her father Horatio Green and his white wife. She arranges to trade places in prison with her lover, the slave George. He escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe. Ten years later, after the Frenchman's death, George and Mary reunite by chance in Dunkirk, France. The novel ends with their marriage. Critical reception. The novel has been extensively studied in the late 20th and early 21st century. Kirkpatrick writes that "Clotel" demonstrates the "pervasive, recurring victimization of black women under slavery. Even individuals of mixed-race status who attempt to pass as white nevertheless suffer horrifically." It exposes "the insidious intersection of economic gain and political ambition—represented by founding fathers such as Jefferson and Horatio Green." It is a "scathing, sarcastic, comprehensive critique of slavery in the American South, race prejudice in the American North, and religious hypocrisy in the American notion as a whole." The novel and the title "walk a precarious line between oral history, written history, and artistic license." Mitchell said that Brown emphasized romantic conventions, dramatic incident and a political view in his novel. Recent scholars have also analyzed "Clotel" for its representations of gender and race. Sherrard-Johnson notes that Brown portrayed both the "tragic central characters " and the "heroic figures" as mulattoes with Angloid features, similar to his own appearance. She thinks he uses the cases of "nearly white" slaves to gain sympathy for his characters. She notes that he borrowed elements from the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child's plot in her short story, "The Quadroons" (1842). He also incorporated notable elements of recent events, such as the escape of the Crafts, and the freedom suit court case of Salome, an enslaved woman in Louisiana who claimed to be an immigrant born in Germany. Martha Cutter notes that Brown portrayed his women characters generally as passive victims of slavery and as representations of True Women and the cult of domesticity, which were emphasized at the time for women. They are not portrayed as wanting or seeking freedom, but as existing through love and suffering. Cutter asks, if Mary could free George, why did she not free herself? Although Brown published three later versions of "Clotel", he did not seriously change this characterization of the African-American women. Slave women such as Ellen Craft were known to have escaped slavery, but Brown did not portray such women fully achieving freedom. Mitchell, in contrast, believes that Brown portrays his women as acting heroically: she notes that Clotel escapes and goes back to Virginia to rescue her daughter, and more than one escape is described. She thinks he emphasizes adventure for the sake of character development. Even after heroic action, Brown's women are subject to the suffering of slavery. He emphasizes its evil of illegitimacy, and the arbitrary breakup of families. Influence. In addition to being the first novel published by an African American, "Clotel" became a model that influenced many other nineteenth-century African-American writers. It is the first instance of an African-American writer "to dramatize the underlying hypocrisy of democratic principles in the face of African American slavery." Through "Clotel", Brown introduces into African-American literature the "tragic mulatto" character. Such characters, representing the historical reality of hundreds of thousands of mixed-race people, many of them slaves, were further developed by "Webb, Wilson, Chesnutt, Johnson, and other novelists", writing primarily after the American Civil War. Adaptations. Brown published three variations of "Clotel" in the 1860s, but did not markedly change his portrayal of the African-American women characters. Style. According to Brown in its preface, he wrote "Clotel" as a polemic narrative against slavery, written for a British audience: It is also considered a propagandistic narrative, in that Brown leveraged "sentimentality, melodrama, contrived plots, [and] newspaper articles" as devices "to damage the 'peculiar institution' of slavery." Chapters predominantly open "with an epigraph underscoring the romance’s urgent message: 'chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man.'" "Clotel" is told through the use of a "third-person limited omniscient narrator." The narrator is "morally didactic and consistently ironic." The narrative is fragmented, in that it "combines fact, fiction, and external literary sources." It presents the reader with a structure that is episodic and is informed by "legends, myths, music, and concrete eye-witness accounts of the fugitive slaves themselves." It also "draws on antislavery lectures and techniques," such as "abolitionist verse and fiction, newspaper stories and ads, legislative reports, public addresses, private letters, and personal anecdotes."

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An American Marriage An American Marriage is a novel by the American author Tayari Jones. It is her fourth novel and was published by Algonquin Books on February 6, 2018. In February 2018, the novel was chosen for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. The novel also won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. The novel focuses on the marriage of a middle-class African-American couple, Celestial and Roy, who live in Atlanta, Georgia. Their lives are torn apart when Roy is wrongfully convicted of a rape he did not commit. In an interview with "The Paris Review" Jones revealed that she initially wrote the book solely from Celestial's point of view and decided to add multiple points of view after her initial readers reacted negatively to Celestial. Plot. Roy, a sales representative for a textbook company, and Celestial, an artist specializing in custom made baby dolls, are newlyweds who live in Atlanta. After their first year of marriage they travel to Eloe, Louisiana to visit Roy's parents. The newlyweds spend the night at the local Motel 6 where they feud after Roy tells Celestial that his father is not his biological father. In the middle of their fight they take 15 minutes to cool off during which Roy exits their room and meets a woman around his mother's age with a broken arm whom he helps to her room. Later that night the woman is raped and she calls the police, believing that Roy was the one who raped her. While Roy is in jail awaiting trial, Celestial discovers that she is pregnant and the two decide that she should have an abortion. When the case goes to trial Roy is given a sentence of 12 years. For the first few years Roy and Celestial keep an active correspondence, though Roy grows frustrated as Celestial's career as an artist begins to take off and the gaps between their letters and visits grows longer. During this period Roy discovers that his cellmate Walter is actually his biological father and shares the news with Celestial. Also during this time, Roy learns that his mother Olive has died. After three years Celestial tells Roy that she no longer wishes to be his wife, causing a rift between them. Roy refuses communication with Celestial for the following two years, however when his case is finally overturned on appeal and the local DA decides not to pursue the case, he optimistically reaches out to Celestial believing that there is still hope for their marriage as she has never divorced him. Celestial has, in the meantime, fallen in love with her childhood best friend, Andre. The night she learns that Roy is about to be set free, Andre proposes. Despite her guilt, Celestial decides to divorce Roy and marry Andre. Though the rest of her family accept her choice, the news causes a rift between Celestial and her father. Roy is released from prison early and is collected by his father, Roy Sr. Aware that Celestial plans to have Andre pick him up, Roy decides to leave for Atlanta just as Andre is leaving to collect him, ensuring that he will have time to spend alone with Celestial. Before he leaves, Roy runs into a former classmate of his, Davina, who invites him over for dinner. The two end up having sex which Roy feels is meaningful. He nevertheless decides to leave for Atlanta to pursue a relationship with his wife. In Atlanta, Roy is relieved to find that his key still works and surprises Celestial by being at home when she comes back from her doll shop. Roy tries to have sex with her but she asks him to use protection, knowing that he does not have any. The following day Andre arrives and in the ensuing argument about what happened when Roy was in jail Roy attacks and beats Andre on Celestial's lawn. Though the police are called Celestial manages to smooth things over. Celestial returns with Roy to her house and the following morning and tells Andre that she needs to be with Roy. That night however, when Roy confesses to having sex with Davina, Celestial has no reaction causing Roy to realize that Celestial truly no longer loves him romantically. Though she is willing to have sex with him he declines saying he has never been and will never be a rapist. In the epilogue Roy and Celestial exchange letters. Celestial informs Roy that though she and Andre are having a baby they have no plans to marry and Roy tells Celestial that he has reunited with Davina and the two plan to marry. Reception. The novel was widely praised upon its release. "The New York Times" praised it as a "wise and compassionate" novel. "The Globe and Mail" called the novel "sensational". The Washington Post commended Jones for her "daring creative choices" and "tender patience". "The Guardian" described the book as, "an immensely readable novel, packed with ideas and emotion". "The Atlantic" positively noted that, "with "An American Marriage", Jones joins this conversation in a quietly powerful way. Her writing illuminates the bits and pieces of a marriage: those almost imperceptible moments that make it, break it, and forcefully tear it apart."

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Linden Hills (novel) Linden Hills is a novel written by Gloria Naylor, originally published in 1985. Naylor bases her allegory on Dante's Inferno. The narrative is written from a third-person omniscient perspective, detailing different characters based on different traits that correspond with the different rings of Dante's interpretation of Hell. The novel is a revision of Naylor's Yale master’s thesis. Plot summary. Naylor begins her narrative by detailing the family history of Luther Nedeed, real estate purveyor of the Linden Hills neighborhood. Naylor exposes the American dream as nightmare, through the lens of race and class, by unraveling the dark secrets of Tupelo Drive. Reception. Critical reception has been positive. "The New York Times" wrote a mostly favorable review for the work, stating "Its flaws notwithstanding, the novel's ominous atmosphere and inspired set pieces - such as the minister's drunken fundamentalist sermon before an incredulous Hills congregation - make it a fascinating departure for Miss Naylor, as well as a provocative, iconoclastic novel about a seldom-addressed subject." "Publishers Weekly" was more critical, stating that the "narrative seems constructed and contrived rather than animated by the inner energy that distinguished Naylor's previous work. The novel as a whole is cold and preachy."

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Black Empire (novel) Black Empire was a tongue-in-cheek speculative fiction novel by conservative African-American writer George S. Schuyler originally published under his pseudonym of Samuel I. Brooks. The two halves of the book originally ran as weekly serials in the "Pittsburgh Courier". "Black Internationale" ran in the "Courier" from November 1936 to July 1937, "Black Empire" ran from October 1937 to April 1938. Combined and edited in 1993 by Robert A. Hill and R. Kent Rasmussen, editors at UCLA's Marcus Garvey Papers, the collected novel detailed the attempts of a radical African-American group called the Black Internationale, equipped with superscience and led by the charismatic Doctor Belsidus, who succeed in creating their own independent nation on the African continent. The novel is believed to be a lampoon of Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement and the Black Star Line.

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The Hate U Give The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting. "The Hate U Give" was published on February 28, 2017, by HarperCollins imprint Balzer + Bray, which had won a bidding war for the rights to the novel. The book was a commercial success, debuting at number one on "The New York Times" young adult best-seller list, where it remained for 50 weeks. It won several awards and received critical praise for Thomas's writing and timely subject matter. In writing the novel, Thomas attempted to expand readers' understanding of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as difficulties faced by black Americans who employ code switching. These themes, as well as the vulgar language, attracted some controversy and caused the book to be one of the most challenged books of 2017 and 2018 according to the American Library Association. The book was adapted into a film by Fox 2000 in October 2018, which received positive reviews. The novel was also adapted into an audiobook, won several awards and praise for its narrator, Bahni Turpin. Development and publication. Shaken by the 2009 police shooting of Oscar Grant, then-college student Angie Thomas began the project as a short story for her senior project in Belhaven University's creative writing program. While writing the short story, the project quickly expanded, though Thomas put it aside for a few years after graduation. Speaking to her hometown newspaper, Thomas said, "I wanted to make sure I approached it not just in anger, but with love even". The deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland drew Thomas back to expand the project into a novel, which she titled after Tupac Shakur's "THUG LIFE" concept: "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody". Events surrounding the killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Michael Brown, and widespread ensuing protests against racism and police brutality, also informed moments in the book. Unsure whether publishers would be interested in the Black Lives Matter-inspired material, Thomas reached out to literary agent Brooks Sherman on Twitter in June 2015 to ask for advice. In February 2016, HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray bought the rights to the novel in an auction, outbidding 13 other publishing houses, and signed a two-book deal with Thomas. Fox 2000 optioned the film rights the following month. The 464-page book was published on February 28, 2017, when the industry was attempting to address a decade-long stagnation in the number of children's books by African-American authors. Since its publication, Thomas has become an example of attempts by publishers to publish more young adult African-American novelists. Plot. Starr Carter is a 16-year-old black girl, who lives in the fictional mostly poor black neighborhood of Garden Heights, but attends an affluent predominantly white private school, Williamson Prep. After a shooting breaks up a party Starr is attending, she is driven home by her childhood best friend and sometimes crush Khalil. They are stopped by a white police officer. The officer instructs Khalil, who is black, to exit the car; while outside the car, Khalil leans into the driver-side window to check in on Starr. The officer then shoots Khalil three times, killing him. Starr agrees to an interview with police about the shooting after being encouraged by her Uncle Carlos, who is also a detective. Carlos was a father figure to Starr when her father, Maverick, spent three years in prison for gang activity. Following his release, Maverick left the gang and became the owner of the Garden Heights grocery store where Starr and her older half-brother Seven work. Maverick was only allowed to leave his gang, the King Lords, because he confessed to a crime to protect gang-leader King. Widely feared in the neighborhood, King now lives with Seven's mother, Seven's half-sister Kenya, who is friends with Starr, and Kenya's little sister, Lyric. Khalil's death becomes a national news story. The media portrays Khalil as a gang banger and drug dealer, while portraying the white officer who killed him more favorably. Starr's identity as the witness is initially kept secret from everyone outside Starr's family, including her younger brother Sekani. Keeping the secret from her white boyfriend Chris and her best friends Hailey Grant and Maya Yang – who all attend Williamson Prep – weighs on Starr, as does her need to keep her Williamson and Garden Heights personalities separate. Starr's struggles with her identity are further complicated after her mother gets a higher-paying job and the family moves out of Garden Heights. After a grand jury fails to indict the white officer, Garden Heights erupts into both peaceful protests and riots. The failure of the criminal justice system to hold the officer accountable pushes Starr to take an increasingly public role, first giving a television interview and then speaking out during the protests, which are met by police in riot gear. Her increasing identification with the people of Garden Heights causes tension with Starr's friends, especially with her boyfriend Chris. But by the end of the novel, Starr and Maya have started standing up to Hailey's racist comments while Chris offers support to Starr. The climax of the novel occurs during the riot following the grand jury decision. Starr, Chris, Seven, and DeVante – whom Maverick helped leave the King Lords – successfully defend Maverick's store from King. The neighborhood stands up to King and as a result of testimony by DeVante, King is arrested and expected to be imprisoned for a lengthy sentence. Starr promises to keep Khalil's memory alive and to continue her advocacy against injustice. Style. Vincent Haddad of Central State University reads "The Hate U Give" as an attempt to build empathy with the Black Lives Matter movement, as "the appeals for empathy figured by Starr's first-person account ultimately serve to discipline those who seek solutions deemed too 'un-realistic' to oppose the 'sustained violence against Black communities. By maintaining realism, and explicitly naming real-world victims of police brutality, Haddad contends that Thomas is able to spur action in her readers. However, he ultimately feels that there are limits to this approach because it is about the individual rather than the collective. By contrast, Vox's Constance Grady argues that this realism is what makes the novel ultimately work to larger purposes: "The specificity and whimsy of ideas like the anger scale of breakup songs is what keeps "The Hate U Give" moving so deftly through its heavy subject matter; it stays warm and focused and grounded in character even when it's dealing with big, amorphous ideas like systemic racism." Themes. Examining race relations is a core theme of the novel. Professor Khalil Muhammad of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government sees the novel as a way to have discussions among people who might not otherwise discuss Black Lives Matter: "The book – and to some degree the movie – has been read and will be read by students in all-white spaces, where otherwise the urgency of these issues has not affected them personally." At the same time, it could offer solace for black teens who have faced similar challenges to Starr. An example of this is Starr's ability to code switch between her private school and home, which Thomas demonstrates through the slang that Starr uses in each context's dialogue. Also helping Starr is her family who offer a variety of points of view, including her Uncle's thoughts as a police officer and her father teaching Starr and her siblings about the Black Panther Party. The novel also shows Starr's parents' struggles with remaining connected to their community while needing to protect and give opportunity to their children. "The Hate U Give" shows Starr's dual need to respond both to the trauma of witnessing Khalil's death and her need to do so politically. This dual need, combined with Thomas's ability to root these struggles in their historical context, helps give the book its power, according to Jonathan Alexander writing in the "Los Angeles Review of Books". "Los Angeles Times" critic Adriana Ramirez sees Starr as similar to the protagonists of fantasy dystopian novels like "Divergent" and "The Hunger Games" as she seeks to change an entrenched system of power, noting, "it is also a dystopian young adult novel that happens to be set in reality". Nick Smart, a professor at the College of New Rochelle, takes this further, stating, "In "The Hate U Give", there's also a girl – who happens to be a black girl – being sent out against the system, against the world, against an entrenched opposition", while Ramirez notes that Starr's blackness is a core element for some readers. Before its publication, exploring a female perspective on the isolation and need to be a model minority at an elite private school was something which had not been conducted in literature or film with the same frequency as for males. Thomas's ability to capture these feelings stemmed from her own experiences with the reactions of her white classmates following the death of Oscar Grant. The novel does not shy away from the realities of urban life, exemplified by the title's reference to the Tupac Shakur quote. Starr's feelings about Khalil evolve during the novel. The reader is first introduced to him at the party as a friend of Starr's and as a victim of a police shooting. This narrative is then complicated both for Starr and in the novel's world at large when it is learned that Khalil dealt drugs. However, Starr comes to disagree with the way the media is portraying Khalil. As Starr finds her own agency, she is able to challenge this narrative first for herself and then for others, recognizing that Khalil was forced into these circumstances by poverty, hunger, and a desire to care for his drug addict mother. She is able to show her courage speaking to the grand jury, and realizes that she needs to participate in the protests which follow its decision. How and where Khalil and Starr can find justice also drives Starr's decision to join in the protests. Reception. The book debuted at the top of "The New York Times" young adult (YA) best-seller list, and was on it for more than 80 weeks. The book had 100,000 copies in print in the first month, eventually selling more than 850,000 copies . The book was popular with readers, winning Goodreads annual awards vote in the categories of Best Young Adult Fiction and Debut Author. Critics also widely praised the book. In the "Christian Science Monitor", Katie Ward Beim-Esche wrote, "Believe the hype: "The Hate U Give," Angie Thomas's extraordinary and fearless debut, really is that good." Shannon Ozirny of "The Globe and Mail" also felt it would have wide appeal, "Ignore the YA label – this should be the one book everyone reads this year." On "Salon", Erin Keane wrote that the novel is "topical, urgent, necessary, and if that weren't enough, it's also a highly entertaining and engaging read." The book also earned starred reviews from multiple review journals. "Kirkus", which nominated the book for its Kirkus Prize, praised both its writing and timelines: "With smooth but powerful prose ... This story is necessary. This story is important." Young adult literature expert Michael Cart, writing in "Booklist", also praised Thomas's writing as Starr: "Beautifully written in Starr's authentic first-person voice, this is a marvel of verisimilitude." While praising the overall book in a starred review, "School Library Journal"s Mahnaz Dar criticized the writing of several characters as "slightly uneven". The "Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", "Horn Book Magazine", and "VOYA" also gave the book their equivalents of starred reviews. Awards. "The Hate U Give" has received the following awards and accolades: Challenges. The American Library Association listed the book as one of the ten most-challenged books of 2017 (), 2018 (), and 2020 (10) "because it was considered 'pervasively vulgar,'" contained "drug use, profanity, and offensive language," as well as sexual references, and "was thought to promote an anti-police message." In July 2018, a South Carolina police union raised objections to the inclusion of the book, as well as the similarly themed "All American Boys" by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, in the summer reading list for ninth-grade students of Wando High School. A representative of the police lodge described the inclusion of the books as "almost indoctrination of distrust of police" and asserted that "we've got to put a stop to that." The books remained on the list and Wando's principal was later recognized by the state school library association for her defense of the challenged books. The book was removed from the school libraries of the Katy Independent School District due to its explicit language. Thomas responded to these challenges by defending the book's message and saying that it is a spur for conversation. Adaptations. Film. Fox 2000 optioned "The Hate U Give" for a film adaption in March 2016, shortly after the book's auction. Director George Tillman Jr. and actress Amandla Stenberg were immediately attached to the project. The movie also features Issa Rae, Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Algee Smith, KJ Apa, Lamar Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Common, and Sabrina Carpenter. The film is based on a screenplay by Audrey Wells, who died one day before it was released. Stenberg's casting received some criticism because of her lighter complexion as compared to the girl on the novel's cover. The movie was given a limited release on October 5, 2018, and a wide release on October 19, 2018. The film was favorably received, with a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 8.2 out of 10, and an A+ CinemaScore. the film had a worldwide box office gross of $34 million against a budget of $23 million. Audiobook. An audiobook was released by Harper Audio on the same day as the novel and featured narration by Bahni Turpin, whom Thomas had selected. Audiobook producer Caitlin Garing spoke of the importance of matching the material with the narrator and spoke of Turpin's skill, "you can trust her to get to the heart of a story and lead the listener there". It was well reviewed and won Audie Awards for best YA and best female narrator. In her acceptance speech, Turpin said it was "an important book for our time". It also won the 2018 Odyssey Award for best children's audiobook. Odyssey committee chair Joan Schroeder Kindig said, "Bahni Turpin's powerful narration of this timely novel will inspire listeners to find their own voices." Turpin downplayed the award saying, "I don't think the public is aware of most of our awards, though – in general, I think those who most appreciate the awards are ... the people in the business of books". "Publishers Weekly", in its starred review of the audiobook, praised Turpin's abilities to convey "the complexity of the 16-year-old protagonist who sounds both youthful and mature for her age, as she relies on code-switching to navigate two different social settings". Maggie Knapp in her starred review for "School Library Journal" and Lynette Pitrak in her starred review for "Booklist" also praised Turpin's ability to capture Starr's voice in her performance.

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The Water Dancer The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by One World, an imprint of Random House. It is a surrealist story set in the pre–Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction" which can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways. The novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club. Background. Coates began writing the novel around 2008 and 2009. He had recently finished his first memoir, "The Beautiful Struggle", and was encouraged by his agent to write fiction. At the time, Coates was extensively researching slavery and the Civil War. He was influenced by author E. L. Doctorow and "how he almost reinvented history; he made history his in a certain kind of way". Coates cited Doctorow's novels "Ragtime" (1975) and "Billy Bathgate" (1989) as early influences and recalled later reading "The Waterworks". He was also influenced by his childhood love of comic books and, in general, the concept of heroes. While researching the Civil War, he was frustrated with how "a lot of the people who were held up as heroic were in fact straight-up white supremacists." Coates worked on the novel for a decade in "various degrees". Plot. Hiram Walker was born into slavery during the Antebellum South on a declining tobacco plantation in Virginia named Lockless. He is the mixed-race son of a white plantation owner and a black mother who was sold away by his father when Hiram was young. The local community consists of the enslaved ("the Tasked"); the landowners ("the Quality"); and the low-class whites. Hiram has an extraordinary photographic memory but is unable to remember his mother. However, in one instance when Hiram is driving across a bridge he suddenly has a vision of his mother dancing. When the vision ends, his carriage has fallen into the water. His (white) half brother drowns, but Hiram is transported out of the water. He learns that his miracle survival was a result of a superhuman ability he has called conduction, which transports himself and others across impossible distances. This conduction is triggered by powerful memories: those of his mother. He eventually becomes involved with the Underground Railroad. Hiram escapes to Philadelphia, where he encounters Box Brown and Jarm Logue. He eventually comes to meet a famous member of the Underground named Moses, who also has the power of Conduction. Moses is later revealed to be Harriet Tubman. Release. On October 13, 2019, the novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list and at number one on the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction best-sellers list. The novel was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the first book for the revival of her Oprah's Book Club on Apple TV+. She called it "one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the Top 5." Reception. At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "Positive" rating based on 41 reviews: 13 "Rave" reviews, 23 "Positive" reviews, 3 "Mixed" reviews, and 2 "Pan" reviews. "Publishers Weekly" gave the novel a rave review, writing, "In prose that sings and imagination that soars, Coates further cements himself as one of this generation's most important writers, tackling one of America's oldest and darkest periods with grace and inventiveness. This is bold, dazzling, and not to be missed." "Kirkus Reviews" gave the novel a favorable review, but felt it was "less intensely realized" than Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" (2015). Dwight Garner of "The New York Times" gave the novel a positive review, calling it "a jeroboam of a book, a crowd-pleasing exercise in breakneck and often occult storytelling that tonally resembles the work of Stephen King as much as it does the work of Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead and the touchstone African-American science-fiction writer Octavia Butler." David Fear of "Rolling Stone" gave the novel a rave review, saying it exceeded expectations for a debut novel and writing, "What's most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. [...] There’s an urgency to his remembrance of things past that brims with authenticity, testifying to centuries of bone-deep pain. It makes "The Water Dancer" feel timeless and instantly canon-worthy." Constance Grady of "Vox" praised the "clarity of Coates's ideas and the poetry of his language" but largely panned the novel as a "mess" with monotonous characters and lacking a strong plot development to make up for it. She criticized the movement between the plot-driven and allegorical storytelling modes as "whiplash-inducing".

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Kenyatta series The Kenyatta series is a four-volume urban fiction series by American author Donald Goines under the pseudonym of Al C. Clark. Goines released the books under a pseudonym on the request of his publisher, who wanted to avoid flooding the market with too many books under Goines's name and potentially undermining sales as well as to differentiate the books from Goines's "grittier" urban fiction novels. The books cover the actions of a man by the name of Kenyatta, named after Jomo Kenyatta, that leads a group of militant blacks similar to the Black Panther Party. The series comprises four books, "Crime Partners, Death List, Kenyatta's Escape", and "Kenyatta's Last Hit". Goines released the first book in June 1974 through Holloway House, with the final book being published posthumously in November of the same year. Synopsis. Crime Partners. "Crime Partners" introduces the character of Kenyatta, the leader of a group of militant Black people. The novel also introduces the reader to a pair of detectives named Benson and Ryan, who are intent on tracking down the people responsible for the murders going on in the city. The story takes place in Detroit, where two stick-up men named Jackie and Billy break into the apartment of a drug addicted couple. They discover the body of a child that had been beaten to death, which enrage them. Jackie and Billy then decide to kill the couple in addition to robbing them due to their part in the child's death. After they finish this, they end up coming across a man named Kenyatta, who runs a group of militant Blacks intent on ridding the streets of drug dealers and racist cops. He manages to persuade the two into joining the group in order to kill a couple of racist cops as well as to hire them to perform a hit on a local drug dealer. Jackie and Billy stake out the drug dealer for a few days before killing him, unaware that their surveillance has been observed by a drug addict. The drug addict then goes to the police to report the crime with the intention of gaining the identity of the two men he had observed and selling it to the drug dealer's supplier. During this time Jackie and Billy have traveled to a farm where Kenyatta trains the organization's members. While they are there the two fall in love with some of the girls working from within the organization. Billy, Jackie, and the two girls they meet later travel back to Detroit, but are ambushed and killed. Death List. "Death List" picks up immediately after the events in "Crime Partners", with detectives Benson and Ryan discovering the bodies of Jackie, Billy, and their girlfriends. Meanwhile, Kenyatta has agreed to pay an arms dealer for a list of the city's drug suppliers, but must hold up a food stamp depot in order to pay him. Once he has the list, Kenyatta has one of his men knock off the people on the list one by one. This proves to be a relatively effective task with the exception of the man at the top of the list, who is elusive. He eventually manages to locate the man by way of a person that works in the supplier's apartment and has that person commit the hit. During all of this Benson and Ryan continue to investigate Kenyatta, eventually locating the farm he trains his members at. The book ends with Kenyatta and a few of his men hijacking an airplane while the police head towards the farm where most of the organization is currently located. Kenyatta's Escape. The novel follows Kenyatta as he and part of his organization hijack a plane while the rest of his group are assaulted by the police and military at a farm. Much of the group at the farm are killed despite some surrendering, with only four people managing to survive and escape. The survivors make their way to an apartment in Chicago. Meanwhile, Kenyatta and his small group depart from Detroit, only to become involved in a mid-flight gun battle. As a result of the gun fight one of the pilots is shot, while the other one had already been killed. Despite being shot, the pilot manages to land the plane in the Nevada desert, where Kenyatta and his group appropriate some motorcycles from a nearby group of bikers. This leads to a fight, with some of the bikers getting killed. Kenyatta's group then steal a few cars and drive out to Los Angeles, where the FBI has brought in Detroit detectives Benson and Ryan, who had been following Kenyatta. The novel ends with a standoff at a gas station that sees Kenyatta's group dwindle even further as a large explosion takes out some police officers as well as a few of Kenyatta's people. Kenyatta and the surviving members of his group manage to escape the explosion and the incoming police officers just in time to avoid both death and capture. Kenyatta's Last Hit. The final book in the series, "Kenyatta's Last Hit" takes place in Los Angeles a year after the events in the previous entry. Kenyatta has managed to form a new group of activists that share his goals to clean the streets of drug dealers and crooked cops. He has also managed to recruit Elliot Stone, a former college football player, to join him. Stone is later shot by a gang along with two of Kenyatta's men, with the gang also setting fire to the building that Stone is in. He manages to escape dying in the fire, but is taken to a hospital where Kenyatta's men are forced to rescue him. They take him to Kenyatta's hide out, where he quickly recovers. The Detroit detectives Benson and Ryan fly into Los Angeles after discovering that the two dead men are members of Kenyatta's group, but are paired with a crooked LA cop. This cop does whatever he can to undermine the investigation, killing several witnesses before being killed himself. Kenyatta later sets up a meeting with a major drug dealer, then kills the drug dealer's men and threatens to kill him unless he introduces Kenyatta to his supplier. The drug dealer sets up a meeting in Las Vegas, only for it to turn into a bloodbath. Despite Kenyatta's attempts, the supplier escapes via helicopter while Kenyatta and much of his militant group and shot and killed. The bodies are then dumped, with Benson and Ryan being called in to identify Kenyatta's corpse. Themes. The "Kenyatta" series deals with several themes such as drug usage and the idea of morality. The book also dealt with the idea of the exploitation of Black sex trade workers by white financiers as well as with the idea of African and African-American "cultural and political nationalism behind bars". In addition to Kenyatta seeking revenge against white police officers and financiers that he believes have wronged his people, the books also deal with the theme of black on black crime and the possible futility of one man attempting to clean up the ghettos in the absence of state or local government assistance. In his book "Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines", Eddie B. Allen, Jr described the series as "symbolizing [Goines's] desire for victory" and "represented the strength and fearless determination that he lacked". Allen expressed disappointment over Kenyatta's death, as he saw the character as a representation of Goines's "desire to overcome his addiction to drugs" and because it "suggests that good can never defeat the larger societal evils that afflict our black communities." Film adaptation. Film rights to the "Kenyatta" series were purchased by "Picture Perfect Films", with Kenneth McGriff intending to release all four books as a series of feature-length films. The first film, "Crime Partners" was released in 2003. The film starred Ice-T, Snoop Dogg, and Ja Rule, with Clifton Powell playing the character of Kenyatta. The film was directed by J. Jesses Smith, with McGriff producing. Producer Irv Gotti funded and marketed "Crime Partner's" soundtrack, with part of the funding being seized by the Federal government. Federal agents claimed that the soundtrack was one of several avenues used by Murder Inc. and Gotti to launder drug money.

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The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter is a 2016 novel by American playwright and author Kia Corthron. It won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Plot. The novel chronicles the lives and interactions of two sets of brothers: Eliot and Dwight in Maryland, and B.J. and Randall in Alabama. It begins in 1941, jumps to the late 1950s, and concludes with the climactic events in 1983, followed by an epilogue in 2010. Development history. Corthron stated in a 2016 interview that she was inspired to begin the novel with the climactic event and drafted the novel in longhand. Upon starting the novel in 2010, she intended to have only one protagonist, but Corthron "realized [she] also wanted to know the story behind the other key person involved in the event ... and at last it became a book about brothers." Corthron, then known for her work as a playwright, said before the novel was published "[the idea] was just so huge I felt that this just couldn't fit into [a play,] a two-hour experience. Not necessarily more important, but just bigger." The novel was composed mainly in chronological order and Corthron "obsessively wrote [the draft] all the time," as fast as a hundred pages per month, noting she completed three drafts before showing it to anyone else. She composed parts of the novel at numerous writers' retreats and workshops. Publication history. The length of "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" caused several publishers to pass on the novel or suggest that it either receive major cuts or be broken into a trilogy; Corthron persisted until Seven Stories Press finally accepted the manuscript in September 2014. The original editor of the book at Seven Stories had resisted its publication, and Corthron believes the advocacy of another Seven Stories author, who brought the book to the primary editor at Seven Stories, was critical to its eventual publication. Corthron would cut 400 pages of the 1,200-page manuscript for final publication. Reception. The novel received mixed reviews, with praise for its dialogue but criticism for its length. "Publishers Weekly" hailed the novel as echoing "the social conscience of Steinbeck, the epic sweep of Ferber, [and] the narrative quirks of Dos Passos." Leonard Pitts, reviewing for "The New York Times", took issue with the length: "There is significant flab on these bones, sins of writerly self-indulgence and authorial indiscipline." Despite this, Pitts admired the novel's message: "... it succeeds admirably in a novel’s first and most difficult task: It makes you give a damn. It also does well by a novel’s second task: It sends you away pondering what it has to say." Naomi Wallace was quoted "[The novel] is the most important piece of writing about twentieth-century America since James Baldwin's "Another Country"." Corthron read from the proof galleys of her novel in 2015 at an artist's residency and a fellow writer in residency, Cathy Davidson, was immediately reminded of "Faulkner. Morrison. Ismael Reed. I cannot wait to read this novel. [...] Breathtaking." Awards. "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for best first novel.

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Jazz (novel) Jazz is a 1992 historical novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison. The majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920s; however, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th-century American South. The novel forms the second part of Morrison's Dantesque trilogy on African-American history, beginning with "Beloved" (1987) and ending with "Paradise" (1997). Narrative style and themes. The novel deliberately mirrors the music of its title, with various characters "improvising" solo compositions that fit together to create a whole work. The tone of the novel also shifts with these compositions, from bluesy laments to up beat, sensual ragtime. The novel also utilizes the call-and-response style of jazz music, allowing the characters to explore the same events from different perspectives. This book also features "untrustworthy narrators" whose emotions and perspective colour the story. Narration switches every so often to the viewpoint of various characters, inanimate objects, and even concepts. The book's final narrator is widely believed to be Morrison or perhaps the book itself. Legacy. Jazz was Morrison’s most recently published work when she was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the novel, "Morrison uses a device which is akin to the way jazz itself is played… the result is a richly complex, sensuously conveyed image of the events, the characters and moods."

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Blues People Blues People: Negro Music in White America is a seminal study of Afro-American music (and culture generally) by Amiri Baraka, who published it as LeRoi Jones in 1963. In "Blues People" Baraka explores the possibility that the history of black Americans can be traced through the evolution of their music. It is considered a classic work on jazz and blues music in American culture. The book documents the effects of jazz and blues on American culture, at musical, economic, and social levels. It chronicles the types of music dating back to the slaves up to the 1960s. "Blues People" argues that "negro music"—as Amiri Baraka calls it—appealed to and influenced new America. According to Baraka, music and melody is not the only way the gap between American culture and African-American culture was bridged. Music also helped spread values and customs through its media exposure. "Blues People" demonstrates the influence of African Americans and their culture on American culture and history. The book examines blues music as performance, as cultural expression, even in the face of its commodification. To Baraka, "Blues People" represented "everything [he] had carried for years, what [he] had to say, and [himself]". The book is deeply personal and chronicles what brought him to believe that blues was a personal history of his people in the United States. The resonance and desperation of this type of music is what compelled Baraka to learn about the history of blues music. He learned through his studies that the "Africanisms" is directly related to American culture, rather than being solely related to Black people. Baraka dedicates the book "to my parents ... the first Negroes I ever met". Content. The 1999 reprint begins with a reminiscence by the author, then aged 65, titled ""Blues People": Looking Both Ways", in which he credits the poet and English teacher Sterling Brown with having inspired both him and his contemporary A. B. Spellman. Baraka does not here discuss the impact his book has had. The original text is divided into twelve chapters, summarized below. "The Negro as Non-American: Some Backgrounds". Baraka opens the book by arguing that Africans suffered in America not only because they were slaves, but because American customs were completely foreign to them. He argues that slavery itself was not unnatural or alien to the African people, as slavery had long before existed in the tribes of West Africa. Some forms of West African slavery even resembled the plantation system in America. He then discusses a brief history of slavery, inside and outside the United States. He argues that unlike the slaves of Babylon, Israel, Assyria, Rome, and Greece, American slaves were not even considered human. Baraka then further addresses his previous assertion that African slaves suffered in the New World because of the alien environment around them. For example, the language and dialect of colonial English had no resemblance to the African dialects. However, the biggest difference that set the African people aside was the difference in skin color. Even if the African slaves were freed, they would always remain apart and be seen as ex-slaves rather than as freed individuals. Colonial America was an alien land in which the African people could not assimilate because of the difference in culture and because they were seen as less than human. The horrors of slavery can be broken down into the different ways in which violence was done against African people. In this section Baraka contends that one of the reasons the Negro people had, and continue to have, a sorrowful experience in America is the violently different ideologies held by them and their captors. He transitions from highlighting the economic intentions of Western religion and war to pointing out how the very opposite life views of the West African can be construed as primitive because of the high contrast. He addresses the violence done against the cultural attitudes of Africans brought to this country to be enslaved. He references the rationale used by Western society to justify its position of intellectual supremacy. Western ideologies are often formed around a heightened concept of self; it is based on a belief that the ultimate happiness of mankind is the sole purpose of the universe. These beliefs are in direct opposition to those of the Africans originally brought to this country, for whom the purpose of life was to appease the gods and live out a predetermined fate. Baraka stresses a point made by Melville Herskovits, the anthropologist responsible for establishing African and African-American studies in academia, which suggests that value is relative or that "reference determines value". Although Baraka is not justifying the white supremacist views of the West, he does create a space to better understand the belief that one can be more evolved than a people from whom one differs very much. Likewise the author does not present the African system of belief in supernatural predetermination as better but speaks of how an awful violence is done against these people ideologically, by forcing them into a world that believes itself to be the sole judge of the ways in which proper existence must occur. "The Negro as Property". In chapter 2, "The Negro as Property", Baraka focuses on the journey from the African to the African American. He breaks down the process of the African's acculturation to show its complex form. Baraka begins with the initial introduction to life in America. He compares the African's immigrant experience to that of the Italian and Irish. He says the Italian and Irish came "from their first ghetto existences into the promise and respectability of this brave New World" (p. 12). Africans, on the other hand, came to this new world against their will. There was no promise or respectability in America for them, only force and abrupt change, and this defines the evolution of African-American culture. After emancipation in 1863, the former slaves are being included in society. Baraka explains, these former slaves are no longer Africans. They are people of African descent who have, for generations, adapted to American culture. Their arrival and assimilation are most importantly not by choice. After being forcefully brought to America, the following generations are raised in a system that obliterates any trace of African culture. Children are immediately separated from their slave mothers at birth. They only learn stories and songs about Africa but lack the experience. Baraka states, "the only way of life these children knew was the accursed thing they had been born into" (p. 13). He shows that slavery is the most influential factor in African-American culture. He goes on to include the living conditions of slavery as an additional force. He refers to Herskovits's ideas to explain the dilution of African culture in the United States specifically. In the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas there are much heavier traces of African culture in the slave population. Herskovits explains this as a result of the master to slave ratio in these areas. In the United States the master to slave ratio was much smaller than in other regions of the New World, and is reflected in its form of a slave culture with constant association between the master and slave. Baraka continues with a description of the effects of the "constant association" between African slaves and the culture of their white masters. This, he states, was a phenomenon confined to the United States. Whereas in the Caribbean and South America the majority of white slave owners had households wealthy enough to keep teams of hundreds of slaves, the American South maintained a class of "poor whites" who owned smaller groups of forced workers. In these smaller estates slaves would often be subjected to sexual abuse at the hand of their masters, as well as social cohabitation among small children (however black and white children would not attend the same schools.) Baraka asserts that a result of this "intimacy" was the alienation of African slaves from the roots of their culture—tribal references (as well as the "intricate political, social, and economic systems of the West Africans"—including trades such as wood carving and basket weaving) faded in the wake of American culture—relegated to the status as "artifact". He argues that only religious, magical, and artistic African practices (that do not result in "artifacts") survived the cultural whitewashing, standing as the "most apparent legacies" of the roots of African families made slaves. "African Slaves / American Slaves: Their Music". Jazz is recognized as beginning around the turn of the 20th century, but is actually much older. Most people believe that its existence derived from African slavery, but it has native African-American roots. Blues music gave birth to Jazz, and both genres of music stem from the work songs of the first generation of African slaves in America. As slave owners forbade their slaves to chant and sing their ritualistic music, in fear of a rebellion, the original African slaves were forced to change their work songs in the field. The lyrics of their songs changed as well, as the original African work songs did not suit their oppressed situation. Jones states that the first generation of these slaves, the native Africans, truly knew the struggle of being forced into submission and stripped of their religion, freedoms, and culture. The music that formed as a result became a combination of the original African work songs and references to slave culture. Negroes in the New World transformed their language to be a mix of their own language and their European masters', which included Negro-English, Negro-Spanish, Negro-French, and Negro-Portuguese, all of which can be observed in their songs. Storytelling was the primary means of education within the slave community, and folk tales were a popular and useful means of passing down wisdom, virtues, and so on from the elders to the youth. These folk tales also became integrated into their music and American culture, and later began to appear in the lyrics of blues songs. Expression of oneself, emotions, and beliefs was the purpose of the African work song. Instruments, dancing, culture, religion, and emotion were blended together to form this representative form of music. Adaptation, interpretation, and improvisation lay at the core of this American Negro music. The nature of slavery dictated the way African culture could be adapted and evolved. For example, drums were forbidden by many slave owners, for fear of its communicative ability to rally the spirits of the enslaved, and lead to aggression or rebellion. As a result, slaves used other percussive objects to create similar beats and tones. As the music derived from their slave/field culture, shouts and hollers were incorporated into their work songs, and were later represented through an instrumental imitation of blues and jazz music. From these origins, Jones declares, "the notable fact is that the only so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of African derivation." "Afro-Christian Music and Religion". Christianity was adopted by the Negro people before the efforts of missionaries and evangelists. The North American Negroes were not even allowed to practice or talk about their own religion that their parents taught them. Specifically, in the south, slaves were sometimes beaten or killed when they talked about conjuring up spirits or the devil. Negroes also held a high reverence to the gods of their conquerors. Since their masters ruled over their everyday lives, Negroes acknowledge that the conqueror's gods must be more powerful than the gods they were taught to worship through discreet traditions. Christianity was also attractive to the Negroes, because it was a point of commonality between the white and black men. Negroes were able to finally imitate something valuable from their white slave owners. By accepting Christianity, Negro men and women had to put away a lot of their everyday superstitious traditions and beliefs in lucky charms, roots, herbs, and symbolism in dreams. White captors or slave masters exposed Christianity to the slaves because they saw Christianity as justification for slavery. Christianity gave the slaves a philosophical resolution of freedom. Instead of wishing to go back to Africa, slaves were looking forward to their appointed peaceful paradise when they meet their savior. Although they had to endure the harshness of slavery, the joy of living a peaceful life forever in eternity meant a lot more for them. As a result of accepting Christianity, slave masters were also happy that their slaves were now bound to live by a high moral code of living in order that they might reach the promised land. A lot of the early Christian Negro church services greatly emphasized music. Call-and-response songs were typically found in African services. Through singing of praise and worships songs in church, Negroes were able to express pent up emotions. African church elders also banished certain songs they considered "secular" or "devil songs" (p. 48). They also banished the playing of violins and banjos. Churches also began sponsoring community activities such as barbecues, picnics, and concerts, which allowed the Negro people to interact with each other. As time went by, African churches were able to produce more liturgical leaders such as apostles, ushers, and deacons. After the slaves were emancipated, the church community that was built by Negro leaders began to disintegrate because many began to enjoy the freedom outside of the church. As a result, some began listening again to the "devil's music" that was banned in the church and secular music became more prevalent. "Slave and Post-Slave". The chapter "Slave and Post-Slave" mainly addresses Baraka's analysis of the cultural changes Negro Americans had to face through their liberation as slaves, and how the blues developed and transformed through this process. After years of being defined as property, the Negro had no place in the post-slave white society. They had to find their place both physically, as they looked for somewhere to settle, but also psychologically, as they reconstructed their self-identity and social structure. Their freedom gave them a new sense of autonomy, but also took away the structured order of life to which they were accustomed. Baraka believes the Civil War and the Emancipation served to create a separate meta-society among Negroes, separating the Negroes more effectively from their masters with the institution of Jim Crow laws and other social repressions. The Reconstruction period brought about liberty for the American Negro and an austere separation from the white ex-slave owners and the white society that surrounded them. Organizations such as the KKK, Pale Faces, and Men of Justice emerged, seeking to frighten Negroes into abandoning their newfound rights, and to some extent succeeding. The Negro leaders — or educated, professional or elite Negro Americas such as Booker T. Washington— and many of the laws that were made to separate races at the time, divided blacks into different groups. There were those who accepted the decree of "separate but equal" as the best way for the Negro to live peacefully in the white order, and those who were separate from white society. After the initial period following the Emancipation, songs that arose from the conditions of slavery created the idea of blues, including the sounds of "shouts, hollers, yells, spirituals, and ballits", mixed with the appropriation and deconstruction of white musical elements. These musical traditions were carried along the post-slavery Negro culture, but it had to adapt to their new structure and way of life, forming the blues that we recognize today. "Primitive Blues and Primitive Jazz". The chapter "Primitive Blues and Primitive Jazz" refers to Baraka's breakdown of the development of blues — and jazz as an instrumental diversion — as Negro music through the slave and especially post-slave eras, into the music that we would consider blues today (its standardized and popular form). After Emancipation Negroes had the leisure of being alone and thinking for themselves; however, the situation of self-reliance proposed social and cultural problems that they never encountered as slaves. Both instances were reflected in their music, as the subject music became more personal and touched on issues of wealth and hostility. The change among speech patterns, which began to resemble Americanized English, also created a development in blues as words had to be announced correctly and soundly. With Negro singers no longer being tied to the field, they had an opportunity to interact with more instruments; primitive or country blues was influenced by instruments, especially the guitar. Jazz occurs from the appropriation of this instrument and their divergent use by blacks, with elements like "riffs", which gave it a unique Negro or blues sound. In New Orleans blues was influenced by European musical elements, especially brass instruments and marching band music. Accordingly, the uptown Negroes, differentiated from the "Creoles" — blacks with French ancestry and culture, usually of a higher class — gave a more primitive, "jass" or "dirty" sound to this appropriated music; which gave blues and jazz a distinct sound. Creoles had to adapt to this sound once segregation placed them on the same level as all other freed black slaves. The fact that the Negro could never become white was a strength, providing a boundary between him and the white culture; creating music that was referenced by African, sub-cultural, and hermetic resources. "Classic Blues". Baraka starts the chapter with marking it as the period where classic blues and ragtime proliferated. The change from Baraka's idea of traditional blues to classic blues represented a new professional entertainment stage for African-American art. Prior to classical blues, traditional blues' functionality required no explicit rules, and therefore a method didn't exist. Classic blues added a structure that was not there before. It started becoming popular with the change in minstrel shows and circuses. Minstrel shows demonstrated recognition of the "Negro" as part of American popular culture, which though it always had been, was never formally recognized. It was now more formal. Minstrel shows, despite the overall slanderous nature towards African Americans, were able to aid in the creation of this new form. It included more instruments, vocals and dancing than the previous blues tradition. Blues artist like Bessie Smith in "Put it Right Here or Keep It Out There" were presenting an unspoken story to Americans who have not heard of or had ignored it. He makes the distinction between blues, which he ties to slavery, and ragtime, which he claims to have more European musical ties. Baraka notes that this more classic blues created more instrumental opportunities for African Americans, but on the other hand instruments such as the piano were the last to incorporate and had a much more free spirited melody than the other instruments or compared to ragtime. Even with these new sounds and structure, some classic blues icons remained out of the popular music scene. "The City". The "Negroes" were moving from the south to the cities for jobs, freedom and a chance to begin again. This, also known as a "human movement", made jazz and classical blues possible. They worked the hardest and got paid the least. Ford played an important role with their transition because it was one of the first companies to hire African Americans. They even created the first car that was available for purchase for African Americans. Blues first began as a "functional" music, only needed to communicate and encourage work in the fields, but soon emerged into something more. Blues music became entertaining. It morphed into what was called "the 'race' record", recordings of music targeted towards African Americans. Mamie Smith was the first African American to make a commercial recording in 1920. She replaced Sophie Tucker, a white singer who was unable to attend due to illness. After that, that "Jazz Age" began, otherwise known as the "age of recorded blues". Soon, African American musicians began being signed and selling thousands of copies. Their music began to spread all over. Companies even began hiring African Americans as talent scouts. To the surprise of many, African Americans became the new consumers in a predominantly white culture. Blues went from a small work sound to a nationwide phenomenon. Musicians in New York were very different from the ones in Chicago, St. Louis, Texas and New Orleans; the music of performers of the east had a ragtime style and was not as original, but eventually the real blues was absorbed in the east. People were only really able to hear the blues and real jazz in the lower-class "gutbucket" cabarets. World War I was a time where the Negroes became mainstream in American life. Negroes were welcomed into the services, in special black units. After World War I, there were race riots in America and Negroes started to think of the inequality as objective and "evil." Because of this, many groups were formed, such as Marcus Garvey's black nationalist organization, and also other groups that had already been around, like the NAACP regained popularity. Another type of blues music that came to the cities was called "boogie woogie", which was a blend of vocal blues and early guitar techniques, adapted for the piano. It was considered a music of rhythmic contrasts instead of melodic or harmonic variations. On weekends, Negroes would attend "blue light" parties. Each featured a few pianists, who would take turns playing while people would "grind". In 1929, the depression left over 14 million people unemployed and Negroes suffered most. This ruined the blues era; most night clubs and cabarets closed and the recording industry was destroyed. Events that shaped the present day American Negro included, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, and the migration to the cities. "Enter the Middle Class". "The movement, the growing feeling that developed among Negroes, was led and fattened by the growing black middle class". In Chapter 9, Baraka's focus is on the cause and effect of the black middle class in the North. Negroes who held positions, such as house servants, freedmen and church officials, were seen as having a more privileged status among Negroes of this time. These individuals embodied the bulk of the black middle class. Although Negroes attempted to salvage their culture in the North, it was impossible to be free of the influence of "white America", drowning out the Negroes' past. The black middle class both responded and reacted to this by believing their culture should be completely forgotten, trying to erase their past and culture completely to be able to fit in. This, in turn, contributed to the growing support for cutting off Southerners in order to have a life in America. This divided and separated blacks, physically and mentally. All in all, the black middle class' attempt to fit into America around them, caused them to conform their own black culture, to the white culture that surrounded them. Not only did they attempt to change music, but media such as paintings, drama and literature changed, as a result of this attempt to assimilate into the culture around them. "Swing—From Verb to Noun". In this chapter, Baraka illustrates the importance of Negro artist to be a "quality" black man instead of a mere "ordinary nigger". Novelists such as Charles Chesnutt, Otis Shackleford, Sutton Griggs, and Pauline Hopkins demonstrated the idea of social classes within the black race in literature, similar to that of the "novel of their models", the white middle class. The separation created within the group gave a voice to the house servant. As the country became more liberal, in the early 1920s, Negroes were becoming the predominant urban population in the North, and there was the emergence of the "New Negro". This was the catalyst for the beginning of the "Negro Renaissance". The Negro middle-class mindset changed from the idea of separation, which was the "slave mentality", into "race pride" and "race consciousness", and a sense that Negroes deserved equality. The "Harlem School" of writers strove to glorify black America as a real production force, comparable to white America. These writers included Carl Van Vechten, author of the novel "Nigger Heaven". Since the Emancipation, the blacks' adaptation to American life had been based on a growing and developing understanding of the white mind. In the book, Baraka illustrates the growing separation, in New Orleans between the Creoles, gens de couleur, and mulattoes. This separation was encouraged as a way to emulate the white French culture of New Orleans. Repressive segregation laws forced the "light people" into relationships with the black culture and this began the merging of black rhythmic and vocal tradition with European dance and march music. The first jazzmen were from the white Creole tradition and also the darker blues tradition. The music was the first fully developed American experience of "classic" blues. In the second half of this chapter, Baraka breaks down the similarities and differences between two jazz stars: Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. "The incredible irony of the situation was that both stood in similar places in the superstructure of American society: Beiderbecke, because of the isolation any deviation from mass culture imposed upon its bearer; and Armstrong, because of the socio-historical estrangement of the Negro from the rest of America. Nevertheless, the music the two made was as dissimilar as is possible within jazz." He goes on to draw a distinction between what he identifies as Beiderbecke's "white jazz" and Armstrong's jazz, which he sees as being "securely within the traditions of Afro-American music". Moreover, Baraka's broader critique of the place of Negro music in America is emphasized when he claims sarcastically, despite Beiderbecke's white jazz being essentially "antithetical" to Armstrong's, that "Afro-American music did not become a completely American expression until the white man could play it!" Baraka then goes on to chart the historical development of Armstrong's music as it became influenced by his performances and recordings with the Hot Five. He notes that though previous jazz bands were focused on an aesthetic based on a flexible group improvisation, Armstrong's presence in the Hot Five changed the dynamic of play and composition. Instead of a cohesive "communal" unit, the other members followed Armstrong's lead and therefore, he claims, the music made by the Hot Five became "Louis Armstrong's music". Baraka goes on to write about the rise of the solo jazz artist and specifically Armstrong's influence on the tendencies and styles of jazz bands all over. His "brass music" was the predecessor of music featuring reed instruments that would follow. He writes about the bands playing in the 1920s and '30s and how the biggest and best of them were run and organized by predominately college-educated black men. These men worked for years to grow the music and integrate new waves of style as much as they could without sacrificing the elements that were so important to the identity of the music. Furthermore, Baraka writes about Duke Ellington's influence being similar in magnitude to Armstrong's but in a different way. He sees Ellington as perfecting the "orchestral" version of an expressive big band unit, while maintaining its jazz roots. After this, much of the white middle-class culture adopted a taste for this new big band music that had the attitude and authenticity of the older black music but was modified, in part, to suit the modern symphony-going listener. This started transforming into the well-known swing music. When there became a market for this particular taste, white bands started trying to appropriate the style for the sake of performance and reaching broader audiences (a testament to the growing influence and significance of the Negro music movement). Unfortunately, Baraka points out, with the explosion in popularity, the industry for recording and producing music of this kind became somewhat monopolized by wealthy white record labels and producers. There was widespread discrimination against black performers, even after labels would pay good money for original scores written by someone else. This discrimination was evident too in the subsequent alienation of many Negro listeners, who became turned off by the appropriation and new mainstream success of what they felt and saw as their own music. "The Blues Continuum". Large jazz bands had begun to replace traditional blues, which had begun to move to the underground music scene. Southwestern "shouting" blues singers developed into a style called rhythm and blues, which was largely huge rhythm units smashing away behind screaming blues singers. The performance of the artists became just as important as the performance of the songs. Rhythm and blues, despite its growth in popularity, remained a "black" form of music that had not yet reached the level of commercialism where it would be popular in the white community. The more instrumental rhythm and blues use of large instruments complemented the traditional vocal style of classic blues. It however differed from traditional blues by having more erratic, louder percussion and brass sections to accompany the increased volume of the vocals. Rhythm and blues had developed into a style that integrated mainstream without being mainstream. With its rebellious style, rhythm and blues contrasted the mainstream "soft" nature of Swing with its loud percussion and brass sections, and because of its distinctive style remained a predominantly "black" form of music that catered to an African American audience. There was divide however between the middle class of African Americans, who had settled upon mainstream swing and the lower class, who still had a taste for traditional country blues. Over time, the mainstream sounds of swing became embedded so far into rhythm and blues that it became indistinguishable from its country blues roots and into a commercialized style. "The Modern Scene". As white Americans adopted styles of blues and adopted this new expression of music, jazz became the more accepted "American" music, which related to a broader audience and was accepted for commercial use. Through this evolution of blues into jazz and this idea that jazz could be more socially diverse and appeal to a broader range of Americans, blues started to become less appreciated while jazz represented the "true expression of an American which could be celebrated". Copying the oppressive ideas that segregated the people between white and black blues was devalued and the assimilation of both African Americans and their music into being considered "American culture" was next to impossible. As years went on there was a failure to see that the more popular mainstream sounds of swing and jazz and "white" wartime entertainment was a result of the black American tradition, blues created by the very people that America was trying so hard to oppress. In efforts to try to re-create their own sound once more and create their own culture of music, they began with their roots in blues and evolved their sounds of the past into a new sound, bebop.

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Stranger in the Village "Stranger in the Village" is an essay by African-American novelist James Baldwin about his experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland, after he nearly suffered a breakdown. The essay was originally published in "Harper's Magazine", October 1953, and later in his 1955 collection, "Notes of a Native Son". In the summer of 1951, Baldwin almost suffered a breakdown, for which his partner, Lucien Happersberger, took him to an established Swiss health-resort in the Valais Alps, known as Leukerbad. Baldwin declares that, while he is a stranger in the village of Leukerbad, he also feels like a stranger in the village of the United States of America as an African American. Plot summary. The essay is an account of Baldwin's experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland. Residents of Leukerbad were fascinated by Baldwin's blackness; according to Baldwin they had never seen a black man before. The village is almost four hours from Milan Italy. Because it is located in Swiss alps, it is extremely isolated. Baldwin being an African American is the only Black person the villagers have ever seen thus making him a stranger in the village. Baldwin was a stranger in Leukerbad, the Swiss village, but there was no possibility for blacks to be strangers in the United States, nor for whites to achieve the fantasy of an all-white America purged of blacks. This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history. Baldwin further goes on to explain the relationship between American and European history, by explicitly pointing out that American history encompasses the history of the Negro, while European history lacks the African-American dimension. Baldwin observes that in America the Negro is “an inescapable part of the general social fabric” and that “Americans attempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro.” Baldwin argues that white Americans try to retain a separation between their history and black history despite the interdependence between the two. It is impossible for Americans to become European again “recovering the European innocence” through the neglect of the American Negro; the American Negro is a part of America permanently pressed and carved into an undeniable history. Baldwin relates his experiences in a small Swiss village composed of people who had never seen a black man before he arrived in the village in the summer of 1951. Baldwin describes a kind of naive racism: children who shout "Neger!" when they see him, unaware of the echoes he hears from his past when others shouted a more damning word ("Nigger!") in the streets of New York City; local Catholic residents (the main religion of the village) who donate money to "buy" Africans so that missionaries can convert those Africans to Catholicism, told to Baldwin with pride, again without realizing the ominous undertones of that practice for a man who is a descendant of African slaves. Yet, there is also a more sinister racism, even in a remote village that has direct experience with only one Black man: men who describe Baldwin as "le sale negre" ('the dirty Black man') behind his back and assume that he stole wood from them, or of children who "scream in genuine anguish" when he approaches them because they have been taught that "the devil is a black man." The final sentence in his essay articulates a defiant claim by Baldwin and an understanding that the villagers' and white Americans' need to reach, losing thereby what Baldwin describes as "the jewel" of the white man's naivete - in other words, white Americans' willful desire to ignore white privilege and the effects of centuries of racism and systemic discrimination against Black Americans: "This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again." Therefore, as Baldwin put it, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” Form and themes. Baldwin appears to be telling the story of his experiences in that tiny Swiss village. He uses the story as a metaphor for the history of race relations in the United States, describing the power discrepancy between whites of European background and African Americans who were forcibly brought to the US as slaves. Baldwin speaks of racism in the United States and in Leukerbad, Switzerland, drawing parallels between the two. This essay is autobiographical in nature, as Baldwin speaks of his own experiences. "Stranger in The Village", in many forms, is a protest against America for its treatment of African Americans, putting its racism on full display. In the essay, Baldwin raises questions of his own identity and how he fits into society in both the United States and in Leukerbad, where the family of his lover, Lucien Happersberger, had a chalet in a village up in the mountains. Reception and influence. The legacy of "Stranger In the Village" is tied to the legacy and reception of the book in which it is featured, "Notes of a Native Son". The book is widely regarded as a classic of the black autobiographical genre. The Modern Library placed it at number 19 on its list of the 100 best 20th-century nonfiction books. Since Baldwin's passing on December 1, 1987, his writings have been published worldwide and are still known as essential emblems of the American canon.

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Beyond the Down Low Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America is a 2005 book by Keith Boykin. This book of essays analyzes the validity of the down low phenomenon, first publicized by J. L. King in his book "On the Down Low". It covers multiple discussions about gay sexuality, the African-American community, homophobia, and the spread of HIV. Boykin distances himself from King's conclusions, accusing him of making a name for himself by spreading misinformation. He also stresses that not only African-American men who have sex with men are "on the down low". He names two Caucasians, Jim McGreevey and Ed Schrock, as examples of non-blacks technically "on the down low". He pinpoints how an article in "The New York Times" stating that a large number of black, gay men has been twisted to suggest that there are many men on the down low purposely infecting heterosexual, African-American women. Finally, he argues that only when more African-American men and women are openly gay in the media spotlight, this will diminish homophobia in black communities or disprove that homosexuality is a predominantly white (or at least non-black) phenomenon. See also. General:

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The Lesson (short story) "The Lesson" is a short story by Toni Cade Bambara (1938–1995). It was first published in 1972. The Lesson” is a first-person narrative told by a young, black girl named Sylvia who is growing up in Harlem in an unspecified time period known only as “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara, 1992). Going by the prices, one can assume the story takes place sometime in the early seventies. The story is about a trip initiated by a well-educated woman named Miss Moore who has taken it upon herself to expose the unappreciative children of the neighborhood to the world outside of their oppressed community. The destination is the FAO Schwarz Toy Store in Manhattan, where the toys aimed at a white market are extremely expensive. Some cost more than the children’s household yearly incomes. The children contemplate the extreme prices. Miss Moore uses the trip to demonstrate how an unjust economic and social system creates unfair access to money and resources for black Americans. The lesson on economic inequality is almost lost on the children, who, too contemptuous to open themselves up to the education offered them by the well-intended Miss Moore, close the story by making plans to spend the leftover cab fare change. In the end, however, Sylvia seeks solitude to contemplate the events of the day. The narrator has found a way to direct her own anger and spouts "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin," illustrating how the two main characters choose different paths at the end of the story. This story also emphasizes that individuals who are segregated to certain environments should not be condescended to, as Miss Moore, the educated outsider, creates resistance with her patronizing.

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The Man Who Was Almost a Man "The Man Who Was Almost a Man", also known as "Almos' a Man", is a short story by Richard Wright. It was published in 1961 as part of Wright's compilation "Eight Men". The story centers on Dave, a young African-American farm worker who is struggling to declare his identity in the atmosphere of the rural South. The story was adapted into a 1976 film starring LeVar Burton. Plot summary. The story follows Dave Saunders, a seventeen-year-old kid desperate to prove his manhood. After being teased, babied, and downright "disrespected", our young hero decides that the only way he can make things right is by buying a gun. (Not the smartest move, as it turns out.) One dead mule, fifty dollars of debt, and an angry boss later, Dave is challenged to finally prove that he's a man once and for all. The story begins with the protagonist Dave Sanders walking home from work, irritated with the way he has been treated. Dave works for a farmer on a cattle farm and as he walks across the fields he begins thinking of ways that will prove to the other workers that he is a grown up. He decides that the perfect way to prove that he is a grown up is to purchase a gun. Instead of going home, he goes over to a local store to have a look at the guns in a Sears Roebuck catalog. When he enters into the store, Dave encounters the owner Fat Joe. Dave requests the catalog, leading Joe to ask him if he is planning on buying something. Dave responds with a “yessuh,” so Joe then inquires whether or not Dave's ma is letting him have his own money now, to which Dave responds with a “[s]hucks. Mistah Joe, Ahm gittin t' be a man like anybody else,”! Joe asks what exactly it is Dave is planning on buying; a question Dave is reluctant to answer unless Joe promises not to say anything. Joe promises and Dave tells him he's looking to purchase a cannon ball; Joe states that Dave “ain’t nothing but a boy,” and that he does not need a gun, but if he's going to buy one he might as well buy it from him and not from some catalog. Joe offers to sell Dave a left-hand Wheeler, fully loaded and in working order for only two dollars if he can get the money from his ma. With his excitement and interest aroused, Dave leaves the store vowing to come back for the gun later. When he gets home his mother awaits him, irritated because he has kept supper waiting. Dave sits down at the table with the borrowed catalog until his mother takes it from him, threatening to make it outhouse material if he does not get up and wash. After explaining that it was not his she gives it back to him only to have him fumble through it all throughout dinner. Dave was so infatuated with the catalog that he did not even notice his food was in front of him, or that his father had spoken to him. He determines that if he was going to get the pistol that he had better ask his mother for the money and not his father because his father would instantaneously say no, whereas his mother might be a little easier to persuade. Upon the completion of supper, Dave finally builds up enough tenacity to approach his mother with his inquiry. He starts the conversation by asking if his boss, Mr. Hawkins, had paid her for the work he had accomplished on the plantation. His mother responds that she has received the money but that it was to be saved in order to buy clothes for the winter. Dave presents to her his proposition and she responds by saying, “[g]it outta here! Don yuh talk t' me bout no gun! Yuh a fool!" Dave persuades her by stating that the family needs a gun, and that if he bought it he would surrender it to his father. Despite her better judgment, Mrs. Sanders agrees to give Dave the two dollars he needs as long as he promises that as soon as the pistol is in his possession he will bring it straight home and turn it over to her. Dave runs out the door with the money and purchases the pistol from Joe. On his way home he stops in the fields to play with the gun, only he is unsure of how to use it so he just points and pretends to be shooting imaginary objects. When he arrives at his house he breaks his promise and does not surrender the gun, instead he hides it under his pillow, and when his mother comes to retrieve it he claims to have hidden it outside. Dave wakes and with the gun in his hands thinks to himself that he now has the power to “kill anybody, black or white.” He ties the pistol to his leg with a piece of flannel and leaves the house early so he can go unnoticed and not have to give up the gun. Dave arrives at work early so Mr. Hawkins tells him to hook up Jenny, the mule, and go plow the fields located near the woods. Dave is delighted with the request because it meant he would be so far away from everyone else that he could practice his shooting and no one would hear. When he gets out to the woods, Dave plows two rows then takes his gun out to show Jenny, he waves the gun around then closes his eyes and take his first shot. The gun flies back in Dave's hand and scares away the mule. When he catches up to her he realizes that Jenny has been shot and he tries repeatedly to plug the hole with handfuls of “damp black earth.” Jenny eventually dies. By sunset Jenny's body is found and Dave is questioned by both his parents and Mr. Hawkins about what happened. Dave lies about the incident stating that something was wrong with Jenny causing her to fall on the point of the plow. His mother knows this is a lie and insist Dave tell the truth. In tears, Dave confesses, but lies yet again when asked what he has done with the gun. Mr. Hawkins tells Dave that although it was an accident he will pay two dollars a month until he has paid fifty dollars to replace the mule. That night Dave feels annoyed at having to pay back Mr. Hawkins for the next two years, and even more annoyed with the fact that people view him as a child more now than ever before. He decides to leave his house and retrieve the gun in which he had buried, not thrown in a river like he claimed. He forces himself to fire the gun with his eyes open until he empties it. In the distance, Dave hears a train, which he approaches and hops in the hopes that this will at last prove he is indeed a man. Symbolism. The Gun: The gun symbolizes several things in the eyes of Dave from the achievement of power or control, to independence, and the desire of masculinity, while in reality it symbolizes his struggle and failure to achieve such aspirations. “Dave felt he wasn’t a man without a gun,” on his way home from work he struggles with finding a way to prove to everyone that he was no longer a boy, feeling that the buying of a gun was the only way to get his point across to those who have been doubting him. In purchasing the gun Dave feels he has acquired masculinity, giving him a newfound sense of independence. With the gun Dave feels invincible, like no one can pass judgment upon him, tell him what to do, or harm him in any way. In the scene in which Dave kills Jenny, Dave exposes his immaturity and lack of control by misusing the weapon. Usually a boy kills an animal on an early morning hunting trip as a right of passage; Dave's kill however, was a result of him “sneaking his gun along with him into the field he is supposed to plow for his boss,” much like a child would do. His misuse of the gun and the killing of the mule demonstrated to those around him that he was in fact still an irresponsible boy. The gun was supposed to have made him an independent masculine individual but in reality it simply symbolized his struggle to achieve such goals.

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Girl (short story) "Girl" is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid that was included in "At the Bottom of the River" (1983). It appeared in the June 26, 1978 issue of "The New Yorker". Plot summary. The story is a to-do list and a how-to-do list containing one sentence of a 650 word dialogue. It features what the girl hears from her mother. The story is mostly told in the second person. The girl hears her mother's instructions and the behavior her mother is trying to instill in her. It is apparent that the mother is trying to give the girl some sort of advice and prescribing the way she should go about her life and daily tasks. One may infer that her mother probably got this language from someone in her past and it was most likely the way her mother spoke to her when she was a young girl, so that's all she's ever known. During the story, her mother's voice sounds somewhat condescending and critical when speaking, suggesting that the girl is likely to become a "slut." For example, in the short story, the mother states, "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming." Throughout the piece the mother tries to pass down certain beliefs from her culture to her daughter. The mother constantly reminds her daughter of how to become the "perfect" woman in order to fit into the society that they live in. Also, the chores and behaviors that the mother makes the daughter inhabit are directly related to how women's duties should relate to a man's. Like most of Kincaid's piece of writing, "Girl" is based on her own relationship between her and her mother while growing up. Jamaica Kincaid has also revealed in interviews that the setting of this short story takes place in Antigua. Structure. The theme for "Girl" is mother-daughter dispute. In this story, the mother goes on and on teaching the daughter how to be the perfect woman in society. As the story goes on, the mother’s directions get more demanding.

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Difficult Women (book) Difficult Women is a 2017 short story collection by Roxane Gay. Content. In "Vogue", Julia Fesenthal characterized "Difficult Women" as "a misogynist's taxonomy of the opposite sex. On the narrator's short list: loose women, frigid women, crazy women, mothers, and, finally, dead girls," depicted in stories "woven through with strands of magical realism." Development and publication. Gay has described being challenged by publishers in the development of the collection owing to the difficult material the book covers. Speaking at the "Los Angeles Times" Festival of Books, Gay recounted, "Editors said, 'we love ["Difficult Women"] but it makes me want to kill myself." Grove Press published the 272-page collection on January 3, 2017. Reception. "Difficult Women" received favorable reviews from critics. Reviewing the collection in "The Washington Post", Megan Mayhew Bergman said Gay's "real gift to readers in "Difficult Women" is her ability to marry her well-known intellectual concerns with good storytelling." In "USA Today", Jaleesa M. Jones gave "Difficult Women" four (of four) stars, noting Gay's "deft touch with how ... intersecting identities mold and shape women’s experiences."

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Life Is Not a Fairy Tale Life Is Not a Fairy Tale is a book describing the life of "American Idol" (season 3) winner Fantasia Barrino, and her rise to national prominence. The book later became a television movie shown on Lifetime. Book. "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale" by Fantasia. In her autobiography "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale", a "New York Times" bestseller, Fantasia tells of her rise from high-school dropout to music star. As an "American Idol" contestant, she captured the hearts of millions with her extraordinary voice and sassy style, with those qualities she won the talent contest and became a nationally prominent singer. But her life began much more humbly. At the age of seventeen, despite her remarkable talent, Fantasia was an uneducated, unmarried teenage mother living in poverty. She was faced with many tough battles growing up in the city of High Point, North Carolina, which is mainly famous for its furniture Market. She shows respect and admiration to the strong women who raised her, her mother and grandmother, both preachers who instilled in her a strong faith in God. Both women struggled with the same issues as Fantasia at a young age which made Fantasia realize that she would only be headed down the same dead end path if she didn't make a change for the better. Film. Life Is Not A Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story is a 2006 American biographical film directed by Debbie Allen, loosely based on the life of American singer Fantasia Barrino. The film was adapted from the book "Life Is Not A Fairy Tale" written by Fantasia. Overview. In this Lifetime original movie, director Debbie Allen gives viewers a first hand look at the struggles Fantasia faced before/during her rise to fame. The movie begins with Fantasia's humble beginnings, growing up in a close knit God-fearing family that faced its own personal demons of struggling with their dreams. Fantasia faces problems with her self-esteem, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy and her faith as she fights to overcome her mistakes at a young age. This movie depicted from her best selling biopic of the same name, provides an emotional example of what you can achieve when believing in yourself. The movie premiered on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 9:00 PM EST. It was Lifetime's second most watched movie in its 22-year history, with more than nineteen million viewers tuning in during the August 19–20 weekend. The movie was ranked the number one basic cable movie premiere in 2006 among women ages 18–49. Weekend online traffic to Lifetimetv.com rose by more than seventy percent during that weekend. In 2007, the movie and its actors including Fantasia, Loretta Devine and Kadeem Hardison were nominated for 4 NAACP Image Awards. Kadeem Hardison won his award. It was also nominated for a 2007 Teen Choice Award for Choice TV: Movie. Soundtrack. Although a soundtrack was never released for the film, many songs were performed throughout the film. The following track listing are the songs that are performed in order throughout the film.

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Another Brooklyn Another Brooklyn is a 2016 novel by Jacqueline Woodson. The book was written as an adult book, unlike many of the author's previous books and titles. NPR wrote that the book was "full of dreams and danger". It was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2016. Plot. The story starts with August, an adult anthropologist, returning to New York to bury her father. On the subway, she encounters an old friend, and begins to reminisce. She remembers being an 8 year old girl moving with her father and younger brother to Brooklyn from Tennessee after the death of her mother. The book then follows August through her teenage years. August shares friendships with three other Brooklynites, Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, as they walk through the neighborhoods and dream optimistically of the future, and revealing what it held in store for them. August and her friends also face dangers on the streets, and family strife of various types. Reviews. The book received many reviews. To "The Washington Post", it is a "short but complex story that arises from simmering grief. It lulls across the pages like a mournful whisper." "Publishers Weekly" writes that it is a "a vivid mural of what it was like to grow up African-American in Brooklyn during the 1970s." NBC News wrote that it "weaves together themes of death, friendship, Black migrations, the sense of displacement that usually follows, and family." "The New York Times" said "the subject isn’t as much girlhood, as the haunting half-life of its memory." Kaitlyn Greenidge for "The Boston Globe" wrote that the book was "a love letter to loss, girlhood and home. It is a lyrical, haunting exploration of family, memory and other ties that bind us to one another and the world." "USA Today" gave it 3 out of 4 stars. "The Los Angeles Times" said that the book "joins the tradition of studying female friendships and the families we create when our own isn’t enough, like that of Toni Morrison’s 'Sula,' Tayari Jones’ 'Silver Sparrow' and " by Audre Lorde. Woodson uses her expertise at portraying the lives of children to explore the power of memory, death and friendship."

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Black Sexual Politics Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins is a work of critical theory that discusses the way that race, class and gender intersect to affect the lives of African American men and women in many different ways, but with similar results. The book explores the way that new forms of racism can work to oppress black people, while filling them with messages of liberation. "Black Sexual Politics" also examines the way a narrow sexual politics based on American ideas/ideals of masculinity, femininity and the appropriate expression of sexuality work to repress gay and hetero, male and female. Collins' work also proposes a liberatory politics for black Americans, centered on honest dialogue about the way stereotypical imagery and limiting racist and sexist ideology have harmed African Americans in the past, and how African Americans might progress beyond these ideas and their manifestations to become active change agents in their own communities. Summary. The book starts from the premise that in order to achieve a more progressive black political agenda, African Americans need to look critically at the way race, class and gender intersect in their lives to create different responses. Looking at the black community as a monolith may prevent us from seeing that African American women are the targets of specific social welfare policies or that African American men are being disproportionately incarcerated. Both of these results stem from racism, but take on a gendered approach. In "Black Sexual Politics", Hill Collins proposes several ideas for black liberation, though the book is focused on getting individuals to find creative ways to challenge racism, sexism and homophobia as it manifests itself in their own communities. One idea that Hill Collins purports is that African Americans need to create and support avenues of self-expression that allow them to tell their own stories about the effects of racism/sexism/homophobia, and to share their emotional and sexual experiences as African American persons. This work is being done, but is largely in its infancy. Hill Collins also argues that it is critical for African Americans to define new visions of success that resist traditional Western/American views. She argues that equating masculinity with wealth and femininity with submissiveness and financial dependence is harmful to all groups, but especially for African Americans, who have been traditionally locked out of the economic opportunity structure. In a society where black men face threats to their economic well being, and disproportionately are incarcerated and lack access to quality education, any vision of masculinity that suggests that to be a man is to be financially successful puts a great number of black males at odds. Collins argues for a new, more holistic version of success, that includes visions of the importance of personal character apart from economic achievement. Hill Collins argues that there needs to be a culture of honesty in the black community, whereby black persons can express their ideas and identities in a whole way. If we do not create the space for black people to express their sexual perspectives freely, then we create a space where the silence and deceptiveness that leads to the spread of HIV/AIDS to continue. When we can discuss sexuality from multiple perspectives, we allow people the space to talk about sex and sexuality and feel more comfortable engaging their partners in dialogues about their own sexual history, sexual feelings, and lead to STD testing and full appreciation and connection of one another. LGBT. In "Black Sexual Politics" Collins expresses the view that the black community will not reach its progressive political agenda, nor will it be able to successfully address social issues such as the HIV/AIDS crisis affecting the black community, if it does not allow marginalized voices like women and LGBT persons to express their perspectives and lifestyles. Collins believes that a group cannot be truly revolutionary or progressive if it works to oppress others. She also believes that a view of the black community that values some identities and expressions over others limits the connectedness that others in that community feel, and prevents issues disproportionately affecting them to be discussed in meaningful ways. She argues that a narrow black sexual politics that places extreme value on limiting views of the role of the male and the role of the female, and also on the role of appropriate and socially acceptable sexual behavior works to deny LGBT people their agency, and prevents honest dialogue about different types of sexual lifestyles. This can work to the oppression of LGBT people, but also of heterosexual women and men, oppressed by views of sexuality which limit their sexual expression, and thus limit the space for them to talk about their lifestyles in a way that breeds honesty, self-affirmation and prevents the spread of disease.

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November Blues November Blues is a young adult novel by Sharon M. Draper, first published in 2007. It's the second novel of the Jericho Trilogy, the sequel to "The Battle of Jericho". The book tackles and discusses the issue of teen pregnancy, as well as making the readers aware that actions always have consequences and that taking responsibility for those actions is always very important. Plot summary. November Nelson lost her boyfriend, Josh Prescott, when a pledge stunt went horribly wrong. After his death, November has to deal with the heartache of losing him forever. Also, November realizes that she is pregnant with Josh's child. November faces the pressures of telling her family and friends that she is pregnant at 16, being talked about and laughed at by her classmates at school, and figuring out how to provide for her child.

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Home Girls Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983) is a collection of Black lesbian and Black feminist writings, edited by Barbara Smith. The anthology includes different accounts from 32 black feminist women who come from a variety of different areas, culture, and classes. This collection of writings is intended to join black women together and encourage them to celebrate similarities that have often gone unnoticed. In the introduction, Smith states her belief that "Black feminism is, on every level, organic to Black experience". Writings within "Home Girls" support this belief through a series writings that exemplify black women's struggles within their race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and home life. Topics and stories discussed in the writings often touch on subjects that in the past have been deemed taboo, provocative, and profound. History. The book grew out of "Conditions" magazine's November 1979 issue, "Conditions 5: the Black Women's Issue", originally edited by Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel. "Conditions 5" was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S." The anthology was first published in 1983 by , and was reissued by Rutgers University Press in 2000. Where necessary, the 2000 issue contained updates of the contributor's biographies as well as a new preface. The current preface evaluates how the lives of black women have changed since the original book was released. Smith's main concern was in regards to how black women were positively contributing to black feminism. Upon its initial release, "Home Girls" "has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings". Topics discussed. Black feminism stems from the idea that women's experiences are intersectional and a reflection of race, sexism, gender oppression, and class. Within the anthology, black women authors take many different approaches to address the issues that arise from their identities and express their support for black feminist organizations. Since its original release there have been numerous events and organizations that work towards building black feminism. Sexuality is another topic brought up in many of the pieces throughout "Home Girls". Black women share their discoveries as well as stories about what it means to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community and how that has shaped them. In the preface, Smith acknowledges black lesbians and their activity within The Ad Hoc Committee "for an open process, the grass-roots groups that have successfully questioned the undemocratic... tactics of the proposed gay millennium march in Washington D.C in 2000". Many of the organizations and marches that came to be before and after the publication of "Home Girls" are centralized around issues of racial inequality and gender oppression. The struggle black women face with sexual orientation is suggested in many of the contributor's pieces. Things such as physical appearance, clothes, mannerisms, and makeup affected the way these women were perceived and sexualized throughout their lives. In"Home Girls" many of the women reveal their personal stories and accounts of sexual abuse and the continuous sexualization they received. Audre Lorde addresses this and mentions "Clothes were often the most important way of broadcasting one's chosen sexual role". In relation to sexual orientation many of the writings in "Home Girls" contain personal stories about their LBGT experiences and reactions from community members and reactions from the LGBT community. Cheryl Clarke is one of the black feministolor Pre contributors to addresses homophobia within the black community. In her writing, she shares the struggles of LGBT in black communities and the fear they often have to live with. Together, the topics presented in this anthology exemplify intersectionality, the idea that multiple oppressions can be suffered together and mold a person's idea of their oppression. A feminist goal is to expand its diversity and inclusiveness. In order to achieve this goal, many activists suggest becoming more knowledgeable about intersectional feminism and its effects on how black women experience oppression and discrimination. Audience response. Critical reception for "Home Girls" has been mostly positive. One reviewer for the Black American Literature Forum praises the book for its sense of unity and black feminist perspective. As the article states: "While many of the book's poems strike me as self-indulgent and forced, the majority of the selections are both finely honed and provocative. Herein lies the strength of "Home Girls". It consciously broaches issues which have heretofore been given only a faint hearing and thus challenges the reader to rethink not only the past and present but also the future."

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Confessions of a Video Vixen Confessions of a Video Vixen is a memoir written by Karrine Steffans which details the first 25 years of her life. Part tell-all covering her sexual liaisons with music industry personalities and professional athletes, and part cautionary tale about the dangers of the otherwise romanticized hip-hop music industry, it caused considerable controversy in some circles. Summary. "Confessions of a Video Vixen" recounts Steffans' life from her troubled girlhood living in poverty in St. Thomas, through abuse, drugs, rape and living as a teenage runaway who turns to stripping and hip hop modeling to support herself and, later, her young son. Originally published in 2005 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, the book was immediately a "New York Times" bestseller. (The 2006 paperback edition includes bonus material, and also made the NYT bestseller list.) The book created a stir when it went on sale because of Steffans' allegations of abuse at the hands of her then-husband rapper, Kool G Rap and her claims that she had sexual relationships with numerous famous music stars and athletes, including Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Bobby Brown, Dr. Dre, DMX, Xzibit, Diddy, Usher, Shaquille O'Neal and Irv Gotti.

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Coming of Age in Mississippi Coming of Age in Mississippi is a 1968 memoir by Anne Moody about growing up in rural Mississippi in the mid-20th century as an African-American woman. The book covers Moody's life from childhood through her mid twenties, including her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement beginning when she was a student at the historically black Tougaloo College. Moody's autobiography details her struggles both against racism among white people and sexism among her fellow civil rights activists. It received many positive reviews and won awards from the National Library Association and the National Council of Christians and Jews. About the author. Anne Moody, born Essie Mae Moody, was born September 15, 1940, just outside Centreville, Mississippi. The daughter of two poor sharecroppers and the eldest of many, Moody took on a great responsibility at a young age and matured quickly. After graduating high school in 1959, Moody received a basketball scholarship to Natchez Junior College and later transferred to Tougaloo College. Moody became involved early in the Civil Rights Movement, helping organize the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and participating in a Woolworth's sit-in on May 28, 1963. After graduation from Tougaloo College, Moody moved to Ithaca, New York, where she was a project coordinator for Cornell University until 1965. She moved to New York City once she left Cornell, where she began writing "Coming of Age in Mississippi", which was published in 1968. She married Austin Straus, with whom she had one son, Sascha Straus. After struggling with dementia for years, she died at her home in Gloster, Mississippi, on February 5, 2015, aged 74. Structure and content. "Coming of Age in Mississippi" is divided into four sections: "Childhood", "High School", "College", and "The Movement". Part One: Childhood. Moody begins her story on the plantation where she lives with her mother, Toosweet, and her father, Diddly, both sharecroppers, and her younger sister, Adline. Later, Moody's mother gives birth to her third child, Jr. While Toosweet is pregnant with Jr., her father begins an affair with another woman from the plantation. Shortly after Jr.’s birth, her parents separate. Moody moves with her mother and younger siblings to town to live with her great aunt and begins grade school. Moody's curiosity about race is sparked when her questions about her two uncles, who appear white, go unanswered. Moody's mother begins a relationship with a man named Raymond, whom she eventually marries and has five more children with by the time Moody is in college. At nine years old, Moody begins her first job sweeping a porch, earning seventy-five cents a week and two gallons of milk. She experiences her first real competition with Raymond’s sister Darlene; they're the same age and in the same class, constantly competing against one another whenever possible. Though Moody enjoys attending Centreville church, which Raymond's family belongs to, she is tricked into joining her mother's church: Mt. Pleasant. She resents her mother for some time after that. Once the family farm falls through, Moody takes on more responsibility to help support the family. When asked to obtain a copy of her birth certificate for graduation, her birth certificate shows up as Annie Mae. When Toosweet requests to have it changed, she is told there would be a fee; Moody asks if she can keep Annie, and so she becomes Annie Mae Moody. Part Two: High School. Moody's political awakenings begin during her teenage years, chronicled in the book's second section, "High School." During her first year in high school, Emmett Till, an innocent 14-year-old black boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago, is tortured and murdered for allegedly whistling in a flirtatious and offensive manner at a white woman. His murder is a defining moment in Moody's life. When Moody asks her mother questions about why the boy was killed and by whom, she is told, "an Evil Spirit killed him;" and that "it would take eight years to learn what that spirit was." For the first time, she realizes the extent to which many whites in Mississippi will go to protect their way of life – white supremacy – and the appalling powerlessness of the blacks – what most whites considered savages. When she asks her mother for the meaning of "NAACP" (referring to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), after hearing it from Mrs. Burke, the white woman she works for, her mother tells her never to mention that word in front of any white person, and, if possible, not at all. Shortly thereafter, Moody discovers that there is one adult in her life who could offer her the answers she seeks: Mrs. Rice, her homeroom teacher. Mrs. Rice plays a pivotal role in Moody's maturation. She not only answers Moody's questions about Emmett Till and the NAACP, but she volunteers a great deal more information about the state of race relations in Mississippi. Moody's early curiosity about the NAACP resurfaces later when she attends Tougaloo College. It is during this time, at fifteen years old, that Moody makes the claim that she began to hate white people. She also moves to Baton Rouge that same summer. While in Baton Rouge, Moody learns some tough lessons when she is ripped off by a white family for two weeks' pay, and when she is betrayed by a co-worker, which resulted in her losing her job. Working for Mrs. Burke was something Moody viewed as a challenge; one that she overcame when she quit after Mrs. Burke wrongfully accused her younger brother, Jr. When Moody returned to New Orleans the following summer she worked as a waitress and was able to save money for college. Moody graduated high school in the summer of 1959 and made the decision to return to New Orleans for good. Part Three: College. The third section of the autobiography reveals Moody's increasing commitment to political activism. Towards the end of the summer after graduation, Moody received a letter from the head coach at Natchez Junior College; she had received a basketball scholarship. Attending Natchez felt very restrictive to Moody, and at the end of the year she was unsure if she would return, but because of the cost of the schools in New Orleans, she returned to Natchez in the fall. During her second year at Natchez College, she helps organize a successful boycott of the campus cafeteria when a student finds a maggot in her plate of grits. This is Moody's first experience in organizing a group of individuals to launch a structured revolt against the practices of an established institution. While waiting for their demands to be met, Moody offers up what little money she has to help buy food for her fellow students. Just before the end of her sophomore year at Natchez, Moody successfully for an academic scholarship to Tougaloo College. When Moody's roommate Trotter encourages her to join the NAACP, of which she is the secretary, Moody promises she will attend the next meeting, despite the animosity and violence that had surrounded everything she knew about the group. Some Tougaloo students were jailed after a demonstration, and when they were brought back to campus, Medgar Evers accompanied them to "get some of Tougaloo’s spirit and try and spread it around all over Jackson." Though Moody's grades suffered, she could not pull herself away from the movement. A white student, Joan Trumpauer, a secretary for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, moved across the hall from Moody and invited her to help canvas in the voter registration they were organizing in the Delta. While a junior at Tougaloo College, Moody joins the NAACP. The third section ends with Moody's recounting of a terrifying ordeal in Jackson, Mississippi. On a shopping trip there with Rose, a fellow student from Tougaloo College, Moody – without any planning or support mechanism in place – decides to go into the "Whites Only" section of the Trailways bus depot. Initially the whites in the waiting area react with shock, but soon a menacing white mob gathers around the two young women and threatens violence. Part Four: The Movement. The fourth and final section documents Moody's full-scale involvement in the struggle for civil rights. In the opening chapter of the final section, Moody narrates her participation in a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson. She and three other civil rights workers – two of them white – take their seats at the lunch counter. They are denied service, but the four continue to sit and wait. Soon a large number of white students from a local high school pour into Woolworth’s. When the students realize that a sit-in is in progress, they crowd around Moody and her companions and begin to taunt them. The verbal abuse quickly turns physical. Moody, along with the other three, is beaten, kicked, and "dragged about thirty feet toward the door by [her] hair" (266). Then all four of them are "smeared with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies and everything on the counter" (266). The abuse continues for almost three hours until Dr. Beittel, the president of Tougaloo College who arrived after being informed of the violence, rescues them. When Moody is escorted out of Woolworth's by Dr. Beittel, she realizes that "about ninety white police officers had been standing outside the store; they had been watching the whole thing through the windows, but had not come in to stop the mob or do anything" (267). This experience helps Moody understand "how sick Mississippi whites were" and how "their disease, an incurable disease," could prompt them even to kill to preserve "the segregated Southern way of life" (267). While Moody is working for CORE, she slowly becomes angry; angry that she is not seeing the change she had hoped for, in the time she had hoped for, and angry that so many black people refused to work as diligently as herself and her activist peers did. Moody experiences the most fear throughout the entire story during this time when she learns she has made the Klan list. In the chapters that follow she comments on the impact of the assassinations of Medgar Evers and President John F. Kennedy on the Civil Rights Movement, and the escalating turmoil across the South. Just before the final chapter, along with her fellow "Woolworth orphans," Moody graduates from Tougaloo College. The short final chapter ends with her joining a busload of civil rights workers on their way to Washington, D.C. As the bus moves through the Mississippi landscape, her fellow travelers sing the anthem of the Movement.

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Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects is a poetry collection written by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in 1854. Her non-fiction collection of poems and essays consists of a brief preface followed by a collection of poems and three short writings. "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" sold approximately 12,000 copies in its first four years in print and was reprinted at least twenty times during Harper's lifetime. The work includes several poetic responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Harper’s work focuses on the themes Christianity, slavery, and women. Background. Frances E. W. Harper was an American social reformer who authored works that were notable for abolitionism, temperance, and women’s suffrage. Harper was the daughter of free black parents, and attended a school that was run by leading abolitionist John Brown. She became dedicated to the abolitionist cause after her home state of Maryland passed a fugitive slave law that allowed free African Americans, such as Harper, to be arrested and sold into slavery. In August 1854, the same year "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" was written, Harper delivered a public address on “Education and the Elevation of the Colored Race”. The success from this address gave her the opportunity to tour for the Anti-Slavery Society, and in addition to her antislavery lecturing, she often pulled from her work "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects". Harper's work became popular with both black and white audiences, and the success of "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" made Harper the most well-known poet of her time. Preface. The preface to Harper’s "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" was written on August 15, 1854. The volume's first edition included a preface signed "W.L.G.", initials that scholars have concluded belong to famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Harper was an abolitionist and advocate for civil rights, and she championed the value of education in achieving change. This passion for education and change is present in her preface. Harper was noted to have an undying drive to educate both races in order to form a unified and equal society. In her preface, Harper addresses the conditions of chattel slavery and how she believes the condition is causing the extinction of genius for African Americans. Harper's complaint of the extinction of genius does not fall on the blacks alone, but she also draws blame from the whites, a technique of group justice that she used in many of her writings. Poems. "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" contains 18 poems. Harper’s poetry is noted for its simple rhythm, biblical imagery, and storytelling style of oral tradition. The themes present in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" focus on Christianity, slavery, and women. Christianity. Christianity became widespread to African Americans during the transatlantic slave trade. Before coming to America, African religious beliefs and practices were numerous and varied. Some Africans had been exposed to European Christianity before coming to America, so they were able to bring Christian beliefs with them. However, many slaves converted to Christianity in America because they saw conversion as a road to freedom. Harper's upbringing included a religious education, and therefore, the experiences she had during her childhood schooling bring religion forth as a prominent theme in her works in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects". Such works include “The Syrophoenician Woman”, “Bible Defence of Slavery”, “The Drunkard’s Child”, “That Blessed Hope”, “The Dying Christian”, “Saved By Faith”, “The Prodigal’s Return”, and “Eva’s Farewell”. Slavery. In "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects", Harper’s theme of slavery focuses on the struggles slaves faced such as separation and death. Poems that fit into the theme of slavery are “The Slave Mother”, “Eliza Harris”, “The Slave Auction”, and “The Fugitive’s Wife”. Harper's most notable abolitionist work, "Bury Me in a Free Land", would be published a few years later in 1858. Women. Harper’s works in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" also address the subjects of marriage and motherhood. When Harper travelled to the South for the first time, she was abhorred by the poor treatment and severe hardships of thousands of black women. In fact, she asked white women to help support the black liberation movement by reminding white women of their common womanhood to African American women. Harper's dedication to advocating for civil and women's rights make the female and womanhood a basic concern in her poems. Works that fall under this theme include “Report”, “Advice to the Girls”, “A Mother’s Heroism”, and “The Contrast”. Short writings. "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" also contains three short works. The three works are titled “Christianity”, “The Bible”, and “The Colored People in America”. Harper's works "Christianity" and "The Bible" contain the same biblical imagery seen in many of her texts. The theme of looking for the salvation granted by Christ at the end of one's life is also present in these works. Harper's short writing "The Colored People in America" addresses the harm that the system of slavery is inflicting upon African Americans. Harper had been known to incorporate the theme of slavery leaving a moral stain on the nation, as seen in her other work "Forest Leaves". Further, Harper elaborates on the moral stain coming from African American's inability to obtain education, a complaint seen in the preface. However, she ends her work on a positive note by encouraging African Americans to strive until the day freedom comes.

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The Yellow House (book) The Yellow House is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It is Broom's first book and it was published on August 13, 2019 by Grove Press. "The Yellow House" chronicles Broom's family (mapping back approximately 100 years), her life growing up in New Orleans East, and the eventual demise of her beloved childhood home after Hurricane Katrina. Broom also focuses on the aftermath of Katrina and how the disaster altered her family and her neighborhood. At its core, the book examines race, class, politics, family, trauma, and inequality in New Orleans and America. "The Yellow House" won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Publication. "The Yellow House" was published by Grove Press on August 13, 2019, following the publication of an early excerpt in the "New Yorker" in 2015. The book debuted at number 11 on the Hardcover Nonfiction best sellers list for the September 1, 2019, edition of "The New York Times". Reception. In a pre-publication review, Dwight Garner of the "New York Times" wrote, "This is a major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade." In the "New York Times Book Review", Angela Flournoy called it “an instantly essential text.” The "Star Tribune" opined that Broom's book had “essentially told the story of black America in one fell swoop.” Other publications to declare the book's importance included "Publishers Weekly". and "Kirkus Reviews" Quoting the book itself, "Kirkus Reviews" opined that "The Yellow House" reflected the author's attempt "to reckon with 'the psychic cost of defining oneself by the place where you are from,'" adding that "Broom's lyrical style celebrates her family bonds, but a righteous fury runs throughout the narrative at New Orleans' injustices, from the foundation on up." In November 2019, "The Yellow House" won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the "New York Times Book Review" and the "Washington Post". "The Yellow House" won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book from the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Awards.

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Transcendent Kingdom Transcendent Kingdom is a novel by Yaa Gyasi, published in the United States on September 1, 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf (). "Transcendent Kingdom" was found in Literary Hub to have made 17 lists of the best books of 2020. Summary. The novel follows 28-year-old Gifty, a PhD candidate in neuroscience in her fifth year at Stanford University, and her Ghanaian-American mother, who is suffering from a deep depression. While experimenting on lab mice for her research, Gifty gets a call that her mother is not feeling well. She sends for her mother so she can take care of her and is overwhelmed by the remembrance of the first time her mother fell into a similar depression, when Gifty was 11. Gifty's mother and her father, affectionately nick-named The Chin-chin man, were Ghanaians who met and married late. They had a brilliant son, Nana, and after his birth Gifty's mother, seeking a better life for her child, relocated to Huntsville, Alabama where a cousin of hers was studying. Gifty's mother was forced to take menial jobs, eventually become a caretaker to abusive and racist elderly patients. Gifty's father eventually relocated to America to be with his family but was only able to find unstable work as a janitor. Gifty was born a few years later, and was an unwanted pregnancy. The family was anchored around Nana's prodigious gifts as an athlete and their mother's fervant religious zeal which Gifty inherited. Never settling in Alabama, The Chin-chin man eventually returned to Ghana for what was initially supposed to be a short trip, never to return. Shaken by his father's abandonment, Nana quit soccer, a sport which he had been proficient in, and in high school joined basketball. After injuring his ankle in a low-stakes game Nana was prescribed opioids and quickly became addicted, seeking out heroin to allay his cravings. When Gifty is 11 her brother dies of an overdose and her mother falls into a deep depression, taking to her bed and unable to care for herself. After she tried to commit suicide Gifty is forced to seek help and is sent to Ghana while her mother recovers, staying with her maternal aunt and briefly reuniting with her estranged father. Nana's death and Gifty's mother's attempted suicide push Gifty away from religion. A bright scholar, she attends elite universities and chooses a path in neuroscience studying addictive behaviour. Her past and her continued belief in God mark her as an outsider and she has trouble opening herself up emotionally. In the present, unable to help her mother she finally reaches out to a colleague of hers who supports Gifty as she attempts to help her mother. In an unspecified future time, after Gifty's mother has died of natural causes, a now married Gifty who is flourishing as a scientist and runs her own lab continues to attend church. Reception. The book drew positive reviews upon publication. "The Washington Post" named it "a book of blazing brilliance". "USA Today" called it "stealthily devastating" while "Vox" gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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Feathers (novel) Feathers is a children's historical novel by Jacqueline Woodson that was first published in 2007. The story is about a sixth-grade girl named Frannie growing up in the '70s. One day an unexpected new student causes much chaos to the class because he is the only white boy in the whole school. "Feathers" grapples with concepts such as religion, race, hope, and understanding. The book examines what it was like to grow up right after segregation had been outlawed, how all people are equal, and that hope is everywhere. The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 2008. Summary. Taking place in the 1970s, in an urban all African American school, this book highlights the hard topics of racism, faith, hope, and disabilities. A white boy comes to the school and is soon dubbed "Jesus Boy". His entrance as the only white student causes tension and misunderstandings. Some of the students believe that he is Jesus and others simply hope he is. He is very quiet and doesn't let Trevor, the class bully, hurt him. He just calmly talks to Trevor and never retaliates. Jesus Boy knows sign language which intrigues Frannie since she has known sign language her whole life. Frannie has grown up with a deaf older brother, and is very sensitive to how people treat and perceive him. She is hesitant about being friends with Jesus Boy because she does not understand him and wonders why he would cross over "the bridge" to their side. She is torn because she knows how difficult it can be to be the new kid, but she does not want to stand out. Frannie's best friend Samantha believes that Jesus Boy truly is Jesus Christ and that he has come in this time of chaos and because of the war. During all that is going on Frannie constantly thinks of the poem she read in class that said "Hope is the thing with feathers". Jesus Boy is subject to a lot of bullying by Trevor. Trevor picks on Jesus Boy because he is the only one who is lighter skinned than himself. Trevor has a white father who left his mother before Trevor was born. One day Trevor is swinging and decides to try to jump off and land on a fence because he wants to feel like he is flying. He falls short and breaks his arm. When he comes back to school he is even angrier at Jesus Boy and starts a fight with him with one arm. Trevor swings at Jesus Boy and misses which causes him to fall. The class realizes that Trevor is just a boy and that they shouldn't be afraid of him anymore. Jesus Boy and Frannie immediately go and help Trevor up out of the snow. Later Samantha asks Frannie why she helped Trevor, and Frannie doesn't know. Samantha then admits that she was wrong about Jesus Boy and says she doesn't know what to believe in anymore. Frannie tries to comfort Samantha and says "Maybe there's a little bit of Jesus inside of all of us. Maybe Jesus is just that something good or something sad or something ... something that makes us do stuff like help Trevor up even when he is cursing us out. Or maybe ... maybe Jesus is just that thing you had when the Jesus Boy got here, Samantha. Maybe Jesus is the hope that you were feeling" (p. 109). At the end of the book Frannie reflects on all that has been happening in her life. She thinks of her mother's baby, her brother, Samantha's loss of faith, and, especially, Jesus Boy. She remembers the poem she read in class and decides "Each moment, I am thinking, is a thing with feathers" Major themes. Hope. The title of the book, Feathers, is a metaphor that the book revolves around. Woodson introduces it through a poem that Frannie reads in class. After reading this, Frannie spends the rest of the book trying to understand hope. How does it have feathers? Understanding. The effort to understand one another was the focus of the sixth grade class as soon as Jesus Boy entered their classroom. Through Jesus Boy they realize that even the bully, Trevor, is a normal kid. After the fight Frannie realizes "Even though he was mean all the time, the sun still stopped and colored him and warmed him─like it did to everybody else" (p. 21) Jesus Boy helped the class to stop beating up each other so much and Trevor got scared by him. Disabilities. Frannie's older brother is deaf and this is a source of tension throughout the story. Frannie feels compelled to protect her brother in a world of people who do not understand him. One difficulty Sean encounters is girls being attracted to him until they find out he is deaf. Woodson stated in an interview with NPR that she made Sean deaf in order to humanize the deaf. One scene in the book that does this well is when Frannie asks Sean what a guitar sounds like, a game they play with one another. His sign back is 'Like rain. Coming down real soft when it's warm out and you only get a little wet but not cold. That kind of rain.' Reception. "Feathers" was well received by critics and the public alike. The book was a Newbery Honor book in 2008. Robin Smith, of Book Page, said that the book filled him with "joy and hope." Norah Piehl, of Kids Reads, reviewed the book saying, "Set against the music, politics and conflicts of the early 1970s, Jacqueline Woodson's exceptional new novel grounds universal ideas in a particular time and place." Matt Berman, of Common Sense Media stated the book is beautifully written, lyrical, thoughtful, at times even wise and that it will also be loved by adults. One reviewer raved about the book but said "While the subject matter isn't as controversial as some of Woodson's others it might lead a child living in today's society to have questions about race, segregation and religion". Overall, the book gets mostly high praise, and Jacqueline Woodson is hailed for her beautiful style of writing. One fan says Woodson writes "pages of poetry" and "without any heavy-handedness or manipulation". Other books by Woodson. Jaqueline Woodson has written 29 books spanning from picture books to young adult fiction. Her books have received numerous awards such as the Caldecott Honor, Newbery Honor, and the Coretta Scott King Award. "Feathers" most resembles her novel "Locomotion" in which she "tackled grief, trauma, death survival, and hope". all in a very short book. "Feathers" is also short but addresses big concepts of "hope, healing, faith, and understanding". Both of the books are around 115 pages and adequately handle their difficult topics.

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Passing (novel) Passing is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1929. Set primarily in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the story centers on the reunion of two childhood friends—Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield—and their increasing fascination with each other's lives. The title refers to the practice of "racial passing", and is a key element of the novel; Clare Kendry's attempt to pass as white for her husband, John (Jack) Bellew, is its most significant depiction in the novel, and a catalyst for the tragic events. Larsen's exploration of race was informed by her own mixed racial heritage and the increasingly common practice of racial passing in the 1920s. Praised upon publication, the novel has since been celebrated in modern scholarship for its complex depiction of race, gender and sexuality, and is the subject of considerable scholarly criticism. As one of only two novels that Larsen wrote, "Passing" has been significant in placing its author at the forefront of several literary canons. Background. Biographical context. As early as 1925, Nella Larsen had decided that she wanted to be among the "New Negro" writers receiving considerable attention at the time. Initially writing short stories that were sold early in 1926 to a ladies magazine, she was rumored that year to be writing a novel. In a letter to her friend, Carl Van Vechten, she acknowledges, "it is the awful truth. But, who knows if I'll get through with the damned thing. Certainly not I." In April 1927, Larsen and her husband, Elmer Imes, moved from Jersey City, New Jersey to Harlem to be closer to the cultural phenomenon. The following year, Larsen published her first novel "Quicksand" with New York-based publisher Knopf, and its favorable critical reception encouraged her ambitions to become known as a novelist. Historical context. The 1920s in the United States was a period marked by considerable anxiety and discussion over the crossing of racial boundaries, the so-called "color line" between blacks and whites. This anxiety was exacerbated by the Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of blacks left the rural south for northern and midwestern cities, where, together with new waves of immigrants, they changed the social makeup. The practice of persons "crossing the color line"—attempting to claim recognition in another racial group than the one they were believed to belong to—was known as "passing". As many African Americans had European ancestry in varying proportions, some appeared visibly European. The legacy of slavery, with its creation of a racial caste, and the imposition in the 17th century of the so-called one-drop rule (by which someone with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African origin was considered black) led to a hardening of racial lines that had historically been more fluid; at any time, the concept of race was "historically contingent." Although the exact numbers of people who passed is, for obvious reasons, not known, many estimates were made at the time. The sociologist Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956) calculated that 355,000 blacks had passed between 1900 and 1920. A significant precedent for Larsen's depiction of Clare and Jack's relationship was the 1925 legal trial known as the "Rhinelander Case" (or "Rhinelander v. Rhinelander"). On the urging of his family, Leonard Kip Rhinelander, a wealthy white man, sued his wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, for annulment and fraud; he alleged that she had failed to inform him of her "colored" blood. The case concerned not only race but also status and class, as he had met her when she was working as a domestic. Although the jury eventually returned a verdict for Alice (she contended that her mixed race was obvious, and she had never denied it), it came at a devastating social cost for both parties; intimate exchanges between the couple were read out in court, and Alice was forced to partially disrobe in front of the jury in the judge's chambers in order for them to assess the darkness of her skin. Larsen refers to the case near the end of the novel, when Irene wonders about the consequences of Jack discovering Clare's racial status: "What if Bellew should divorce Clare? Could he? There was the "Rhinelander" case." The case received substantial coverage in the press of the time, and Larsen could assume that it was common knowledge to her readers. Plot. The story is written as a third person narrative from the perspective of Irene Redfield, a mixed-race woman who lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Part One of the book, titled "Encounter," opens with Irene receiving a letter from Clare Kendry, causing her to recall a chance encounter she had had with her, at the roof restaurant of the Drayton Hotel in Chicago, during a brief stay in the city. Irene does not answer Clare's attempts to reconnect written in the letters.The women grew up together but lost touch when Clare's bi-racial father died and she was taken to live with her two paternal white aunts. Irene learns that Clare "passes" for white, living primarily in Europe with her unsuspecting, rich, white husband and their daughter. Although Irene tries to avoid further engagement with Clare, she never is able to fully exclude her from her life as she later visits Clare for tea along with another childhood friend, Gertrude Martin. Toward the end of the visit, Clare's white husband John (Jack) Bellew arrives. Unaware that all three women are bi-racial, Jack expresses some very racist views and makes the women uneasy. However, the women play along in an effort to maintain Clare's secret identity. Afterward, Irene and Gertrude decide that Clare's situation is too dangerous for them to continue associating with her and are uncomfortable around Clare and her husband. Irene receives a letter of apology from Clare but destroys it in her quest to try and forget about Clare and get her out of her life. Instead Irene wants to focus on her life with her husband, Brian, and her two sons, Theodore and Brian Jr. Part Two of the book, "Re-encounter," returns to the present, with Irene having received the new letter from Clare. After Irene ignores Clare's letter, Clare visits in person so Irene reluctantly agrees to see her. When it is brought up that Irene serves on the committee for the "Negro Welfare League" (NWL) Clare invites herself to their upcoming dance despite Irene's advice against it for fear that Jack will find out. Clare attends the dance and enjoys herself without her husband finding out, which encourages her to continue spending time in Harlem. Irene and Clare resume their childhood companionship, and Clare frequently visits Irene's home. The third and final part of the novel begins before Christmas, as Irene's relationship with her husband has become increasingly fraught. Aware of her friend's appeal, Irene becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair with Clare. During a shopping trip with her visibly black friend Felise Freeland, Irene encounters Jack, who becomes aware of her and, by extension, Clare's, racial status. Irene considers warning Clare about Jack's new-found knowledge but decides against it, worried that the pair's divorce might encourage her husband to leave her for Clare. Later, Clare accompanies Irene and Brian to a party hosted by Felise. The gathering is interrupted by Jack, who accuses Clare of being a "damned dirty nigger!" Irene rushes to Clare, who is standing by an open window. Suddenly, Clare falls out of the window from the top floor of the building to the ground below, where she is pronounced dead by the guests who eventually gather at the site. Whether she has fallen accidentally, was pushed by either Irene or Bellew, or committed suicide, is unclear. The book ends with Irene's fragmented anguish at Clare's death. Themes. Race and "tragic mulatto". "Passing" has been described as "the tragic story of a beautiful light-skinned mulatto passing for white in high society." The tragic mulatto (also "mulatta" when referring to a woman) is a stock character in early African-American literature. Such accounts often featured the light-skinned offspring of a white slaveholder and his black slave, whose mixed heritage in a race-based society means that she is unable to identify or find a place with either blacks or whites. The resulting feeling of exclusion was portrayed as variably manifested in self-loathing, depression, alcoholism, sexual perversion, and attempts at suicide. On the surface, "Passing" conforms to that stereotype in its portrayal of Clare Kendry, whose passing for white has tragic consequences; however, the book resists the conventions of the genre, as Clare refuses to feel the expected anguish at the betrayal of her black identity and socializes with blacks for the purposes of excitement rather than racial solidarity. Scholars have more generally considered "Passing" as a novel in which the major concern is not race. For instance, Claudia Tate describes the issue as "merely a mechanism for setting the story in motion, sustaining the suspense, and bringing about the external circumstances for the story's conclusion." Catherine Rottenberg argues that Larsen's novella is a prime example of race and gender norms portrayed in the US. The main characters, Irene and Clare, and their struggle with their own identification problems in the novel, helps readers understand the difference between gender and race norms. These two central characters are able to pass as white women even though Irene does not fully pass over, and Rottenberg argues the difference between Clare and Irene by re-evaluating the idea of desire/identification. The mis-identification Clare deals with stems from her re-connection with Irene after twelve years of not speaking. Seeing Irene sparked a desire in Clare for her to get back in touch with her African-American culture. Irene's identification trouble is associated with her need to feel safe and in control in her life, the main reason Irene chooses to pass over only on occasion. Irene doesn't want to put herself into a dangerous situation. Class. As scholars show, race is not the only primary concern in Nella Larsen's "Passing". Class is also a major aspect that is simultaneously developed. Both of the main characters Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry present a strong sense of class. They also demonstrate how they cross clearly defined class borders in order to obtain more power in their life. Zulena. Scholarly critics such as Mary Wilson have examined the character of Irene's maid Zulena, who demonstrates the middle-class African-American family in the 1920s. Irene opposed the idea of discrimination and racism towards the blacks but when it came to maintaining her social class she preferred domesticity and servitude even if it was from the people from her own black race. Domesticity in the South was often associated with the black woman but Irene decides to maintain the power and class through the servitude of another black woman. Wilson examines that the differences in class were not just embedded in the black versus white society but also within the single black race. Such difference can be seen as a conflict between Irene's ideology and her actions when it comes to maintaining her status as a middle-class African-American. The class privilege is well defined through the skin color as Zulena is described as a "mahogany-colored creature" which meant that she had no chance to pass like Irene as white and it automatically decides the role for the black colored woman to serve as a maid and belong to the inferior class. Although, Irene calls herself black but having an ability to pass as white makes her behave like a white privileged woman because she happily accepts the servitude complicating the issue of race and class. Larsen introduces Zulena in the story as a "colored creature", primarily from Irene's perspective which depicts that Irene's considers her servant from an inferior class and therefore decides to keep a certain distance from her maid. Clare Kendry. Clare Kendry crosses social class binaries. Clare does not inhabit any particular social class but rather lives as both a working-class and a middle-class woman in the novel. Clare is born in a working-class family where her father is a janitor of the building that she lives in. In adulthood, she passes during her marriage to obtain the lifestyle of an upper-middle-class woman. Despite having the luxury and comfort that she has always wanted but never had had in her childhood, Clare still longs for her childhood experiences and constantly visits Irene and her maid Zelena. Because Clare shares many experiences of the working-class, she feels very comfortable when talking to Zulena as if Zulena was her friend. Clare's desire to live in both social classes at the same time shows how these class boundaries are fluid. Irene Redfield. While Clare demonstrates her class binaries, Irene is very protective towards her own status quo. Irene grew up as a middle-class person and continues to live as such after marrying a doctor. Irene is more hesitant to cross between middle-class and working-class; she isolates herself and avoids all of the circumstances that she might be mistaken for a lower-class person. For example, during Irene's attempt to pass to become an elite white woman at Drayton hotel, she makes a clear distinction between herself and working-class individuals by showing her desire to be separated from the "sweating masses". Irene is also concerned that people at the Negro League Dance might mistake Clare for a prostitute. Throughout the novel, Irene seems comfortable living in a higher social class while Clare constantly crosses between the two classes. Eugenic ideology. Scholar Sami Schalk argues that the notion of eugenic ideology emerges in the novel. Eugenic Ideology assigns specific behavioral and physical traits to different distinctions of race, class, gender, and sexual identity. Both physical and behavioral features of this ideology are discussed by the main characters in "Passing", Irene and Clare. For example, several times in the novel, Irene acknowledges the way white people racially designate physical traits to African Americans in order to identify them. The concept of eugenic ideology also emerges when Clare's aunts assign her to a domestic servant role believing this would align with her skin color. Thus, the aunt's perceptions of Clare's work are distinctly categorized through race. Schalk further suggests that the novel resists these notions of eugenic ideology by emphasizing how characters pass fluidly between racial identities and resist clear categories of identity. In the novel, Clare Kendry hides her racial identity from her husband and is able to travel to places where African Americans are not allowed entry because no one can denote her black heritage from her behavior. In addition, Irene notes several times in the novel that the physical traits white people assign to African Americans are ridiculous. She, too, is able to pass in places where African Americans are not allowed entry and therefore defies racial categorization. The novel resists eugenic distinctions by highlighting the fluid transitions between races. Sexuality. Repression. Scholars have treated "sexuality" with caution and reticence especially during the Harlem Renaissance because of the history of slavery and the objectification of black women. Black novelists, especially female black novelists, had to be more discreet when writing about the sexuality of their characters. During this time, women, especially black women, were used as sexual objects. Due to sexual objectification, black novelists wanted to overcome the legacy of rape. They wanted to end the stereotypes of black women as "sexual objects" and to return to the "timidity and modesty" of Negro womanhood. The writers didn't want to repeat the experience of women's oppression, especially African-American women. McDowell believes that during the Harlem Renaissance female sexuality was acknowledged only in the advertising, beauty, and fashion industries, and "sexual pleasure, especially for black women, leads to the dangers of domination in marriage, repeated pregnancy, or exploitation and loss of status." According to scholar Deborah McDowell, Larsen wanted to tell the story of black women with sexual desires, but the novelist also had to be constrained in that she wanted to establish "black women as respectable" in black middle-class terms. As an example, in the novel, Irene is portrayed as sexually repressed. Irene has a tenuous relationship with her husband Brian. In fact, they have separate rooms. McDowell believes that Irene is confused by her sexual feelings for Clare, which are much more apparent. McDowell argues that the story is about "Irene's awakening sexual desire towards Clare". Homosexuality. Scholars have identified a homoerotic subtext between Irene and Clare, centered on the erotic undertones in Irene's descriptions of Clare and appreciation of her beauty. As scholar Deborah McDowell's writes "the idea of bringing sexual attraction between two women to full narrative expression is, likewise, too dangerous a move, which helps to explain why critics have missed this aspect of the novel". In that interpretation, the novel's central metaphor of "passing" under a different identity "occurs at a surprisingly wide variety of levels," including sexual. This suggests that there are other forms of "passing" that take place in the novel that is not just based on race. Larsen has a clever way of "deriving its surface theme and central metaphor-passing", disguising the plots "neatly" and "symmetrically". The apparently sexless marriage between Brian and Irene (their separate bedrooms and identification as co-parents rather than sexual partners) allow Larsen to "flirt, if only by suggestion, with the idea of a lesbian relationship between [Clare and Irene]." In the novel, these sexual innuendos appear when Irene first lays eyes on Clare at the rooftop of the Drayton Hotel. The novel describes Clare as "a sweetly scented woman in a fluttering dress of green chiffon whose mingled pattern of narcissuses, jonquils, and hyacinths was a reminder of pleasantly chill spring days". These flowers symbolize the attraction Irene has for Clare. Jonquils and narcissus, both represent an excessive interest in one's physical appearance. This alludes to Irene's obsession and physical attraction for Clare. As the novel states, "from the very beginning of their re-encounter, Irene is drawn to Clare like a moth to a flame". The character of her husband, Brian, has been subject to a similar interpretation: Irene's labeling of him as and his oft-expressed desire to go to Brazil, a country then widely thought to be more tolerant of homosexuality than the United States was, are given as evidence. It is also shown that Brazil is considered to be a place with more relaxed ideas about race. Irene begins to believe that Clare and Brian are having an affair to hide or distract from her own feelings for Clare. McDowell writes, "the awakening of Irene's erotic feelings for Clare coincides with Irene's imagination of an affair between Clare and Brian". Although she had no reason to accuse him, Irene did so to protect herself from her own sexual desires. Jealousy. Scholars such as Claudia Tate and Helena Michie suggest there is a theme of jealousy throughout the novel. Both point to Irene's jealousy in terms of her appreciation for Clare's charisma and desirable appearance in the novel. As Clare meets Irene to go to the Negro Welfare League dance, Irene feels "dowdy and commonplace" in comparison to Clare, who she sees as "exquisite, golden, fragrant, flaunting." The scholars stress that there are two aspects to this jealousy, with Irene exhibiting both bitterness in her perception of Clare, and simultaneously, feelings of affection and desire for her. Helena Michie categorizes the relationship as "sororophobic", a term she defines as a "fear of one's sister." While Irene expresses jealousy in her admiration of Clare's beauty and social charms, she is also susceptible to their seduction and eventually begins to suspect that her husband Brian might be influenced by them as well. In her intensifying suspicions, Irene's jealousy develops into a fear of losing her family, and with it, the identity she has built for herself as a middle class black woman. Irene displays it here when deciding whether to expose Clare or not "She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three. Nothing, she imagined, was ever more completely sardonic." Larsen uses jealousy as the main source of conflict in the novel, and uses race as a vehicle for Irene to potentially rid herself of Clare. At this point in the story Irene realizes she can expose Clare's true racial identity to remove Clare from her life, and regain that security she desires more than anything. Albeit she feels jealousy and fear, out of loyalty for her race, Irene does not follow through with her thoughts of exposing Clare. While the novel primarily focuses on Irene's feelings of jealousy, Clare is also shown to be envious of Irene. Unlike Irene, however, Clare exhibits jealousy towards Irene's lifestyle. Clare perceives Irene as being close to her blackness and her community, a state that Clare has previously chosen to leave behind but strives to experience again. As Clare and Irene converse during Clare's first visit to Irene's home, Clare expresses her loneliness to Irene, contrasting her view of Irene's condition to Clare's own feelings of isolation: "'How could you know? How could you? You're free. You're happy.'" Clare expresses her own jealousy outwardly, even as the novel centers on Irene's inner turmoil. Whiteness. Scholars such as Catherine Rottenberg examine how Larsen's characters struggle against race and gender norms of "whiteness" in the United States. Rottenberg shows how the main characters in the novel confront normative characteristics of white culture. Clare, who is of mixed race, chooses to identify with the white culture. Irene, who identifies as an African American, chooses to pass when she feels the need to blend into white culture. The essence of Rottenberg's scholarship shows how the novel's characters struggle against the desire for whiteness because of the positive stereotypes society has created around "white" identity. Clare's experience growing up with her white aunts, who treated her as a servant, directly impacts Clare's initial desire towards whiteness. Hence, she passes as a white woman, marries a white man, and forgets her African-American culture. Even though as a society the white race is the desirable race, Rottenberg explains how there are limitations put into place so the inferior race can never fully be white. For example, Clare has this desire to pass as a white woman because she believes that is the only way she will have a social power, but after reconnecting with her childhood friend Irene, she begins to struggle with her misplaced desire for whiteness and returns to her African-American identification. Seeing Irene sparks a desire in Clare to get back in touch with her African-American culture. Similarly, Irene identifies as black, but because she desires to feel safe and in control at all times in her life, she chooses to pass over only on occasion. Irene's desire to be white comes from her wanting the middle-class lifestyle because it will give her the security she needs. Irene doesn't want to put herself into a dangerous situation, which in a way, makes her feel like her marriage and the life she knows at risk. Throughout Larsen's novel Rottenberg explains how Clare has evolved from wanting to achieve whiteness to reconnecting with the African-American culture, while Irene still has a desire to achieve "whiteness" to feel secure. Middle-class security. Scholars such as Andrew W. Davis and Zahirah Sabir acknowledge Irene's psychology of safety and security, which likely originated from "the threat of racism" surrounding her family. In the novel, Irene states that she places security as the first priority in her life, on top of race and friendship in the novel. Davis states that the reason that Irene prioritizes security is she wants to protect her children from the social prejudices of the time. In addition, Irene wants Brian, her husband, to stay in New York as a doctor to provide security for her children. When Brian desires to leave for Brazil, Irene is anxious due to the fact that New York is still a white society, and is a familiar to her as an African-American middle-class woman. Clare's presence in Irene's life is a threat to this security. It makes Irene sense the insecurity of her marriage with her husband, Brian. And, it makes her acknowledge the reality of questions of race and class that surround her and her children's life. Motherhood. Passing, although focuses on the races aspect of the book, the chapters have talked about motherhood where both Irene and Clare are depicted to be mothers. It is interesting as Irene sees her sons, Junior and Theodore, differently than how Clare sees her daughter, Margery. Irene views her children as her security; she sees them as the reason Brian would stay with her. Their child ties them together and thus would make Brian stay with Irene even if they have a fallout. Irene holds her children dear to her and would do whatever she can for them. Irene is also the more protective parent compared to Brian; she wants to shield the children from the bad things in the world, like the knowledge of lynching and racism. Irene wants what's best for her children even if it means acting like specific topics do not affect them although they do, like racism. Meanwhile, Clare views motherhood as a requirement in her lifetime. She had Margery and no longer wants any more children as she cannot handle the suspense of knowing another babies' skin tone. She also mentions how "children aren't everything" this shows how she prioritizes her priorities, we see circumstances where she would leave her daughter with her husband and instead socialize with the black community. Unlike Irene, Clare actually rejects the thought of motherhood in fear that her identity might be revealed. Irene, on the other hand, is the devoted mother wanting the best for her boys, and always talking and thinking about them. Clare does not have the same attachments to Margery like Irene have to Junior and Ted as Clare sees motherhood as a binding thing that forces her to stay in a marriage she feels trapped in, while Irene is in the same boat Irene like this and uses it for her security. Critical reception. "Passing" was published in April 1929 by Knopf in New York City. Sales of the book were modest: Knopf produced three small print runs each under 2,000 copies. While early reviews were primarily positive, it received little attention beyond New York City. Comparing it to Larsen's previous novel "Quicksand", Alice Dunbar-Nelson's review in "The Washington Eagle" began by declaring that "Nella Larsen delights again with her new novel". Writer and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois hailed it as the "one of the finest novels of the year" and believed that its limited success was due to its treating a "forbidden subject," the marriage of a white man to a mixed-race girl who did not reveal her ancestry. A common criticism of the novel is that it ends too suddenly, without a full exploration of the issues it raises. Mary Rennels, writing in the "New York Telegram", said, "Larsen didn't solve the problem [of passing]. Knocking a character out of a scene doesn't settle a matter." An anonymous reviewer for the "New York Times Book Review" similarly concluded that "the most serious fault with the book is its sudden and utterly unconvincing close", but otherwise considered it an effective treatment of the topic. On the other hand, Dunbar-Nelson found that the ending confirmed to the reader that "you have been reading a masterpiece all along." In modern scholarship, Larsen is recognized as one of the central figures in the African-American, feminist and modernist canons, a reputation that is based on her two novels ("Passing" and "Quicksand") and some short stories. As of 2007, "Passing" is the subject of more than 200 scholarly articles and more than 50 dissertations, which offer a range of critical interpretations. It has been hailed as a text helping to "create a modernist psychological interiority ... challenging marriage and middle-class domesticity, complexly interrogating gender, race, and sexual identity, and for redeploying traditional tropes—such as that of the tragic mulatta—with a contemporary and critical twist." However, literary critic Cheryl Wall summarizes the critical response to "Passing" as less favorable than to Larsen's first novel "Quicksand", citing the views of Amaritjit Singh in "The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance" (99), of Robert Bone in "The Negro Novel in America" (102), and of Hoyt Fuller in his "Introduction" to "Passing" (14)." On one hand, the significance of sexual jealousy in the story has been seen to detract from the topic of racial passing; conversely, even if racial passing is accurately treated in the novel, it is considered a historically specific practice and so "Passing" appears dated and trivial. Film adaptation. The novel was adapted to film by director Rebecca Hall in 2021. It had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival on January 30, 2021, and will be released by Netflix later in the year. References. Notes Citations Bibliography

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The History of White People The History of White People is a 2010 book by Nell Irvin Painter, in which the author explores the idea of whiteness throughout history, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing through the beginning of scientific racism in early modern Europe to 19th- through 21st-century America. Overview. The book describes attitudes toward and definitions of race among Europeans, and particularly Americans of European descent. The author says the idea of race is not just a matter of biology but also includes "concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty". The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves. Throughout most of European history, slaves were generally of European origin, often from conquered countries. From the fifth to the eleventh century the Vikings were especially prolific slavers, capturing and selling the inhabitants wherever they went. It was only in relatively modern times that slavery became associated with race. In 1790 U.S. citizens were defined as "free white men"; this excluded white men who were indentured servants. By the mid 19th century in America, white people (as then defined) were all free; slaves were of African or part-African descent. When writers and scientists began to explore the concept of race, they focused on Europe, describing three or four different races among Europeans. Much of the classification was done by head shape and skull measurements, as well as height and skin pigmentation. The most attractive and most admirable race was that found in northwestern Europe, while the inhabitants of eastern and southern Europe were classified as lower races. The categorizing of different European races had legal and social effects in the United States, where 19th century immigrants from less favored areas such as Ireland, Italy, and Iberia were treated as less than fully "white" for legal and social purposes. During the 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States, discussion of race often included a belief in the permanent superiority of one racial group over others, and a fear of the loss of racial purity. Intelligence testing was widely used as a means of ranking various races and ethnicities; this led to immigration laws that encouraged immigration from the presumably most desirable racial and ethnic groups while discouraging or forbidding others. Ralph Waldo Emerson was an influential figure in promoting some of these racial theories. Eugenics became a widely discussed issue and was embraced to some extent by many prominent people including Theodore Roosevelt and David Starr Jordan. Eugenics proponents urged higher reproductive rates among the most desirable population and sometimes sterilization of the less desirable elements. The author traces four consecutive "enlargements of American whiteness" by which Irish, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, and other discriminated-against ethnicities gradually became fully accepted into white society. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminated legal discrimination by race. As of the book's publication date, 2010, mixed-race people were more common and were becoming integrated: "The dark of skin who happen to be rich ... and the light of skin from any (racial background) who are beautiful, are now well on their way to inclusion." The author concludes that race has not disappeared from American society – "the fundamental black/white binary endures" – but the "category of whiteness – or we might say more precisely, a category of nonblackness – effectively expands." Reception. The book was a "New York Times" best seller. Paul Devlin, writing in the "San Francisco Chronicle", said the book "is perhaps the definitive story of a most curious adjective. It is a scholarly, non-polemical masterpiece of broad historical synthesis, combining political, scientific, economic and cultural history." Linda Gordon of "The New York Times" says the book "has much to teach everyone, including whiteness experts, but it is accessible and breezy, its coverage broad and therefore necessarily superficial." She adds that she wishes she had had this book, "an insightful and lively exposition", to help her teach undergraduate students about race theory. Thomas Rogers in "Salon" calls it an "exhaustive and fascinating new look at the history of the idea of the white race". In January 2019, it was translated into French as "Histoire des Blancs".

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If i can cook / you know god can if i can cook / you know god can (sometimes known as "If I Can Cook You Know God Can") is a culinary memoir by Ntozake Shange. It was originally published by Beacon Press, in Boston MA, United States, in 1998. The piece is both memoir and cookbook. Short essays precede recipes written in personal vernacular, and these recipes cover locations such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the United States. Synopsis. Chapter 1. The book begins with a discussion of celebrations and the food that accompanies them, mentioning Frederick Douglass's lack of enthusiasm for the celebration of the Fourth of July, and asking why "would they want to celebrate the American Declaration of Liberation while the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed the kidnapping of free slaves back to slave states on the word of any white man, was in effect?" It details a winter during which Shange, determined to give her daughter a traditional Owens/Wilsons holiday, searches Clinton - Washington for ingredients. She looks for ways to recreate the traditional flavors, for she "tried to make again my very colored childhood and my very 'black' adolescence." In this first chapter, Shange expresses feeling a connection to her ancestors through the re-creation of pig's feet, chitlins' Hoppin’ John, baked ham, collard greens and cornbread with syrup despite experiencing the holiday in a friends home and eating alone. Chapter 2. Chapter 2 takes the reader to St. Louis and Shange uses the experience of listening to a short wave radio emanating the sounds of Fidel Castro as a child to talk about her experiences in Cuba as an adult. She says that her child was one of Cuba's Young Pioneers and shared food, recipes and traditions with children from a multitude of other locations, such as Zimbabwe and Palestine. While in Cuba, the author experiences a blackface performance, which she is horrified by. She eats avocado with beer and reminds herself that "history, our history, mustn't scare me." Cuba's slave trade history is discussed, and Shange is concerned with "How'd all these hardworking - cutting cane is torturous labor - Africans get fed and what'd they eat?" Chapter 3. In Chapter 3, Shange is in Nicaragua. She describes it as the "little country with the black people on one side of the mountain and the mestizoes and blancos on the other, while the Amerindians made a way for themselves in the jungles as best they could." She shows the East and West coast as being uncommunicative and disconnected and the area she is familiar with being left with no infrastructure, which she describes as detrimental to the community. Shange's journey to the house of the esteemed poet Rubén Darío leads her to participate in a bus ride during the entire bus singing along to Usted Abuso, by Shange's favorite salsa singer. This makes her feel at home. Shange runs into Carlos Johnson and partakes in the experience of a dance hall. saying "we connect to the culture of the people we live with", Chapter 4. Shange is in Brixton, a working-class West Indian neighborhood and she describes shopping in the area with her daughter, as they look for food items. Savannah and Shange prepare for her friend Leila's birthday dinner, and each of the ingredients used is described. At the end of the chapter, she mentions the fact that Leila's partner Darcus Howe is from Trinidad and Tobago, and makes a reference to the presence of slavery in East India. She ends with the quote: "Now we are independent. We own the soil. We have our own name. We have our own flag. Let us have some wine and some music." Chapter 5. In Chapter 5, Shange is in the world of the Caribbean, and looking at the "matter of the flyin' fish" in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. Here, she describes the different ways in which two communities looked at one commodity. The Trinidad and Tobago fishermen were catching the flyin fish that were essential to the Barbadian diet, and didn’t eat it. While the Barbadians argued that it was wrong for them to catch the fish that they didn’t even eat and then sell it back as a profit, they said that they were only supplying the demand. She then says that who knows what would happen if the Barbadians came after shark meat, which is treasured by the Trinidadians. Chapter 6. Chapter 6 is about Brazil. Shange talks about the different colors of the populations of different sections of Brazil, saying that the south is industrialized and "mythologically white", while it's thought that the "Africans" live in the north. She talks about how when she was at a university in Bahia she asked each student to bring in the beginning of a performance piece or something based either off their lives or the world as they knew it. Each student talked about a myth, which she found disturbing and says that "My students were validating themselves as the 'other' where they were not the other." Shange says that "We are not folklore." In terms of Brazil, she says that "the epitome and apex of Brazilian life may be the continually multiplying mulatta, but we must all eat whatever our hue, or the hue and cry over who we are." She then goes about looking at what makes up the primary dishes, focusing on Brazilian rice. Shange makes the point that Brazil has the highest percentage of people of African descent who live outside continent and that "We eat what they eat, just differently. These recipes have stayed with us for centuries, being improvised here and there, where we found somethin' we were accustomed to in, say, Guinea was not available at the mouth of the Amazon." Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, Shange talks about the Juba, "a dance of coutrin'", that is found in the Caribbean and the community of slaves in North America. Chapter 7 briefly discusses dance in slave culture and says that "it's time to tend to our own gardens. Let's grow some sweet potatoes to keep the niggah alive." It mentions the crops that were carried into the new world, and talks about Carolina rice, which Shange was raised on. It talks about different preparations of rice, and Shange relates style of cooking to location. She chides her mother for thinking that spice and a burnt bottom are ruining the rice, when rice with a crusty bottom is common in the Caribbean. Shange then goes back to dance, talking about classes taken at the Clark Center. Chapter 8. Chapter 8 talks about the assimilation of people to western territories and how old dishes are adapted to new locations, as well as the lack of knowledge newly arrived slaves had about the treatment of Native Americans. It talks about the ramifications of the Dred Scott decision. Oklahoma is mentioned as "our nearest place of safety", and A. G. Belton is mentioned as an entrepreneur who wrote to the American Colonization Society about the problems of post slavery communities. She questions the Buffalo Soldiers' treatment of the Native Americans and the way that "we changed, made necessary readjustments to our gods and belief systems to accommodate the Christianity thrust upon us as our salvation." (p. 54). She also discusses debate around bones of freemen that were found along Vine Street Expressway in Philadelphia. She says that bones have to be moved to make room for other things and that it was acceptable for the removed bones to be moved because they belonged to what were considered a "lower species of man". This leads to a part about the treatment of deceased African - Americans and what happens to their remains. Shange says that the world of slavery and the European took "what the world was to us out of our control?" Chapter 9. Chapter 9 looks at African Americans in Texas. She says that slaves in Texas weren't immediately informed that they were free until General Order number three was issued. African American Texans created their own independence day (Juneteenth) and she asserts that they found ways of finding community. She describes arenas commanded by African American cowboys who were continuing tradition, as well as her own participation. She says that rodeos were another venue for food, with women producing barbecue; she provides a recipe for Texan beef barbecue. She tells a story about convincing her father to come see her race barrels in Hitchcock, Texas, and about the barbecue they had. She details her father's reaction the barbecue and sauce, and his comparison of it to his own barbecue. Shange makes mention of the fact that "I was raised to experiment with taste and sound, thus my interest in music, language, and food, but more importantly to never turn my nose or chin up to any kinda food that anybody ate." Chapter 10. Chapter 10 begins with a mention of Elijah Muhammad's column "How to Eat to Live". Shange talks about Frank Yerby's play Foxes of Harrow and looks at his characters "defiant and self - determining" and at Yerby as someone who actively rejected Southern antebellum life, without denying its existence. From there, Shange looks at refusing food as "one of many methods Africans used to maintain some dignity, some control of their lives". She discusses the relationship between crackheads, dope fiends and slavery and writes that "Cooking is a way of insisting on living," and saying that "When we are hungry for life, we search out spice, aromas, and texture to entice and please those around us." She uses gumbo as an example here and references the cities of Charleston and New Orleans. She discusses different ways to make roux and then the way to add okra to gumbo, yet says that her own immediate family does not like okra. Chapter 11. Chapter 11 looks at boys. Shange says that from the first, she was expected to serve boys food, and that this was part of a dating ritual "to prove I was of value, valued my visitors and our time together so much that I made a hands-on effort to create something for whoever this person was". She discusses her adolescent reaction to it and her later realization that was being taught an important "Southern/African tradition of sharing the best I had with visitors". (p. 80). She describes the link between cooking and self value, as well as the energy and importance of time in the kitchen. She mentions that music can assist the kitchen process. Chapter 12. Chapter 12 looks at the need "to re-create a 'where' for our people". It looks at people who do not commit to the American way of life. Shange talks about meeting a Rastafarian in Cancun, Mexico, and the ways in which African culture was destabilized during slavery. She uses the limitation of diet as an example. Yvette, a friend, is used as an example; she explains that her vegetarianism is an alternative choice to the meat and dairy diet suggested by America. In this chapter, Shange looks at the idea that African Americans are a "people in transition" describes the first bembe she ever attended and talks about African-American Jews. Epilogue. The epilogue contains references to Shange's dance experience and talks about sugar, giving people something to make them happy, and providing dessert recipes. Analysis. The author herself once described this difficult to define project as one of "writing some thoughts about food", It allows the author to see herself both within the tradition she is exploring as an individual, and is a tribute to black cuisine as a food that reflects the spirit and history of a people. Shange actually moved her bedroom into the kitchen while writing the book. She looks at food as something that celebrates the history, migration and soul of a people. Here, food provides the backdrop and basis for questions of identity that involve origin, relocation and what ultimately has the power to bring people together. The essays before each recipe endow them with historical, emotional, and communal importance. The small essays allow her to "understand or recognize herself in the history and culture of other African - origin people of the world... travels to Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, or places undeniably products of the African Diaspora launch Shange's thoughts on being and identity." Shange puts extreme value on food, evident in an interview with The Sun, in which she says that "I believe you should eat and prepare food with the same care you treat a newborn infant", "if i can cook / you know god can" explores history, and the ways in which food and culture are intertwined. Different people, cultures and locations come together in the food put on the table, and the recipes that the food comes from. By writing about the food culture she comes from, Shange asserts the importance of the food she details and provides recipes for, the food that is important to her people. She claims this food culture, and history, as important, worthy of recognition, remembrance, and immortality in writing. Shange refuses to let this history be ignored. As stated by "Mosaic Literary Magazine": "This is not a cookbook, it's a food lesson, a means by which the African diasporic existence is ultimately justified." Shange sees connection between food and history, and has said that "I also wanted to write about {blacks'} relationship to food as a people in bondage and how that changed." In this work, Shange actively addresses the past, and "goes well beyond mere listings of ingredients to show how various foods reflect the black experience from the slave ships to the present". For example, Shange introduces the readers to "Afro-Atlantic foodways", which is a type of food that came to being on slave ships. This piece discusses the importance of location in relation to food. Eating brings people together. Shange displays the ways in which recipes are adapted according to location. When people move, they bring a food history with them, and yet it evolves according to the availability of ingredients, culture, traditions and influence of present location. Therefore, recipes are spread to different locations, evolving and yet simultaneously staying true to tradition. In a review in "The Booklist" by Alice Joyce, she says that Shange "paints a fervent, richly impassioned chronicle of African-American experience, at the same time making note of political situations and discord among the peoples of these nations and recording how connections are made beyond issues of class or skin color. Recipes serve as savory, nourishing garnishes" Shange displays the ways in which certain recipes and traditions have survived over time, allowing people to remember and recall Africa, even when in a different place. Food is a way for "black folks in the Western Hemisphere to be full". For example, Shange "identifies the African-American migration west after the Civil War and how the voyage was fueled by the hunting and farming skills folks learned during slavery. She makes these connections from a fundamental love for and admiration of the development of African contributions to the new world order". Shange claims that by continuing, but adapting, past food culture to location, African Americans declare the presence and importance of their culture in a new location, such as the United States. She is asking the questions "Where did black folks end up? How did they cope with relocation?" and realizing that the answer is "at the table, where hearts, minds, and bellies come together and are made full". Shange looks at food as a feature of memory as well, for not only is the memory of history bestowed upon food but food, as a product of a long and rich culture, can trigger memory. When Shange spends New Years with her daughter in New York, she has an "insatiable desire to recreate for her daughter the family holidays she remembered". This work is a tribute to the universality and individuality of food, for it connects an entire group of people and yet can remain a specific, unique experience. As said in "The Austin Chronicle", "it's clear in her book that Shange takes a great deal of pleasure in the preparation, presentation, and savoring of well-prepared food". Shange writes her recipes with a specific reader in mind, one who will understand the references she makes and who has a prior knowledge of the foods she discusses. Shange reclaims the food history of her people, while dispelling stereotypes and misconceptions through an identification of facts, experiences, and feelings both cultural, historical, and social. Food ties people together, and Shange makes the point that "Our food isn't reflective of our lack of culture, it is, in fact, the very opposite - it's the foundation from which we grow and continue to thrive." Style/Tone. The recipes and essays are written informally in a personable tone of an experienced person conveying exactly how to recreate a recipe. The recipes make allowances for individual preference and skill level, while at the same time making basic assumptions about the reader's knowledge base. Shange writes in "trademark lilting vernacular" The voice of a piece is extremely important, for Shange said in an interview with Neal A. Lester in 1990 that "I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives."

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M. C. Higgins, the Great M. C. Higgins, the Great, first published in 1974, is a realistic novel by Virginia Hamilton that won the 1975 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature. It also won the National Book Award in category Children's Books and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; it was the first book to do so, and only one other book has done so since ("Holes", by Louis Sachar). "M.C. Higgins" is a bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel) that covers three eventful days in the life of teenager Mayo Cornelius Higgins. It is set in the Appalachian Mountains on Sarah's Mountain, a fictional mountain in Kentucky, near the Ohio River, that is being encroached upon by a mining company. The book highlights the strange, almost surreal customs of the hill people, including their traditions of song and superstition. At its core is the reconciliation M.C. must make between tradition and change. Reception. At the time of the book's publication, "Kirkus Reviews" said: "Hamilton is at her best here; the soaring but firmly anchored imagery, the slant and music of everyday speech, the rich and engaging characters and warm, tough, wary family relationships, the pervasive awareness of both threat and support connected with the mountain -- all mesh beautifully in theme and structure to create a sense of organic belonging." According to "The Horn Book Magazine", "All of the characters have vitality and credibility as well as a unique quality that makes them unforgettable... All of the themes are handled contrapuntally to create a memorable picture of a young boy's growing awareness of himself and of his surroundings." In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal-winning books from 1966 to 1975, children's author John Rowe Townsend wrote, "As of this writing, "M.C. Higgins, The Great" is too large and still too close to be seen whole; the perspective of time is needed to discern its shape and its standing; but I should not be surprised if it emerged as being the nearest thing to a masterpiece to appear on the children's lists in its decade." Translations and adaptations. The book has been translated into many languages, including Japanese and German, and was made into a movie in 1986.

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Kindred (novel) Kindred is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. First published in 1979, it is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being a common choice for high school and college courses. The book is the first-person account of a young African-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself being shunted in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. There she meets her ancestors: a proud black freewoman and a white planter who has forced her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana's stays in the past become longer, the young woman becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. She makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time. "Kindred " explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. Through the two interracial couples who form the emotional core of the story, the novel also explores the intersection of power, gender, and race issues, and speculates on the prospects of future egalitarianism. While most of Butler's work is classified as science fiction, "Kindred" is considered to cross genre boundaries. It has been classified also as literature or African-American literature. Butler has categorized the work as "a kind of grim fantasy." Plot. "Kindred" scholars have noted that the novel's chapter headings suggest something "elemental, apocalyptic, archetypal about the events in the narrative," thus giving the impression that the main characters are participating in matters greater than their personal experiences. Prologue Dana wakes up in the hospital with her arm amputated. Police deputies question her about the circumstances surrounding the loss of her arm and ask her whether her husband Kevin, a white man, beats her. Dana tells them that it was an accident and that Kevin is not to blame. When Kevin visits her, they are both afraid of telling the truth because they know nobody would believe them. The River Their predicament began on June 9, 1976, the day of her twenty-sixth birthday. The day before, she and Kevin had moved into a house a few miles away from their old apartment in Los Angeles. While unpacking, Dana suddenly becomes dizzy, and her surroundings begin to fade away. When she comes to her senses, she finds herself at the edge of a wood, near a river where a small, red-haired boy is drowning. Dana wades in after him, drags him to the shore, and tries to resuscitate him. The boy's mother, who had been unable to save him, begins screaming and hitting Dana, accusing her of killing her son, whom she identifies as Rufus. A man arrives and points a gun at Dana, terrifying her. She becomes dizzy again and arrives back at her new house with Kevin beside her. Kevin, shocked at her disappearance and reappearance, tries to understand if the whole episode was real or a hallucination. The Fire Dana managed to wash off the filth from the river before the dizziness sets in once again. This time, she is whisked back to a bedroom where a red-haired boy has set his bedroom drapes aflame. The boy turns out to be Rufus, now a few years older. Dana quickly puts out the fire and speaks to Rufus, who, unafraid, confesses he set fire to the drapes to get back at his father for beating him after he stole a dollar. During their ensuing conversation, Rufus's casual use of the word "nigger" to refer to Dana, who is black, initially upsets Dana, but then leads her to figure out that she has been transported back in time as well as space, specifically to Maryland, circa 1815. Following Rufus's advice, Dana seeks refuge at the home of Alice Greenwood and her mother, free blacks who live on the edge of the plantation. Dana realizes that both Rufus and Alice are her ancestors, and will one day have children. At the Greenwoods', she witnesses a group of young white men smash down the door, drag out Alice's father, who is a slave, and whip him brutally for being there without papers. One of the men punches Alice's mother when she refuses his advances. The men leave, Dana comes out of hiding, and helps Alice's mother, only to be confronted by one of the white men, who hits her and attempts to rape her. Fearing for her life, Dana becomes dizzy and returns to 1976. Though hours have passed for her, Kevin assures her that she has been gone only for a few minutes. The next day, Kevin and Dana prepare for the possibility that she may travel back in time again by packing a survival bag for her and by doing some research on black history from the books in their home library. The Fall In a flashback, Dana recounts how she met Kevin while doing minimum-wage temporary jobs at an auto-parts warehouse. Kevin becomes interested in Dana when he learns she is a writer like him, and she befriends him even though he is white and their coworkers judge their relationship. They find they have much in common; both are orphans, both love to write, and both their families disapproved of their aspiration to become writers. They become lovers. As Kevin is leaving for the library to find out how to forge "free papers" for Dana, she feels the dizziness coming back. This time, Kevin holds on to her and also travels to the past. They find Rufus writhing in pain from a broken leg. Next to him is a black boy named Nigel, whom they send to the main house for help. Rufus reacts with violent disbelief when he finds out that Kevin and Dana are married: whites and blacks are not allowed to marry in his time. Dana and Kevin explain to Rufus that they are from the future and prove it by showing the dates stamped on the coins Kevin carries in his pockets. Rufus promises to keep their identities a secret, and Dana tells Kevin to pretend that he is her owner. When Tom Weylin arrives with his slave Luke to retrieve Rufus, Kevin introduces himself. Weylin grudgingly invites him to dinner. Once back in the Weylin plantation, Margaret, Rufus's mother, fusses about her son's well-being and, jealous of the attention Rufus shows Dana, sends Dana to the cookhouse. There, Dana meets two house slaves: Sarah, the cook; and Carrie, her mute daughter. Unsure as to what their next act should be, Kevin accepts Weylin's offer to become Rufus's tutor. Kevin and Dana stay on the plantation for several weeks. They observe the relentless cruelty and torture that Weylin, Margaret, and the spoiled Rufus use against the slaves. While none is actually sadistic or evil, they feel entitled to treat the slaves as property. Weylin catches Dana reading and whips her mercilessly. The dizziness overcomes her before Kevin can reach her and she travels back to 1976 alone. The Fight In a flashback, Dana remembers how she and Kevin were married. Both of their families opposed the marriage due to ethnic bias. While Kevin's reactionary sister is prejudiced against African Americans, Dana's uncle abhors the idea of a white man eventually inheriting his property. Only Dana's aunt favors the union, as it would mean that her niece's children would have lighter skin. Kevin and Dana marry without any family present. After eight days of being home recuperating without Kevin, Dana time travels to find Rufus getting beaten up by Alice Greenwood's husband, the slave Isaac Jackson. Dana learns that Rufus had attempted to rape Alice, once his childhood friend. Dana convinces Isaac not to kill Rufus, and Alice and Isaac run away while Dana gets Rufus home. She learns that it has been five years since her last visit and that Kevin has left Maryland. Dana nurses Rufus back to health in return for his help delivering letters to Kevin. Five days later, Alice and Isaac are caught. Isaac is mutilated and sold to traders heading to Mississippi. Alice is beaten, savaged by dogs, and enslaved as punishment for helping Isaac escape. Rufus, who claims to love Alice, buys her, and orders Dana to nurse her back to health. Dana does so with much care. When Alice finally recovers, she curses Dana for not letting her die, and is wracked with grief for her lost husband. Rufus orders Dana to convince Alice to sleep with him now that she has recovered. Dana speaks with Alice, outlining her three choices: she can refuse and be whipped and raped; she can acquiesce and be raped without being beaten; or she can try again to run away. Injured and terrified from her previous punishment, Alice gives in to Rufus's desire and becomes his concubine. While in his bedroom, Alice finds out that Rufus did not send Dana's letters to Kevin, and tells Dana. Furious that Rufus lied to her, Dana runs away to find Kevin, but is betrayed by a jealous slave, Liza. Rufus and Weylin capture her and Weylin whips her brutally. When Weylin learns that Rufus failed to keep his promise to Dana to send her letters, he writes to Kevin and tells him that Dana is on the plantation. Kevin comes to retrieve Dana, but Rufus stops them on the road and threatens to shoot them. He tells Dana that she can't leave him again. The dizziness overcomes Dana and she travels back to 1976, this time with Kevin. The Storm Dana's and Kevin's happy reunion is short-lived, as Kevin has a hard time adjusting to the present after living in the past for five years. He shares a few details of his life in the past with Dana: he witnessed terrible atrocities against slaves, traveled farther up north, worked as a teacher, helped slaves escape, and grew a beard to disguise himself from a lynch mob. Disconcerted about his trouble in re-entering his former world, he grows angry and cold. Deciding to let him work his feelings out for himself, Dana packs a bag in case she time travels again. Soon enough she finds herself outside the Weylin plantation house in a rainstorm, with a very drunk Rufus lying face down in a puddle. She tries to drag him back to the house, then gets Nigel to help her carry him. Back at the house, an aged Weylin appoints Dana to nurse Rufus back to health under threat of her life. Suspecting Rufus has malaria and knowing she cannot help much, Dana feeds Rufus the aspirin she has packed to lower his fever. Rufus survives, but remains weak for weeks. Dana learns that Rufus and Alice have had three mixed-race children of the plantation and that only one, a boy named Joe, has survived. Alice is pregnant again. Rufus had forced Alice to let the doctor bleed the other two when they had fallen ill, a customary treatment of the time, but it killed them. Weylin has a heart attack and, when Dana is unable to save his life, Rufus sends her to work in the corn fields as punishment. By the time he repents his decision, she has collapsed from exhaustion and is being whipped by the overseer. Rufus appoints Dana as the caretaker of his ailing mother, Margaret. Now the master of the plantation, Rufus sells off some slaves, including Tess, Weylin's former concubine. Dana expresses her anger about that sale, and Rufus explains that his father left debts he must pay. He convinces Dana to use her writing talent to stave off his other creditors. Dana abhors secretarial work, and had argued with Kevin about his asking her to type his manuscripts. Time passes and Alice gives birth to a girl, Hagar, a direct ancestor of Dana. Alice confides that she plans to run away with her children as soon as possible, as she fears that she is forgetting to hate Rufus. Dana convinces Rufus to let her teach his son Joe and some of the slave children how to read. However, when a slave named Sam asks Dana if his younger siblings can join in on the lessons, Rufus sells him away as punishment for flirting with her. When Dana tries to interfere, Rufus hits her. Faced with her own powerlessness over Rufus, she retrieves the knife she has brought from home and slits her wrists in an effort to time travel. The Rope Dana awakens back at home with her wrists bandaged and Kevin by her side. She tells him of her eight months in the plantation, of Hagar's birth, and of the need to keep Rufus alive, as the slaves would be separated and sold if he died. When Kevin asks if Rufus has raped Dana, she responds that he has not, that a rape attempt would be the act that would cause her to kill him, despite the possible consequences. Fifteen days later, on the 4th of July, Dana returns to the plantation where she finds that Alice has hanged herself. Alice attempted to run away after Dana disappeared, and as punishment Rufus whipped her and told her that he had sold her children. In reality, he had sent to them to stay with his aunt in Baltimore. Racked with guilt about Alice's death, Rufus nearly commits suicide. After Alice's funeral, Dana uses that guilt to convince Rufus to free his children by Alice. From that moment on, Rufus keeps Dana at his side almost constantly, having her share meals and teach his children. One day, he finally admits that he wants Dana to replace Alice in his life. He says that unlike Alice, who, despite growing used to Rufus, never stopped plotting to escape him, Dana will see that he is a fair master and eventually stop hating him. Dana, horrified at the thought of forgiving Rufus in this way, flees to the attic to find her knife. Rufus follows her there, and when he attempts to rape her, Dana stabs him twice with her knife. Nigel arrives to see Rufus's death throes, at which point Dana becomes terribly sick and time travels home for the last time, only to find herself in excruciating pain, as her arm has been joined to a wall in the spot where Rufus was holding it. Epilogue Dana and Kevin travel to Baltimore to investigate the fate of the Weylin plantation after the death of Rufus, but they find very little; a newspaper notice reporting Rufus's death as a result of his house catching fire, and a Slave Sale announcement listing all the Weylin slaves except Nigel, Carrie, Joe, and Hagar. Dana speculates that Nigel covered up the murder by starting the fire, and feels responsible for the sale of the slaves. To that, Kevin responds that she cannot do anything about the past, and now that Rufus is finally dead, they can return to their peaceful life together. Main themes. Realistic depiction of slavery and slave communities. "Kindred "was written to explore how a modern black woman would experience the time of a slavery society, where most black people were considered as property; a world where "all of society was arrayed against you." During an interview, Butler admitted that while reading slave narratives for background, she realized that if she wanted people to read her book, she would have to present a less violent version of slavery. Still, scholars of "Kindred" consider the novel an accurate, fictional account of slave experiences. Concluding that "there probably is no more vivid depiction of life on an Eastern Shore plantation than that found in "Kindred"," Sandra Y. Govan traces how Butler's book follows the classic patterns of the slave narrative genre: loss of innocence, harsh punishment, strategies of resistance, life in the slave quarters, struggle for education, experience of sexual abuse, realization of white religious hypocrisy, and attempts to escape, with ultimate success. Robert Crossley notes how Butler's intense first-person narration deliberately echoes the ex-slave memoirs, thereby giving the story "a degree of authenticity and seriousness." Lisa Yaszek sees Dana's visceral first-hand account as a deliberate criticism of earlier commercialized depictions of slavery, such as the book and film "Gone with the Wind", produced largely by whites, and even the television miniseries "Roots", based on a book by African-American writer Alex Haley. In "Kindred", Butler portrays individual slaves as distinctive people, giving each his or her own story. Robert Crossley argues that Butler treats the blackness of her characters as "a matter of course", to resist the tendency of white writers to incorporate African Americans into their narratives just to illustrate a problem or to divorce themselves from charges of racism. Thus, in "Kindred "the slave community is depicted as a "rich human society": the proud yet victimized freewoman-turned-slave Alice; Sam the field slave, who hopes Dana will teach his brother; the traitorous sewing woman Liza, who frustrates Dana's escape; the bright and resourceful Nigel, Rufus's childhood friend who learns to read from a stolen primer; most importantly, Sarah the cook, who Butler transforms from an image of the submissive, happy "mammie" of white fiction to a deeply angry yet caring woman subdued only by the threat of losing her last child, the mute Carrie. Master-slave power dynamics. Scholars have argued that "Kindred" complicates the usual representations of chattel slavery as an oppressive system where the master regards the slave as a mere tool/economic resource to be bred or sold. Pamela Bedore notes that while Rufus seems to hold all the power in his relationship with Alice, she never wholly surrenders to him. Alice's suicide can be read as her way of ending her struggle with Rufus with a "final upsetting of their power balance", an escape through death. By placing "Kindred" in comparison to other Butler novels such as "Dawn", Bedore explores the bond between Dana and Rufus as re-envisioning slavery as a "symbiotic" interaction between slave and master: since neither character can exist without the other's help and guidance, they are continually forced to collaborate in order to survive. The master does not simply control the slave but depends on her. From the side of the slave, Lisa Yaszek notices conflicting emotions: in addition to fear and contempt, there is affection from familiarity and the occasional kindnesses of the master. A slave who collaborates with the master to survive is not reduced to a "traitor to her race" or to a "victim of fate." "Kindred" portrays the exploitation of black female sexuality as a main site of the historic struggle between master and slave. Diana Paulin describes Rufus's attempts to control Alice's sexuality as a means to recapture power he lost when she chose Isaac as her sexual partner. Compelled to submit her body to Rufus, Alice divorces her desire from her sexuality to preserve a sense of self. Similarly, Dana's time traveling reconstructs her sexuality to fit the times. While in the present, Dana chooses her husband and enjoys sex with him; in the past, her status as a black female forced her to subordinate her body to the desires of the master for pleasure, breeding, and as sexual property. Thus, as Rufus grows into adulthood, he attempts to control Dana's sexuality, ending with his attempt at rape to turn her into a replacement of Alice. Since Dana sees sexual domination as the ultimate form of subordination, her killing of Rufus is the way she rejects the role of female slave, distinguishing herself from those who did not have the power to say "no." Critique of American history. Scholarship on "Kindred" often touches on its critique of the official history of the formation of the United States as an erasure of the raw facts of slavery. Lisa Yaszek places "Kindred" as emanating from two decades of heated discussion over what constituted American history, with a series of scholars pursuing the study of African-American historical sources to create "more inclusive models of memory." Missy Dehn Kubitschek argues that Butler set the story during the bicentennial of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of the United States to suggest that the nation should review its history in order to resolve its current racial strife. Robert Crossley believes that Butler dates Dana's final trip to her Los Angeles home on the Bicentennial to connect the personal with the social and the political. The power of this national holiday to erase the grim reality of slavery is negated by Dana's living understanding of American history, which makes all her previous knowledge of slavery through mass media and books inadequate. Yaszek further notes that Dana throws away all her history books about African-American history on one of the trips back to her California home, as she finds them to be inaccurate in portraying slavery. Instead, Dana reads books about the Holocaust and finds these books to be closer to her experiences as a slave. In several interviews, Butler has mentioned that she wrote "Kindred" to counteract stereotypical conceptions of the submissiveness of slaves. While studying at Pasadena City College, Butler heard a young man from the Black Power Movement express his contempt for older generations of African-Americans for what he considered their shameful submission to white power. Butler realized the young man did not have enough context to understand the necessity to accept abuse just to keep oneself and one's family alive and well. Thus, Butler resolved to create a modern African-American character, who would go back in time to see how well he (Butler's protagonist was originally male) could withstand the abuses his ancestors had suffered. Therefore, Dana's memories of her enslavement, as Ashraf A. Rushdy explains, become a record of the "unwritten history" of African-Americans, a "recovery of a coherent story explaining Dana's various losses." By living these memories, Dana is enabled to make the connections between slavery and current social situations, including the exploitation of blue-collar workers, police violence, rape, domestic abuse, and segregation. Trauma and its connection to historical memory (or historical amnesia). "Kindred "reveals the repressed trauma slavery caused in America's collective memory of history. In an interview on 1985, Butler suggested that this trauma partly comes from attempts to forget America's dark past: "I think most people don’t know or don’t realize that at least 10 million blacks were killed just on the way to this country, just during the middle passage...They don’t really want to hear it partly because it makes whites feel guilty." In a later interview with Randall Kenan, Butler explained how debilitating this trauma has been for Americans, especially for African Americans, as symbolized by the loss of her protagonist's left arm: "I couldn’t really let [Dana] come all the way back. I couldn’t let her return to what she was, I couldn’t let her come back whole and [losing her arm], I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn’t leave people quite whole." Many academics have extended Dana's loss as a metaphor for the "lasting damage of slavery on the African American psyche" to include other meanings: Pamela Bedore, for example, reads it as the loss of Dana's naïvete regarding the supposed progress of racial relations in the present. For Ashraf Rushdy, Dana's missing arm is the price she must pay for her attempt to change history. Robert Crossley quotes Ruth Salvaggio as inferring that the amputation of Dana's left arm is a distinct "birthmark" that represents a part of a "disfigured heritage." Scholars have also noted the importance of Kevin's forehead scar, with Diana R. Paulin arguing that it symbolizes Kevin's changing understanding of racial realities, which constitute "a painful and intellectual experience." Race as social construct. The construction of the concept of "race" and its connections to slavery are central themes in Butler's novel. Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint place "Kindred" as a key science fiction literary text of the 1960s and 1970s black consciousness period, noting that Butler uses the time travel trope to underscore the perpetuation of past racial discrimination into the present and, perhaps, the future of America. The lesson of Dana's trips to the past, then, is that "we cannot escape or repress our racist history but instead must confront it and thereby reduce its power to pull us back, unthinkingly, to earlier modes of consciousness and interaction." The novel's focus on how the system of slavery shapes its central characters dramatizes society's power to construct raced identities. The reader witnesses the development of Rufus from a relatively decent boy allied to Dana to a "complete racist" who attempts to rape her as an adult. Similarly, Dana and Kevin's prolonged stay in the past reframes their modern attitudes. Butler's depiction of her principal character as an independent, self-possessed, educated African-American woman defies slavery's racist and sexist objectification of black people and women. "Kindred" also challenges the fixity of "race" through the interracial relationships that form its emotional core. Dana's kinship to Rufus disproves America's erroneous concepts of racial purity. It also represents the "inseparability" of whites and blacks in America. The negative reactions of characters in the past and the present to Dana and Kevin's integrated relationship highlight the continuing hostility of both white and black communities to interracial mixing. At the same time, the relationship of Dana and Kevin extends to concept of "community" from people related by ethnicity to people related by shared experience. In these new communities whites and black people may acknowledge their common racist past and learn to live together. The depiction of Dana's white husband, Kevin, also serves to examine the concept of racial and gender privilege. In the present, Kevin seems unconscious of the benefits he derives from his skin pigmentation as well as of the way his actions serve to disenfranchise Dana. Once he goes to the past, however, he must not just resist accepting slavery as the normal state of affairs, but dissociate himself from the unrestricted power white males enjoy as their privilege. His prolonged stay in the past transforms him from a naive white man oblivious about racial issues into an anti-slave activist fighting racial oppression. Strong female protagonist. In her article "Feminisms," Jane Donawerth describes "Kindred" as a product of more than two decades of recovery of women's history and literature that began in the 1970s. The republication of a significant number of slave narratives, as well as the work of Angela Davis, which highlighted the heroic resistance of the black female slave, introduced science fiction writers such as Octavia Butler and Suzy McKee Charnas to a literary form that redefined the heroism of the protagonist as endurance, survival, and escape. As Lisa Yaszek points further, many of these African-American woman's neo-slave narratives, including "Kindred", discard the lone male hero in favor of a female hero immersed in family and community. Robert Crossley sees Butler's novel as an extension of the slave woman's memoir's exemplified by texts such as Harriet Ann Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", especially in its portrayal of the compromises the heroine must make, the endurance she must have, and her ultimate resistance to victimization. Originally, Butler intended for the protagonist of "Kindred "to be a man, but as she explained in her interview, she could not do so because a man would immediately be "perceived as dangerous": "[s]o many things that he did would have been likely to get him killed. He wouldn't even have time to learn the rules...of submission." She then realized that sexism could work in favor of a female protagonist, "who might be equally dangerous" but "would not be perceived so." Most scholars see Dana as an example of a strong female protagonist. Angelyn Mitchell describes Dana as a black woman "strengthened by her racial pride, her personal responsibility, her free will, and her self-determination." Identifying Dana as one of many Butler's strong female black heroes, Grace McEntee explains how Dana attempts to transform Rufus into a caring individual despite her struggles with a white patriarchy. These struggles, Missy Dehn Kubitschek explains, are clearly represented by Dana's resistance to white male control of a crucial aspect of her identity—her writing—both in the past and in the present. Sherryl Vint argues that, by refusing Dana to be reduced to a raped body, Butler would seem to be aligning her protagonist with "the sentimental heroines who would rather die than submit to rape" and thus "allows Dana to avoid a crucial aspect of the reality of female enslavement." However, by risking death by killing Rufus, Dana becomes a permanent surviving record of the mutilation of her black ancestors, both through her armless body and by becoming "the body who writes "Kindred"." In contrast to these views, Beverly Friend believes Dana represents the helplessness of modern woman and that "Kindred" demonstrates that women have been and continue to be victims in a world run by men. Female quest for emancipation. Some scholars consider "Kindred" as part of Butler's larger project to empower black women. Robert Crossley sees Butler' science fictional narratives as generating a "black feminist aesthetic" that speaks not only to the sociopolitical "truths" of the African-American experience, but specifically to the female experience, as Butler focuses on "women who lack power and suffer abuse but are committed to claiming power over their own lives and to exercising that power harshly when necessary." Given that Butler makes Dana go from liberty to bondage and back to liberty beginning on the day of her birthday, Angelyn Mitchell further views "Kindred" as a revision of the "female emancipatory narrative" exemplified by Harriet A. Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", with Butler's story engaging in themes such as female sexuality, individualism, community, motherhood, and, most importantly, freedom in order to illustrate the types of female agency that are capable of resisting enslavement. Similarly, Missy Dehn Kubistchek reads Butler's novel as "African-American woman’s quest for understanding history and self" which ends with Dana extending the concept of "kindred" to include both her black and white her heritage as well as her white husband while "insisting on her right to self definition." The meaning of the novel's title. "Kindred"’s title has several meanings: at its most literal, it refers to the genealogical link between its modern-day protagonist, the slave-holding Weylins, and both the free and bonded Greenwoods; at its most universal, it points to the kinship of all Americans regardless of ethnic background. Since Butler’s novel challenges readers to come to terms with slavery and its legacy, one significant meaning of the term "kindred" is the United States’ history of miscegenation and its denial by official discourses. This kinship of black people and whites must be acknowledged if America is to move into a better future. On the other hand, as Ashraf H. A. Rushdy contends, Dana's journey to the past serves to redefine her concept of kinship from blood ties to that of "spiritual kinship" with those she chooses as her family: the Weylin slaves and her white husband, Kevin. This sense of the term "kindred" as a community of choice is clear from Butler's first use of the word to indicate Dana and Kevin's similar interests and shared beliefs. Dana and Kevin's relationship, in particular, signals the way for black and white America to reconcile: they must face the country's racist past together so they can learn to co-exist as kindred. Genre. Publishers and academics have had a hard time categorizing "Kindred". In an interview with Randall Kenan, Butler stated that she considered "Kindred" "literally" as "fantasy." According to Pamela Bedore, Butler's novel is difficult to classify because it includes both elements of the slave narrative and science fiction. Frances Smith Foster insists "Kindred" does not have one genre and is in fact a blend of "realistic science fiction, grim fantasy, neo-slave narrative, and initiation novel." Sherryl Vint describes the narrative as a fusion of the fantastical and the real, resulting in a book that is "partly historical novel, partly slave narrative, and partly the story of how a twentieth century black woman comes to terms with slavery as her own and her nation's past." Critics who emphasize "Kindred"’s exploration of the grim realities of antebellum slavery tend to classify it mainly as a neo-slave narrative. Jane Donawerth traces Butler's novel to the recovery of slave narratives during the 1960s, a form then adapted by female science fiction writers to their own fantastical worlds. Robert Crossley identifies "Kindred" as "a distinctive contribution to the genre of neo-slave narrative" and places it along Margaret Walker’s "Jubilee", David Bradley’s "The Chaneysville Incident", Sherley Anne Williams’s "Dessa Rose", Toni Morrison’s "Beloved", and Charles R. Johnson’s "Middle Passage". Sandra Y. Govan calls the novel "a significant departure" from the science fiction narrative not only because it is connected to "anthropology and history via the historical novel," but also because it links "directly to the black American slave experiences via the neo-slave narrative." Noting that Dana begins the story as a free black woman who becomes enslaved, Marc Steinberg labels "Kindred " an "inverse slave narrative." Still, other scholars insist that Butler's background in science fiction is key to our understanding of what type of narrative "Kindred" is. Dana's time traveling, in particular, has caused critics to place "Kindred" along science fiction narratives that question "the nature of historical reality," such as Kurt Vonnegut's "time-slip" novel "Slaughterhouse Five" and Philip K. Dick’s "The Man in the High Castle", or that warn against "negotiat[ing] the past through a single frame of reference," as in William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum." In her article "A Grim Fantasy," Lisa Yaszek argues that Butler adapts two tropes of science fiction—time-travel and the encounter with the alien Other—to "re-present African-American women’s histories." Raffaella Baccolini further identifies Dana's time traveling as a modification of the "grandfather paradox" and notices Butler's use of another typical science fiction element: the narrative's lack of correlation between time passing in the past and time passing in the present. Style. "Kindred" ‘s plot is non linear; rather, it begins in the middle of its end and contains several flashbacks that connect events in the present and past. In an interview, Butler acknowledged that she split the ending into a "Prologue" and an "Epilogue" so as to "involve the reader and make him or her ask a lot of questions" that could not be answered until the end of the story. Missy Dehn Kubitschek sees this framing of Dana's adventures as Butler's way to highlight the significance of slavery to what Americans consider their contemporary identity. Because "Prologue" occurs before Dana travels in time and "Epilogue" concludes with a message on the necessity to confront the past, we experience the story as Dana's understanding of what we have yet to understand ourselves, while the "Epilogue" speaks about the importance of this understanding. Roslyn Nicole Smith proposes that Butler's framing of the story places Dana literally and figuratively "in media res" so as to take her out of that "in media res"; that is, to indicate Dana's movement from "a historically fragmented Black woman, who defines herself solely on her contemporary experiences" to "a historically integrated identity" who has knowledge of and a connection to her history. "Kindred" ’s story is further fragmented by Dana’s report of her time traveling, which uses flashbacks to connect the present to the past. Robert Crossley sees this "foreshortening" of the past and present as a "lesson in historical realities." Because the story is told from the first-person point of view of Dana, readers feel they are witnessing firsthand the cruelty and hardships that many slaves faced every day in the South and so identify with Dana's gut-wrenching reactions to the past. This autobiographical voice, along with Dana's harrowing recollection of the brutality of slavery and her narrow escape from it, is one of the key elements that have made critics classify "Kindred" as a neo-slave narrative. Another strategy Butler uses to add dramatic interest to "Kindred"’s story is the deliberate delay of the description of Dana and Kevin’s ethnicities. Butler has stated in an interview she did not want to give their "race" away yet since it would have less of an impact and the reader would not react the way that she wanted them to. Dana's ethnicity becomes revealed in chapter two, "The Fire," while Kevin's ethnicity becomes clear to the reader in chapter three, "The Fall," which also includes the history of Dana's and Kevin's interracial relationship. Butler also uses Alice as Dana's doppelgänger to compare how their decisions are a reflection of their environment. According to Missy Dehn Kubitschek, each woman seems to see a reflection of herself in the other; each is the vision of what could be (could have been) the possible fate of the other given different circumstances. According to Bedore, Butler's use of repetition blurs the lines between the past and present relationships. As time goes on, Alice and Rufus’ relationship begins to seem more like a miserable married couple while Dana and Kevin become somewhat distant. Background. Butler wrote "Kindred" specifically to respond to a young man involved in black consciousness raising. He felt ashamed of what he considered the subservience of older generations of African Americans, saying they were traitors and he wanted to kill them. Butler disagreed with this view. She believed that a historical context had to be given so that the lives of the older generations of African Americans could be understood as the silent, courageous resistance that it was, a means of survival. She decided to create a contemporary character and send her (originally it was a him) back to slavery, to explore how difficult a modern person would find it to survive in such harsh conditions. As Butler said in a 2004 interview with Allison Keyes, she "set out to make people feel history." Butler's field research in Maryland also influenced her writing of "Kindred". She traveled to the Eastern Shore to Talbot County where she wandered a bit. She also conducted research at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and the Maryland Historical Society. She toured Mount Vernon, the plantation home of America's first president, George Washington. At the time, guides referred to the slaves as "servants" and avoided referring to the estate as a former slave plantation. Butler also spent time reading slave narratives, including the autobiography of Fredrick Douglass, who escaped and became an abolitionist leader. She read many grim accounts, but decided she needed to moderate events in her book in order to attract enough readers. Reception. "Kindred "is Butler's bestseller, with Beacon Press advertising it as "the classic novel that has sold more than 450,000 copies." Among Butler's peers, the novel has been well received. Speculative writer Harlan Ellison has praised "Kindred "as "that rare magical artifact… the novel one returns it to again and again", while writer Walter Mosley described the novel as "everything the literature of science fiction can be." Book reviewers were enthusiastic. "Los Angeles Herald-Examiner" writer Sam Frank described the novel as "[a] shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now." Reviewer Sherley Anne Williams from "Ms". defined the novel as "a startling and engrossing commentary on the complex actuality and continuing heritage of American slavery. "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" writer John Marshall said that "Kindred" is "the perfect introduction to Butler’s work and perspectives for those not usually enamored of science fiction." "The Austin Chronicle" writer Barbara Strickland declared "Kindred" to be "a novel of psychological horror as it is a novel of science fiction." High school and college courses have frequently chosen "Kindred" as a text to be read. Linell Smith of "The Baltimore Sun" describes it as "a celebrated mainstay of college courses in women's studies and black literature and culture." Speaking at the occasion of Beacon Press' reissue of "Kindred" for its 25th Anniversary, African-American literature professor Roland L. Williams said that the novel has remained popular over the years because of its crossover appeal, which "continues to find a variety of audiences--fantasy, literary and historical" and because "it is an exceedingly well-written and compelling story… that asks you to look back in time and at the present simultaneously." Communities and organizations also choose this novel for common reading events. In 2003, Rochester, New York selected "Kindred" as the novel to be read during the third annual "If All of Rochester Read the Same Book." Approximately 40,000 to 50,000 people participated by reading "Kindred" and joining panel discussions, lectures, film viewings, visual arts exhibitions, poetry readings, and other events from February 2003 until March 2003. The town discussed the book in local groups, and from March 4–7 met Octavia Butler during her appearances at colleges, community centers, libraries, and bookstores. In the spring of 2012, "Kindred" was chosen as one of thirty books to be given away as part of World Book Night, a worldwide event conducted to encourage love for books and reading by giving away hundreds of thousand of free paperbacks in one night.

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Joy (Hunt novel) Joy (1990) is a novel by Marsha Hunt about the relationship between two African-American women that is based on secrets, lies and delusion. Mainly set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black neighbourhood in the 1950s and 1960s. The book also deals with stardom in the music business and some people's inability, despite their riches, to make their own American Dream come true and to lead fulfilled lives. Plot summary. The first person narrator of the novel is Palatine Ross, a 70-year-old cleaning woman originally from New Orleans, whose childhood is dominated by poverty and loss. Shutting her eyes to all the evil in the world and firmly relying on God and the words of the Bible as guidance, Palatine tries to raise Joy and her sisters to be educated, honest and religious members of society. The fact that, growing up in a rough neighbourhood, the not-yet-teenaged girls are very early in their lives confronted with sex willingly escapes her notice. It troubles Palatine a great deal when Dagwood, her neighbour's new boyfriend, starts spending the night with the girls' mother. One morning during the summer vacation, while his girlfriend is at work and Palatine is taking care of the children, Dagwood stays on in the apartment. Right from the start, Palatine tries to take the three girls along to church, seeing that their blaspheming mother will never do so. Time and again, in the course of more than twenty years, Palatine tries to convince Joy that finding herself a nice coloured boyfriend whom she could marry and have children with would be the right thing to do. However, "Chocolate Chip" remains a one-hit wonder after an interview given by Brenda to some gay magazine in which she announces her coming out as a lesbian. However, rather than being able to mourn Joy's death, she for the first time learns things about Joy which finally force her to abandon her blinkered view of her "God-sent child" and admit that she was a sinner rather than a saint.

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The Salt Eaters The Salt Eaters is a 1980 novel, the first such work by Toni Cade Bambara. The novel is written in an experimental style and is explicitly political in tone, with several of the characters being veterans of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It is set in the fictional town of Claybourne, Georgia. Plot. The novel opens on Minnie Ransom, the "fabled healer of the district", performing a healing on Velma Henry who has attempted suicide by slitting her wrists and sticking her head into a gas oven. Velma, a community activist who has worked in various leftist movements, has suffered a nervous breakdown due to the increasing factionalism in the activist community of Claybourne as well as her failing marriage to Obie, another activist, and the pressures of her job as a computer programmer at Transchemical, a chemical plant in the neighboring town. Minnie, an unmarried eccentric, calls on her spiritual guide, a "haint" she called Old Wife, to guide her through the healing as she feels Velma is resisting her efforts. (Old Wife was the elderly woman who helped Minnie deal with the emotional breakdown she experienced after she ran away from the bible college that her well-to-do parents sent her to and headed to New York City.) Many chapters of the book feature long internal dialogues between Minnie and Old Wife, with the two of them having spirited debates about the "loas" that Old Wife refuses to acknowledge. The healing, which is conducted in the infirmary that Velma helped to establish to serve the community is witnessed by several visitors, most of whom have some sort of connection to Velma. The entirety of the novel's action revolves around the healing, with the planning of the upcoming Spring Festival serving as backdrop. The point-of-view of the novel shifts numerous times between characters. "At once spiritual, apocalyptic, mysterious, cacophonic, and destabilizing, "The Salt Eaters" offers a unifying epiphany of creation and community."

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Ordinary Light Ordinary Light: A Memoir is a 2015 book by poet Tracy K. Smith. It was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Development and publication history. Smith described the process of writing the memoir as becoming "an investigator of [her] own life," comparing recollections with her siblings and finding memory to be a "flawed lens." She began writing "Ordinary Light" in 2009, though had long wanted to write the memoir, born of a desire to write about her mother who passed away in 1994 as Smith was graduating from college; Smith made initial efforts beginning in 1999 but found the pieces difficult to finish. Later, working with German writer Hans Manus Enzensberger in the context of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, Smith found the structure of exchanging work as well as Enzensberger's feedback helped move the project forward. Smith has also said becoming a parent herself—her daughter was an infant when Smith was writing the book--gave her insight necessary to writing about her mother: "Not only did I have access to my own feelings and recollections but suddenly I had a way of imagining what my mother, as a parent, might have been thinking and worrying about, and weighing in her mind." The 368-page book was published by Alfred A. Knopf on April 2, 2015. Content and style. Writing in "Slate", Stacia L. Brown says "most of the time", "Ordinary Light" is "a coming-of-age story about a middle-class black girl with a relatively idyllic life...the story of the healthy, nurturing bond between a black mother and daughter." However, Brown found the book "most powerful when it returns to the subject" with which Smith opens the narrative: "her mother’s illness and Smith’s slow-dawning realization that she will not recover"—Smith's mother died shortly after Smith graduated from college. Smith, whose first books were poetry, has said that in retrospect, the move to writing in prose was a necessity for her to engage the story of her relationship with her mother. "I had found a way of exploring my own private material in poems. I knew the kinds of answers—that’s not the right noun because I don't think a poem "solves" things—but I knew the kind of encounter I was capable of creating in a poem. I realized that if I wanted to get something new out of that material I needed to shift languages." Reception. "Ordinary Light" received widely favorable reviews and was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

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On the Come Up On the Come Up, published on February 5, 2019 by Balzer + Bray, is a young adult novel by Angie Thomas . It tells the story of Bri, a sixteen-year old rapper hoping to fill the shoes of her father and 'make it' as an underground hip-hop legend. Overnight, Bri becomes an internet sensation after posting a rap hit which sparks controversy. As Bri defeats the odds to 'make it' she battles controversy to achieve her dreams. It is set in the same universe (Garden Heights) as Thomas' first book "The Hate U Give". Reception. The book was well reviewed by The New York Times, Vox, and The Washington Post. The American Library Association named the book one of the best released for young adults in 2020. Awards. "On the Come Up" received several accollades: Film adaptation. On February 4, 2019, Fox 2000 Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the novel with George Tillman Jr. directing and producing with Robert Teitel, and Jay Marcus from State Street Pictures, alongside Thomas Marty Bowen, Isaac Klausner and John Fischer of Temple Hill Entertainment. On December 11, 2019, after Disney acquisition of 21st Century Fox and closing of Fox 2000, Paramount Players acquired the film adaptation with Kay Oyegun hired to write the script and Tillman Jr. still attached to direct. On October 19, 2020, Wanuri Kahiu replaced Tillman Jr. as director of the film.

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Piecing Me Together Piecing Me Together is a 2017 children's book by Renée Watson. The first person novel tells the story of Jade, an ambitious African American high school student. The book was well reviewed and won several awards. Plot. Jade, who is also the book's narrator, is a sixteen-year-old African American student attending a mostly white private school in Portland, Oregon on a scholarship. Jade is from a poor neighborhood and is different from the rest of her school. Heeding her mother's advice, Jade works to take advantage of every opportunity presented to her. Hoping to be afforded the opportunity to study abroad so she can utilize her fluent Spanish Skills, Jade is instead offered the chance to be paired with a mentor in the Women to Women program by her school's guidance counselor. Paired with Maxine, Jade initially has high hopes for this mentor-ship, hopes which are dashed when Maxine proves unreliable and Jade begins to wonder if it is she or Maxine who is getting more out of the program. Through her art, Jade begins to act on the realization that she needs to make her own opportunities. Reception and awards. The book was well reviewed including starred reviews by "The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", Kirkus Reviews, which also named it a best book of 2017, and "School Library Journal", which also named it a best book of 2017. The book was recognized by the American Library Association at the 2018 Youth Media Awards. Watson was awarded the Coretta Scott King Author Award; in her acceptance speech Watson thanked the award committee for, "bring visibility to black characters who are bold and brave, beautiful and brilliant." "Piecing Me Together" was also named a Newbery Honor book with the award committee citing its, "Through artful and poetic language, Watson explores themes of race, class, gender and body image in this dynamic journey." Bank Street College of Education also recognized the novel with its Josette Frank Award.

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So You Want to Talk About Race So You Want to Talk About Race is a 2018 non-fiction book by Ijeoma Oluo. Each chapter title is a question about race in contemporary America. Oluo outlines her opinions on the topics as well as advice about how to talk about the issues. The book received positive critical reception, with renewed interest following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd, after which the book re-entered "The New York Times" Best Seller list. Background. Author Ijeoma Oluo was an editor-at-large at "The Establishment". "So You Want to Talk About Race" is her first book. Oluo was convinced into writing a book by her agent, who conceived of a "guidebook" in which Oluo answered questions she regularly received on social media or addressed in her essays. Oluo was reluctant to spend so much time writing about race, but was inspired after beginning to ask people what issues they face when talking about race and hearing the responses of people of color. The book was published by Seal Press. Synopsis. The book is about race in the contemporary United States, each chapter titled after a question. Oluo makes the argument that America's political, economic and social systems are systematically/institutionally racist. The book provides advice for readers when discussing race-related subjects, such as how to avoid acting defensive or getting off-topic. Statistics are used to support the book's arguments. Oluo also describes her upbringing and experience living in Seattle, Washington. She was raised by a white single mother and became a single mother herself to two mixed-race sons at a young age. The book also covers topics including affirmative action, cultural appropriation, intersectionality, microaggressions, police brutality and the school-to-prison pipeline. Oluo argues that use of the word "nigger" or other racial slurs by white people is not appropriate even if the intention is ironic or the motive anti-racist. Reception. The book received renewed attention following the killing of George Floyd in May 2020. Having been listed for one week previously, it re-entered "The New York Times" Best Seller list in the category Combined Print & E-book Nonfiction on June 14, 2020, peaking at position #2 on June 21. It remained on the list until September 13 and reappeared October 4. Critical reception. "Bustle" named "So You Want to Talk about Race" to a list of 14 recommended debut books by women, praising Oluo's "no holds barred writing style", as well as to a list of the 16 best non-fiction books of January 2018. "Harper's Bazaar" also named it to a list of 10 best new books of 2018, saying "Oluo crafts a straightforward guidebook to the nuances of conversations surrounding race in America." "The New York Times" listed the book in its "New & Noteworthy" column. "Publishers Weekly" praised Oluo's commentary as "thoughtful", "insightful" and "not preachy". Jenny Ferguson of the "Washington Independent Review of Books" found Oluo's style to be "intellectually sharp and even funny", praising the "punchy one- and two-liners". She thought that white readers would "gain insight" on the book and found that the book's tone and use of direct address made reading an "intimate experience". "Salon"s Erin Keane reviewed that the book is "accessible and approachable" and recommended it as "a highly productive book-in-common for high school seniors in America". Jenny Bhatt of "The National Book Review" wrote that the book is "a comprehensive conversation guide" with arguments presented "thoroughly and rationally". Bhatt found "no ambivalence or soft-pedaling" in the book, praising Oluo for being "even-keeled" when discussing her personal experiences. Ferguson criticised the use of the term "Indigenous American" in the book as an example of "Oluo's own basic assumptions that create an inhospitable climate for other racially marked bodies". Oluo responded that future editions of the book would instead use the term "indigenous peoples". Bhatt suggested that a further reading list would have improved the book.

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Betsey Brown Betsey Brown is an African-American literature novel by Ntozake Shange, published in 1985. Plot. "Betsey Brown" is the story of an adolescent African-American girl growing up in 1959 St. Louis, Missouri, who is part of the first generation of students to be integrated in the public school system. She navigates common adolescent issues such as family dynamics, first love, and identity questions. Major themes. Thematic concerns of the novel include African-American family life, coming of age, feminism, and racial freedom. One critic described the narrative structure of the novel as paralleling "the personal story of Betsey’s attaining self-confidence with the social achievements of the Civil Rights Movement." This structure allows Shange to address feminist issues in addition to racial issues. Development history. In order to write the novel, Shange drew on her own experiences growing up in St. Louis, but the resulting novel is not entirely autobiographical. Nevertheless, like Betsey Brown, Shange really did know such African-American celebrities as Chuck Berry and W. E. B. Du Bois. Publication history. "Betsey Brown" was published in 1985 by St. Martin's Press. Explanation of the novel's title. Set in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Educationm —the landmark case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional—the novel is eponymous. Literary significance and reception. Though perhaps the least known of Shange's work, the novel has been called "a little gem." Adaptations. Shange adapted the novel into a musical play, which has been performed in various cities.

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Arilla Sun Down Arilla Sun Down is a 1976 children's novel by Virginia Hamilton and is about the life experiences of Arilla, a young girl of African American and American Indian parentage. Reception. A review of "Arilla Sun Down" in "The Best in Children's Books: The University of Chicago Guide to Children's Literature, 1973-78" stated "Hamilton is a genius with words; once accustomed to the pattern, the reader hears the singing quality. What is outstanding in the story is the depth and nuance of the author's perception of the young adolescent, the brilliant characterization, and the dramatic impact of some of the episodes." and Margaret Bernice Smith Bristow, writing about Hamilton in "The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature", found "Her use of unconventional stream of consciousness and language in "Arilla Sun Down" (1976) is also noteworthy." "Arilla Sun Down" has also been reviewed by "Kirkus Reviews", "Children's Literature Association Quarterly", the "English Journal", and the "School Library Journal".

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Third Woman Press Third Woman Press (TWP) is a "Queer and Feminist of Color" publisher forum committed to feminist and queer of color decolonial politics and projects. It was founded in 1979 by Norma Alarcón in Bloomington, Indiana. Alarcón, who was the professor and chair of women's studies at Berkeley at the time, began the TWP journal as a labor of love in 1979. In that same year, Alarcón realized that "there weren't enough other women of color or Latinas for me to have a conversation with." She aimed to create a new political class surrounding, sexuality, race and gender. Alarcón wrote that, ""Third Woman" is one forum, for the self-definition and the self-invention which is more than reformism, more than revolt. The title "Third Woman" refers to that pre-ordained reality that we have been born to and continue to live and experience and be a witness to, despite efforts toward change . . ." By 2004, the press published over 30 books that were for, by and about women. The press was closed down in 2004 due to lack of funds and energy. It then had reopened in 2011 by Dr. Alarcon with the help of Christina L. Gutiérrez and Sara A. Ramírez. TWP taught Ramirez a deeper sense of women of color, all of which were thinkers, writers, and artists in which their activism; this led to her passion of finding their publishing. Alarcon was at the top of her list of activists in which she learned about TWP and its closing.  Ramirez brought back the publishing movement because she and the resources support to do so for feminism of color. In 2011, Ramirez asked Alarcon if she could revitalize TWP project and resulted in the rebirth of TWP. Without Ramirez, the press would not have reopened or functioning as of today. She is also the First Core Collective Member is the first member of a national collective working that helped revive TWP. TWP was revived to honor and continue the legacy of women of color publishing. It has also published works by notable women of color such as Gloria Anzaldúa's "Living Chicana Theory" (1998), Cherrie Moraga's "The Sexuality of Latinas" (1993)"," Carla Trujillo's "Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About" (1991), Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Writing Self, Writing Nation: A Collection of Essays on Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha" (1994) and Ana Castillo's "The Sexuality of Latinas" (co-editor, with Norma Alarcón and Cherríe Moraga) (1993). TWP believes that language, art, and media are tools for creating dynamic social change. The tools expand access to the work of activist scholars and artists dedicated to liberation from the historical injustices of colonialism and imperialism. They also encourage reader to collaborate with them to envisioning a world for women of color that incorporates migratory, diasporic, and indigenous women both within and beyond U.S. national borders.

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All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave (1982) is a landmark feminist anthology in Black Women's Studies printed in numerous editions, co-edited by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith. Awards. Hull received the National Institute's Women of Color Award for her contribution to this book. Her contribution to this "landmark scholarship directed attention to the lives of Black women and, combined with the numerous articles she wrote thereafter, helped remedy the emphasis within Feminist Studies on white women and within Black studies on Black men". Context. The interest in black feminism was on the rise in the 1970s, through the writings of Mary Helen Washington, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and others. In 1981, the anthology "This Bridge Called My Back", edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa, was published and "But Some of Us Are Brave" was published the following year. In both anthologies, the emphasis was placed on the intersection between race and gender. The contributors argued that previous waves of feminism had focused on issues related to white women. They wanted to negotiate a large space for women of color. According to Teresa de Lauretis, "This Bridge Called My Back" and "But Some Women Are Brave" revealed "the feelings, the analyses, and the political positions of feminists of color, and their critiques of white or mainstream feminism" and created a "shift in feminist consciousness." Impact. In the 2000 reprint of their anthology, editors Hull, Bell-Scott, and Smith described how in 1992 black feminists mobilized "a remarkable national response" - "African American Women in Defense of Ourselves" - to the controversy surrounding the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States against the backdrop of allegations by law professor Anita Hill, about sexual harassment that became part of Thomas' confirmation hearings. Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw cited "But Some of Us Are Brave", at the beginning of her seminal 1989 paper, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics" in which she introduced the concept of Intersectionality. Crenshaw is known for introducing and developing intersectional theory to feminism. Crenshaw noted that it was one of the "very few Black women's studies books". She used the title "All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave", as her "point of departure" to "develop a Black feminist criticism". Barbara Y. Welke published her article entitled "When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks Were Men: Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855–1914", in reference to Hull et al., in 1995 in the "Law and History Review." Welke wrote how Crenshaw, referring to "But Some of Us Are Brave", said that the title "sets forth a problematic consequence of the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis.

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Black Feminist Thought Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment is a 1990 book by Patricia Hill Collins. Defining Black Feminist Thought. Black feminist thought is a field of knowledge that is focused on the perspectives and experiences of Black women. There are several arguments in support of this definition. First, Berger and Luckmann (1966) and Mannheim (1936) similarly argue that the definition implies that the overall content of the thought and the historical and factual circumstances of Black women are inseparable. Proposition is that other groups in the field act as merely transcribers, whereas Black women are the actual authors. Second, the definition assumes that Black women possess a unique standpoint on, or perspective of, their experiences and that there will be certain commonalities of perception shared by Black women as a group. Third, while living life as Black women may produce certain commonalities of outlook, the diversity of class, region, age, and sexual orientation shaping individual Black women's lives has resulted in different expressions of these common themes. Thus, universal themes included in the Black women's standpoint may be experienced and expressed differently by distinct groups of Afro-American women. Finally, the definition assumes that, while a Black women's standpoint exists, its contours may not be clear to Black women themselves. Therefore, one role for Black female intellectuals is to produce facts and theories about the Black female experience that will clarify a Black woman's standpoint for Black women. In other words, Black feminist thought contains observations and interpretations about Afro-American womanhood that describe and explain different expressions of common themes. Black women's insistence on self-definition, self-valuation, and the necessity for a Black female-centered analysis is significant for two reasons. First, defining and valuing one's consciousness of one's own self-defined standpoint in the face of images that foster a self-definition as the objectified "other" is an important way of resisting the dehumanization essential to systems of domination. The status of being the "other" implies being "other than" or different from the assumed norm of white male behavior. In this model, powerful white males define themselves as subjects, the true actors, and classify people of color and white women in terms of their position vis-a-vis this white male hub. Since Black women have been denied the authority to challenge these definitions, this model consists of images that define Black women as a negative other, the virtual antithesis of positive white male images. Moreover, as Britain and Maynard (1984:199) point out, "domination always involves the objectification of the dominated; all forms of oppression imply the devaluation of the subjectivity of the oppressed." Book description. In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In "Black Feminist Thought", originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music, and oral history, the result is a book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon. Key concepts. Outsider-within. Patricia Hill Collins coins the term "outsider-within" in a former essay and redefines the term in her book to describe the experience of black women. In the book, she historically situates the term to describe the social location of black women in domestic work pre-World War II. While the domestic work gave black women an opportunity "to see White elites, both actual and aspiring, from perspectives largely obscured from Black men and from these groups themselves," they were still economically exploited by their white employers. Collins asserts that black women cannot fully be a member of feminist thought nor black social thought because the former assumes whiteness while the latter assumes maleness. The makeup of their identity and consequently their experiences as black women maintain their position as outsiders within spaces of oppression. However, as Collins notes, the black woman's position as an outsider-within provides her with a unique perspective on social, political, intellectual, and economic realities. Therefore, although black women are marginalized they can bring a more nuanced outlook to feminist and social thought. Intellectual activism. Collins pinpoints intellectual activism as a key process in developing black feminist thought. She articulates the reclaiming of "black feminist intellectual traditions" as one of the most important pillars of intellectual activism. Since the intellectual work of black women has been suppressed for so long, reclaiming and centering these works not only preserves the intellectual traditions of past black women but also encourages continued contributions to black feminist thought. Collins also notes the importance in "discovering, reinterpreting, and analyzing the ideas of subgroups within the larger collectivity of U.S. Black women who have been silenced" meaning that we must also give equal attention to the groups of black women who have been especially marginalized, such as black lesbians. Collins describes the relationship between past and present intellectual traditions, suggesting that we use black feminists' theoretical frameworks of today, such as, race, class, and gender, to interpret the intellectual traditions of previously silenced black women. Collins' focus goes beyond black female academics; she argues that all forms of works be considered as black women's social thought which questions the definition of "intellectual" and allows for poetry, music, etc. to be considered as valid forms of social thought. Balancing of Intellectual Activism. Black women's work within the academy faces a double meaning of exclusion. The exclusion of the work of Black Feminist Thought or the exclusion of their own selves from Black women academicians, all for the sake of visibility and acceptance within the academy. Through academic frameworks built around a White, male viewpoint, the work in having Black Feminist Thought recognized as legitimate is listed against varying frames of knowledge, one in particular, Positivist. The Positivist methodology would require the exclusion of self from Black women academics with the requirements of distancing one's self and their emotions from their work along with hostile confrontations with superiors. The implied separation of the personal and professional goes against the inherent value systems within Black communities that included varying areas of community, familial and religion. The intermeshing of these ideas also includes views that scholars view as feminist, with Black women having experiences pulling from their racial community and gender identity, their intellectual experiences, even through differences, still showcase similarities. Matrix of domination. The matrix of domination refers to how intersections of oppression are structurally organized. It explains the way "structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power reappear across quite different forms of oppression". The matrix of domination is made up of varying combinations of intersecting oppression such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, age, and sexuality. Collins' matrix of domination works in four different domains: the structural domain, the disciplinary domain, the hegemonic domain, and the interpersonal domain. The structural domain functions to organize power and oppression, the disciplinary manages oppression in attempts to sustain it, the hegemonic functions to legitimize oppression, and the interpersonal domain controls the interactions and consciousness of individuals. Although all black women are within the matrix of domination, the differences in the intersections of oppression make the experiences and the perspectives of black women differ. Controlling images. Collins' discussion of controlling images focuses on the negative stereotypical representations and images of black women. These representations continue to oppress black women as they continue to perpetuate the dominant subject's definition of the object i.e. the black woman. The images' pervasive nature aid in sustaining intersecting oppression because they "[reflect] the dominant group's interest in maintaining Black women's subordination. These images are used to make black women's oppression seem natural and normal. Collins' critique on controlling images includes an analysis of the mammy, the welfare mother, and the jezebel. She explains that the images constitute different oppressions simultaneous: the mammy works to make the defeminized black women and all oppressive factors against her seem natural, the welfare mother works to make the economically unfit black women and all oppressive factors against her seem natural, and the jezebel works to make the hypersexual black women and all oppressive factors against her seem natural. Power of Images on Black girls. For young Black girls, the manipulation of images is also an influence. From a 2016 study by University of Pennsylvania associate professor, Charlotte E. Jacobs, utilizing Black Feminist Thought as an educational work for Black girls in media depictions. Coupled with the inherent knowledge and experiences of Black girls, Jacobs explained how it is able to provide an "opportunity to develop critical media literacy skills." Knowing this frameworks aids in their own viewpoints and stances to media representations in understanding and deciphering the images and meaning behind such imagery. Moving beyond the surface images and using this framework as a means of combatting against the prevalent, normalized view of characters and ideals within the media that are shown as representations of and for young Black girls. Self-definition. Self-definition is "the power to name one's own reality" Collins articulates black women's resistance against controlling images as an important step for practicing self-definition. The rejection of the dominant group's definition of black women and black women's imposition of their own self-definition indicates a "collective Black women's consciousness". The expression of the black women's consciousness and standpoint is an integral part of developing Black feminist thought. Collins notes the importance of safe spaces for black women, where self-definition is not clouded by further objectification or silencing. Affirmation is also an important part of Collins' call for self-definition, which can take place in the individual friendships and familial relationships of black women. Collins describes the process of self-definition as a "journey form internalized oppression to the 'free mind'" in order to emphasize its significance in the formation of the collective consciousness of black women. Reception. Media reception. With the success of "Black Feminist Thought", Collins gained more recognition as a "social theorist, drawing from many intellectual traditions." Collins' work has now been published and used in many different fields including philosophy, history, psychology and sociology. The University of Cincinnati named Collins The Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Sociology in 1996, making her the first ever African-American, and only the second woman, to hold this position. She received Emeritus status in the Spring of 2005, and became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. The University of Maryland named Collins a Distinguished University Professor in 2006." "Black Feminist Thought" is used in various university African American and Women Studies courses. Literary significance and reviews. Black feminism remains important because U.S. Black women constitute an oppressed group. As a collectivity, U.S. Black women participate in a dialectical relationship linking African American women's oppression and activism. Dialectical relationships of this sort mean that two parties are opposed and opposite. As long as Black women's subordination within intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation persists, Black feminism as an activist response to that oppression will remain needed. Editorial reviews. "With the publication of Black Feminist Thought, black feminism has moved to a new level. Her work sets a standard for the discussion of black women's lives, experiences, and thought that demands rigorous attention to the complexity of these experiences and an exploration of a multiplicity of responses." Black Feminist Thought provides a synthesis of a body of knowledge that is crucial to putting in perspective the situation of Black Women and their place in the overall struggle to reduce and eliminate gender, race, and class inequalities. The book provides an analysis of the ideas of Black Women, particularly those ideas that reflect a consciousness in opposition to oppression. Awards. "Black Feminist Thought" won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 1993 and the C. Wright Mills Award of The Society for the Study of Social Problems in 1990. According to the American Sociological Association, "The Jessie Bernard Award is given in recognition of scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society. The contribution may be in empirical research, theory, or methodology. It is presented for significant cumulative work done throughout a professional career." The Society for the Study of Social Problems "annually gives its C. Wright Mills Award to the author of what the committee considers to be the most outstanding book written in the tradition of C. Wright Mills and his dedication to a search for a sophisticated understanding of the individual and society."

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Redefining Realness Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More is a memoir and the debut book by Janet Mock, an American writer and transgender activist. It was published on 1 February 2014 by Atria Books. The book has been praised by Melissa Harris-Perry, bell hooks, Laverne Cox, and Barbara Smith. It debuted in 19th position on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for Hardcover Nonfiction. The book's original title was "Fish Food". The memoir follows Mock's journey as a transgender girl and young woman in Hawaii. Summary. In "Redefining Realness," Janet Mock describes her life as a transgender woman from childhood to adulthood. Mock opens the book with a scene from 2009, where she starts to tell her boyfriend Aaron that she is transgender and then starts telling her story from childhood. Part One. In 1989, as children, Mock's friend and neighbor Marylin dares Mock to take her grandmother's dress down from the clothesline and put it on. After being caught, Mock is scolded by her grandmother and mother for wearing a dress. At four years old, Mock discovers that her father is cheating on her mother. Her parents eventually split up and at age seven Mock is sent to live with her father and brother, Chad, in Oakland, California. While there, her father tries to instill masculinity into young Mock, pushing her to participate in sports and other activities that her brother enjoys. Mock's father gets a new girlfriend, and that girlfriend's son, a boy much older than Mock, molests her. In 1992, Mock discovers her father smoking crack cocaine in her bedroom. At this moment she loses respect for her father. In 1994, Mock's father moves the three of them to Dallas, where the father's family lives. While in Dallas, Mock begins participating in more feminine activities with her aunts. When her father moves them into an apartment with his new girlfriend, Denise, Mock connects with her daughter, Makayla. Mock adopts a pseudonym, Keisha, and chats with boyfriends Makayla is no longer interested with over the phone as Keisha. Once, while at her aunt's apartment, one of the boys she had been meeting up with as Keisha comes looking for her. After the boy addresses Mock as Keisha in front of her father, Mock's father cuts her hair short to make her more masculine. Mock's mother eventually decides to bring Mock and her brother Chad back to Hawaii to live with her. Part Two. Mock, Chad, and their younger brother Jeff lived with their older sister Cori and her children. While in school in Hawaii, Mock meets Wendi, another transgender girl. Through her friendship with Wendi, Mock becomes more confident, dresses more feminine, and has access to estrogen pills. At age thirteen, Mock comes out as gay to her mother, and Wendi helps her become even more feminine. Together, they meet other transgender women and drag queens. Mock's mother gets back together with Cori's father, her boyfriend from high school, named Rick. Mock attends Moanalua High School, a rigorous school. She joins the volleyball team, and becomes more confident in her femininity. She continues to meet up with Wendi, who develops a passion for makeup.   Part Three. Mock becomes class treasurer at Moanalua. After taking estrogen in secret, she talks to her family to come out as a woman and ask to be called Janet. She repeatedly gets sent home from school for breaking the dress code by wearing skirts. She graduates from estrogen pills to shots, which she pays for in cash. She meets a boy named Adrian, who shows interest in her but rejects her when he discovers she is transgender. After Rick gets arrested, Mock and her brothers, mother, and Rick move into a hotel room. After hanging around with Wendi and other transgender women, Mock enters the sex industry. She makes enough money that she can pay for her own hormone therapy. Later, Rick gets arrested again, and Mock's mother moves back in with Cori. Because of the transphobia she faces at Moanalua, Mock transfers to Farrington, the school where her brother and Wendi attend. At Farrington, there is a Teen Center and a transgender support group called Chrysalis that provides resources to transgender girls. Mock comes out to her father via a letter. Mock decides she wants to undergo genital reconstructive surgery and gets an after-school job at a clothing store to save money. Mock receives a scholarship to the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. She schedules a date for a GRS procedure in Thailand for December 20, 2001. Mock continues to work in the sex trade on Merchant Street with strict rules on what acts she will perform and for whom. She starts college at the University of Hawai'i. When she pays her mother $120 dollars for their electric bill, her mother and Chad realize how she is getting the money but say nothing. As adults, Chad tells Mock how worried he was for her. Mock is picked up on Merchant Street by a man in a van, someone she would never agree to be with under normal circumstances, but he offers her so much money, and it is so close to her GRS date, that she gets into his van. The man steals her purse and, when the other women on the street help her call the police, the officers are unhelpful. She calls a regular, Sam, to come pick her up and let her sleep in his apartment for the night. Sam offers to pay for her GRS, Mock declines, but asks him about the nude modeling her photographs for. Mock poses for a photographer, Felix, in lingerie. This is, she says, the decision she regrets most. She gets $1500 for two modeling sessions. Mock goes to Bangkok, Thailand, for GRS. Dr. R. and Dr. C. perform the surgery. In recovery, Mock meets an older transgender Australian woman, Genie. Mock returns to Hawaii on December 28 and her mother embraces her tearfully. While Mock recovers, her mother takes care of her. Mock accepts her mother's faults and the family is loving. 2009. Returning to 2009, having told her story to Aaron, Mock waits for a reaction. Their relationship is inconsistent for a while, and Mock makes a new friend in Mia, the woman who hired her for a "People" magazine job. Mock comes out to Mia as transgender. After eight months of no contact from Aaron, he comes to her apartment in the middle of the night. They reconcile, and move in together soon after. The book ends with a discussion of LGBT representation in the media and the perception that transgender women need to be out and visible at all times. Storygiving campaign. On Christmas Eve 2013, Mock launched the "Redefining Realness Storygiving Campaign". The campaign fulfilled 127 book requests from people who wished to read "Redefining Realness" but had financial constraints. "Redefining Realness" video series. On 30 January 2014, Mock posted a series of six videos on her YouTube channel discussing topics covered in her memoir. She talks about growing up while transgender, having to take care of herself because her parents did not, hoping that her book will reach other young transgender girls. She discusses coming out, as both transgender and a sex worker, which she says is a big theme of her book. She shares about her experience in the sex industry, how she worked in other jobs but sex work gave quick earnings and a tight-knit community, and how sex work is complex. In talking about popular culture, Mock says that Beyoncé, Aaliyah, and Janet Jackson influenced her growing up. Pop culture references appear throughout "Redefining Realness", references many different types of media. Passing, Mock says, implies that transgender people are not actually the gender their identify as; she is not passing as a woman, she is a woman. In the last video, Mock discusses reading at the library as a child, how stories about women who inspired her impacted her growing up, and how her book might be the same for young girls now. Reception. Mock has said that she wrote "Redefining Realness" for transgender girls of color, particularly, her own childhood self. However, many cisgender women of color have connected to themes and moments in the memoir. "Redefining Realness" is praised for being one of a small number of literary texts written by transgender people of color, especially ones that feature themes of reading. "Redefining Realness" has also been praised for its complexity in representation of transgender people of color and for combining Western and African structures of autobiography. A 2014 review of the book claims that while Mock's memoir is personal, it reaches across the queer, transgender, and female communities to relate to many people. In the paper "Redefining Realness?: On Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, TS Madison, and the Representation of Transgender Women of Color in Media", scholar Julian Kevon Glover complicates the popular reception of "Redefining Realness". Glover states that Mock's memoir has gained such high esteem because Mock's transition journey reflects traditional heteronormative norms, beauty standards, and respectability politics. Glover states that many transgender women who do not uphold heteronormative ideals rarely get as much media prestige. While the popularity of "Redefining Realness" is significant for representation of transgender women, Glover states, many transgender activists are denied media presence because their bodies or actions are not in line with respectability politics. Mock published a second memoir, "Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me," which covers her twenties, a period not much discussed in "Redefining Realness." Influences. Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" was a significant influence in Mock's writing of "Redefining Realness." "Their Eyes" was an important book in Mock's girlhood because it was a book about Black women, identity, and love. Other Black female authors that were formative for Mock and her development of "Redefining Realness" were Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Audre Lorde. References to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" appear throughout the book. She also includes quotes from Ralph Ellsion, Gloria Anzaldua, and James Baldwin. In a review by David B. Green Jr., "Redefining Realness" was stated to do more than just tell a personal story as it builds from the tradition of earlier women of color writers, such as those Mock references in the memoir. Green states that Mock's memoir relates to women of all kinds, not just transgender women of color.

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Legendborn Legendborn is a debut young adult fantasy novel by Tracy Deonn. Called "a modern day twist on Arthurian legend" it follows a Black teenage girl who discovers a secret historically white magic society while attending a UNC-Chapel Hill residential pre-college program. The book is the first in the "Legendborn" series. It was released on September 15, 2020 and published under Simon & Schuster/McElderry. The book was recommended by BuzzFeed, Nerdist, and io9. Plot. The book centers 16-year-old Bree Matthews, who attempts to infiltrate a historically white magical society to get help hunting the demons that are terrorizing the participants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pre-college summer program she is attending. Background. Tracy Deonn was inspired by "The Dark is Rising" series by Susan Cooper. She was also influenced by the death of her mother. Having worked in video games, she took that knowledge to help develop the stringent rules that guide the magical system described in the book. Reception. "Legendborn" received positive critical reception. "Publisher's Weekly" stated, "Though hazy exposition initially slows the narrative, Deonn adeptly employs the haunting history of the American South [...] to explore themes of ancestral pain, grief, and love, balancing them with stimulating worldbuilding and multiple thrilling plot twists." In a starred review Bookpage stated, "Legendborn establishes Deonn as an important new voice in YA. Its gorgeous prose and heart-splitting honesty compel an eyes-wide-open reading experience." Syfy.com called the book "a refreshing twist on classic Arthurian legend with a lot of Southern Black girl magic to boot". Natalie Berglind wrote in a review for the "Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", "Deonn brings Arthurian legend to life with originality, a dash of heart-pounding demon-slaying, and a deep and meaningful acknowledgement of the violent roots of slavery in U.S. history." "Kirkus Reviews" noted "Representation of actualized, strong queer characters is organic, not forced, and so are textual conversations around emotional wellness and intergenerational trauma [...] Well-crafted allusions to established legends and other literary works are delightful easter eggs." Awards & Accolades. "Legendborn" received the following accolades:

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World of Wakanda Black Panther: World of Wakanda is a comic book series and a spin-off from the Marvel Comics' "Black Panther" title. It published six issues before being canceled. The series was primarily written by Roxane Gay, with poet Yona Harvey contributing a story to the first issue. Alitha E. Martinez drew the majority of the art for the series, for which Afua Richardson contributed cover art to the first five issues, as well as art for a short story in the first issue. Gay and Harvey became the first two black women to author a series for Marvel; counting Martinez and Richardson, upon its debut the series itself was helmed entirely by black women. Ta-Nehisi Coates served as a consultant for the series. "Black Panther: World of Wakanda" won a 2018 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series. The series also won a 2018 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book. Publication history. After the success of the "Black Panther" series relaunch in April 2016, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Marvel developed a companion piece set in the fictional African country of Wakanda, home to the Black Panther. Coates recommended Gay and Harvey to pen the series. He had seen Gay read a short story about zombies two years earlier that he recalled as "the most surprising, unexpected, coolest zombie story you ever want to see"; Harvey had been his classmate at Howard University and he felt her skills as a poet would lend themselves to the comic-book form, telling "The New York Times", "That’s just so little space, and you have to speak with so much power. I thought she’d be a natural." The series debuted November 9, 2016 (with a cover date of January 2017). Harvey wrote a 10-page origin story for Wakanda's revolutionary leader Zenzi, and has said she drew on the example of Winnie Mandela as inspiration. Gay has mentioned the character of Olivia Pope in the first season of "Scandal" and the original USA version of "La Femme Nikita" as influences for the series. The series was canceled after six issues due to poor sales. Overview. The first "World of Wakanda" story arc (issues #1-5) features Ayo and Aneka, two Wakandan members of the Dora Milaje, the Black Panther's female security force. Ayo and Aneka are also lovers. The first storyline also describes Zenzi, a revolutionary and villain in the "Black Panther" series. The first issue is a prequel to Coates's "Black Panther" series, describing the backstory of women in Wakanda. Captain Aneka of the Dora Milaje must deal with an impertinent new recruit who simultaneously challenges her and fascinates her. Meanwhile, Zenzi discovers that she has enhanced abilities and has to decide the best way to use them. Contrasting "World of Wakanda" with its "Black Panther" predecessor, Caitlin Rosberg writes at "The A.V. Club" that ""World Of Wakanda" feels more intimate, and all the more powerful for it. It’s deeply invested in the identities of black women both as characters and more importantly as creators, making it clear that these aren’t just background characters in T’Challa’s [Black Panther's] life." Writing for "Inverse" magazine, Caitlin Busch called the first installment "a tear-jerking love story for the ages, encapsulating all the emotion, romance, tragedy, and fearsome intelligence of Black Panther’s Wakandan civilization." As the story moves along, Aneka and Ayo grow closer, but concerns over the righteousness of T'Challa's priorities lead them to leave the sisterhood. Aneka is conflicted about making her relationship with Ayo more public, but she agrees to take a vacation trip together. Folami tries to cause trouble for the Dora Milaje, but Queen Ramonda rebuffs her attempt and alerts Zola. Aneka and Ayo cut their trip short when they are summoned back to Wakanda. They become estranged when they return from their vacation to find that Shuri has been killed. Aneka takes on a solo mission to rescue women from an evil chieftain, and she is forced to kill him. She is arrested, and Folami, the chieftain's daughter, vows revenge. The women of Wakanda rise up to object to Aneka's imprisonment, and the Dora Milaje take a more active role in peacekeeping. Folami threatens Ayo and eventually kills Mistress Zola. Ayo breaks Aneka out of prison and the two vow to remain together and to fight injustice as the masked Midnight Angels. The series' final issue, #6, is a standalone story by Rembert Browne and Joe Bennett about Kasper Cole and White Tiger.

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Autobiography of a Family Photo Autobiography of a Family Photo is a 1995 book by Jacqueline Woodson. The book covers childhood, the growth of dark emotional and sexual tension, and the terrors of war.

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Parable of the Sower (novel) Parable of the Sower is a 1993 science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, the first in a two-book series. It is an apocalypse science fiction novel that provides commentary on climate change and social inequality. It is the first of a series of two books. The novel follows Lauren Olamina in her quest for freedom. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has crafted titled Earthseed. In this religion, the destiny for believers is to inhabit other planets. "Parable of the Sower" was the winner of two awards and adapted into a concert and a graphic novel. "Parable of the Sower" has influenced music and essays on social justice. Plot. Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, "Parable of the Sower" takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager. Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with "hyper-empathy" or "sharing" – the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly pain. Lauren grows up in the remnants of a gated community in Robledo, just twenty miles from Los Angeles, where she and her neighbors struggle but are separate from the abject poverty of the world outside. Outside of the community are numerous homeless and mutilated individuals who resent the community members for their relative affluence. Public services such as police or firefighters are untrustworthy, exploiting their positions for profit and making little effort to help. Lauren's father, a Baptist pastor, holds the community together through mutual aid and careful use of resources, such as making bread from acorns. However, Lauren is increasingly certain that despite all efforts, society will continue to deteriorate and the community will no longer be safe; she secretly prepares to travel north, as many do in search of rare paying jobs. The newly elected radical, authoritarian President Donner loosens labor protection, creating a rise in company towns owned by foreign businesses. Lauren privately develops a new belief system based on the belief that "God is Change" is the only lasting truth, and humanity, dubbed Earthseed, should "shape God" in order to aid themselves. She comes to call this religion Earthseed. Lauren's youngest brother, Keith, rebelliously runs away to live outside the walls of the community. For a time, he survives by joining a group of ruthless thieves who value him for his rare literacy, but he is eventually found dead after torture. Later, Lauren's father disappears while leaving the community for work, and is accepted as dead. When Lauren is eighteen in 2027, the community's security is breached in an organized attack by outsiders: most of the community is destroyed, looted, and murdered, including Lauren's family. She travels north, disguised as a man, with Henry and Zahra, two survivors from her community. Society outside the community walls has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty. U.S. states have become akin to city-states, with strict borders. Money still has value, but travellers constantly fear attacks for resources or by pyromaniac drug-users, cannibals, and wild dogs. Mixed-race relationships are stigmatized and women constantly fear sexual assault. Slavery has returned in the form of indebted servitude. Lauren gathers people to protect along her journey and begins to share the Earthseed religion, which is developing into a collection of texts titled "Earthseed: The Books of the Living". She believes that humankind's destiny is to travel beyond Earth and live on other planets, forcing humankind into its adulthood, and that Earthseed is preparation for this destiny. Lauren begins a relationship with Bankole, an older doctor who joins the group, and agrees to marry him. Bankole leads the group to the land he owns in Northern California, where the group settles and Lauren founds the first Earthseed community, Acorn. Proposed future novels. Butler had planned to write a third "Parable" novel to finish her trilogy, tentatively titled "Parable of the Trickster", which would have focused on the community's struggle to survive on a new planet. Along with the idea of a third novel, there were several others titled "Parable of Teacher, Parable of Chaos," and "Parable of Clay." She began "Parable of the Trickster" after finishing "Parable of the Talents", and mentioned her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point encountered writer's block. She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in "Fledgling", her final novel. The various false starts for the novel can now be found among Butler's papers at the Huntington Library, as described in an article at the "Los Angeles Review of Books". Butler passed away in 2006, leaving the trilogy unfinished. Publication and award history. Published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 1993, by Women's Press Ltd. in 1995, by Warner in 1995 and 2000, and by Seven Stories Press in 2017. Adaptations. "Parable of the Sower" was adapted as "Parable of the Sower: The Concert Version", a work-in-progress opera written by American folk/blues musician Toshi Reagon in collaboration with her mother, singer and composer Bernice Johnson Reagon. The adaptation's libretto and musical score combine African-American spirituals, soul, rock and roll, and folk music into rounds to be performed by singers sitting in a circle. It was performed as part of The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival in New York City in 2015 and in 2018. In 2020 it was adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the team which had previously adapted Butler's novel "Kindred", and published by Abrams ComicArts. The graphic novel was named to the Black Lives Matter Reading Lists compiled by the Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. In popular culture. The work of hip hop/R&B duo THEESatisfaction was influenced by Octavia Butler. The third track from their 2012 album "awE NaturalE", "Earthseed", contains themes from the "Parable" series: "Change there are few words / That you can say / We all watch things morphing everyday." In 2015, Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha co-edited "Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements", a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. In 2020, adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon began collaborating on a podcast called Octavia's Parables.

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The Sweet Breath of Life The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family is a 2004 photographic poetic narrative by Ntozake Shange and the photography collective Kamoinge Inc. The Kamoinge Workshop was founded in New York in 1963 to support the work of black photographers in a field then dominated by white photographers. The book was first published on October 26, 2004, through Atria Books and was edited by Frank Steward, the president of Kamoinge Inc. Summary. The book depicts the various aspects of everyday urban African-American life through poetic narrative. Through poetic narrative and accompanying photographs, the book deals with various themes such as religion, identity, and representation. Reception. Critical reception for "The Sweet Breath of Life" has been positive and reviewers have compared the work to that of Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava. "Black Issues Book Review" judges some of the photos to be outdated and that some of the poems felt more like journalism than poetry, but also that when the poems and photography worked together they were "powerfully made" and "breathtaking". "Curve" rated the book highly, citing the photography as one of the book's highlights. The "Tri-State Defender" praised the project as "a wonderful blend of words and images that give definition to the beauty and wonder of contemporary African-American culture."

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Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968 is a 2018 children's picture book told in poetry and prose by writer Alice Faye Duncan and illustrator R. Gregory Christie, published by Calkins Creek. Synopsis. In February of 1968, two African American sanitation workers were killed by unsafe garbage truck equipment in Memphis, Tennessee. Discouraged and outraged, sanitation workers formed a labor union to advocate their rights to higher pay and safer working conditions. Mayor Loeb and the city refused to recognize the labor union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1733 and 1,300 sanitation workers organized a labor strike on February 12, 1968. The strike lasted two months, successfully crippling garbage collection and bringing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis to help with the protests in his nonviolent way. With his presence the community was greatly inspired, and he delivered his infamous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon in the Mason Temple Church, rallying behind the protesters "I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land." Dr. King was assassinated the next day. On April 8, 1968 Coretta Scott King flew to Memphis for a nonviolent memorial march to honor Dr. King's life. With 40,000 people, the marchers silently raised protest signs and remembered the man and the cause. Finally, on April 16, 1968 the Memphis Sanitation Strike ended with the help of James Reynolds, a top US labor official. Author Alice Faye Duncan describes the history of the Memphis strike through a child's perspective. Reception. The book received the 2019 Coretta Scott King Honor Award for Illustration. In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews praised the ability of how the "strong historical details back up the organizing feat…(t)he narrative is set in vignettes that jump between verse and prose, set against Christie’s bold paintings… encapsulates the bravery, intrigue, and compassion that defined a generation, presenting a history that everyone should know: required and inspired." The School Library Journal noted the book as a "a superbly written and illustrated work. A first purchase for public and school libraries.”

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An Untamed State An Untamed State is the debut novel of writer Roxane Gay, first published in 2014 by Grove Atlantic. Plot. Mireille Duval Jameson is born and raised in the United States, her parents are from Haitian descent. Her parents move back to Haiti. While vacationing at her parents' house with her husband and child in Haiti, she is kidnapped. When her father, who by now has become a wealthy Haitian developer, refuses to pay her ransom, she is gang-raped and tortured by her captors, who keep her imprisoned for 13 days before finally releasing her. "Happily Ever After". In the first portion of the book, called "Happily Ever After," the novel moves back and forth in time between Mireille's captivity and her earlier life, meeting and falling in love with husband Michael during graduate school in the Midwest of the United States. "Once Upon a Time". The latter section of the novel, "Once Upon a Time," follows Mireille in the aftermath of her trauma, including her time living with Michael's mother, Lorraine, on the family farm in Nebraska. Themes. Commentary on "An Untamed State" frequently cites the novel's emphasis on fairy tale. Reviewing the novel for the Los Angeles Times, Chris Daley suggests the fairy tale theme serves to translate unspeakable trauma: "Written from Mireille's perspective, 'An Untamed State' is an account of what is normally unaccountable: a level of trauma that, even if it is survived, is often too painful to relate. From the first sentence, we know Mireille has found a way to craft her story to make it bearable. She frames it as a fairy tale: 'Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped[...]'" In The New York Times, Holly Bass said in contrast to contemporary, happy-ending-focused fairy tales, Gay's interpretation of the genre recalled "the real horrors of the original Brothers Grimm stories and their ilk...that a passing stranger raped Sleeping Beauty as she lay unconscious, or that Snow White’s jealous stepmother not only called for her death but wanted to eat her liver and lungs. Roxane Gay’s striking debut novel, 'An Untamed State,' is a fairy tale in this vein, its complex and fragile moral arrived at through great pain and high cost." Reception. Reviews. "An Untamed State" received positive reviews upon publication. Nolan Feeney writing for Time (magazine) called it a "riveting debut" that "captivates from its opening sentence and doesn’t let go." The Los Angeles Times called it "suspenseful, immediate and realistic." The A.V. Club awarded it an A letter grade and praised it as "a gripping psychological portrait of how trauma remakes the body to respond only to itself." Awards. Gay was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction in 2015 for "An Untamed State". Adaptation. In March 2016 director Gina Prince-Bythewood announced she would be adapting the novel into a feature film for Fox Searchlight. Prince-Bythewood and Gay will co-write the film, to star Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Prince-Bythewood will direct and will also produce with Michael De Luca. Prince-Bythewood and Mbatha-Raw previously collaborated on "Beyond the Lights".

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Men We Reaped Men We Reaped is a memoir by African-American writer Jesmyn Ward and published by Bloomsbury in 2013. Ward describes her own personal history and the deaths of five Black men in her life over a four-year span. "Men We Reaped" won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Source of the title. The book’s title comes from a Harriet Tubman quotation, on the occasion of the unsuccessful assault of the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry upon the Confederate forces at Fort Wagner during the American Civil War: "We saw the lightning and that was the guns; We heard the thunder and that was the big guns; We heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped." Synopsis. Five men in Ward's life die in the space of four years. Black men between the ages of 19-32, including her brother, Joshua, killed by a white drunk driver. Though seemingly unconnected, Ward takes her readers on a journey—personal, familial and communal—showing how they were in reality bonded by identity and place, and how race, poverty and gender predetermined the outcome of their lives. Ward was born in California when her mother was 18 and her father 20, premature and sickly child, not expected to survive. That she does, marks her as a "fighter" in her family's eyes. The family later moves to Mississippi, where her parents are from. She describes growing up in the poor, small towns of DeLisle and Pass Christian, where her family, like the community around them, experience a lack of opportunities, and an abundance of violence, including from the police, leading many to sink into abuse of drugs and alcohol. She also recounts how in her family, like so many others, the mother ends up raising her children on her own, due to infidelity and abandonment by her husband. She contrasts their lives, choices and experiences, and her own life zig-zagging between them: "What it meant to be a woman: working, dour, full of worry. What it meant to be a man: resentful, angry, wanting life to be everything but what it was." Ward learns at an early age how girls are treated differently than boys, when she gets into trouble for doing things her cousins do freely (smoking), and also seeing how her father gets to spend the family money on a motorcycle, and then ride away on it, while her mother works extra hard to put food on the table. She also learns that for her male relatives, being Black is dangerous in itself, as her mother and grandmother worry about them being arrested or experiencing violence. As her mother works long hours as a maid, Ward is expected to care for her younger siblings and the household. She suffers from depression. At school, she experiences bullying. Her mother's rich, white employer offers to pay Ward's tuition for private school. There, however, she must deal with being the only Black girl in a white environment. She experiences racism and rejection. Ward's father is now living in New Orleans. When Ward and her siblings visit, their mother sends them with groceries, because she doesn't trust him to feed the children. Her brother Joshua moves in with him, and Ward later learns that he is dealing crack to help his father pay his bills. Ward heads out of state for university, to Stanford, becoming the first member of her family to attend college. Her grief for the loss of her brother never leaves her, but she knows it will change over time. Ward closes with her memory of riding in a car with Joshua, declaring, "I don't ride like that anymore", and imagining that when her life is over, Joshua will ride up and ask her to go for one more ride. The men "reaped" in the book, narrated in reverse of the order in which they died: Reception. "Men We Reaped" was enthusiastically received by critics, and was named one of the best books of 2013 by "The New York Times Book Review", "Publishers Weekly", "Time", and "Vogue". "The Guardian" review states that the book is "not for the light-hearted", including as it does "a suicide, two car accidents, a drug overdose and a shooting: tragic tales of young people's lives cut short are interwoven with the disintegration of Ward's parents' marriage and her own sense of drift and isolation." Quoting Ward's assessment of this, "That's a brutal list, in its immediacy and its relentlessness, and it's a list that silences people. It silenced me for a long time", reviewer Gary Younge is thankful she found her voice: "by virtue of a restrained but rich style and gift for storytelling, her book does not read like the litany of woe that one might expect. Melancholic and introspective rather than morbid and self-indulgent, it is really a story of what it is like to grow up smart, poor, black and female in America's deep south." Younge lauds how Ward creates out of the Mississippi Gulf Coast a sort of character in the book, with a vulnerability of its own, as revealed by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, shortly after the last death recounted in the book. The review concludes: "Anyone who emerges from America's black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward's deserves a hearing. As such "The Men We Reaped" is an eloquent account of a psychological, sociological and political condition all too often dismissed as an enduring pathology." The "New York Times" review acknowledges that "Men We Reaped" could have been a straightforward memoir of Ward's life, approving of how she narrates her life history; however, lauds how Ward "loops around, again and again" to talk about race and gender in the South, about masculinity, and how it cost her the lives of the five men she lost, about her mother's work as a maid, and heading of the household while her father was absent; about infidelity; and about how she felt as the only Black girl in an all-while school; about the economics of poverty, treatment by the police, and how drugs come to play such a central part in the deaths at the heart of the book. The review notes that on occasion, Ward seems to press upon issues "too hard", but concludes that Men We Reap reaffirms her considerable talent, and calls it "an elegiac book that's rangy at the same time." "NPR"'s Richard Torres calls "Men We Reaped" a "superb memoir", that takes the reader behind the statistics of Black deaths, on an ambitious journey into the history of the small deep-south town, Ward's own community and family, and the individual stories, intertwining them capably and sensitively. He writes, "Ward's deceptively conversational prose masks her uncommon skill at imagery. She makes you feel the anguish of each lost life, as well as her survivor's guilt, with its ever-present haunt of memory," and lauds how Ward is "candid enough to paint the flaws in the deceased as well as their good qualities. (In other words, Ward humanizes instead of canonizes.) She's also talented enough to turn such prose into poetry." "Kirkus Reviews" summarizes that "Men We Reaped" is "a modern rejoinder to "Black Like Me", "Beloved" and other stories of struggle and redemption—beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear", while "Publishers Weekly" calls it "riveting", and declares that "Ward has a soft touch, making these stories heartbreakingly real through vivid portrayal and dialogue."

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After Tupac and D Foster After Tupac And D Foster (2008) is a novel written by Jacqueline Woodson. Set within a community affected by the life of Tupac Shakur, the novel follows three young girls as they group up in that community. The novel received a Newbery Medal Honor in 2009 and won the American Library Association Award and the 2009 Josette Frank Award. Plot summary. "After Tupac And D Foster" is based on three girls: two black eleven year old girls, Neeka and the anonymous narrator, and D Foster, who was of mixed race and had just moved into Neeka and the narrator's neighborhood in Queens, New York. Their experiences are set within a world impacted by Tupac Shakur, describing events and experiences in his life during the mid 1990s, such as run-ins with the cops and events that foreshadowed his death. Growing up together on the same block of their safe neighborhood, Neeka and the narrator have been friends since birth. When D. Foster first moved into a house on their block, her initial impression as unconventional and different had left the two girls in a bit of shock, as well as their mothers hesitant to let them interact with her. However, they then discovered that they both were greatly influenced by Tupac Shakur's music which caused the three girls to gradually develop a lasting friendship. Later in their teens, Foster opens up to her two close friends about her alcoholic mother who had abandoned her as a child, leaving her in the care of constantly changing foster homes. She also shares with them the news of her biological Mother now wanting her back. However, relating her relationship with her Mother to that of Tupac's and his Mother, Foster realizes that even through the conflicting relationship, there is still love.

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The Lesson (short story) "The Lesson" is a short story by Toni Cade Bambara (1938–1995). It was first published in 1972. The Lesson” is a first-person narrative told by a young, black girl named Sylvia who is growing up in Harlem in an unspecified time period known only as “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara, 1992). Going by the prices, one can assume the story takes place sometime in the early seventies. The story is about a trip initiated by a well-educated woman named Miss Moore who has taken it upon herself to expose the unappreciative children of the neighborhood to the world outside of their oppressed community. The destination is the FAO Schwarz Toy Store in Manhattan, where the toys aimed at a white market are extremely expensive. Some cost more than the children’s household yearly incomes. The children contemplate the extreme prices. Miss Moore uses the trip to demonstrate how an unjust economic and social system creates unfair access to money and resources for black Americans. The lesson on economic inequality is almost lost on the children, who, too contemptuous to open themselves up to the education offered them by the well-intended Miss Moore, close the story by making plans to spend the leftover cab fare change. In the end, however, Sylvia seeks solitude to contemplate the events of the day. The narrator has found a way to direct her own anger and spouts "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin," illustrating how the two main characters choose different paths at the end of the story. This story also emphasizes that individuals who are segregated to certain environments should not be condescended to, as Miss Moore, the educated outsider, creates resistance with her patronizing.

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The Road to Paris The Road to Paris is a 2006 children's fiction chapter book by American writer Nikki Grimes, originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Synopsis. Paris is a nine-year old, biracial girl who is placed in the foster system. Her white father left the family while she was young, and her mother has problems with alcohol. She and her older brother Malcolm are placed in different homes after running away from an abusive foster family. She is finally placed with the Lincolns, where she faces racism and loneliness, yet also learns what it is like to have a loving family. Reception. The Road to Paris received the Coretta Scott King Award Author Honor in 2007. Kirkus Reviews wrote that Paris's growth was "perfectly paced," even if supporting characters were "not all perfectly realized." Deborah Stevenson at "The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", disagreed, writing that "the book tells rather than shows and does so episodically, so Paris jerks along from stage to stage without any clear indication of how she gets there."

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Becoming Billie Holiday Becoming Billie Holiday is a 2008 book of poetry for young readers by American poet and author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, originally published by Wordsong. It won an honorary Coretta Scott King Award in 2009. Synopsis. Through a series of poems, Weatherford outlines the evolution from Eleanora Fagan to renowned singer Billie Holiday. Told from Billie's own perspective, she muses on the first 25 years of her life. Most poems are titled after actual Billie Holiday songs. The book starts with poems about her young life. Detailing events like her father's abandonment, her tomboyish attitude, and her time spent in an orphanage with nuns. It continues into her adolescence with poems about her first gig singing jazz, deciding to change her name, and her many relationships with men. Weatherford's book ends with Holiday's rising fame and the tension of racism in the United States. The last poem illustrates Holiday's memorable performance at the Café Society, singing the song "Strange Fruit." At the end of the book, there are pages giving information for further reading and biographies of others mentioned in the poems. Background. In the book's afterword, Weatherford talks about her childhood listening to jazz music with her father. As a teenager, she started listening to more popular music at the time until she watched the film "Lady Sings the Blues" in 1972. From then on, she was listening to and collecting Holiday's music all the time. Weatherford related to much of Holiday's life: a shared hometown of Baltimore, a difficult love life, and navigating the realities of racism. Before writing the poems, the author would listen to early Billie Holiday songs for weeks. For the factual parts of the story, Weatherford referenced oral histories and Holiday's autobiography. She hoped the book would inspire readers to learn more about the singer, as well as cross over to an adult audience. Weatherford has written several other books about jazz musicians. Floyd Cooper created the illustrations in the book using an eraser to make subtractive shapes in paint. He also used other mediums on top that were oil based, all put on with a drybrush technique. Reception. Critics reviewed "Becoming Billie Holiday" very favorably. In a starred Kirkus review, they praise both Weatherford's "remarkable tribute" as well as illustrator Floyd Cooper's beautiful images. Another Kirkus reviewer was impressed with the rich writing of the poems, and felt it was a perfect tribute to such a celebrated singer. Booklist noted that Weatherford's book was "proud, and clear-toned." A starred review in the School Library Journal points out the perfect background soundtrack in the novel, praising Weatherford's choice to use song titles as poem titles. The reviewer comments on the author's way of capturing Holiday's "jazzy, candid voice so adroitly that at times the poems seem like they could have been lifted...from Holiday's autobiography..." She continues to marvel at Cooper's images that invoke real emotions paired with the words. The book was awarded the honorary Coretta Scott King Award in 2009.

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Silver Sparrow Silver Sparrow is the third novel by the American author Tayari Jones, which was first published in 2011. The novel follows the complicated relationship between two families, joined together by a bigamist father. Jones was inspired to write the book by her own relationship with her sisters who were over a decade older than her and who she felt lived very different lives than her own. In 2019, the writer and actress Issa Rae announced plans to adapt the novel into a film. Plot. Dana Lynn Yarboro's parents meet in Atlanta, Georgia when her father is buying an anniversary present for his wife. Her mother, a young divorcée named Gwen Yarboro, becomes James Witherspoon's mistress. Dana is born shortly before the birth of James's daughter Chaurisse, from his marriage to his wife Laverne. After Chaurisse's birth, Gwen pressures James to illegally marry her which he consents to though he does not leave Laverne. Dana grows up with the knowledge that her father is married to another woman and has another daughter. Dana and her mother are kept secret, however the only individual from James's other life that is aware of the situation is his childhood friend and adopted brother, Raleigh. Dana is prevented from participating in certain jobs and going to certain schools in order to protect Chaurisse, however while attending a high school science competition she runs into Chaurisse who she notices is wearing the exact same fur jacket as her, both presents given to them by their father, James. While still a teenager, Dana becomes involved with a young adult man, Marcus McCready, and while her father is displeased he does nothing to stop her as he knows McCready from his married life. In her final year of high school Dana is introduced to her paternal grandmother, Bunny Witherspoon, as she is dying. Her grandmother bequeaths her her favourite brooch as a parting gift. Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon grows up the protected and beloved daughter of James Witherspoon and Laverne Witherspoon. Her parents met at the age of 14 when her mother lost her virginity to her father and subsequently became pregnant and was forced to marry James and leave school. Their son was a stillborn but Laverne remained with the Witherspoons. They managed to claw their way to being middle-class business owners with James and his brother Raleigh running a chauffeur business and Laverne running a beauty salon out of their garage. While out shopping Chaurisse meets a young girl and saves both of them from being caught shoplifting. The girl is named Dana, and Chaurisse grows infatuated with her believing she is a "silver" girl who is beautiful and leads a charmed life. The two become friends with the shy Dana eventually meeting and befriending Laverne as well. When the girls are seventeen they go to a party together but the tire on their car blows before they are able to make it. Chaurisse calls her father and Raleigh for help and is confused when Dana subsequently panics and calls her own mother before locking herself in a gas station bathroom. When James arrives, Chaurisse is shocked that he insists on leaving her friend behind. However, Gwen arrives before they can leave and is infuriated that James intended to leave their daughter alone. Gwen and Dana subsequently visit Laverne's beauty parlour where she presents her marriage certificate and also presents Bunny's brooch as proof that James is Dana's father. Laverne throws James out of their home and falls into a depression. However, after two weeks James and Laverne reconcile. Some fifteen years later Dana has a daughter. Though, she does not marry her daughter's father he publicly claims his daughter as his own which Dana considers progress. She is visited by Chaurisse who asks Dana if James continued to see her and her mother after reconciling with Laverne. Dana reveals that after reuniting with Laverne she only saw James briefly at his vow renewal to Laverne. At this point, James told her she had finally achieved what she wanted: recognition of her paternity at the cost of her private relationship with him. She understands that nevertheless Laverne and Chaurisse have never been able to believe that they have won. Reception. "The Washington Post" described Jones's writing as "realistic and sparkling". "The Chicago Tribune" praised the novel as "an exciting read all the way through." However, "Publishers Weekly" criticized the novel as "growing increasingly histrionic and less believable" as it went on.

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The New Jim Crow The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States, but Alexander noted that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Alexander's central premise, from which the book derives its title, is that "mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow". Overview. Though the conventional point of view holds that systemic racial discrimination mostly ended with the civil rights movement reforms of the 1960s, Alexander posits that the U.S. criminal justice system uses the War on Drugs as a primary tool for enforcing traditional, as well as new modes of discrimination and oppression. These new modes of racism have led to not only the highest rate of incarceration in the world, but also a disproportionately large rate of imprisonment for African American men. Were present trends to continue, Alexander writes, the United States would imprison one third of its African American population. When combined with the fact that whites are more likely to commit drug crimes than people of color, the issue becomes clear for Alexander: “the primary targets of [the penal system's] control can be defined largely by race”. This ultimately leads Alexander to believe that mass incarceration is “a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow”. The culmination of this social control is what Alexander calls a “racial caste system”, a type of stratification wherein people of color are kept in an inferior position. Its emergence, she believes, is a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement. It is because of this that Alexander argues for issues with mass incarceration to be addressed as issues of racial justice and civil rights. To approach these matters as anything but would be to fortify this new racial caste. Thus, Alexander aims to mobilize the civil rights community to move the incarceration issue to the forefront of its agenda and to provide factual information, data, arguments and a point of reference for those interested in pursuing the issue. Her broader goal is the revamping of the prevailing mentality regarding human rights, equality and equal opportunities in America, to prevent future cyclical recurrence of what she sees as “racial control under changing disguise”. According to the author, what has been altered since the collapse of Jim Crow is not so much the basic structure of US society, as the language used to justify its affairs. She argues that when people of color are disproportionately labeled as “criminals”, this allows the unleashing of a whole range of legal discrimination measures in employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights, jury duty, and so on. Alexander explains that it took her years to become fully aware and convinced of the phenomena she describes, despite her professional civil rights background. She expects similar reluctance and disbelief on the part of many of her readers. She believes that the problems besetting African American communities are not merely a passive, collateral side effect of poverty, limited educational opportunity or other factors, but a consequence of purposeful government policies. Alexander has concluded that mass incarceration policies, which were swiftly developed and implemented, are a “comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow”. Alexander contends that in 1982 the Reagan administration began an escalation of the War on Drugs, purportedly as a response to a crack cocaine crisis in black ghettos, which was (she claims) announced well before crack cocaine arrived in most inner city neighborhoods. During the mid-1980s, as the use of crack cocaine increased to epidemic levels in these neighborhoods, federal drug authorities publicized the problem, using scare tactics to generate support for their already-declared escalation. The government's successful media campaign made possible an unprecedented expansion of law enforcement activities in America's urban neighborhoods, and this aggressive approach fueled widespread belief in conspiracy theories that posited government plans to destroy the black population. (Black genocide) In 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acknowledged that during the 1980s the Contra faction—covertly supported by the US in Nicaragua—had been involved in smuggling cocaine into the US and distributing it in US cities. Drug Enforcement Administration efforts to expose these illegal activities were blocked by Reagan officials, which contributed to an explosion of crack cocaine consumption in America's urban neighborhoods. More aggressive enforcement of federal drug laws resulted in a dramatic increase in street level arrests for possession. Disparate sentencing policies (the crack cocaine v. powdered cocaine penalty disparity was 100-1 by weight and remains 18-1 even after recent reform efforts) meant that a disproportionate number of inner city residents were charged with felonies and sentenced to long prison terms, because they tended to purchase the more affordable crack version of cocaine, rather than the powdered version commonly consumed in the suburbs. Alexander argues that the War on Drugs has a devastating impact on inner city African American communities, on a scale entirely out of proportion to the actual dimensions of criminal activity taking place within these communities. During the past three decades, the US prison population exploded from 300,000 to more than two million, with the majority of the increase due to drug convictions. This led to the US having the world's highest incarceration rate. The US incarceration rate is eight times that of Germany, a comparatively developed large democracy. Alexander claims that the US is unparalleled in the world in focusing enforcement of federal drug laws on racial and ethnic minorities. In the capital city of Washington, D.C. three out of four young African American males are expected to serve time in prison. While studies show that quantitatively Americans of different races consume illegal drugs at similar rates, in some states black men have been sent to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times those of white men. The proportion of African American men with some sort of criminal record approaches 80% in some major US cities, and they become marginalized, part of what Alexander calls "a growing and permanent "undercaste"". Alexander maintains that this "undercaste" is hidden from view, invisible within a maze of rationalizations, with mass incarceration its most serious manifestation. Alexander borrows from the term “racial caste”, as it is commonly used in scientific literature, to create “undercaste”, denoting a “stigmatized racial group locked into inferior position by law and custom”. By "mass incarceration" she refers to the web of laws, rules, policies and customs that make up the criminal justice system and which serve as a gateway to permanent marginalization in the undercaste. Once released from prison, new members of this undercaste face a “hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion”. According to Alexander, crime and punishment are poorly correlated, and the present US criminal justice system has effectively become a system of social control unparalleled in any other Western democracy, with its targets largely defined by race. The rate of incarceration in the US has soared, while its crime rates have generally remained similar to those of other Western countries, where incarceration rates have remained stable. The current rate of incarceration in the US is six to ten times greater than in other industrialized nations, and Alexander maintains that this disparity is not correlated to the fluctuation of crime rates, but can be traced mostly to the artificially invoked War on Drugs and its associated discriminatory policies. The US embarked on an unprecedented expansion of its juvenile detention and prison systems. Alexander notes that the civil rights community has been reluctant to get involved in this issue, concentrating primarily on protecting affirmative action gains, which mainly benefit an elite group of high-achieving African Americans. At the other end of the social spectrum are the young black men who are under active control of the criminal justice system (currently in prison, or on parole or probation)—approximately one-third of the young black men in the US. Criminal justice was not listed as a top priority of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 2007 and 2008, or of the Congressional Black Caucus in 2009. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been involved in legal action, and grassroots campaigns have been organized, however Alexander feels that generally there is a lack of appreciation of the enormity of the crisis. According to her, mass incarceration is "the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement", and those who feel that the election of Barack Obama represents the ultimate "triumph over race", and that race no longer matters, are dangerously misguided. Alexander writes that Americans are ashamed of their racial history, and therefore avoid talking about race, or even class, so the terms used in her book may seem unfamiliar to many. Americans want to believe that everybody is capable of upward mobility, given enough effort on his or her part; this assumption forms a part of the national collective self-image. Alexander points out that a large percentage of African Americans are hindered by the discriminatory practices of an ostensibly colorblind criminal justice system, which end up creating an undercaste where upward mobility is severely constrained. Alexander believes that the existence of the "New Jim Crow" system is not disproved by the election of Barack Obama and other examples of exceptional achievement among African Americans, but on the contrary the "New Jim Crow" system depends on such exceptionalism. She contends that the system does not require overt racial hostility or bigotry on the part of another racial group or groups. Indifference is sufficient to support the system. Alexander argues that the system reflects an underlying racial ideology and will not be significantly disturbed by half-measures such as laws mandating shorter prison sentences. Like its predecessors, the new system of racial control has been largely immune from legal challenge. She writes that a human tragedy is unfolding, and "The New Jim Crow" is intended to stimulate a much-needed national discussion “about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States”. Defining "Incarceration". Alexander states in the book: "I was careful to define "mass incarceration" to include those who were subject to state control outside of prison walls, as well as those who were locked in literal cages." The scope of Alexander's definition of "incarceration" includes people who have been arrested (but not tried), people on parole and people who have been released but labelled as "criminals". Alexander's definition is intentionally much broader than the subset of individuals currently in physical detention. Reception. Darryl Pinckney, writing in the "New York Review of Books", called the book one that would "touch the public and educate social commentators, policymakers, and politicians about a glaring wrong that we have been living with that we also somehow don't know how to face... [Alexander] is not the first to offer this bitter analysis, but NJC is striking in the intelligence of her ideas, her powers of summary, and the force of her writing". Jennifer Schuessler, writing in the "New York Times", notes that Alexander presents voluminous evidence in the form of both statistics and legal cases to argue that the tough-on-crime policies begun under the Nixon administration and amplified under Reagan's war on drugs have devastated black America, where nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison during their lifetimes, and where many of these men will be second-class citizens afterwards. Schuessler also notes that Alexander's book goes further, by asserting that the increase in incarceration was a deliberate effort to roll back civil rights gains, rather than a true response to increased rates of violent crime. Schuessler notes that the book has galvanized both black and white readers, some of whom view the work as giving voice to deep feelings that the criminal justice system is stacked against blacks, while others might question its portrayal of anti-crime policies as primarily motivated by racial animus. Forbes wrote that Alexander "looks in detail at what economists usually miss", and "does a fine job of truth-telling, pointing the finger where it rightly should be pointed: at all of us, liberal and conservative, white and black". The book received a starred review in "Publishers Weekly", saying that Alexander "offers an acute analysis of the effect of mass incarceration upon former inmates" who will be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives, and described the book as "carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable". James Forman, Jr argues that though the book has value in focusing scholars (and society as a whole) on the failures of the criminal justice system, it obscures African-American support for tougher crime laws and downplays the role of violent crime in the story of incarceration. John Pfaff, in his book "Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform", criticizes Alexander's assertion that the Drug War is responsible for mass incarceration. Among his findings are that drug offenders make up only a small part of the prison population, and non-violent drug offenders an even smaller portion; that people convicted of violent crimes make up the majority of prisoners; that county and state justice systems account for the large majority of American prisoners and not the federal system that handles most drug cases; and, subsequently, "national" statistics tell a distorted story when differences in enforcement, conviction, and sentencing are widely disparate between states and counties. The Brookings Institution reconciles the differences between Alexander and Pfaff by explaining two ways to look at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes, concluding "The picture is clear: Drug crimes have been the predominant reason for new admissions into state and federal prisons in recent decades" and "rolling back the war on drugs would not, as Pfaff and Urban Institute scholars maintain, totally solve the problem of mass incarceration, but it could help a great deal, by reducing exposure to prison." The 10th Anniversary Edition (2020) was discussed with Ellen DeGeneres on The Ellen Show on network TV, and reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review section on January 19, 2020. "The New Jim Crow" was listed in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" as one of the 11 best scholarly books of the 2010s, chosen by Stefan M. Bradley. Notes. "a."The persistently lingering result of the lack of land reform, of the fact that the former slaves were not granted any of the property on which they had long labored (unlike many European serfs, emancipated and economically empowered to various degrees by that time, their American counterparts ended up with nothing), is the present extremely inequitable distribution of wealth in the United States along racial lines. 150 years after the Civil War, the median wealth of a black family is a small fraction of the median wealth of a white family. "b."According to Ruth W. Grant of Duke University, the author of the book "Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives" (Princeton University Press 2011, ), the expediency-based plea bargain process, in which 90 to 95% of felony prosecutions never go to trial, but are settled by the defendant pleading guilty, undermines the purpose and challenges the legitimacy of the justice system. Justice won't take place, because "either the defendant is guilty, but gets off easy by copping a plea, or the defendant is innocent but pleads guilty to avoid the risk of greater punishment". The question of guilt is decided without adjudicating the evidence-the fundamental process of determining the truth and assigning proportionate punishment does not take place. "c."Michelle Alexander suggested in a March 2012 "New York Times" article a possible strategy (she attributed the idea to Susan Burton) for coping with the unjust criminal justice system. If large numbers of the accused could be persuaded to opt out of plea bargaining and demand a full trial by jury, to which they are constitutionally entitled, the criminal justice system in its present form would be unable to continue because of lack of resources (it would "crash"). This last resort strategy is controversial, as some would end up with extremely harsh sentences, but, it is argued, progress often cannot be made without sacrifice.