Percival Everett0.0 An irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America
I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier.
Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation.
Percival Everett’s hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: “What’s your name?” a kid would ask. “Not Sidney,” I would say. “Okay, then what is it?”
Бернардин Эваристо4.5 The most provocative debut novel of the year, "a dizzying satire" (The New Yorker) that "boldly turns history on its head" (Elle).
What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? How would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers today? We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman enslaved and taken to the New World, movingly recounting experiences of tremendous hardship and the dreams of the people she has left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.
A poignant and dramatic story grounded in provocative ideas, Blonde Roots is a genuinely original, profoundly imaginative novel.
Colson Whitehead5.0 It's the summer of 1985 and Benji is determined that this is the summer when things will change and he'll fit in. For starters, he'll be reinvented as 'Ben'. When that doesn't catch on, it's another summer of the perpetual mortification that is teenage existence.
Benji spends most of the year as one of the only black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan, going to roller disco bar mitzvahs, desperately trying to find his place in the social hierarchy.
Then he spends his summers in the African-American community of Sag Harbor on Long Island, and is just as confused. He's way behind on the latest handshakes, baffled by new slang, and his attempts to be cool and meet girls are constantly thwarted by his extremely awkward inner geek, braces and a badly cut Afro.
Victor LaValle0.0
Ricky Rice is a middling hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. A survivor of a suicide cult, he scrapes by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York, until one day a mysterious letter arrives, summoning him to enlist in a band of paranormal investigators comprised of former addicts and petty criminals, all of whom had at some point in their wasted lives heard what may have been the voice of God.
Infused with the wonder of a disquieting dream and laced with Victor LaValle’s fiendish comic sensibility, Big Machine is a mind-rattling mystery about doubt, faith, and the monsters we carry within us.
Attica Locke0.0 On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife's birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora's Box. Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life. Before he can untangle the mystery that stretches to the highest reaches of corporate power, he must confront the demons of his past. A provocative thriller with an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.
Chielo Zona Eze0.0 Unable to recall when exactly he died, Robert Mugabe is shocked to be in the presence of God for trial. Facing him are countless people who died during his regime. They tell their stories, after which God condemns him to hell. Mugabe suddenly wakes up, in Harare, realizing he just had a dreadful dream. Set in the African Afterlife, The Trial of Robert Mugabe tells the Zimbabwean story from the perspectives of two iconic Zimbabwean writers, Yvonne Vera and Dambudzo Marechera, present at the trial. At the core of the trial is Gukurahundi (1982-1987), a highly orchestrated genocide on Ndebele people by Mugabe's North Korean trained Fifth Brigade. Yvonne Vera had reflected this mass killing in her novel, The Stone Virgins. At the trial, she relates some of what she knows about Gukurahundi to Mugabe's hearing. Marechera also gets a unique opportunity to interpret his famous title, House of Hunger, to Mugabe's understanding. But this is not just about Gukurahundi. It is also about Zimbabwe today (2000-2008). It is about how Mugabe's militia used rape, murder and starvation as means of political repression. In the words of Ali Mazrui, those who are picked for trial are sometimes just symbols of wider phenomena. The Trial of Robert Mugabe is a symbol of the trial of African despots and a sad reminder of the truth in the words of the great poet, W.H. Auden: We would rather be ruined than change. We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the Present And let our illusions die.
Haki R. Madhubuti0.0 Spanning a long career, these poems helped define and sustain a movement that added music and brash street language to traditional poetics. Like Amiri Barka (aka LeRoi Jones), this poet and social activist has long combined the per
Рита Дав0.0 The son of a white woman and an “African Prince,” George Polgreen Bridgetower (1780–1860) travels to Vienna to meet “bad-boy” genius Ludwig van Beethoven. The great composer’s subsequent sonata is originally dedicated to the young mulatto, but George, exuberant with acclaim, offends Beethoven over a woman. From this crucial encounter evolves a grandiose yet melancholy poetic tale. A New Yorker's A Year's Reading; Booklist Editors Choice Award.
Робин Д. Дж. Келли5.0 THELONIOUS MONK is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist’s struggle to “make it” without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.
Betty DeRamus0.0 Following up Betty DeRamus’s Essence bestselling Forbidden Fruit, Freedom by Any Means follows the story of extraordinary acts of courage and love by Blacks in the American slave era with beautifully written and inspiring stories of how slaves used the law—against all odds—to gain freedom for themselves and loved ones.
In Freedom by Any Means, Betty DeRamus explains that “Much of what we think we know about African American history isn't completely true.” Slave freedom isn’t limited to the usual story—slaves gained their freedom by running away, being freed by their owners, buying their way out of bondage, or having someone else buy them. But history doesn’t account for the slaves who bluffed their way to freedom, sidestepped tricks and traps, won lawsuits, or even gained their freedom by their cooking.
Riveting and surprising, DeRamus captures the tumultuous lives of the humans in inhumane situations who were able to salvage their families and marriages and achieve freedom together against tremendous odds. It takes a broader look at the various extraordinary ways that enslaved and dehumanized people achieved freedom and the means to a self-determined life. Among these people are visionaries who not only survived against the odds, but prospered—building businesses, owning land and other property. Freedom by Any Means also features the return of many of the beloved figures from her previous book Forbidden Fruit, including Lucy Nichols, Al and Margaret Wood, and Sylvia and Louis Stark.
This inspiring account, steeped in rich historical research, attests to the resolve of the human spirit and reveals how men and women were willing to risk it all to escape the slavery.
