"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."


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.


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.


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.


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.


"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.


This book is recommended for ages 9–12. It has a Lexile of 750L.


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."


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.


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.


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.


"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.


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.


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".


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.


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.


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".


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.


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."


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.


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 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?"


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".


It was reported in October 2017 that streaming service Hulu was developing the novel into a television series.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Danish artist that proposes to Helga and ultimately gets turned down because he objectifies her.


Helga’s white aunt in Copenhagen, her mother’s sister.


Helga’s white uncle that lives in Copenhagen. His only wish is for Helga to be happy and get married.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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).


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.


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.


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.


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.


Michael Hemmingson wrote in the journal "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" that Hogg,


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."


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."


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.”


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.”


"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."


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."


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.


"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.


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, 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.


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."


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 symbolize the attractiveness and contentment that Pecola associates with the middle class. To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize beauty and associates it with whiteness.


The marigold flowers symbolize the overall safety of Pecola’s baby.


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.


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.


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.


Hip Hop High School (2006) is a novel by American author Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It's the second in the Hoopster Trilogy.


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


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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."


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.


Before the official publication in June 2016, "Time"'s Sarah Begley called it "one of the summer’s most-anticipated novels".


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.


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.


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.


"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.


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.


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.


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 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.


"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.


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.


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.


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".


"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.


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. "


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.


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).


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.


The novel has a nonlinear narrative structure.


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.


It was selected for the "New York Times Book Review"s "10 Best Books of 2020" list.


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.


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.


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 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.


"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.


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.


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.


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.


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."


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


"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."


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.


Ward's third novel, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" was published on September 5, 2017, by Scribner.


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.


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.


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.


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.


"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.