Racial relations is also discussed in this novel through the family's interracial dynamics. Though Michael appears to love Leonie despite their differing skin colors, his family sternly disapproves of the life he leads. The character of Michael's father, Big Joseph, showcases the lingering tensions of white supremacy in the South. He protects Michael's cousin after killing Given, since the cousin was upholding Southern ideals of Black inferiority. In the same manner, Big Joseph rejects his own son, Michael, for defying this tradition with his bi-racial children.


Finally, the theme of water offers much significance in the novel. Water symbolizes the processes of nurturing and developing. Those with water, like River and Mam (who is referred to as the saltwater woman), are able to bloom. Meanwhile, those without water, like those in "Parchman," are withering away without such subsistence, unable to find peace and stability. Even the setting in the Mississippi Delta may suggest the importance of water in the novel.


Reviewing the novel for "The Washington Post", Ron Charles compared it to George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved"; at NPR, Annalisa Quinn found it "reminiscent of "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner.


"Sing, Unburied, Sing" was the winner of the 2017 National Book Award for fiction. This was her second time winning this award. Ward is the first woman and first person of color to receive this honor twice.


The novel was selected by "Time" magazine and "The New York Times" as one of the top ten novels of 2017. It is also acclaimed as one of the best novels of the year by the "New Statesman", the "Financial Times", and BBC, all of which are located in London.


Former U.S. President Barack Obama included the novel in a list of the best books he read in 2017.


It was ranked in Literary Hub as the second best book of the 2010s, behind only Claudia Rankine’s "" (2014).


The novel also won Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction in 2018 and the Mark Twain American Voice In Literature Award in 2019.


Annie John, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid in 1985, details the growth of a girl in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. It covers issues as diverse as mother-daughter relationships, lesbianism, racism, clinical depression, poverty, education, and the struggle between medicine based on "scientific fact" and that based on "native superstitious know-how".


Annie John is then moved to a higher class because of her intelligence. For this reason, Annie is drawn away from her best friend Gwen, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. The book ends with her physically distancing herself away from all that she knows and loves by leaving home for nursing school in England.


The book's chapters were originally published separately in "The New Yorker", before being combined and published as the novel "Annie John", the stories connected by Kincaid's use of Annie John as the narrator.


Children growing apart from their parents while becoming adolescents is the major theme in the novel. Annie and her mother share common personalities, goals and even look exactly alike, though they grow apart through the narrative. Barbara Wiedemann writes that Kincaid's fiction is not specifically aimed at a young adult audience, but the readers will benefit from insight evident in Kincaid's description of coming of age.


"Annie John" has been noted to contain feminist views. Asked if the relationship between Annie and Gwen was meant to suggest “lesbian tendencies,” Kincaid replied: "No…I think I am always surprised that people interpret it so literally." The relationship between Gwen and Annie is really a practicing relationship. It's about how things work. It's like learning to walk. Always there is the sense that they would go on to lead heterosexual lives. Whatever happened between them, homosexuality would not be a serious thing because it is just practicing” (Vorda 94).


In the story, the theme of colonization is conveyed. England has colonized Antigua, and has reconstructed its society. This is seen when the reader is introduced to Miss George and Miss Edward, teachers at Annie's school, who are both named after English kings. Antigua in return, strongly dislikes England for disposing of its native culture.


Water is consistently used throughout the novel to depict the separation between Annie John and her mother. Symbolic references to water (including the sea, rain, and other forms) illustrate Annie's development from childhood to maturity. Near the start of the novel, the reader learns that Annie has both a normal baby bottle and one shaped like a boat - and that is only the beginning of her water-connected choices in life.


Kincaid's writing form is not in the traditional paragraph form, but run-on sentences and paragraphs with little fragments. Jan Hall, a writer for Salem Press Master Plots, Fourth Edition book states in an article about "Annie John" that “because the novel has no years, months, or dates the story has a sense of timelessness.”


Dear Martin, published in 2017 by Crown Publishing Group, is a young adult novel by Nic Stone. It is Stone's debut novel, written as a reaction to the murder of Jordan Davis. The book appeared as #4 on The New York Times Best Seller list.


Stone began writing the book after a series of racially-charge events, including the 2012 murder of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old who was killed by man who shot several rounds into a car of teenagers over a dispute about loud rap music, and the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown. Stone was also inspired to write the book for her sons. Stone sold her book as a proposal, resulting in her writing and researching simultaneously over an eight-week period to develop a draft. Stone described the experience as "excruciating" and stated that she was not interested in repeating it.


"Dear Martin" has been published and translated in Germany, Brazil, Indonesia, The Netherlands, UK, Turkey, and Romania.


"Dear Martin" follows Justyce McAllister, a high school student living in Atlanta and attending a predominantly white preparatory high school on a scholarship. Justyce is thrown to the ground and handcuffed by a white police officer. After the incident, Justyce attempts to make sense of life as a black teenager in the current political climate and begins writing letters to the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, asking himself, "What would Dr. King do if he were alive today?".


The book received a starred review from Booklist.


In February 2020, two years after it was first published, "Dear Martin" again hit the New York Times bestseller list, as the #1 Young Adult Paperback.


Stone wrote a sequel, "Dear Justyce," which was published in October 2020. The book is about an incarcerated teen, Quan, who is on trial for murder charges. Quan first appears in "Dear Martin" as the cousin of Justyce's best friend. Stone was not planning on writing a sequel, but was encouraged by her publisher and decided to write a book about a "black boy that everybody is afraid of."


Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl


Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs's life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away.


In the book, Jacobs addresses white Northern women who fail to comprehend the evils of slavery. She makes direct appeals to their humanity to expand their knowledge and influence their thoughts about slavery as an institution.


Jacobs composed "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" after her escape to New York, while living and working at Idlewild, the home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis.


Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813. When she was a child, her mistress taught her to read and write, skills that were extremely rare among slaves. At twelve years old, she fell into the hands of an abusive owner who harassed her sexually. When he threatened to sell her children, she hid in a tiny crawlspace under the roof of her grandmother's house. After staying there for seven years, spending much of her time reading the Bible and also newspapers, she finally managed to escape to New York in 1842.


When Jacobs started working on "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" in 1853, many works by abolitionist and African American writers were already in print. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison had started the publication of his weekly "The Liberator".


In 1845, Frederick Douglass had published his first autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself", which became a bestseller and paved the way for subsequent slave narratives.


The white abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, artfully combining the genres of slave narratives and sentimental novels. Although a work of fiction, Stowe based her novel on several accounts by eyewitnesses.


However, the relationship between black and white abolitionist writers was not without problems. Garrison supplied a preface to Douglass' "Narrative" that would later be analyzed as latently racist, and the relationship between the two male abolitionists deteriorated when Garrison was less than supportive to the idea of Douglass starting his own newspaper. That Stowe's book became an instant bestseller was in part due to the fact that she shared her readers' racist mindset, explicitly stating that black people were intellectually inferior and modeling the character of her protagonist, Uncle Tom, accordingly. When Jacobs suggested to Stowe that Stowe transform her story into a book, Jacobs perceived Stowe's reaction as a racist insult, which she analyzed in a letter to her white friend Amy Post.


In the antebellum period, the Cult of True Womanhood was prevalent among upper and middle-class white women. This set of ideals, as described by Barbara Welter, asserted that all women possessed (or should possess) the virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. Venetria K. Patton explains that Jacobs and Harriet E. Wilson, who wrote "Our Nig", reconfigured the genres of slave narrative and sentimental novel, claiming the titles of "woman and mother" for black females, and suggesting that society's definition of womanhood was too narrow. They argued and "remodeled" Stowe's descriptions of black maternity.


They also showed that the institution of slavery made it impossible for African-American women to control their virtue, as they were subject to the social and economic power of men. Jacobs showed that slave women had a different experience of motherhood but had strong feelings as mothers despite the constraints of their position.


Jacobs was clearly aware of the womanly virtues, as she referred to them as a means to appeal to female abolitionists to spur them into action to help protect enslaved black women and their children. In the narrative, she explains life events that prevent Linda Brent from practicing these values, although she wants to. For example, as she cannot have a home of her own for her family, she cannot practice domestic virtues.


Linda Brent is Harriet Jacobs, the narrator and protagonist.


Aunt Martha is Molly Horniblow, Linda's maternal grandmother. After briefly talking of her earliest childhood, her parents and her brother, Jacobs begins her book with the history of her grandmother. At the end of the book, Jacobs relates the death of her grandmother in 1853, soon after Jacobs had obtained her legal freedom, using the very last sentence to mention the "tender memories of my good old grandmother." Molly Horniblow obtained her freedom in 1828, when Jacobs was about 15 years old, because friends of hers bought her with the money she had earned by working at night.


William is John S. Jacobs, Linda's brother, to whom she is close.


Ellen is Louisa Matilda Jacobs, Linda's daughter.


Dr. Flint is Dr. James Norcom, Linda's master, enemy and would-be lover. J. F. Yellin, after researching his surviving private letters and notes, writes about his personality: "Norcom was a loving and dominating husband and father. In his serious and sophisticated interest in medicine, his commitment as a physician, and his educated discourse, he appears unlike the villain Jacobs portrays. But his humorlessness, his egoism, his insistently controlling relationships with his wife and children ... suggest the portrait Jacobs draws. This impression is supported by ... his unforgiving fury against those he viewed as enemies. It is underscored by his admitted passionate responses to women."


Mrs. Flint is Mary "Maria" Norcom, Linda's mistress and Dr. Flint's wife.


Emily Flint is Mary Matilda Norcom, Dr. Flint's daughter and Linda's legal owner.


Mr. Sands is Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, Linda's white sexual partner and the father of her children, Benny and Ellen.


The second Mrs. Bruce is Cornelia Grinnel Willis.


The other chapters are dedicated to special subjects: Chapter 3 describes the hiring out and selling of slaves on New Year's Day, chapter 8 is called "What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North", chapter 9 gives various example of cruel treatment of slaves, chapter 12 describes the narrator's experience of the anti-black violence in the wake of Nat Turner's Rebellion, and chapter 13 is called "The Church And Slavery".


Both Harriet Jacobs and her brother John frustrate the threats of their master by simply choosing what was meant as a threat: When Dr. Norcom throws John into the jail, which regularly serves as the place to guard slaves that are to be sold, John sends a slave trader to his master telling him he wants to be sold. When Norcom tells Harriet to choose between becoming his concubine and going to the plantation, she chooses the latter, knowing that plantation slaves are even worse off than town slaves.


Harriet Jacobs also knows to fight back with words: On various occasions, she doesn't follow the pattern of submissive behavior that is expected of a slave, protesting when her master beats her and when he forbids her to marry the man she loves, and even telling him that his demand of a sexual relationship is against the law of God.


Jacobs's employer, N. P. Willis, was the founding editor of the "Home Journal". Some years before she started working on her book, he had published an anonymous story called "The Night Funeral of a Slave" about a Northerner who witnesses a funeral of an old slave which he interprets as a sign for the love between the master and his slaves. The story ends with the conclusion drawn by the northern narrator, "that the negroes of the south are the happiest and most contented people on the face of the earth". In 1849, that story was republished by Frederick Douglass, in order to criticize pro-slavery Northerners.


However, she is very critical regarding the religion of the slaveholders, stating "there is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south." She describes "the contemptuous manner in which the communion [was] administered to colored people". She also tells of a Methodist class leader, who in civil life is the town constable, performing the "Christian office" - as Jacobs calls it in bitter irony - of whipping slaves for a fee of 50 cents. She also criticizes "the buying and selling of slaves, by professed ministers of the gospel."


Jacobs's distinction between "Christianity and religion at the south" has a parallel in Frederick Douglass's "Narrative", where he distinguishes the "slaveholding religion" from "Christianity proper", between which he sees the "widest, possible difference", stating, "I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land."


According to Yellin, "Incidents" has a "radical feminist content." Yellin states that "Incidents" is linked to the then popular genre of the seduction novel. That genre, examples of which include "Charlotte Temple" (1791) and "The Quadroons", written in 1842 by M. Lydia Child, who would later become the editor of "Incidents", features the story of a virtuous, but helpless woman seduced by a man. Her failure to adhere to the standard of sexual behaviour set by the "white partriarchy", "inevitably" leads to her "self-destruction and death". Although Jacobs describes her sexual transgression (i.e. the liaison with Sawyer) in terms of guilt and sin, she also sees it as a "mistaken tactic in the struggle for freedom". Most important, the book does not end with self-destruction, but with liberty.


According to Yellin, "a central pattern in "Incidents" shows white women betraying allegiances of race and class to assert their stronger allegiance to the sisterhood of all women": When Jacobs goes into hiding, a white woman who is herself a slaveholder hides her in her own house for a month, and when she is threatened with recapture, her female employer's plan to rescue her involves entrusting her own baby to Jacobs.


Jacobs presents herself as struggling to build a home for herself and her children. "This endorsement of domestic values links "Incidents" to what has been called 'woman's fiction'", in which a heroine overcomes hardships by finding the necessary resources inside herself. But unlike "woman's fiction", ""Incidents" is an attempt to move women to political action", thus stepping out of the domestic sphere at that time commonly held to be the proper sphere for women and joining the public sphere.


Jacobs discusses "the painful personal subject" of her sexual history "in order to politicize it, to insist that the forbidden topic of sexual abuse of slave women be included in public discussions of the slavery question." In telling of her daughter's acceptance of her sexual history, she "shows black women overcoming the divisive sexual ideology of the white patriarchy".


The book was promoted via the abolitionist networks and was well received by the critics. Jacobs arranged for a publication in Great Britain, which appeared in the first months of 1862, soon followed by a pirated edition. ""Incidents" was immediately acknowledged as a contribution to Afro-American letters."


The publication did not cause contempt as Jacobs had feared. On the contrary, Jacobs gained respect. Although she had used a pseudonym, in abolitionist circles she was regularly introduced with words like "Mrs. Jacobs, the author of Linda", thereby conceding her the honorific "Mrs." which normally was reserved for married women. The "London Daily News" wrote in 1862, that Linda Brent was a true "heroine", giving an example "of endurance and persistency in the struggle for liberty" and "moral rectitude".


"Incidents" "may well have influenced" "Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted", a 1892 novel by black author Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "which in turn helped shape the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and other foremothers of black women writing today."


Still, "Incidents" was not republished, and "by the twentieth century both Jacobs and her book were forgotten".


The new interest in women and minority issues that came with the American civil rights movement also led to the rediscovery of "Incidents". The first new editions began to appear at the end of the 1960s.


Prior to Jean Fagan Yellin's research in the 1980s, the accepted academic opinion, voiced by such historians as John Blassingame, was that "Incidents" was a fictional novel written by Lydia Maria Child. However, Yellin found and used a variety of historical documents, including from the Amy Post papers at the University of Rochester, state and local historical societies, and the Horniblow and Norcom papers at the North Carolina state archives, to establish both that Harriet Jacobs was the true author of "Incidents," and that the narrative was her autobiography, not a work of fiction. Her edition of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was published in 1987 with the endorsement of Professor John Blassingame.


In 2004, Yellin published an exhaustive biography (394 pages) entitled "Harriet Jacobs: A Life".


In a New York Times review of Yellin's 2004 biography, David S. Reynolds states that "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" "and "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" are commonly viewed as the two most important slave narratives."


In the "Acknowledgments" of his best selling 2016 novel, "The Underground Railroad (novel)", Colson Whitehead mentions Jacobs: "Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, obviously." The heroine of the novel, Cora, has to hide in a place in the attic of a house in Jacobs's native North Carolina, where like Jacobs she is not able to stand, but like her can observe the outside life through a hole that "had been carved from the inside, the work of a previous occupant" (p. 185).


In 2017 Jacobs was the subject of an episode of the Futility Closet Podcast, where her experience living in a crawlspace was compared with the wartime experience of Patrick Fowler.


According to a 2017 article in "Forbes" magazine, a 2013 translation of "Incidents" by Yuki Horikoshi became a bestseller in Japan.


Katherine McKittrick reveals how theories of geography and spatial freedom produce alternative understandings and possibilities within Black feminist thought. By centering geography in her analysis, McKittrick portrays the ways in which gendered-racial-sexual domination is spatially organized. McKittrick writes, "Recognizing black women's knowledgeable positions as integral to physical, cartographic, and experiential geographies within and through dominant spatial models also creates an analytical space for black feminist geographies: black women's political, feminist, imaginary, and creative concerns that respatialize the geographic legacy of racism-sexism."


Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867.


The novel explores slavery's destructive effects on African-American families, the difficult lives of American mulattoes or mixed-race people, and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the United States of America." Featuring an enslaved mixed-race woman named Currer and her daughters Althesa and Clotel, fathered by Thomas Jefferson, it is considered a tragic mulatto story. The women's relatively comfortable lives end after Jefferson's death. They confront many hardships, with the women taking heroic action to preserve their families.


The novel played with known 19th-century reports that Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered several children with her. Of mixed race and described as nearly white, she was believed to be the half sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, the youngest of six children by her father John Wayles with his slave Betty Hemings. Members of the large Hemings family were among more than 100 slaves inherited by Martha and Thomas Jefferson after her father's death. Martha died when Jefferson was 40 and he never remarried.


As an escaped slave, due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, William Wells Brown was at risk in the United States. While in England on a lecture tour in 1849, he decided to stay there with his two daughters after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, as he was at risk of being taken by slave catchers. He published "Clotel" in 1853 in London; it was the first novel published by an African American. In 1854 a British couple purchased freedom for Brown, and he returned with his daughters to the US.


The narrative of "Clotel" plays with history by relating the "perilous antebellum adventures" of a young mixed-race slave Currer and her two light-skinned daughters fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Because the mother is a slave, according to partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia adopted into law in 1662, her daughters are born into slavery. The book includes "several sub-plots" related to other slaves, religion and anti-slavery. Currer, described as "a bright mulatto" (meaning light-skinned) gives birth to two "near white" daughters: Clotel and Althesa.


After the death of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters are sold as slaves.


Horatio Green, a white man, purchases Clotel and takes her as a common-law wife. They cannot legally marry under state laws against miscegenation.


Her mother Currer and sister Althesa remain "in a slave gang." Currer is eventually purchased by Mr. Peck, a preacher. She is enslaved until she dies from yellow fever, shortly before Peck's daughter was preparing to emancipate her.


Althesa marries her white master, Henry Morton, a Northerner, by passing as a white woman. They have daughters Jane and Ellen, who are educated. Although supporting abolition, Morton fails to manumit Althesa and their daughters. After Althesa and Morton both die, their daughters are enslaved. Ellen commits suicide to escape sexual enslavement, and Jane dies in slavery from heartbreak.


Green and Clotel have a daughter Mary, also mixed race of course, and majority white. When Green becomes ambitious and involved in local politics, he abandons his relationship with Clotel and Mary. He marries "a white woman who forces him to sell Clotel and enslave his child."


Mary is forced to work as a domestic slave for her father Horatio Green and his white wife. She arranges to trade places in prison with her lover, the slave George. He escapes to Canada. Sold to a slave trader, Mary is purchased by a French man who takes her to Europe. Ten years later, after the Frenchman's death, George and Mary reunite by chance in Dunkirk, France. The novel ends with their marriage.


The novel has been extensively studied in the late 20th and early 21st century. Kirkpatrick writes that "Clotel" demonstrates the "pervasive, recurring victimization of black women under slavery. Even individuals of mixed-race status who attempt to pass as white nevertheless suffer horrifically." It exposes "the insidious intersection of economic gain and political ambition—represented by founding fathers such as Jefferson and Horatio Green." It is a "scathing, sarcastic, comprehensive critique of slavery in the American South, race prejudice in the American North, and religious hypocrisy in the American notion as a whole." The novel and the title "walk a precarious line between oral history, written history, and artistic license." Mitchell said that Brown emphasized romantic conventions, dramatic incident and a political view in his novel.


Recent scholars have also analyzed "Clotel" for its representations of gender and race. Sherrard-Johnson notes that Brown portrayed both the "tragic central characters " and the "heroic figures" as mulattoes with Angloid features, similar to his own appearance. She thinks he uses the cases of "nearly white" slaves to gain sympathy for his characters. She notes that he borrowed elements from the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child's plot in her short story, "The Quadroons" (1842). He also incorporated notable elements of recent events, such as the escape of the Crafts, and the freedom suit court case of Salome, an enslaved woman in Louisiana who claimed to be an immigrant born in Germany.


Martha Cutter notes that Brown portrayed his women characters generally as passive victims of slavery and as representations of True Women and the cult of domesticity, which were emphasized at the time for women. They are not portrayed as wanting or seeking freedom, but as existing through love and suffering. Cutter asks, if Mary could free George, why did she not free herself? Although Brown published three later versions of "Clotel", he did not seriously change this characterization of the African-American women. Slave women such as Ellen Craft were known to have escaped slavery, but Brown did not portray such women fully achieving freedom.


Mitchell, in contrast, believes that Brown portrays his women as acting heroically: she notes that Clotel escapes and goes back to Virginia to rescue her daughter, and more than one escape is described. She thinks he emphasizes adventure for the sake of character development. Even after heroic action, Brown's women are subject to the suffering of slavery. He emphasizes its evil of illegitimacy, and the arbitrary breakup of families.


In addition to being the first novel published by an African American, "Clotel" became a model that influenced many other nineteenth-century African-American writers. It is the first instance of an African-American writer "to dramatize the underlying hypocrisy of democratic principles in the face of African American slavery."


Through "Clotel", Brown introduces into African-American literature the "tragic mulatto" character. Such characters, representing the historical reality of hundreds of thousands of mixed-race people, many of them slaves, were further developed by "Webb, Wilson, Chesnutt, Johnson, and other novelists", writing primarily after the American Civil War.


Brown published three variations of "Clotel" in the 1860s, but did not markedly change his portrayal of the African-American women characters.


According to Brown in its preface, he wrote "Clotel" as a polemic narrative against slavery, written for a British audience:


It is also considered a propagandistic narrative, in that Brown leveraged "sentimentality, melodrama, contrived plots, [and] newspaper articles" as devices "to damage the 'peculiar institution' of slavery."


Chapters predominantly open "with an epigraph underscoring the romance’s urgent message: 'chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man.'"


"Clotel" is told through the use of a "third-person limited omniscient narrator." The narrator is "morally didactic and consistently ironic." The narrative is fragmented, in that it "combines fact, fiction, and external literary sources." It presents the reader with a structure that is episodic and is informed by "legends, myths, music, and concrete eye-witness accounts of the fugitive slaves themselves." It also "draws on antislavery lectures and techniques," such as "abolitionist verse and fiction, newspaper stories and ads, legislative reports, public addresses, private letters, and personal anecdotes."


An American Marriage is a novel by the American author Tayari Jones. It is her fourth novel and was published by Algonquin Books on February 6, 2018. In February 2018, the novel was chosen for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. The novel also won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction.


The novel focuses on the marriage of a middle-class African-American couple, Celestial and Roy, who live in Atlanta, Georgia. Their lives are torn apart when Roy is wrongfully convicted of a rape he did not commit.


In an interview with "The Paris Review" Jones revealed that she initially wrote the book solely from Celestial's point of view and decided to add multiple points of view after her initial readers reacted negatively to Celestial.


Celestial has, in the meantime, fallen in love with her childhood best friend, Andre. The night she learns that Roy is about to be set free, Andre proposes. Despite her guilt, Celestial decides to divorce Roy and marry Andre. Though the rest of her family accept her choice, the news causes a rift between Celestial and her father.


Roy is released from prison early and is collected by his father, Roy Sr. Aware that Celestial plans to have Andre pick him up, Roy decides to leave for Atlanta just as Andre is leaving to collect him, ensuring that he will have time to spend alone with Celestial. Before he leaves, Roy runs into a former classmate of his, Davina, who invites him over for dinner. The two end up having sex which Roy feels is meaningful. He nevertheless decides to leave for Atlanta to pursue a relationship with his wife.


In the epilogue Roy and Celestial exchange letters. Celestial informs Roy that though she and Andre are having a baby they have no plans to marry and Roy tells Celestial that he has reunited with Davina and the two plan to marry.


The novel was widely praised upon its release. "The New York Times" praised it as a "wise and compassionate" novel. "The Globe and Mail" called the novel "sensational". The Washington Post commended Jones for her "daring creative choices" and "tender patience". "The Guardian" described the book as, "an immensely readable novel, packed with ideas and emotion". "The Atlantic" positively noted that, "with "An American Marriage", Jones joins this conversation in a quietly powerful way. Her writing illuminates the bits and pieces of a marriage: those almost imperceptible moments that make it, break it, and forcefully tear it apart."


Linden Hills is a novel written by Gloria Naylor, originally published in 1985. Naylor bases her allegory on Dante's Inferno. The narrative is written from a third-person omniscient perspective, detailing different characters based on different traits that correspond with the different rings of Dante's interpretation of Hell. The novel is a revision of Naylor's Yale master’s thesis.


Naylor begins her narrative by detailing the family history of Luther Nedeed, real estate purveyor of the Linden Hills neighborhood. Naylor exposes the American dream as nightmare, through the lens of race and class, by unraveling the dark secrets of Tupelo Drive.


Critical reception has been positive. "The New York Times" wrote a mostly favorable review for the work, stating "Its flaws notwithstanding, the novel's ominous atmosphere and inspired set pieces - such as the minister's drunken fundamentalist sermon before an incredulous Hills congregation - make it a fascinating departure for Miss Naylor, as well as a provocative, iconoclastic novel about a seldom-addressed subject." "Publishers Weekly" was more critical, stating that the "narrative seems constructed and contrived rather than animated by the inner energy that distinguished Naylor's previous work. The novel as a whole is cold and preachy."


The Hate U Give is a 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. It is Thomas's debut novel, expanded from a short story she wrote in college in reaction to the police shooting of Oscar Grant. The book is narrated by Starr Carter, a 16-year-old black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite private school in a predominantly white, affluent part of the city. Starr becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer shoot and kill her childhood friend, Khalil. She speaks up about the shooting in increasingly public ways, and social tensions culminate in a riot after a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer for the shooting.


The book was adapted into a film by Fox 2000 in October 2018, which received positive reviews. The novel was also adapted into an audiobook, won several awards and praise for its narrator, Bahni Turpin.


Unsure whether publishers would be interested in the Black Lives Matter-inspired material, Thomas reached out to literary agent Brooks Sherman on Twitter in June 2015 to ask for advice. In February 2016, HarperCollins' imprint Balzer + Bray bought the rights to the novel in an auction, outbidding 13 other publishing houses, and signed a two-book deal with Thomas. Fox 2000 optioned the film rights the following month.


The 464-page book was published on February 28, 2017, when the industry was attempting to address a decade-long stagnation in the number of children's books by African-American authors. Since its publication, Thomas has become an example of attempts by publishers to publish more young adult African-American novelists.


Starr Carter is a 16-year-old black girl, who lives in the fictional mostly poor black neighborhood of Garden Heights, but attends an affluent predominantly white private school, Williamson Prep. After a shooting breaks up a party Starr is attending, she is driven home by her childhood best friend and sometimes crush Khalil. They are stopped by a white police officer. The officer instructs Khalil, who is black, to exit the car; while outside the car, Khalil leans into the driver-side window to check in on Starr. The officer then shoots Khalil three times, killing him.


Starr agrees to an interview with police about the shooting after being encouraged by her Uncle Carlos, who is also a detective. Carlos was a father figure to Starr when her father, Maverick, spent three years in prison for gang activity. Following his release, Maverick left the gang and became the owner of the Garden Heights grocery store where Starr and her older half-brother Seven work. Maverick was only allowed to leave his gang, the King Lords, because he confessed to a crime to protect gang-leader King. Widely feared in the neighborhood, King now lives with Seven's mother, Seven's half-sister Kenya, who is friends with Starr, and Kenya's little sister, Lyric.


Khalil's death becomes a national news story. The media portrays Khalil as a gang banger and drug dealer, while portraying the white officer who killed him more favorably. Starr's identity as the witness is initially kept secret from everyone outside Starr's family, including her younger brother Sekani. Keeping the secret from her white boyfriend Chris and her best friends Hailey Grant and Maya Yang – who all attend Williamson Prep – weighs on Starr, as does her need to keep her Williamson and Garden Heights personalities separate. Starr's struggles with her identity are further complicated after her mother gets a higher-paying job and the family moves out of Garden Heights.


After a grand jury fails to indict the white officer, Garden Heights erupts into both peaceful protests and riots. The failure of the criminal justice system to hold the officer accountable pushes Starr to take an increasingly public role, first giving a television interview and then speaking out during the protests, which are met by police in riot gear. Her increasing identification with the people of Garden Heights causes tension with Starr's friends, especially with her boyfriend Chris. But by the end of the novel, Starr and Maya have started standing up to Hailey's racist comments while Chris offers support to Starr.


The climax of the novel occurs during the riot following the grand jury decision. Starr, Chris, Seven, and DeVante – whom Maverick helped leave the King Lords – successfully defend Maverick's store from King. The neighborhood stands up to King and as a result of testimony by DeVante, King is arrested and expected to be imprisoned for a lengthy sentence. Starr promises to keep Khalil's memory alive and to continue her advocacy against injustice.


The book also earned starred reviews from multiple review journals. "Kirkus", which nominated the book for its Kirkus Prize, praised both its writing and timelines: "With smooth but powerful prose ... This story is necessary. This story is important." Young adult literature expert Michael Cart, writing in "Booklist", also praised Thomas's writing as Starr: "Beautifully written in Starr's authentic first-person voice, this is a marvel of verisimilitude." While praising the overall book in a starred review, "School Library Journal"s Mahnaz Dar criticized the writing of several characters as "slightly uneven". The "Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", "Horn Book Magazine", and "VOYA" also gave the book their equivalents of starred reviews.


"The Hate U Give" has received the following awards and accolades:


The American Library Association listed the book as one of the ten most-challenged books of 2017 (), 2018 (), and 2020 (10) "because it was considered 'pervasively vulgar,'" contained "drug use, profanity, and offensive language," as well as sexual references, and "was thought to promote an anti-police message."


In July 2018, a South Carolina police union raised objections to the inclusion of the book, as well as the similarly themed "All American Boys" by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, in the summer reading list for ninth-grade students of Wando High School. A representative of the police lodge described the inclusion of the books as "almost indoctrination of distrust of police" and asserted that "we've got to put a stop to that." The books remained on the list and Wando's principal was later recognized by the state school library association for her defense of the challenged books.


The book was removed from the school libraries of the Katy Independent School District due to its explicit language. Thomas responded to these challenges by defending the book's message and saying that it is a spur for conversation.


The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by One World, an imprint of Random House. It is a surrealist story set in the pre–Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction" which can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways.


The novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club.


On October 13, 2019, the novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list and at number one on the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction best-sellers list.


The novel was selected by Oprah Winfrey as the first book for the revival of her Oprah's Book Club on Apple TV+. She called it "one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the Top 5."


At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "Positive" rating based on 41 reviews: 13 "Rave" reviews, 23 "Positive" reviews, 3 "Mixed" reviews, and 2 "Pan" reviews.


"Publishers Weekly" gave the novel a rave review, writing, "In prose that sings and imagination that soars, Coates further cements himself as one of this generation's most important writers, tackling one of America's oldest and darkest periods with grace and inventiveness. This is bold, dazzling, and not to be missed."


"Kirkus Reviews" gave the novel a favorable review, but felt it was "less intensely realized" than Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad" (2015).


Dwight Garner of "The New York Times" gave the novel a positive review, calling it "a jeroboam of a book, a crowd-pleasing exercise in breakneck and often occult storytelling that tonally resembles the work of Stephen King as much as it does the work of Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead and the touchstone African-American science-fiction writer Octavia Butler."


David Fear of "Rolling Stone" gave the novel a rave review, saying it exceeded expectations for a debut novel and writing, "What's most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. [...] There’s an urgency to his remembrance of things past that brims with authenticity, testifying to centuries of bone-deep pain. It makes "The Water Dancer" feel timeless and instantly canon-worthy."


Constance Grady of "Vox" praised the "clarity of Coates's ideas and the poetry of his language" but largely panned the novel as a "mess" with monotonous characters and lacking a strong plot development to make up for it. She criticized the movement between the plot-driven and allegorical storytelling modes as "whiplash-inducing".


The Kenyatta series is a four-volume urban fiction series by American author Donald Goines under the pseudonym of Al C. Clark. Goines released the books under a pseudonym on the request of his publisher, who wanted to avoid flooding the market with too many books under Goines's name and potentially undermining sales as well as to differentiate the books from Goines's "grittier" urban fiction novels.


The books cover the actions of a man by the name of Kenyatta, named after Jomo Kenyatta, that leads a group of militant blacks similar to the Black Panther Party. The series comprises four books, "Crime Partners, Death List, Kenyatta's Escape", and "Kenyatta's Last Hit". Goines released the first book in June 1974 through Holloway House, with the final book being published posthumously in November of the same year.


The "Kenyatta" series deals with several themes such as drug usage and the idea of morality. The book also dealt with the idea of the exploitation of Black sex trade workers by white financiers as well as with the idea of African and African-American "cultural and political nationalism behind bars". In addition to Kenyatta seeking revenge against white police officers and financiers that he believes have wronged his people, the books also deal with the theme of black on black crime and the possible futility of one man attempting to clean up the ghettos in the absence of state or local government assistance.


In his book "Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines", Eddie B. Allen, Jr described the series as "symbolizing [Goines's] desire for victory" and "represented the strength and fearless determination that he lacked". Allen expressed disappointment over Kenyatta's death, as he saw the character as a representation of Goines's "desire to overcome his addiction to drugs" and because it "suggests that good can never defeat the larger societal evils that afflict our black communities."


Film rights to the "Kenyatta" series were purchased by "Picture Perfect Films", with Kenneth McGriff intending to release all four books as a series of feature-length films. The first film, "Crime Partners" was released in 2003. The film starred Ice-T, Snoop Dogg, and Ja Rule, with Clifton Powell playing the character of Kenyatta. The film was directed by J. Jesses Smith, with McGriff producing. Producer Irv Gotti funded and marketed "Crime Partner's" soundtrack, with part of the funding being seized by the Federal government. Federal agents claimed that the soundtrack was one of several avenues used by Murder Inc. and Gotti to launder drug money.


The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter is a 2016 novel by American playwright and author Kia Corthron. It won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.


The novel chronicles the lives and interactions of two sets of brothers: Eliot and Dwight in Maryland, and B.J. and Randall in Alabama. It begins in 1941, jumps to the late 1950s, and concludes with the climactic events in 1983, followed by an epilogue in 2010.


Corthron stated in a 2016 interview that she was inspired to begin the novel with the climactic event and drafted the novel in longhand. Upon starting the novel in 2010, she intended to have only one protagonist, but Corthron "realized [she] also wanted to know the story behind the other key person involved in the event ... and at last it became a book about brothers." Corthron, then known for her work as a playwright, said before the novel was published "[the idea] was just so huge I felt that this just couldn't fit into [a play,] a two-hour experience. Not necessarily more important, but just bigger."


The novel was composed mainly in chronological order and Corthron "obsessively wrote [the draft] all the time," as fast as a hundred pages per month, noting she completed three drafts before showing it to anyone else. She composed parts of the novel at numerous writers' retreats and workshops.


The length of "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" caused several publishers to pass on the novel or suggest that it either receive major cuts or be broken into a trilogy; Corthron persisted until Seven Stories Press finally accepted the manuscript in September 2014. The original editor of the book at Seven Stories had resisted its publication, and Corthron believes the advocacy of another Seven Stories author, who brought the book to the primary editor at Seven Stories, was critical to its eventual publication. Corthron would cut 400 pages of the 1,200-page manuscript for final publication.


Corthron read from the proof galleys of her novel in 2015 at an artist's residency and a fellow writer in residency, Cathy Davidson, was immediately reminded of "Faulkner. Morrison. Ismael Reed. I cannot wait to read this novel. [...] Breathtaking."


"The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" won the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for best first novel.


Jazz is a 1992 historical novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison. The majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920s; however, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th-century American South.


The novel forms the second part of Morrison's Dantesque trilogy on African-American history, beginning with "Beloved" (1987) and ending with "Paradise" (1997).


The novel deliberately mirrors the music of its title, with various characters "improvising" solo compositions that fit together to create a whole work. The tone of the novel also shifts with these compositions, from bluesy laments to up beat, sensual ragtime. The novel also utilizes the call-and-response style of jazz music, allowing the characters to explore the same events from different perspectives.


This book also features "untrustworthy narrators" whose emotions and perspective colour the story. Narration switches every so often to the viewpoint of various characters, inanimate objects, and even concepts. The book's final narrator is widely believed to be Morrison or perhaps the book itself.


Jazz was Morrison’s most recently published work when she was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. In the novel, "Morrison uses a device which is akin to the way jazz itself is played… the result is a richly complex, sensuously conveyed image of the events, the characters and moods."


To Baraka, "Blues People" represented "everything [he] had carried for years, what [he] had to say, and [himself]". The book is deeply personal and chronicles what brought him to believe that blues was a personal history of his people in the United States. The resonance and desperation of this type of music is what compelled Baraka to learn about the history of blues music. He learned through his studies that the "Africanisms" is directly related to American culture, rather than being solely related to Black people. Baraka dedicates the book "to my parents ... the first Negroes I ever met".


The 1999 reprint begins with a reminiscence by the author, then aged 65, titled ""Blues People": Looking Both Ways", in which he credits the poet and English teacher Sterling Brown with having inspired both him and his contemporary A. B. Spellman. Baraka does not here discuss the impact his book has had.


The original text is divided into twelve chapters, summarized below.


Baraka opens the book by arguing that Africans suffered in America not only because they were slaves, but because American customs were completely foreign to them. He argues that slavery itself was not unnatural or alien to the African people, as slavery had long before existed in the tribes of West Africa. Some forms of West African slavery even resembled the plantation system in America. He then discusses a brief history of slavery, inside and outside the United States. He argues that unlike the slaves of Babylon, Israel, Assyria, Rome, and Greece, American slaves were not even considered human.


Baraka then further addresses his previous assertion that African slaves suffered in the New World because of the alien environment around them. For example, the language and dialect of colonial English had no resemblance to the African dialects. However, the biggest difference that set the African people aside was the difference in skin color. Even if the African slaves were freed, they would always remain apart and be seen as ex-slaves rather than as freed individuals. Colonial America was an alien land in which the African people could not assimilate because of the difference in culture and because they were seen as less than human.


Baraka stresses a point made by Melville Herskovits, the anthropologist responsible for establishing African and African-American studies in academia, which suggests that value is relative or that "reference determines value". Although Baraka is not justifying the white supremacist views of the West, he does create a space to better understand the belief that one can be more evolved than a people from whom one differs very much. Likewise the author does not present the African system of belief in supernatural predetermination as better but speaks of how an awful violence is done against these people ideologically, by forcing them into a world that believes itself to be the sole judge of the ways in which proper existence must occur.


In chapter 2, "The Negro as Property", Baraka focuses on the journey from the African to the African American. He breaks down the process of the African's acculturation to show its complex form. Baraka begins with the initial introduction to life in America. He compares the African's immigrant experience to that of the Italian and Irish. He says the Italian and Irish came "from their first ghetto existences into the promise and respectability of this brave New World" (p. 12). Africans, on the other hand, came to this new world against their will. There was no promise or respectability in America for them, only force and abrupt change, and this defines the evolution of African-American culture.


"African Slaves / American Slaves: Their Music".


Jazz is recognized as beginning around the turn of the 20th century, but is actually much older. Most people believe that its existence derived from African slavery, but it has native African-American roots. Blues music gave birth to Jazz, and both genres of music stem from the work songs of the first generation of African slaves in America.


Storytelling was the primary means of education within the slave community, and folk tales were a popular and useful means of passing down wisdom, virtues, and so on from the elders to the youth. These folk tales also became integrated into their music and American culture, and later began to appear in the lyrics of blues songs.


Expression of oneself, emotions, and beliefs was the purpose of the African work song. Instruments, dancing, culture, religion, and emotion were blended together to form this representative form of music. Adaptation, interpretation, and improvisation lay at the core of this American Negro music. The nature of slavery dictated the way African culture could be adapted and evolved. For example, drums were forbidden by many slave owners, for fear of its communicative ability to rally the spirits of the enslaved, and lead to aggression or rebellion. As a result, slaves used other percussive objects to create similar beats and tones.


As the music derived from their slave/field culture, shouts and hollers were incorporated into their work songs, and were later represented through an instrumental imitation of blues and jazz music. From these origins, Jones declares, "the notable fact is that the only so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of African derivation."


Christianity was adopted by the Negro people before the efforts of missionaries and evangelists. The North American Negroes were not even allowed to practice or talk about their own religion that their parents taught them. Specifically, in the south, slaves were sometimes beaten or killed when they talked about conjuring up spirits or the devil. Negroes also held a high reverence to the gods of their conquerors. Since their masters ruled over their everyday lives, Negroes acknowledge that the conqueror's gods must be more powerful than the gods they were taught to worship through discreet traditions.


"The movement, the growing feeling that developed among Negroes, was led and fattened by the growing black middle class".


"Stranger in the Village" is an essay by African-American novelist James Baldwin about his experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland, after he nearly suffered a breakdown. The essay was originally published in "Harper's Magazine", October 1953, and later in his 1955 collection, "Notes of a Native Son".


In the summer of 1951, Baldwin almost suffered a breakdown, for which his partner, Lucien Happersberger, took him to an established Swiss health-resort in the Valais Alps, known as Leukerbad. Baldwin declares that, while he is a stranger in the village of Leukerbad, he also feels like a stranger in the village of the United States of America as an African American.


The essay is an account of Baldwin's experiences in Leukerbad, Switzerland. Residents of Leukerbad were fascinated by Baldwin's blackness; according to Baldwin they had never seen a black man before. The village is almost four hours from Milan Italy. Because it is located in Swiss alps, it is extremely isolated. Baldwin being an African American is the only Black person the villagers have ever seen thus making him a stranger in the village. Baldwin was a stranger in Leukerbad, the Swiss village, but there was no possibility for blacks to be strangers in the United States, nor for whites to achieve the fantasy of an all-white America purged of blacks. This fantasy about the disposability of black life is a constant in American history.


Baldwin further goes on to explain the relationship between American and European history, by explicitly pointing out that American history encompasses the history of the Negro, while European history lacks the African-American dimension. Baldwin observes that in America the Negro is “an inescapable part of the general social fabric” and that “Americans attempt until today to make an abstraction of the Negro.”


Baldwin argues that white Americans try to retain a separation between their history and black history despite the interdependence between the two. It is impossible for Americans to become European again “recovering the European innocence” through the neglect of the American Negro; the American Negro is a part of America permanently pressed and carved into an undeniable history.


The final sentence in his essay articulates a defiant claim by Baldwin and an understanding that the villagers' and white Americans' need to reach, losing thereby what Baldwin describes as "the jewel" of the white man's naivete - in other words, white Americans' willful desire to ignore white privilege and the effects of centuries of racism and systemic discrimination against Black Americans: "This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again." Therefore, as Baldwin put it, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”


Baldwin appears to be telling the story of his experiences in that tiny Swiss village. He uses the story as a metaphor for the history of race relations in the United States, describing the power discrepancy between whites of European background and African Americans who were forcibly brought to the US as slaves.


Baldwin speaks of racism in the United States and in Leukerbad, Switzerland, drawing parallels between the two. This essay is autobiographical in nature, as Baldwin speaks of his own experiences. "Stranger in The Village", in many forms, is a protest against America for its treatment of African Americans, putting its racism on full display. In the essay, Baldwin raises questions of his own identity and how he fits into society in both the United States and in Leukerbad, where the family of his lover, Lucien Happersberger, had a chalet in a village up in the mountains.


The legacy of "Stranger In the Village" is tied to the legacy and reception of the book in which it is featured, "Notes of a Native Son". The book is widely regarded as a classic of the black autobiographical genre. The Modern Library placed it at number 19 on its list of the 100 best 20th-century nonfiction books. Since Baldwin's passing on December 1, 1987, his writings have been published worldwide and are still known as essential emblems of the American canon.


Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies and Denial in Black America is a 2005 book by Keith Boykin.


This book of essays analyzes the validity of the down low phenomenon, first publicized by J. L. King in his book "On the Down Low". It covers multiple discussions about gay sexuality, the African-American community, homophobia, and the spread of HIV.


Boykin distances himself from King's conclusions, accusing him of making a name for himself by spreading misinformation. He also stresses that not only African-American men who have sex with men are "on the down low". He names two Caucasians, Jim McGreevey and Ed Schrock, as examples of non-blacks technically "on the down low".


He pinpoints how an article in "The New York Times" stating that a large number of black, gay men has been twisted to suggest that there are many men on the down low purposely infecting heterosexual, African-American women. Finally, he argues that only when more African-American men and women are openly gay in the media spotlight, this will diminish homophobia in black communities or disprove that homosexuality is a predominantly white (or at least non-black) phenomenon.


"The Lesson" is a short story by Toni Cade Bambara (1938–1995). It was first published in 1972.


This story also emphasizes that individuals who are segregated to certain environments should not be condescended to, as Miss Moore, the educated outsider, creates resistance with her patronizing.


The Man Who Was Almost a Man


"The Man Who Was Almost a Man", also known as "Almos' a Man", is a short story by Richard Wright. It was published in 1961 as part of Wright's compilation "Eight Men". The story centers on Dave, a young African-American farm worker who is struggling to declare his identity in the atmosphere of the rural South. The story was adapted into a 1976 film starring LeVar Burton.


The story follows Dave Saunders, a seventeen-year-old kid desperate to prove his manhood. After being teased, babied, and downright "disrespected", our young hero decides that the only way he can make things right is by buying a gun. (Not the smartest move, as it turns out.) One dead mule, fifty dollars of debt, and an angry boss later, Dave is challenged to finally prove that he's a man once and for all.


By sunset Jenny's body is found and Dave is questioned by both his parents and Mr. Hawkins about what happened. Dave lies about the incident stating that something was wrong with Jenny causing her to fall on the point of the plow. His mother knows this is a lie and insist Dave tell the truth. In tears, Dave confesses, but lies yet again when asked what he has done with the gun. Mr. Hawkins tells Dave that although it was an accident he will pay two dollars a month until he has paid fifty dollars to replace the mule.


That night Dave feels annoyed at having to pay back Mr. Hawkins for the next two years, and even more annoyed with the fact that people view him as a child more now than ever before. He decides to leave his house and retrieve the gun in which he had buried, not thrown in a river like he claimed. He forces himself to fire the gun with his eyes open until he empties it. In the distance, Dave hears a train, which he approaches and hops in the hopes that this will at last prove he is indeed a man.


"Girl" is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid that was included in "At the Bottom of the River" (1983). It appeared in the June 26, 1978 issue of "The New Yorker".


The story is a to-do list and a how-to-do list containing one sentence of a 650 word dialogue. It features what the girl hears from her mother. The story is mostly told in the second person. The girl hears her mother's instructions and the behavior her mother is trying to instill in her. It is apparent that the mother is trying to give the girl some sort of advice and prescribing the way she should go about her life and daily tasks. One may infer that her mother probably got this language from someone in her past and it was most likely the way her mother spoke to her when she was a young girl, so that's all she's ever known.


During the story, her mother's voice sounds somewhat condescending and critical when speaking, suggesting that the girl is likely to become a "slut." For example, in the short story, the mother states, "on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming." Throughout the piece the mother tries to pass down certain beliefs from her culture to her daughter. The mother constantly reminds her daughter of how to become the "perfect" woman in order to fit into the society that they live in. Also, the chores and behaviors that the mother makes the daughter inhabit are directly related to how women's duties should relate to a man's.


Like most of Kincaid's piece of writing, "Girl" is based on her own relationship between her and her mother while growing up. Jamaica Kincaid has also revealed in interviews that the setting of this short story takes place in Antigua.


The theme for "Girl" is mother-daughter dispute. In this story, the mother goes on and on teaching the daughter how to be the perfect woman in society. As the story goes on, the mother’s directions get more demanding.


Difficult Women is a 2017 short story collection by Roxane Gay.


In "Vogue", Julia Fesenthal characterized "Difficult Women" as "a misogynist's taxonomy of the opposite sex. On the narrator's short list: loose women, frigid women, crazy women, mothers, and, finally, dead girls," depicted in stories "woven through with strands of magical realism."


Gay has described being challenged by publishers in the development of the collection owing to the difficult material the book covers. Speaking at the "Los Angeles Times" Festival of Books, Gay recounted, "Editors said, 'we love ["Difficult Women"] but it makes me want to kill myself."


Grove Press published the 272-page collection on January 3, 2017.


"Difficult Women" received favorable reviews from critics. Reviewing the collection in "The Washington Post", Megan Mayhew Bergman said Gay's "real gift to readers in "Difficult Women" is her ability to marry her well-known intellectual concerns with good storytelling." In "USA Today", Jaleesa M. Jones gave "Difficult Women" four (of four) stars, noting Gay's "deft touch with how ... intersecting identities mold and shape women’s experiences."


Life Is Not a Fairy Tale is a book describing the life of "American Idol" (season 3) winner Fantasia Barrino, and her rise to national prominence. The book later became a television movie shown on Lifetime.


"Life Is Not a Fairy Tale" by Fantasia.


In her autobiography "Life Is Not a Fairy Tale", a "New York Times" bestseller, Fantasia tells of her rise from high-school dropout to music star.


Life Is Not A Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story is a 2006 American biographical film directed by Debbie Allen, loosely based on the life of American singer Fantasia Barrino. The film was adapted from the book "Life Is Not A Fairy Tale" written by Fantasia.


In this Lifetime original movie, director Debbie Allen gives viewers a first hand look at the struggles Fantasia faced before/during her rise to fame. The movie begins with Fantasia's humble beginnings, growing up in a close knit God-fearing family that faced its own personal demons of struggling with their dreams. Fantasia faces problems with her self-esteem, sexual abuse, teen pregnancy and her faith as she fights to overcome her mistakes at a young age. This movie depicted from her best selling biopic of the same name, provides an emotional example of what you can achieve when believing in yourself.


The movie premiered on Saturday, August 19, 2006 at 9:00 PM EST. It was Lifetime's second most watched movie in its 22-year history, with more than nineteen million viewers tuning in during the August 19–20 weekend. The movie was ranked the number one basic cable movie premiere in 2006 among women ages 18–49. Weekend online traffic to Lifetimetv.com rose by more than seventy percent during that weekend.


In 2007, the movie and its actors including Fantasia, Loretta Devine and Kadeem Hardison were nominated for 4 NAACP Image Awards. Kadeem Hardison won his award. It was also nominated for a 2007 Teen Choice Award for Choice TV: Movie.


Although a soundtrack was never released for the film, many songs were performed throughout the film. The following track listing are the songs that are performed in order throughout the film.


Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism by Patricia Hill Collins is a work of critical theory that discusses the way that race, class and gender intersect to affect the lives of African American men and women in many different ways, but with similar results. The book explores the way that new forms of racism can work to oppress black people, while filling them with messages of liberation.


"Black Sexual Politics" also examines the way a narrow sexual politics based on American ideas/ideals of masculinity, femininity and the appropriate expression of sexuality work to repress gay and hetero, male and female. Collins' work also proposes a liberatory politics for black Americans, centered on honest dialogue about the way stereotypical imagery and limiting racist and sexist ideology have harmed African Americans in the past, and how African Americans might progress beyond these ideas and their manifestations to become active change agents in their own communities.


The book starts from the premise that in order to achieve a more progressive black political agenda, African Americans need to look critically at the way race, class and gender intersect in their lives to create different responses. Looking at the black community as a monolith may prevent us from seeing that African American women are the targets of specific social welfare policies or that African American men are being disproportionately incarcerated. Both of these results stem from racism, but take on a gendered approach.


In "Black Sexual Politics", Hill Collins proposes several ideas for black liberation, though the book is focused on getting individuals to find creative ways to challenge racism, sexism and homophobia as it manifests itself in their own communities. One idea that Hill Collins purports is that African Americans need to create and support avenues of self-expression that allow them to tell their own stories about the effects of racism/sexism/homophobia, and to share their emotional and sexual experiences as African American persons. This work is being done, but is largely in its infancy.


Hill Collins also argues that it is critical for African Americans to define new visions of success that resist traditional Western/American views. She argues that equating masculinity with wealth and femininity with submissiveness and financial dependence is harmful to all groups, but especially for African Americans, who have been traditionally locked out of the economic opportunity structure. In a society where black men face threats to their economic well being, and disproportionately are incarcerated and lack access to quality education, any vision of masculinity that suggests that to be a man is to be financially successful puts a great number of black males at odds. Collins argues for a new, more holistic version of success, that includes visions of the importance of personal character apart from economic achievement.


Hill Collins argues that there needs to be a culture of honesty in the black community, whereby black persons can express their ideas and identities in a whole way. If we do not create the space for black people to express their sexual perspectives freely, then we create a space where the silence and deceptiveness that leads to the spread of HIV/AIDS to continue. When we can discuss sexuality from multiple perspectives, we allow people the space to talk about sex and sexuality and feel more comfortable engaging their partners in dialogues about their own sexual history, sexual feelings, and lead to STD testing and full appreciation and connection of one another.


In "Black Sexual Politics" Collins expresses the view that the black community will not reach its progressive political agenda, nor will it be able to successfully address social issues such as the HIV/AIDS crisis affecting the black community, if it does not allow marginalized voices like women and LGBT persons to express their perspectives and lifestyles. Collins believes that a group cannot be truly revolutionary or progressive if it works to oppress others. She also believes that a view of the black community that values some identities and expressions over others limits the connectedness that others in that community feel, and prevents issues disproportionately affecting them to be discussed in meaningful ways.


She argues that a narrow black sexual politics that places extreme value on limiting views of the role of the male and the role of the female, and also on the role of appropriate and socially acceptable sexual behavior works to deny LGBT people their agency, and prevents honest dialogue about different types of sexual lifestyles. This can work to the oppression of LGBT people, but also of heterosexual women and men, oppressed by views of sexuality which limit their sexual expression, and thus limit the space for them to talk about their lifestyles in a way that breeds honesty, self-affirmation and prevents the spread of disease.


November Blues is a young adult novel by Sharon M. Draper, first published in 2007. It's the second novel of the Jericho Trilogy, the sequel to "The Battle of Jericho". The book tackles and discusses the issue of teen pregnancy, as well as making the readers aware that actions always have consequences and that taking responsibility for those actions is always very important.


November Nelson lost her boyfriend, Josh Prescott, when a pledge stunt went horribly wrong. After his death, November has to deal with the heartache of losing him forever. Also, November realizes that she is pregnant with Josh's child. November faces the pressures of telling her family and friends that she is pregnant at 16, being talked about and laughed at by her classmates at school, and figuring out how to provide for her child.


The book grew out of "Conditions" magazine's November 1979 issue, "Conditions 5: the Black Women's Issue", originally edited by Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel. "Conditions 5" was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S." The anthology was first published in 1983 by , and was reissued by Rutgers University Press in 2000. Where necessary, the 2000 issue contained updates of the contributor's biographies as well as a new preface. The current preface evaluates how the lives of black women have changed since the original book was released. Smith's main concern was in regards to how black women were positively contributing to black feminism. Upon its initial release, "Home Girls" "has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings".


Black feminism stems from the idea that women's experiences are intersectional and a reflection of race, sexism, gender oppression, and class. Within the anthology, black women authors take many different approaches to address the issues that arise from their identities and express their support for black feminist organizations. Since its original release there have been numerous events and organizations that work towards building black feminism.


Sexuality is another topic brought up in many of the pieces throughout "Home Girls". Black women share their discoveries as well as stories about what it means to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community and how that has shaped them. In the preface, Smith acknowledges black lesbians and their activity within The Ad Hoc Committee "for an open process, the grass-roots groups that have successfully questioned the undemocratic... tactics of the proposed gay millennium march in Washington D.C in 2000". Many of the organizations and marches that came to be before and after the publication of "Home Girls" are centralized around issues of racial inequality and gender oppression.


The struggle black women face with sexual orientation is suggested in many of the contributor's pieces. Things such as physical appearance, clothes, mannerisms, and makeup affected the way these women were perceived and sexualized throughout their lives. In"Home Girls" many of the women reveal their personal stories and accounts of sexual abuse and the continuous sexualization they received. Audre Lorde addresses this and mentions "Clothes were often the most important way of broadcasting one's chosen sexual role".


In relation to sexual orientation many of the writings in "Home Girls" contain personal stories about their LBGT experiences and reactions from community members and reactions from the LGBT community. Cheryl Clarke is one of the black feministolor Pre contributors to addresses homophobia within the black community. In her writing, she shares the struggles of LGBT in black communities and the fear they often have to live with.


Together, the topics presented in this anthology exemplify intersectionality, the idea that multiple oppressions can be suffered together and mold a person's idea of their oppression. A feminist goal is to expand its diversity and inclusiveness. In order to achieve this goal, many activists suggest becoming more knowledgeable about intersectional feminism and its effects on how black women experience oppression and discrimination.


Critical reception for "Home Girls" has been mostly positive. One reviewer for the Black American Literature Forum praises the book for its sense of unity and black feminist perspective. As the article states: "While many of the book's poems strike me as self-indulgent and forced, the majority of the selections are both finely honed and provocative. Herein lies the strength of "Home Girls". It consciously broaches issues which have heretofore been given only a faint hearing and thus challenges the reader to rethink not only the past and present but also the future."


Confessions of a Video Vixen is a memoir written by Karrine Steffans which details the first 25 years of her life. Part tell-all covering her sexual liaisons with music industry personalities and professional athletes, and part cautionary tale about the dangers of the otherwise romanticized hip-hop music industry, it caused considerable controversy in some circles.


"Confessions of a Video Vixen" recounts Steffans' life from her troubled girlhood living in poverty in St. Thomas, through abuse, drugs, rape and living as a teenage runaway who turns to stripping and hip hop modeling to support herself and, later, her young son.


Originally published in 2005 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, the book was immediately a "New York Times" bestseller. (The 2006 paperback edition includes bonus material, and also made the NYT bestseller list.) The book created a stir when it went on sale because of Steffans' allegations of abuse at the hands of her then-husband rapper, Kool G Rap and her claims that she had sexual relationships with numerous famous music stars and athletes, including Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Bobby Brown, Dr. Dre, DMX, Xzibit, Diddy, Usher, Shaquille O'Neal and Irv Gotti.


Coming of Age in Mississippi is a 1968 memoir by Anne Moody about growing up in rural Mississippi in the mid-20th century as an African-American woman. The book covers Moody's life from childhood through her mid twenties, including her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement beginning when she was a student at the historically black Tougaloo College. Moody's autobiography details her struggles both against racism among white people and sexism among her fellow civil rights activists. It received many positive reviews and won awards from the National Library Association and the National Council of Christians and Jews.


"Coming of Age in Mississippi" is divided into four sections: "Childhood", "High School", "College", and "The Movement".


Moody begins her story on the plantation where she lives with her mother, Toosweet, and her father, Diddly, both sharecroppers, and her younger sister, Adline.


Later, Moody's mother gives birth to her third child, Jr. While Toosweet is pregnant with Jr., her father begins an affair with another woman from the plantation. Shortly after Jr.’s birth, her parents separate.


Moody moves with her mother and younger siblings to town to live with her great aunt and begins grade school. Moody's curiosity about race is sparked when her questions about her two uncles, who appear white, go unanswered. Moody's mother begins a relationship with a man named Raymond, whom she eventually marries and has five more children with by the time Moody is in college.


At nine years old, Moody begins her first job sweeping a porch, earning seventy-five cents a week and two gallons of milk. She experiences her first real competition with Raymond’s sister Darlene; they're the same age and in the same class, constantly competing against one another whenever possible.


Though Moody enjoys attending Centreville church, which Raymond's family belongs to, she is tricked into joining her mother's church: Mt. Pleasant. She resents her mother for some time after that.


Once the family farm falls through, Moody takes on more responsibility to help support the family. When asked to obtain a copy of her birth certificate for graduation, her birth certificate shows up as Annie Mae. When Toosweet requests to have it changed, she is told there would be a fee; Moody asks if she can keep Annie, and so she becomes Annie Mae Moody.


Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects is a poetry collection written by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in 1854. Her non-fiction collection of poems and essays consists of a brief preface followed by a collection of poems and three short writings. "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" sold approximately 12,000 copies in its first four years in print and was reprinted at least twenty times during Harper's lifetime. The work includes several poetic responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Harper’s work focuses on the themes Christianity, slavery, and women.


"Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" contains 18 poems. Harper’s poetry is noted for its simple rhythm, biblical imagery, and storytelling style of oral tradition. The themes present in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" focus on Christianity, slavery, and women.


Christianity became widespread to African Americans during the transatlantic slave trade. Before coming to America, African religious beliefs and practices were numerous and varied. Some Africans had been exposed to European Christianity before coming to America, so they were able to bring Christian beliefs with them. However, many slaves converted to Christianity in America because they saw conversion as a road to freedom. Harper's upbringing included a religious education, and therefore, the experiences she had during her childhood schooling bring religion forth as a prominent theme in her works in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects". Such works include “The Syrophoenician Woman”, “Bible Defence of Slavery”, “The Drunkard’s Child”, “That Blessed Hope”, “The Dying Christian”, “Saved By Faith”, “The Prodigal’s Return”, and “Eva’s Farewell”.


In "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects", Harper’s theme of slavery focuses on the struggles slaves faced such as separation and death. Poems that fit into the theme of slavery are “The Slave Mother”, “Eliza Harris”, “The Slave Auction”, and “The Fugitive’s Wife”. Harper's most notable abolitionist work, "Bury Me in a Free Land", would be published a few years later in 1858.


Harper’s works in "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects" also address the subjects of marriage and motherhood. When Harper travelled to the South for the first time, she was abhorred by the poor treatment and severe hardships of thousands of black women. In fact, she asked white women to help support the black liberation movement by reminding white women of their common womanhood to African American women. Harper's dedication to advocating for civil and women's rights make the female and womanhood a basic concern in her poems. Works that fall under this theme include “Report”, “Advice to the Girls”, “A Mother’s Heroism”, and “The Contrast”.


The Yellow House is a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It is Broom's first book and it was published on August 13, 2019 by Grove Press. "The Yellow House" chronicles Broom's family (mapping back approximately 100 years), her life growing up in New Orleans East, and the eventual demise of her beloved childhood home after Hurricane Katrina. Broom also focuses on the aftermath of Katrina and how the disaster altered her family and her neighborhood. At its core, the book examines race, class, politics, family, trauma, and inequality in New Orleans and America. "The Yellow House" won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction.


"The Yellow House" was published by Grove Press on August 13, 2019, following the publication of an early excerpt in the "New Yorker" in 2015. The book debuted at number 11 on the Hardcover Nonfiction best sellers list for the September 1, 2019, edition of "The New York Times".


In November 2019, "The Yellow House" won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by both the "New York Times Book Review" and the "Washington Post". "The Yellow House" won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book from the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Awards.


Feathers is a children's historical novel by Jacqueline Woodson that was first published in 2007. The story is about a sixth-grade girl named Frannie growing up in the '70s. One day an unexpected new student causes much chaos to the class because he is the only white boy in the whole school. "Feathers" grapples with concepts such as religion, race, hope, and understanding. The book examines what it was like to grow up right after segregation had been outlawed, how all people are equal, and that hope is everywhere. The book was a Newbery Honor winner in 2008.


Taking place in the 1970s, in an urban all African American school, this book highlights the hard topics of racism, faith, hope, and disabilities. A white boy comes to the school and is soon dubbed "Jesus Boy". His entrance as the only white student causes tension and misunderstandings. Some of the students believe that he is Jesus and others simply hope he is. He is very quiet and doesn't let Trevor, the class bully, hurt him. He just calmly talks to Trevor and never retaliates.


Later Samantha asks Frannie why she helped Trevor, and Frannie doesn't know. Samantha then admits that she was wrong about Jesus Boy and says she doesn't know what to believe in anymore. Frannie tries to comfort Samantha and says "Maybe there's a little bit of Jesus inside of all of us. Maybe Jesus is just that something good or something sad or something ... something that makes us do stuff like help Trevor up even when he is cursing us out. Or maybe ... maybe Jesus is just that thing you had when the Jesus Boy got here, Samantha. Maybe Jesus is the hope that you were feeling" (p. 109).


At the end of the book Frannie reflects on all that has been happening in her life. She thinks of her mother's baby, her brother, Samantha's loss of faith, and, especially, Jesus Boy. She remembers the poem she read in class and decides "Each moment, I am thinking, is a thing with feathers"


The title of the book, Feathers, is a metaphor that the book revolves around. Woodson introduces it through a poem that Frannie reads in class.


After reading this, Frannie spends the rest of the book trying to understand hope. How does it have feathers?


The effort to understand one another was the focus of the sixth grade class as soon as Jesus Boy entered their classroom. Through Jesus Boy they realize that even the bully, Trevor, is a normal kid. After the fight Frannie realizes "Even though he was mean all the time, the sun still stopped and colored him and warmed him─like it did to everybody else" (p. 21)


Jesus Boy helped the class to stop beating up each other so much and Trevor got scared by him.


Frannie's older brother is deaf and this is a source of tension throughout the story. Frannie feels compelled to protect her brother in a world of people who do not understand him. One difficulty Sean encounters is girls being attracted to him until they find out he is deaf. Woodson stated in an interview with NPR that she made Sean deaf in order to humanize the deaf. One scene in the book that does this well is when Frannie asks Sean what a guitar sounds like, a game they play with one another. His sign back is 'Like rain. Coming down real soft when it's warm out and you only get a little wet but not cold. That kind of rain.'


Overall, the book gets mostly high praise, and Jacqueline Woodson is hailed for her beautiful style of writing. One fan says Woodson writes "pages of poetry" and "without any heavy-handedness or manipulation".


Jaqueline Woodson has written 29 books spanning from picture books to young adult fiction. Her books have received numerous awards such as the Caldecott Honor, Newbery Honor, and the Coretta Scott King Award. "Feathers" most resembles her novel "Locomotion" in which she "tackled grief, trauma, death survival, and hope". all in a very short book. "Feathers" is also short but addresses big concepts of "hope, healing, faith, and understanding". Both of the books are around 115 pages and adequately handle their difficult topics.


The History of White People is a 2010 book by Nell Irvin Painter, in which the author explores the idea of whiteness throughout history, beginning with ancient Greece and continuing through the beginning of scientific racism in early modern Europe to 19th- through 21st-century America.


The book describes attitudes toward and definitions of race among Europeans, and particularly Americans of European descent. The author says the idea of race is not just a matter of biology but also includes "concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty".


The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves. Throughout most of European history, slaves were generally of European origin, often from conquered countries. From the fifth to the eleventh century the Vikings were especially prolific slavers, capturing and selling the inhabitants wherever they went. It was only in relatively modern times that slavery became associated with race. In 1790 U.S. citizens were defined as "free white men"; this excluded white men who were indentured servants. By the mid 19th century in America, white people (as then defined) were all free; slaves were of African or part-African descent.


When writers and scientists began to explore the concept of race, they focused on Europe, describing three or four different races among Europeans. Much of the classification was done by head shape and skull measurements, as well as height and skin pigmentation. The most attractive and most admirable race was that found in northwestern Europe, while the inhabitants of eastern and southern Europe were classified as lower races. The categorizing of different European races had legal and social effects in the United States, where 19th century immigrants from less favored areas such as Ireland, Italy, and Iberia were treated as less than fully "white" for legal and social purposes.


The author traces four consecutive "enlargements of American whiteness" by which Irish, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, and other discriminated-against ethnicities gradually became fully accepted into white society. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminated legal discrimination by race. As of the book's publication date, 2010, mixed-race people were more common and were becoming integrated: "The dark of skin who happen to be rich ... and the light of skin from any (racial background) who are beautiful, are now well on their way to inclusion." The author concludes that race has not disappeared from American society – "the fundamental black/white binary endures" – but the "category of whiteness – or we might say more precisely, a category of nonblackness – effectively expands."


The book was a "New York Times" best seller. Paul Devlin, writing in the "San Francisco Chronicle", said the book "is perhaps the definitive story of a most curious adjective. It is a scholarly, non-polemical masterpiece of broad historical synthesis, combining political, scientific, economic and cultural history." Linda Gordon of "The New York Times" says the book "has much to teach everyone, including whiteness experts, but it is accessible and breezy, its coverage broad and therefore necessarily superficial." She adds that she wishes she had had this book, "an insightful and lively exposition", to help her teach undergraduate students about race theory. Thomas Rogers in "Salon" calls it an "exhaustive and fascinating new look at the history of the idea of the white race".


In January 2019, it was translated into French as "Histoire des Blancs".


If i can cook / you know god can


if i can cook / you know god can (sometimes known as "If I Can Cook You Know God Can") is a culinary memoir by Ntozake Shange. It was originally published by Beacon Press, in Boston MA, United States, in 1998. The piece is both memoir and cookbook. Short essays precede recipes written in personal vernacular, and these recipes cover locations such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the United States.


Chapter 2 takes the reader to St. Louis and Shange uses the experience of listening to a short wave radio emanating the sounds of Fidel Castro as a child to talk about her experiences in Cuba as an adult. She says that her child was one of Cuba's Young Pioneers and shared food, recipes and traditions with children from a multitude of other locations, such as Zimbabwe and Palestine. While in Cuba, the author experiences a blackface performance, which she is horrified by. She eats avocado with beer and reminds herself that "history, our history, mustn't scare me." Cuba's slave trade history is discussed, and Shange is concerned with "How'd all these hardworking - cutting cane is torturous labor - Africans get fed and what'd they eat?"


Shange is in Brixton, a working-class West Indian neighborhood and she describes shopping in the area with her daughter, as they look for food items. Savannah and Shange prepare for her friend Leila's birthday dinner, and each of the ingredients used is described. At the end of the chapter, she mentions the fact that Leila's partner Darcus Howe is from Trinidad and Tobago, and makes a reference to the presence of slavery in East India. She ends with the quote: "Now we are independent. We own the soil. We have our own name. We have our own flag. Let us have some wine and some music."


In Chapter 5, Shange is in the world of the Caribbean, and looking at the "matter of the flyin' fish" in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. Here, she describes the different ways in which two communities looked at one commodity. The Trinidad and Tobago fishermen were catching the flyin fish that were essential to the Barbadian diet, and didn’t eat it. While the Barbadians argued that it was wrong for them to catch the fish that they didn’t even eat and then sell it back as a profit, they said that they were only supplying the demand. She then says that who knows what would happen if the Barbadians came after shark meat, which is treasured by the Trinidadians.


Chapter 11 looks at boys. Shange says that from the first, she was expected to serve boys food, and that this was part of a dating ritual "to prove I was of value, valued my visitors and our time together so much that I made a hands-on effort to create something for whoever this person was". She discusses her adolescent reaction to it and her later realization that was being taught an important "Southern/African tradition of sharing the best I had with visitors". (p. 80). She describes the link between cooking and self value, as well as the energy and importance of time in the kitchen. She mentions that music can assist the kitchen process.


Chapter 12 looks at the need "to re-create a 'where' for our people". It looks at people who do not commit to the American way of life. Shange talks about meeting a Rastafarian in Cancun, Mexico, and the ways in which African culture was destabilized during slavery. She uses the limitation of diet as an example. Yvette, a friend, is used as an example; she explains that her vegetarianism is an alternative choice to the meat and dairy diet suggested by America. In this chapter, Shange looks at the idea that African Americans are a "people in transition" describes the first bembe she ever attended and talks about African-American Jews.


The epilogue contains references to Shange's dance experience and talks about sugar, giving people something to make them happy, and providing dessert recipes.


Shange looks at food as a feature of memory as well, for not only is the memory of history bestowed upon food but food, as a product of a long and rich culture, can trigger memory. When Shange spends New Years with her daughter in New York, she has an "insatiable desire to recreate for her daughter the family holidays she remembered".


The recipes and essays are written informally in a personable tone of an experienced person conveying exactly how to recreate a recipe. The recipes make allowances for individual preference and skill level, while at the same time making basic assumptions about the reader's knowledge base. Shange writes in "trademark lilting vernacular" The voice of a piece is extremely important, for Shange said in an interview with Neal A. Lester in 1990 that "I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives."