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Ross brings to the forefront new figures that are usually not represented in talks of Black identity. In Oreo she presents the characters of Jimmie C., the feeble-hearted, fainting nerd, Jimmie's best friend, Fonzelle Scarsdale, a hyper-sexualized F-student with a choreographed heavy walk, the flamboyantly dressed pimp, Parnell, and Kirk the sexual beast with an oversized phallus.
The novels uses a broad spectrum of languages, including African American vernacular, Yiddish, superstandard language, louise-ese, math, rhyme, singing. Christine's skillful navigation among this broad array of languages points to her cultural hybridity. She is capable of code-switching and interchanging, and communicating with all these languages and their users.
Oreo can also be viewed as searching for her identity, since she feels that neither "Jewish" nor "Black" fully define her experience. Oreo is in multiple spaces where others assume her identity and treat her according to their assumptions. Oreo never had the opportunity to immerse herself into both of her racial designations, and she believed that finding her father would give her the missing piece of her identity. She was trying to transcend race and find her individual identity.
Upon its republication by Northeastern University Press in 2000, the then nearly thirty-year-old novel was praised for being ahead of its time. "Oreo" has been hailed as "one of the masterpieces of 20th century American comic writing." Furthermore, one critic elaborated that "Oreo" was "a true twenty-first century novel." The novel's "wit is global, hybrid and uproarious ... simultaneously irreverent, appropriative and serious. It is post-everything: post-modern, post-identity politics, post-politically correct." Novelist Paul Beatty also included an excerpt of "Oreo" in his 2006 anthology of African-American humor "Hokum". In June 2007, Cultural critic Jalylah Burrell listed the book on VIBE.com as the number one work in African-American literature that should be adapted into a major motion picture, writing, "Quirky comedy with surrealist elements, i.e., Wes Anderson meets Kaufman/Gondry."
The novel was adapted by Adam Davenport into a screenplay intended as a starring vehicle for Keke Palmer. The project is yet to be produced.
Erasure is a 2001 novel by Percival Everett and originally published by UPNE. The novel reacts against the dominant strains of discussion surrounding the publication and criticism of African American literature.
Erasure is about a writer dealing with death, murder, and growing old. The novel's plot revolves around many things, but is essentially about the consequences of turning one's art into a simple commodity; i.e. giving into market forces. The market force within Erasure mirrors the late-90s reality around how the publishing industry pigeon-holed Black writers, and centered or valued certain experiences [those of the urban poor] over others. Themes around race, class, loyalty to family, sex, the theory of language, the life of canonical western artists, abortion, and sexual identity are also explored as the novel unfolds.
Like many Everett novels, "Erasure" is experimental in structure. Part of the novel's structure involves the multiple embedded narratives, written by the main character Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, including his mock-novel titled "My Pafology". "The Guardian" described as a "skilful, extended parody of ghetto novels such as Sapphire's "Push"." The novel includes other narrative styles within the larger narrative frame, including an academic paper, personal letters, story ideas, imagined dialogue between fictionalized historical characters, and, in the final section, the end of "Erasure" as written by Stagg R Leigh, Monk's alter ego.
The novel was well received. "The Guardian" focused on the dark comedy that it represents, describing it as moving towards "bleakest comedy" and "sly work." Ready Steady Book focused more on the novel being "full of anger" about the African American literary establishment, but describes the most redeeming elements of the plot coming from " moving portrait of a son coming to terms with his mother’s life."
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a 1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The story depicts the struggles of African Americans as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman. She tells of the major events of her life from the time she was a young slave girl in the American South at the end of the Civil War.
The novel was dramatized in a TV movie in 1974, starring Cicely Tyson.
Some people have asked me whether or not "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" is fiction or nonfiction. It is fiction. When Dial Press first sent it out, they did not put "a novel" on the galleys or on the dustjacket, so a lot of people had the feeling that it could have been real. ... I did a lot of research in books to give some facts to what Miss Jane could talk about, but these are my creations. I read quite a few interviews performed with former slaves by the WPA during the thirties and I got their rhythm and how they said certain things. But I never interviewed anybody.
The book was made into an award-winning television movie, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman", broadcast on CBS in 1974. The film holds importance as one of the first made-for-TV movies to deal with African-American characters with depth and sympathy. It preceded the ground-breaking television miniseries "Roots" by three years. The film culminates with Miss Pittman joining the civil rights movement in 1962 at age 110. Critics have noted the language to be difficult to understand by viewers not familiar with the dialect and accent of the characters.
The movie was directed by John Korty; the screenplay was written by Tracy Keenan Wynn and executive produced by Roger Gimbel. It starred Cicely Tyson in the lead role, as well as Michael Murphy, Richard Dysart, Katherine Helmond and Odetta. The film was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and was notable for its use of very realistic special effects makeup by Stan Winston and Rick Baker for the lead character, who is shown from ages 23 to 110. The television movie is currently distributed through Classic Media. The film won nine Emmy Awards in 1974 including Best Actress of the Year, Best Lead Actress in a Drama, Best Directing in a Drama, and Best Writing in Drama.
Joy (1990) is a novel by Marsha Hunt about the relationship between two African-American women that is based on secrets, lies and delusion. Mainly set in a posh New York apartment in the course of one day in the spring of 1987, the novel contains frequent flashbacks that describe life in a black neighbourhood in the 1950s and 1960s. The book also deals with stardom in the music business and some people's inability, despite their riches, to make their own American Dream come true and to lead fulfilled lives.
The first person narrator of the novel is Palatine Ross, a 70-year-old cleaning woman originally from New Orleans, whose childhood is dominated by poverty and loss.
Shutting her eyes to all the evil in the world and firmly relying on God and the words of the Bible as guidance, Palatine tries to raise Joy and her sisters to be educated, honest and religious members of society. The fact that, growing up in a rough neighbourhood, the not-yet-teenaged girls are very early in their lives confronted with sex willingly escapes her notice. It troubles Palatine a great deal when Dagwood, her neighbour's new boyfriend, starts spending the night with the girls' mother. One morning during the summer vacation, while his girlfriend is at work and Palatine is taking care of the children, Dagwood stays on in the apartment.
Right from the start, Palatine tries to take the three girls along to church, seeing that their blaspheming mother will never do so. Time and again, in the course of more than twenty years, Palatine tries to convince Joy that finding herself a nice coloured boyfriend whom she could marry and have children with would be the right thing to do. However, "Chocolate Chip" remains a one-hit wonder after an interview given by Brenda to some gay magazine in which she announces her coming out as a lesbian.
However, rather than being able to mourn Joy's death, she for the first time learns things about Joy which finally force her to abandon her blinkered view of her "God-sent child" and admit that she was a sinner rather than a saint.
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, by the African-American writer Ishmael Reed, is a satirical take on the traditional Western. It is Ishmael Reed's second novel, following "The Freelance Pallbearers" (1967), and was first published in 1969. It tells the story of the Loop Garoo Kid, an African-American cowboy who practices the religion of Neohoodooism, and describes his struggle against established religion and cultural oppression.
"Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" is a western that spans some three centuries of history and references locations from across the United States landscape. Through the three colorful protagonists, Chief Showcase, a Native American, Drag Gibson, a white land capitalist, and the Loop Garoo Kid, an African-American cowboy, Reed criticizes the hypocrisy of the American Church, the warping of history to degrade the portrayal of African Americans, and ways the "white man" attempts to destroy the "black man".
"Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" jumps into the narrative of the main protagonist, Loop Garoo, a black, silver tongued, circus cowboy, who represents the devil to the white men. The circus troupe heads into Yellow Back Radio, a sparsely populated ghost town overtaken by a child population in Indian garb. The circus troupe and the children are massacred by the adults that were chased out by the children, while Loop Garoo escapes with his life and a desire for vengeance. Drag Gibson, a homosexual and influential land-owner who is head of the city, is also introduced.
As Drag deals with the problems from a deteriorating city, Loop Garoo is saved from being eaten by wild animals by Chief Showcase, a Native American who fights his oppressors through suave and underhanded means. Loop begins his Hoodoo curses on Drag, giving him the retroactive itch and other inconveniences, as the conflict builds.
Drag murders his sixth wife and orders his seventh through the mail-order service. Her name is Mustache Sal, a nymphomaniac who seeks to murder Drag to inherit his vast fortunes. She proceeds to have sex with just about every main and minor male character, showing a complete lack of discrimination. As Drag continues into a progressively more deteriorating state of mind because of the uncontrollable loss of power and influence around him, Loop Garoo continues to gain influence through his appearance in town, soundly whipping the marshal and pushing the Preacher into the brink of insanity.
The Loop Garoo Kid is an African-American cowboy and Neohoodoo houngan. He combats the imperialism and monopolistic greed of Drag Gibson and organized religion, casting spells and summoning Loa to assist him. His struggle against Gibson symbolizes his fight against the power structure and repressive elements of white culture. He embodies African-American culture and religion; his art is as diverse and adaptable as the Hoodoo rituals he performs. Loop Garoo is the apocryphal brother of Jesus Christ, the love interest of the Virgin Mary, and the high priest of Neohoodooism.
Drag Gibson is an influential landowner who represents the impact of white culture on the West, the rapacious greed of land capitalists, and the rigidity of Judeo-Christian values. He rules the town of Yellow Back Radio from his ranch house with a small army of ranch hands. A blatant racist with no regard for human life, he kills off a total of seven wives by the end of the novel. Drag clashes with Loop Garoo and Neohoodooism until he is finally eaten by Yellow Back Radio's steel-jawed hogs.
Chief Showcase is the last surviving Native-American in the Yellow Back Radio region. After Drag Gibson slaughtered his tribe, he began writing militant poetry about white imperialism. Reed portrays Showcase as spiritual and advanced - he travels in a helicopter that confuses and terrifies his provincial white adversaries. Showcase fights back against his oppressors by playing both sides of an escalating conflict between Drag Gibson and the powers in Washington, D.C., working to stir up trouble between the powerful Western landowner and the greedy Federal Government.
Zozo Labrique is a Hoodoo mambo who travelled with Loop Garoo's circus. She taught Loop Garoo connaissance, or Hoodoo magic, and was killed by Drag Gibson's cowhands when they burned down the circus. She reappears in the novel as a Loa called upon by Loop Garoo during his summoning ritual.
Mustache Sal is Drag Gibson's nymphomaniac mail-order bride. She marries Drag with the intention of poisoning him and inheriting his land, but he discovers her plan and feeds her to the executioner's steel-jawed hogs. In contrast to the Black Cougar Saloon's Hurdy Gurdy girls and Drag's previous wife, The Horrible Hybrid, Mustache Sal displays independence, intelligence, and open-mindedness. She doesn't discriminate racially in her personal associations, consorting with Loop Garoo, the ranch hands, and Chief Showcase alike.
Reverend Boyd is the Protestant minister of Yellow Back Radio. He tries to connect with the youth of the town, hosting light shows for them, but his efforts fail. He turns to alcohol for comfort and is ridiculed by Loop Garoo and Pope Innocent. He is killed by the Pope with a can of DDT-based insecticide.
Field Marshal Theda Doompussy Blackwell is a member of the U.S. military brass who schemes with Chief Showcase to take control of Drag Gibson's land. Reed portrays the Field Marshal as weak, petulant, and possibly homosexual, poking fun at the typically virile stereotype of the military man.
Reed interweaves the basic tenets of a religious aesthetic called Neohoodooism throughout the text. He achieves this chiefly through the statements of the Loop Garoo Kid, the spiritual high priest of Neohoodooism. The religious side of Neohoodooism has its roots in the African-American folk magic of Hoodoo, which Reed claims is based on the West African religion of Vodoun. Loop Garoo's summoning of various Loa and hexing of Drag Gibson confirms these religious roots.
Neohoodooism is also an artistic aesthetic which values multicultural hybridism. The Loop Garoo Kid uses Neohoodooism to fight Drag Gibson, a symbol of the intolerance in white culture. Their battle represents the struggle of an inclusive African-American culture against a rigid Judeo-Christian one.
Reed explains that he linked the religious and aesthetic aspects of Neohoodooism together because the one is a metaphor for the other; both aspects are essentially amalgamations: "Voodoo is the perfect metaphor for the multicultural. Voodoo comes out of the fact that all these different tribes and cultures were brought from Africa and Haiti. All of their mythologies, knowledges, and herbal medicines, their folklores, jelled. It's an amalgamation like this country."
"Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" was received with varied criticisms: "Neil Schmitz, in an essay on Reed's fiction in "Twentieth Century Literature" (April 1974), judged "Yellow Back Radio" "to exhibit a 'simplistic' focus and 'diffused' energy, although many readers found it to be a comic tour de force."
"Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" has been cited as an important precursor or model for the 1974 satirical Western film "Blazing Saddles", a connection that Reed himself has made.
"Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down" was rated one of the 100 Best Books in the 20th Century by the "American Book Review" and a "San Francisco Chronicle" poll.
The Salt Eaters is a 1980 novel, the first such work by Toni Cade Bambara. The novel is written in an experimental style and is explicitly political in tone, with several of the characters being veterans of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It is set in the fictional town of Claybourne, Georgia.
The novel opens on Minnie Ransom, the "fabled healer of the district", performing a healing on Velma Henry who has attempted suicide by slitting her wrists and sticking her head into a gas oven. Velma, a community activist who has worked in various leftist movements, has suffered a nervous breakdown due to the increasing factionalism in the activist community of Claybourne as well as her failing marriage to Obie, another activist, and the pressures of her job as a computer programmer at Transchemical, a chemical plant in the neighboring town.
The entirety of the novel's action revolves around the healing, with the planning of the upcoming Spring Festival serving as backdrop. The point-of-view of the novel shifts numerous times between characters. "At once spiritual, apocalyptic, mysterious, cacophonic, and destabilizing, "The Salt Eaters" offers a unifying epiphany of creation and community."
The Between (1995) is the first novel by writer Tananarive Due. It was nominated for the
A middle-class African American couple's life is shattered when the wife begins receiving death threats. The husband begins to experience an alternative reality so real he has trouble grasping which is real. His psychiatrist diagnosis him as a latent schizophrenic. The family must decide if its schizophrenia, are the dreams a cosmic death threat or has the husband become unstuck from this reality and become stuck between worlds.
Part horror novel, part detective story and part speculative fiction, "The Between" is a mix of genres. Yet it is no hybrid. It is a finely honed work that always engages and frequently surprises. <br>-- JAMES POLK, "The New York Times"
The lengthy autobiographical essay by Due elucidates the history and context of her first novel "The Between" among many other works and details of her life. Due also subtly suggests the horrifying thought that pervades the story but is left tactfully unspoken: if each of us creates our own reality, then ultimately we are all alone in the world.
On the Come Up, published on February 5, 2019 by Balzer + Bray, is a young adult novel by Angie Thomas . It tells the story of Bri, a sixteen-year old rapper hoping to fill the shoes of her father and 'make it' as an underground hip-hop legend. Overnight, Bri becomes an internet sensation after posting a rap hit which sparks controversy. As Bri defeats the odds to 'make it' she battles controversy to achieve her dreams. It is set in the same universe (Garden Heights) as Thomas' first book "The Hate U Give".
The book was well reviewed by The New York Times, Vox, and The Washington Post.
The American Library Association named the book one of the best released for young adults in 2020.
"On the Come Up" received several accollades:
On February 4, 2019, Fox 2000 Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the novel with George Tillman Jr. directing and producing with Robert Teitel, and Jay Marcus from State Street Pictures, alongside Thomas Marty Bowen, Isaac Klausner and John Fischer of Temple Hill Entertainment. On December 11, 2019, after Disney acquisition of 21st Century Fox and closing of Fox 2000, Paramount Players acquired the film adaptation with Kay Oyegun hired to write the script and Tillman Jr. still attached to direct. On October 19, 2020, Wanuri Kahiu replaced Tillman Jr. as director of the film.
If He Hollers Let Him Go is the first novel by American writer Chester Himes, published in 1945, about an African-American shipyard worker in Los Angeles during World War II. It earned him critical acclaim and was considered a "protest novel", in the tradition of Richard Wright.
The book was adapted as a 1968 film, starring Raymond St. Jacques, Dana Wynter, Kevin McCarthy, Barbara McNair, and Arthur O'Connell. The screenplay differed markedly from the novel.
The story spans four days in the life of Robert "Bob" Jones, a newcomer to Los Angeles from Ohio. With some college education, he works as a crew leader in a naval shipyard. In this period, black workers are gaining opportunities in the defense industry as a result of executive orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II.
However, Jones cannot escape the pressures of racism. He believes he was promoted as a supervisor only to gain the cooperation of black workers in the war effort. He is forced to deal with anti-communist paranoia, resentment from whites on the floor working at the same jobs as "colored boys", and the baiting of black workers by some white females.
His fears invade his dreams, aspirations, and passions. His dream of making something of himself in California is jeopardized as he reacts to the actions of the white people around him. He struggles to contain his urges to fight, kill, and rape as ways to overcome his resentment of white power arrayed against him.
The main characters are the protagonist, Bob Jones, and two women: Madge Perkins, who is white; and Alice Harrison, his higher-class African-American girlfriend. Bob struggles for place in a white-dominated world and is filled with violent thoughts against white people, but does not act on them.
In what is described as a "sexually charged novel", Madge makes a racial slur toward Bob. His calling her a "bitch" results in his demotion. He considers raping her as a way to get back at white America, seeing her as a symbol of "whiteness", but when she expresses sexual attraction to him, he rejects her. Alice tells Bob it is no use getting angry about the inequality that blacks must live with, and he has to learn to deal with it.
Themes addressed in the novel include racism suffered by blacks, color differentiation among African Americans (Alice's light skin is associated with her higher class), employment discrimination against blacks, and class divisions among whites and blacks. Communism is featured generously, as the Communist unionists ("agitators") are the only ones who talk about the issue of race in any way with which the protagonist agrees. There is some reference to jazz.
The novel is referred to in Frantz Fanon's book, "Black Skin White Masks" (1952), first published in French, in the chapter titled "The Fact of Blackness".
Critics praised this first novel by Himes, classifying it in the "protest novel" tradition established by Richard Wright.
Brown Girl, Brownstones is the debut novel by the internationally recognized writer Paule Marshall, first published in 1959, and dramatized by CBS Television Workshop in 1960. The story is about Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. The book gained further recognition after it was reprinted in 1981 by the Feminist Press.
Book 1. A Long Day and a Long Night.
Ten-year-old Selina Boyce lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn with her Barbadian immigrant family: her mother Silla, father Deighton, and sister Ina. Silla is a strict, no-nonsense woman whose goal is to save enough money to purchase the brownstone they are leasing. Deighton is lackadaisical, impulsive, and he frequently cheats on his wife. His dreams of returning to Barbados and his frivolousness are a source of tension between Silla and him. Deighton inherits a piece of land; Silla wants him to sell it so they can buy the brownstone, but Deighton has fantasies about moving back and building an extravagant house. Suggie Skeete, Miss Mary, and Miss Thompson are a few other characters who appear sporadically; Selina goes to them for companionship and advice.
Book 2 opens with a brief description of Deighton and Silla's drawn-out argument over selling the piece of land, and Selina imagining herself as one of the sleeping children who lived in the brownstone before the Boyces. Selina starts to think about womanhood and growing up. She goes to the park with her friend Beryl, where they have an argument about how babies are born: c-section or vaginal birth. Beryl confides to Selina that she has started menstruating. Selina is confused and somewhat repulsed by the idea, as she believes it will never happen to her. In reality, Selina feels left out and confused by puberty.
World War II is in progress at the start of the third book; this section spans a few years, beginning when Selina is around eleven and ends when she is fifteen. Book 3 is titled "The War" partially in reference to the war, but also in reference to the continuing argument between Silla and Deighton about his piece of land. A group of a few other Bajan women visits Silla in her kitchen while she makes Barbadian cuisine to sell. She vents her frustrations about the land, but she comes with a plan that will get it taken care of. Selina overhears, and Silla threatens to punish her if she tells her father.
Selina searches for someone she can tell about Silla's plans because she wants to protect her father. Deighton, still jobless, begins to devote his time to studying the trumpet. He believes that music will be his next get-rich-quick scheme. Selina tells him about the conversation Silla had with the other Bajan women and her plans to somehow sell the land, but reassures him that it's probably nothing to worry about. She fights with her sister, feeling ignored and unloved. Ina says that no one will ever like her because of her bold and brash personality.
Selina tells Miss Thompson about her fight and her concerns about her mothers plans. Miss Thompson, being a maternal and nurturing person, tries to help by distracting her. She fixes Selina's hair in curls, then Selina heads to her mother's work with the intention of confronting her about her plans to sell the land behind Deighton's back. Silla chastises her for travelling to the part of town by herself at night.
Silla reveals that she has successfully sold Deighton's land for nine hundred dollars. Over the course of a year, Silla forged letters to Deighton's sister and granted his sister the power of attorney to sell the land. Deighton seems to be resigned to this fact, and agrees to take out the money the following day. He is gone the entire day, which raises Silla's suspicions. Deighton comes home with an abundance of frivolous and extravagant gifts. Silla mourns the loss of the money that could have gotten them the brownstone.
The community attends the wedding of ’Gatha Steed’s daughter, which turns out to be an extravagant celebration. Deighton shows up to the reception, but it is clear that everyone know what he’s done, and he is essentially excommunicated. He severely injures his arm while incorrectly using machinery at a factory job, then begins to follow a cultist religion lead by a man called Father Peace. Deighton he demands to be called "Brother Boyce", and he renounces his family to be with other followers of Father Peace. Silla calls the authorities to have him deported back to Barbados. The family receives news that Deighton either jumped or fell off the ship that was on its way to Barbados, and he drowned.
Since her father's death, Selina's grief has removes her even further from the community. She attends a party hosted by her childhood friend, Beryl, where Selina learns about the Association. She realizes that her peers are all conforming to their parents’ wishes rather than deciding their futures for themselves. Selina begins college. Silla owns the brownstone, and she works to get rid of Miss Mary and Suggie. Miss Mary passes away, and Silla is able to evict Suggie on the grounds that her promiscuous behavior seems suspiciously like prostitution. Selina loses two of the people she's closest to in a short span. Convinced Silla's doing it on purpose, she becomes even angrier and more reclusive.
Miss Thompson reveals to Selina how she got the sore on her leg. It was the result of a racist attack while she was in the South, where a man injured her with a shovel. She also encourages her to attend an Association meeting so she can re-connect with her "people" and her culture a bit more and stop feeling so alienated. Selina begrudgingly agrees to go, but she tells the group they are money-hungry, narrow-minded, etc. and their concerns are petty compared to what they have to face in the white world.
Selina meets Clive, a melancholy artist about ten years her senior. He initially seems to share a lot of Selina's personal values, and they begin a secret relationship. Selina joins her school dance team, discovering she has natural talent and enjoys it. Silla finds out about Clive, but Selina lies and says they are just friends. Silla warns Selina about him, saying that he is not the sort of person she should hang around with.
Selina decides to rejoin the Association under the pretense of wanting the scholarship they are offering. She plans to take the money and use it to run away with Clive. Selina dances a sola in a recital and has a racist encounter with one of the other dancer's mother afterwards. Selina goes straight to Clive's, and realizes that he never meant to go away with her. Selina leaves her copy of the key to his apartment and returns home to cry herself to sleep.
Selina wins the Association scholarship, but she declines the award. In private, she tells her mother she never stopped seeing Clive and what she had planned to do with the money. Selina plans to leave school and go to Barbados alone. The novel ends with Selina walking alone and tossing one of the silver bangles she has had since she was a baby towards a set of brownstones that are being torn down for a city project.
"Remarkable for its colorful characters, the cadence of its dialogue and its evocation of a still-lingering past." — "New York Times Book Review""
"Marshall brings to her characters ... an instinctive understanding, a generosity and free humor that combine to form a style remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control." — "The New Yorker""
"An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears." — "New York Herald Tribune"
The tension between the themes of individualism and ethnicity are explored in Martin Japtok's essay "Paule Marshall's "Brown Girl, Brownstones": Reconciling Ethnicity and Individualism", which concludes: "The simultaneous assertion of ethnicity and individualism must thus be accomplished through a constructionist conceptualization of ethnicity that allows one to see ethnic solidarity as an original response to an Old World environment that still has validity in the New World, though maybe not the same urgency. […] Selina accepts ethnic communalism while pursuing an individualist agenda, creating a new conceptualization of ethnicity in the process".
Betsey Brown is an African-American literature novel by Ntozake Shange, published in 1985.
"Betsey Brown" is the story of an adolescent African-American girl growing up in 1959 St. Louis, Missouri, who is part of the first generation of students to be integrated in the public school system. She navigates common adolescent issues such as family dynamics, first love, and identity questions.
Thematic concerns of the novel include African-American family life, coming of age, feminism, and racial freedom. One critic described the narrative structure of the novel as paralleling "the personal story of Betsey’s attaining self-confidence with the social achievements of the Civil Rights Movement." This structure allows Shange to address feminist issues in addition to racial issues.
In order to write the novel, Shange drew on her own experiences growing up in St. Louis, but the resulting novel is not entirely autobiographical. Nevertheless, like Betsey Brown, Shange really did know such African-American celebrities as Chuck Berry and W. E. B. Du Bois.
"Betsey Brown" was published in 1985 by St. Martin's Press.
Set in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Educationm —the landmark case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students were unconstitutional—the novel is eponymous.
Though perhaps the least known of Shange's work, the novel has been called "a little gem."
Shange adapted the novel into a musical play, which has been performed in various cities.
Love (2003) is the eighth novel by Toni Morrison. Written in Morrison's non-linear style, the novel tells of the lives of several women and their relationships to the late Bill Cosey.
Cosey was a charismatic hotel owner, and the people around him were affected by his life — even long after his death. The main characters are Christine, his granddaughter and Heed, his widow. The two are the same age and used to be friends but some forty years after Cosey's death they are sworn enemies, and yet share his mansion. Again Morrison uses split narrative and jumps back and forth throughout the story, not fully unfolding until the very end. The characters in the novel all have some relation to the infamous Bill Cosey.
Similar to the concept of communication between the living and the dead in her 1987 novel "Beloved", Morrison introduced a character named Junior; she was the medium to connect the dead Bill Cosey to the world of the living.
The storytelling techniques in "Love", namely the split narrative, suggest a recent trend in Morrison's literature that divides the plot among different time periods.
Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Story is a 2007 mystery novel by actor Blair Underwood and writers Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. The book was released on June 19, 2007 through Atria Books and is the first book in the "Tennyson Hardwick" series. "Casanegra" follows the adventures of Tennyson Hardwick, an actor and former gigolo. A sequel, "In the Night of the Heat", was released in 2009.
Underwood has expressed interest in filming an adaptation of "Casanegra" with himself potentially starring as the character of Tennyson Hardwick.
Tennyson "Ten" Hardwick is an actor trying to make it big in Hollywood, which is made difficult by his past as a gigolo that sold his body to anyone willing to pay the right price. This past has caused a distance between Tennyson and his family, especially his LAPD captain of a father. However overcoming his past proves to be harder than he imagined after Tennyson finds himself the prime suspect for the murder of Afrodite, a rapper and former client of his.
Underwood came up with the book's concept after working on a project with Diana Ross that would have had the two acting as a client and her gigolo. The project never came to fruition, but Underwood continued to work on the concept until he approached Due with the idea of writing a novel based upon a gigolo. The first draft of "Casanegra" was written by Due and subsequent drafts were co-written with Underwood and Barnes. The team drew on Walter Mosley and Zane for some of the book's influences and included several recognizable Hollywood features such as the restaurant chain Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles and the African-American owned bookstore Eso Won Books.
Critical reception was mostly positive. Entertainment Weekly and Publishers Weekly both gave mostly positive reviews for "Casanegra", with Publishers Weekly praising the book as a "seamlessly entertaining novel".
Legendborn is a debut young adult fantasy novel by Tracy Deonn. Called "a modern day twist on Arthurian legend" it follows a Black teenage girl who discovers a secret historically white magic society while attending a UNC-Chapel Hill residential pre-college program. The book is the first in the "Legendborn" series. It was released on September 15, 2020 and published under Simon & Schuster/McElderry. The book was recommended by BuzzFeed, Nerdist, and io9.
The book centers 16-year-old Bree Matthews, who attempts to infiltrate a historically white magical society to get help hunting the demons that are terrorizing the participants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill pre-college summer program she is attending.
Tracy Deonn was inspired by "The Dark is Rising" series by Susan Cooper. She was also influenced by the death of her mother. Having worked in video games, she took that knowledge to help develop the stringent rules that guide the magical system described in the book.
"Legendborn" received positive critical reception. "Publisher's Weekly" stated, "Though hazy exposition initially slows the narrative, Deonn adeptly employs the haunting history of the American South [...] to explore themes of ancestral pain, grief, and love, balancing them with stimulating worldbuilding and multiple thrilling plot twists." In a starred review Bookpage stated, "Legendborn establishes Deonn as an important new voice in YA. Its gorgeous prose and heart-splitting honesty compel an eyes-wide-open reading experience."
Syfy.com called the book "a refreshing twist on classic Arthurian legend with a lot of Southern Black girl magic to boot". Natalie Berglind wrote in a review for the "Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books", "Deonn brings Arthurian legend to life with originality, a dash of heart-pounding demon-slaying, and a deep and meaningful acknowledgement of the violent roots of slavery in U.S. history." "Kirkus Reviews" noted "Representation of actualized, strong queer characters is organic, not forced, and so are textual conversations around emotional wellness and intergenerational trauma [...] Well-crafted allusions to established legends and other literary works are delightful easter eggs."
The Harlem Detective series of novels by Chester Himes comprises nine hardboiled novels set in the 1950s and early 1960s:

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