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All American Boys, published in 2015 by Atheneum, is a young adult novel written by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. The book tells the story of two teenage boys, Rashad Butler and Quinn Collins, as they handle racism and police brutality in their communityThe novel has gained attention in recent years due, becoming t...
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely met on a Simon & Schuster book tour in 2013. While sharing a room on the book tour, they heard the news that George Zimmerman had been acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin. Reynolds and Kiely began to share their feelings and frustrations, developing a friendship. After Michael Bro...
The book follows two characters, Rashad Butler and Quinn, as they navigate racism. The novel switches between the perspective of a black boy, Rashad, written by Jason Reynolds, and a white boy, Quinn, written by Brendan Kiely.Rashad is a 16-year-old who is assaulted by a white police officer in a convenience store. Qui...
"All American Boys" won the inaugural Walter Dean Myers Award from the We Need Diverse Books organization inn 2016 and the Coretta Scott King Award. In 2016, the novel won the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award for Young Adult Fiction.
In 2020, "All American Boys" landed the third position on the American Library Association's list of the most commonly banned and challenged books in the United States. The book was banned, challenged, and/or restricted "for profanity, drug use, and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views, c...
Two parents, one of whom a police officer with children at Bailey Middle School in Cornelius, North Carolina, challenged All American Boys. Police officers, faculty members and community members were all involved in the review process, with the school inviting officers to attend classes in which the novel was taught. A...
A Business Career is a novel by African-American author Charles Chesnutt that features the life of a "new woman" of the late 19th century; she enters the world of business instead of embracing the traditional roles of women. It explores a failed romance between two successful upper-class members. A family’s vendetta ag...
The book was completed in 1890 but Chesnutt, who had published only a few short stories by then, was unable to interest a publisher in it. The book's depiction of white society may have contributed to that failure. Editor Walter Hines Page, who declined the book, nevertheless encouraged Chesnutt in his writing and late...
Since the late 20th century, there has been a revival of interest in Chesnutt. This novel was published posthumously in 2005 with an introduction and editing by Matthew Wilson.
The story takes place in 1890s in the Midwest city of Groveland (critics consider this a fictional stand-in for Cleveland, where Chesnutt lived). At the Truscott Refining Company, the male stenographer has just been fired. Stella Merwin fills in temporarily; she has already learned shorthand. When an opportunity opens ...
The Truscott Refining Company is at the brink of collapse because the company needs $200,000 that it owes to its creditors. Luckily Matilda Wedderburn comes to Truscott’s rescue, even though he put their romance to an end, by offering her good friend the money that he desperately needs therefore saving the company.
Stella moves back to Cloverdale leaving Groveland in her rear-view mirror because she wants to forget about her experience working for Wendell Truscott as much as possible. She soon receives a letter from Truscott asking her to come back to work because he cannot find anyone who did as good a job as she did, but more i...
Stella Merwin (Miss Smith): The protagonist of the novel is a "new woman" of the late 19th century who pursues a life outside the traditional roles of wife and mother. As a junior in college, she learns shorthand, which enables her to secure a job as a stenographer. She works for The Truscott Refining Company with the ...
Wendell Truscott: The wealthy proprietor of the Truscott Refining Company whom the Merwin family blames for their financial ruin. He is a crafty businessman. It is revealed that he never betrayed his mentor Henry Merwin, but provided for his family.
Mrs. Paxton: Stella’s mentor who gets her the job at Truscott Refining. She guides Stella in the business world and becomes a friend.
Mr. Peters: The former stenographer, fired for tardiness due to excessive drinking.
Mr. Ross: The bookkeeper of Truscott Refining, who steals $20,000 from the company, but escapes to South America. Stella Merwin's judgment of him is proved true by events.
Matilda Wedderburn: A beautiful, wealthy woman being courted by Wendell Truscott. Her hopes of marrying him end when he "falls for" Stella Merwin. As a friend, she loans Truscott money to save the company.
Mrs. Merwin: The mother of Stella and George, and wife of Henry Merwin. The widow has trouble dealing with her decline in status and yearns to return to her high place in society
George Merwin: Stella’s brother, who also lives and works in Groveland. George has a gambling problem and falls into debt, leading to his arrest. He is saved by a stranger, revealed to be Wendell Truscott, whom the Merwin family considers an enemy. He is sent to a ranch in the West for rehabilitation.
The major theme of this novel is the emergence of the new woman in American society at the turn of the century. Mrs. Merwin exemplifies the traditional female role as a mother and wife, but Stella Merwin pursues higher education. Her schooling allows her to get a job in the business world that pays a substantial salary...
Chesnutt explores the financial inequality in the structure of society. This era was known for the vast disparity in wealth between the classes, as the upper class lived in luxurious mansions with many servants and enjoyed the theatre, but the lower class struggled through life by working long hours in a factory or off...
Chesnutt wrote a novel of Realism, portraying society, as was the major form of his time. He did not use a high style of elaborate language or refer to the mythical characters popular in an earlier generation. The novel effectively captures the business world by describing The Truscott Refining Company’s inner workings...
The novel follows the form of a romance, as Matilda Wedderburn and Wendell Truscott engage in a courtship. This fails after he falls for his young stenographer. The courtship is highlighted by nights out at the theatre and dinner parties with the family. It omits the sexual component prevalent in modern courtship and p...
When Chesnutt completed his novel in 1890, he was unable to find a publisher for it. At the time he had published only a few short stories set in the South, recounting the culture of slave life on plantations. Although Houghton Mifflin chose not to publish the novel, editor Walter Hines Page advised Chesnutt, "You will...
Twenty-first century scholar Matthew Wilson believes Chesnutt may have been trying to appeal in this work to white readers, who made up most of the market for literature. Chesnutt, along with Paul Laurence Dunbar, was one of the first African-American writers to write in the "white life" genre, to portray only white ch...
Matthew Wilson says about African-American authors at the turn of the 20th century:
"Very little expressed interest in representations of whiteness in the black imagination. Black cultural and social critics allude to such representations in their writing, yet only a few have dared to make explicit those perceptions of whiteness that they think will discomfort or antagonize readers."He describes Chesn...
Charles Chesnutt viewed his work differently than most in terms of its racial implications. After receiving an award from the NAACP in the early 1900s, Chesnutt said he was "Not a Negro writing about Negroes, but a human being writing about other human beings." He did not see color in his writing. But, many critics con...
It is not known whether Chesnutt tried to find another publisher for "A Business Career," but it was among his six unpublished manuscripts found at the time of his death. In his introduction to this novel, editor Mathew Wilson says, "African American writers have had no right to represent white-life exclusively because...
When it was published in 2005 over a century after it was written, "A Business Career" received little attention from critics or readers. One of the first of its kind, the novel has faded to the edge of American Literature.
Where the Line Bleeds is the debut novel by American writer Jesmyn Ward. It was published in 2008 by Scribner.
Ward had difficulty finding a publisher for the novel. Between this and the low pay she received from her job as a composition instructor, Ward considered abandoning writing to pursue a career in nursing. But before she went gave up entirely, Doug Siebold of Agate Publishing accepted the novel, and the company publishe...
Characters from the novel have later appeared in other books by Ward.
"Where the Line Bleeds" follows twin brothers who have just graduated from high school on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Poor and Black, they find few economic opportunities as they struggle to undertake their adult lives.
The novel received positive reviews. Reviews from "Kirkus" and "Publishers Weekly" praised the novel as a strong debut. In the "Austin Chronicle," Elizabeth Jackson compared Ward’s style to William Faulkner and noted the potential in “a female, black author invoking the (white) father of Southern letters to explore the...
The novel was shortlisted for the First Novelist Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.
Black Girl in Paris is a novel written by American author Shay Youngblood. It was originally published in 2000 by Riverhead Books and then reprinted in 2013 by Blue Cloud Press.
The novel follows Eden Daniels, a black American woman in her mid-20s, who longs to be a writer and escapes to Paris in the mid-1980s.
In 2013 the novel was adapted into a short film of the same name directed by Kiandra Parks and starring Zaraah Abrahams.
In 1986 Eden Daniels, a 26 year old African-American woman decides to move to Paris to follow in the steps of other artists she's admired and try to become a writer.
Eden arrives in Paris when a wave of terrorism sparks an anti-immigrant backlash. Nevertheless, she is able to find work in the ex-pat community and works as an artist's model, an au-pair and a poet's assistant. As she scrapes by Eden dreams of encountering one of her literary heroes, James Baldwin who still lives in P...
Eden falls in love with Ving, a white American jazz musician, but their relationship is complicated as they still face prejudice for being an interracial couple. When the family where Eden works as an au-pair leaves for the U.S. and Ving leaves around the same time to visit his ailing mother, Eden is left friendless an...
Luce leaves Paris and Ving returns, sending Eden to his friends near Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where James Baldwin has an estate. Eden tries to meet him but learns he has returned to Paris. Heartbroken she finally begins to write her story down.
On Eden's last day in Paris she runs into Baldwin leaving a café. He greets her briefly before leaving.
The novel had a mixed reception. "Salon" called Youngblood a lyricist but criticized her for "clichéd bohemian characters". "Publishers Weekly" called it "a bold if sometimes self-indulgent memoir-style account of an aspiring writer".
Such a Fun Age is a 2019 novel by American author Kiley Reid. It is her debut novel and was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons on December 31, 2019. It tells the story of a young black woman who is wrongly accused of kidnapping while babysitting a white child, and the events that follow the incident. The novel received f...
Alix Chamberlain is a wealthy blogger and public speaker in her early thirties who has built a brand known as "LetHer Speak" around the practice of writing old-fashioned letters to businesses, often in exchange for free product samples, and encouraging women to be assertive. Alix's family has moved from New York City t...
Alix tells Emira that she should break up with Kelley because he fetishized black people in high school: he invited Robbie and the cool kids to the house to become friends with them and later broke up with Alix in favor of them. When Emira dismisses her advice, Alix gains access to Emira's email and leaks the video of ...
Minutes before the interview, Emira comes to know that it was in fact Alix who leaked the video. On air, Emira embarrasses Alix by quitting and using the same line that Kelley had used to break up with her in high school. When Alix confronts her, Emira urges Alix to be a better mother to Briar. After the interview airs...
Years pass and Emira begins working as administrative assistant. She sees Kelley with his black girlfriend and Mrs. Chamberlain with an older Briar but does not approach any of them. Well into her thirties, Emira wonders what she learned from her time at the Chamberlain house and what kind of person Briar will grow up ...
Reid started writing the novel in 2015, while she was applying to graduate school, and finished it while pursuing her MFA at the University of Iowa. It was during this period that the deaths of Freddie Gray and Philando Castile took place, and Reid said she was "absolutely inspired by the everyday terror" but that, in ...
The novel was published in the United States in hardcover and paperback by G. P. Putnam's Sons on December 31, 2019. It was published in the United Kingdom in hardcover by Bloomsbury Circus, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, on January 7, 2020.
The novel debuted at number three on "The New York Times" Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list.
"Such a Fun Age" deals with the themes of interracial relations, privilege, millennial anxiety and wealth.
Reid interrogates tropes of the white savior and unknowing racist in everyday life. Throughout the novel, the white characters assume they know what is best for the protagonist, without ever seeing anything from her perspective, and speak about her with a sense of ownership. The novel satirizes what has been described ...
The novel was very well-received by critics, who described it as having timely themes, authentic dialogue and believable characters. Sara Collins of "The Guardian" gave the novel a rave review, calling it "the calling card of a virtuoso talent" and writing that it "skillfully interweaves race-related explorations with ...
Hephzibah Anderson of "The Observer" criticized the character development of Alix Chamberlain as well as the novel's plot for "[pivoting] on an almighty coincidence" but nonetheless called it a "cracking debut" and wrote that "Reid writes with a confidence and verve that produce magnetic prose." "The Boston Globe" conc...
Lauren Christensen of "The New York Times Book Review" gave the novel a mixed review, criticizing the plot's "many lapses in credibility" as well as Reid's "cloying vernacular".
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a debut short story collection by Deesha Philyaw. The book contains nine stories about Black women, church, and sexuality and was released on September 1, 2020 by West Virginia University Press. It was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction and received The Story Pr...
The collection consists of nine stories that explore the intersection of sexuality and Christianity. Black women protagonists appear in each story. Topics covered include infidelity, casual sex, and lesbian relationships.
The title refers to the catch-all term for church-going women that Philyaw learned growing up. These women were prim, conservatively dressed, "who makes sure not a hair is out of place, never speaks out of line, and does all the right Godly things."
Philyaw stated in an interview for "Richmond Free Press", "I see the book as centering Black women in their own stories of the tug of war they experience between their desires and what they may have learned at church."
Philyaw was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. She was raised attending church and attended services under the denominations of AME, Baptist, Pentecostal, COGIC, and Missionary Baptist Church. Philyaw drew on those experience to write about how the church space influences female sexuality. She no longer attends ...
"The Secret Lives of Church Ladies" received critical acclaim. Marion Wink reviewed the book for "Star Tribune" and stated: "This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure." Wendeline O. Wright further praised Philyaw in "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette": "“The Secret Lives of Church Ladies” is an unforge...
"Kirkus" wrote in a starred review, "No saints exist in these pages, just full-throated, flesh-and-blood women who embrace and redefine love, and their own selves, in powerfully imperfect renditions. Tender, fierce, proudly Black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root." In a similarly positive...
In January 2021 it was announced that Tessa Thompson's newly formed production company, Viva Maude, had picked up the collection to be adapted for television. Philyaw is slated to write the adaptation and co-executive produce with Thompson.
Plan B is an unfinished novel published posthumously in America in 1993 by Chester Himes, which is the final volume in the Harlem Cycle. The story is even darker and more nihilistic than the preceding volumes, culminating in a violent revolutionary movement in the streets of America.
The first edition was published in France, in 1983 (Editions lieu commun), translated by Helène Devaux-Minié.
The story differs somewhat from the other volumes of the cycle in being less a detective story and more a surrealistic tale of a racial apocalypse in America. The story hinges on the efforts of community leader Tomsson Black to stir up racial tension in Harlem in order to force a radical change in race relations. The n...
In an interview, Himes once noted that he had wanted to "depict the violence that is necessary so that the white community will also give it a little thought, because you know, they're going around playing these games. They haven't given any thought to what would happen if the black people would seriously uprise."
Most notably, "Plan B" features the death of both of the protagonists of the Harlem Cycle. Gravedigger Jones kills Coffin Ed Johnson in a dramatic final scene, before being killed himself by Tomsson Black. Throughout the story, the usually level-headed Gravedigger gets caught up in the revolutionary fervor, while Coffi...
The Mothers is a debut novel by Brit Bennett. The book follows Nadia, a young woman who left her Southern California hometown years ago after the suicide of her mother and is called back to attend to a family emergency. "The Mothers", released on October 11, 2016 by Riverhead Books, received critical acclaim and was a ...
Living in Southern California, 17-year-old Nadia, grieving her mother's suicide, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Luke, a local pastor's son. She has an abortion and leaves her hometown to attend University of Michigan. Years later, her Christian friend Aubrey begins dating and then marries Luke. In her adulthood Nadi...
The book includes themes of Christianity in the context of the Black church, shame, and motherhood.
Bennett began writing the novel when she was 17 years old. She used many elements of her own life to craft the narrative; she and the protagonist, Nadia, were both high-achievers who maintained close ties to their families even after leaving home for college. Nadia's hometown is based on Bennett's hometown of Oceanside...
In 2014 Bennett published a viral essay on Jezebel.com called "I Don’t Know What to Do With Good White People", shortly after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Literary agent Julia Kardon read the essay and contacted Bennett to offer her representation to write and sell a book, which became her manuscript, "...
"The Mothers" was a "New York Times" bestseller.
In March 2017 it was announced that Kerry Washington was lead producer on a film adaptation for the novel, to be produced through her company Simpson Street for Warner Bros.
Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison's second novel, published posthumously in 1999 as a 368-page condensation of over 2,000 pages written by him over a period of 40 years. It was originally written without any real organization, and Ellison's longtime friend, biographer and critic John F. Callahan, put the novel together, edit...
The fuller version of the manuscript was published as "Three Days Before the Shooting..." on February 2, 2010.
Ellison began work on his second novel around 1954, following the publication of Invisible Man.
Ellison claimed to be devastated when part of the original manuscript of "Juneteenth" was destroyed by a fire in 1967. However, Arnold Rampersad advanced the opinion that the loss of the crucial, irrecoverable sections of his manuscript appears to have been something Ellison concocted after the fact to justify his lack...
Ellison published eight excerpts from the novel during his lifetime, including an excerpt called "Juneteenth" in "the Quarterly Review of Literature" in 1965, and the story "Cadillac Flambé", published in "American Review" in 1973 and reprinted many times since, which received considerable critical attention, leading t...
Following Ellison's death, John F. Callahan, named Ellison's literary executor by his widow, was pressed to release the novel, despite the fact that the pages of manuscript were not organized and Ellison had left no notes on how they were to be put together. For this work, Callahan took the central episode from Ellison...
The long-awaited novel received mixed reviews. The review in "The Guardian" said that although the work was published with the subtitle "a novel," it "is decidedly not a novel: it lacks a novel's shape, rationale, and self-justifying propulsion." "Publishers Weekly" acknowledged Callahan's "difficulties" in putting the...
A fuller version of the manuscript was published as "Three Days Before the Shooting..." on February 2, 2010.
Fledgling is a science fiction vampire novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, published in 2005.
The novel tells the story of Shori, a 53-year-old member of the Ina species, who appears to be a ten-year-old African-American girl. The Ina are nocturnal, long-lived, and derive sustenance by drinking human blood. Though they are physically superior to humans, both in strength and ability to heal from injury, the Ina ...
The story opens as Shori awakens with no knowledge of who or where she is, in a cave and suffering from critical injuries. Although she is burned and has skull trauma, she kills and eats the first creature that approaches her. Eating this creature allows her to heal quickly enough to walk and explore on her own. She ru...
While staying at Wright's uncle's cabin, Shori realizes she's in need of more blood, so she feeds on other inhabitants in the town and develops a relationship with an older woman named Theodora. Shori and Wright return to the burned-out, abandoned village near where she woke up to learn more about her past. They eventu...
Later, before Shori is able to move in with Iosif, his settlement is burned down as Shori's home was. Shori and Wright meet the only two human symbionts who survived, Celia and Brook. Shori adopts Celia and Brook as her own symbionts to save their lives. Their bonding is initially uncomfortable for all of them, however...
The group travels to the settlement of the Gordon family (old friends of Iosif), where they are welcomed and guarded by human symbionts during the day. The attackers also raid the settlement, but Shori and the human symbionts are able to fight back. They capture three attackers alive. The Gordon family interrogates the...
One of the most commented aspects of "Fledgling" is its unusual type of vampire, the result of Butler's fusion of vampire fiction with science fiction. While the Ina is simply another species coexisting with humanity, the traditional vampire's monstrosity and abnormality routinely symbolizes deviant sexuality and decad...
Biological rather than supernatural, the Ina do not turn humans into vampires. They are not ruthless, threatening, predatory, intimidating, or generally antagonistic to humans. Instead, they create close-knit Ina-human communities where they cohabitate with selected humans in symbiotic relationships. In fact, as Pramro...
Aside from their unusual relationships with humans, the Ina is quite ordinary. Steven Shaviro describes them as having "a culture, with laws and customs, kinship groups, a religion and ethics and a politics, and disputes and power struggles about all these things—just as any group of human beings does". Butler even ren...
Some critics view Butler's decision to endow her protagonist with a larger dose of melanin than what is normal for the Ina as a metaphor for how the concept of race is created. Ali Brox, for example, points out that Shori is not just "made black" biologically, but also socially when Ina fixate on her difference. Thus, ...
Ina bias against humans also serves as a comment on the history of human bigotry, specifically the prejudices of whites against blacks. As Sanchez-Taylor explains, "[t]he displacement of the notion of race into a species conflict allows Butler to have a black protagonist and have a discussion of intolerance without the...
Additionally, endowing Shori with a specific racial identity serves to deconstruct negative stereotypes of blackness. As a black protagonist, she becomes the vehicle through which Butler articulates the lack of Black in the vampire genre and challenges traditional notions of white males as heroes. Moreover, because her...
The vampire protagonist of "Fledgling" is even more unusual, as she has been genetically enhanced. While the Ina are stereotypically white, as is traditional for vampires, Shori's genetic makeup includes human melanin, which renders her skin brown, a necessary trait for her kind to be able to survive exposure to the su...

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