Split (1)

train · 25k rows

text stringlengths 13 991
As Emma Lou gains more economic independence, she discovers that it isn't everything; she's still not happy. She decides to leave Alva and his son. When she returns to the Y.W.C.A. she contacts Benson, who announces that he and Gwendolyn have been dating and have decided to marry. They even invite her to the wedding.
Emma Lou realizes she has spent her life running: she ran from Boise's color prejudice; she left Los Angeles for similar reasons. But she decides never to run again. She knows there are many people like her and that she has to accept herself.
Thurman's novel has been widely discussed. Through Emma Lou Morgan, he expressed the idea that dark skin presented more problems for a woman than a man. The young woman struggles with people's reactions to her.
In 2004 Daniel Scott III published an article noting that Thurman was interested in Harlem in the 1920s as a place for personal transformation. He was aware that people were attracted there from all over the United States, and brought expectations with them. The experience of living there opened them to new possibiliti...
The novel's line "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice" is referenced in Tupac Shakur's 1993 song Keep Ya Head Up, as well as Pharoahe Monch's 2007 song Let's Go and "Run and Tell That" from the musical Hairspray. Kendrick Lamar's 2015 song The Blacker the Berry is named after the novel.
Hip Hop High School (2006) is a novel by American author Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It's the second in the Hoopster Trilogy.
Theresa Anderson: the main protagonist of the story. She goes through a lot throughout her high school years
Cee-Saw: Tee-Ay’s best friend who gets pregnant and drops out
Sonia Rodriguez: Tee-Ay’s other best friend who’s Mexican-American
Devon: another friend whom she works with on the SAT
Homeboyz is a 2007 young adult fiction novel written by California teacher Alan Lawrence Sitomer. It is the third and final book of the Hoopster Trilogy. The book won the Top Ten Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers award from the American Library Association in 2008.
Homegoing is the debut historical fiction novel by Ghanaian-American author Yaa Gyasi, published in 2016. Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, who are half-sisters, separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British go...
The novel was selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation's "5 under 35" award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for best first book, and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. It received the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize fo...
Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but when her mother tells her to hide her menstrual cycle, rumours spread that she is barren. As a result she married a Brit...
Quey's son, James, learns that his Asante grandfather died and returns to Asante land where he meets a farmer woman, Akosua Mensah. Growing up with his parents dysfunctional political marriage, and promised since childhood to the daughter of the Fante chief, Amma, James longs to run away and marry Akosua. With help fro...
Esi is the beloved and beautiful daughter of a Big Man and his wife, Maame. Her father is a renowned and successful warrior and he eventually captures a slave who asks Esi to send a message to her father about where she is. Esi complies out of pity as her mother was formerly enslaved. As a result her village is raided ...
Carson, who as an adult goes by the name Sonny, tries to find meaning in marching for civil rights and working for the NAACP but instead becomes demoralized by his work. Like his own father he becomes an absentee parent to three children by three different women, often dodging their requests for alimony. He meets a you...
The novel touches on several notable historical events, from the introduction of cacao as a crop in Ghana and the Anglo-Asante wars in Ghana to slavery and segregation in America. Because of the novel's scope, which covers several hundred years of history and fourteen characters, it has been described as "a novel in sh...
In the summer of 2009, following her sophomore year at Stanford University, Gyasi took a trip to Ghana sponsored by a research grant. Although Gyasi was born in Ghana, she moved to the United States as an infant, and this was her first trip back. On a friend's prompting, they visited the Cape Coast Castle, where she fo...
Gyasi says the family tree came first, and each chapter, which follows one descendant, is tied to a significant historical event, although she described the research as "wide but shallow." "The Door of No Return" by British historian William St Clair helped to form the descriptions of life in and around the Castle in t...
Before the official publication in June 2016, "Time"'s Sarah Begley called it "one of the summer’s most-anticipated novels".
Leilani Clark at KQED Arts wrote: "Until every American embarks on a major soul-searching about the venal, sordid racial history of the United States, and their own position in relation to it, the bloodshed, tears, and anger will keep on. Let "Homegoing" be an inspiration to begin that process."
In 2019, the book was listed in 'Paste' as the third-greatest novel of the 2010s.
On November 5, 2019, the "BBC News" listed "Homegoing" on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Ta-Nehisi Coates selected "Homegoing" for the National Book Foundation's 2016 "5 under 35" award, announced in September 2016. "Homegoing" was shortlisted for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, which eventually went to "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter" by Kia Corthron.
The novel was subsequently awarded the John Leonard Award for publishing year 2016 by the National Book Critics Circle for outstanding debut novel in January 2017. In February 2017, Swansea University announced "Homegoing" had made the longlist for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize for the best published literary work in the...
Leaving Atlanta is the first novel by the American author Tayari Jones. The book was published by Warner Books in 2002. Jones's experiences through the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981 largely inspired the book. During the time of the murders, Jones attended Oglethorpe Elementary School, which is located in Athens, G...
"Leaving Atlanta" focuses on three fictional students at Oglethorpe Elementary School: Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Fuller. Jones chose to use children's perspectives for her novel, "to make a record of how life was for those of us who were too young to understand the complicated social and political landsca...
In her "Author's Note," Jones mentions she made some alterations to the historic chronology of the Atlanta Child Murders to suit the novel.
When the Child Murders began, Jones was nine years old, attending Oglethorpe Elementary School. She writes in the "Reader's Guide" for the book, "but the time had come for someone of my generation, to tell the tale from the vantage point of the playground. This novel is a memorial to twenty-nine (or more) who did not s...
While Jones is from Atlanta, writing about Atlanta is not intentional. Jones has noted that she writes what she knows, which is her hometown of Atlanta and the people in it. This has led her contemporaries to consider her a Southern writer, a label that she does not reject but recognizes it as one part of who she is as...
Each part of the novel is written from a different narrative point of view. “Part One: Magic Words” is written in the third-person through LaTasha Baxter’s perspective; “Part Two: The Opposite Direction of Home” is written in the second-person through Rodney Green’s perspective; and “Part Three: Sweet Pea” is written i...
Because the story is told through the perspective of children it focuses on the experience of humanity instead of humanity fighting against oppressive forces. The innocence of children is taken into perspective, and the reader sees the world through the eyes of pure-hearted children.
LaTasha Baxter returns to school after summer vacation, having practiced jacks and jump rope, as she tries to fit into the social structure of her fifth grade classroom. At the same time, she is dealing with her parents' separation, and the reality that children are going missing and turning up dead. In the novel, the ...
One night Tasha goes to the roller rink with her best friend. At the roller rink, she runs into her crush, Jashante. He buys her M&Ms and gives her a pine scented air freshener, which he usually sells for cash. When Jashante disappears, Tasha blames herself for his disappearance and subsequent death, since she cursed h...
In Part One, Octavia Fuller and Rodney Green are introduced as the social outcasts of Tasha's fifth grade classroom. Tasha briefly befriends Octavia but ultimately does not pursue their friendship because Tasha is afraid of becoming a social outcast through association with Octavia, who many of their classmates bully b...
Part Two: The Opposite Direction of Home.
Rodney Green, a fifth grader at Oglethorpe Elementary, is introduced with a scene highlighting Rodney's fear of his father. Throughout Part Two, Rodney and Octavia begin to develop a friendship, in part as a result of both being ignored or made fun of by the rest of their classmates. This section also shows Rodney's ha...
Because of the events of Part One, Rodney's class receives a visit from a police officer named Officer Brown, to speak about "personal safety". Rodney expresses that, because of the visit, he's more nervous about the murders because Officer Brown is the only protection they have against being attacked and murdered. At ...
One day, Rodney gets caught stealing candy from Mrs. Lewis after trying to help his classmate Leon, and she tells him to be careful of who he hangs around with. The section ends with Rodney running away after his father beats him in front of his classmates for stealing candy. As he is running away, a man in a blue seda...
Part Three of "Leaving Atlanta" focuses on Octavia Fuller, who is called Sweet Pea by her loved ones. In this section of the novel, Octavia deals with the grief of Rodney's kidnapping and assumed death. Octavia also deals with the guilt of feeling like it is her fault that her Uncle Kevin was kicked out of their house....
While walking to school one day, Octavia and her neighbors come across a Guardian Angel from New York that was acting as a neighborhood watch — guarding the children in the neighborhood. On their way to school, Delvis, Octavia's friend and neighbor asks the Guardian Angel, “They don’t have no black Angels in New York t...
Ultimately, Octavia's mother sends her to away from Atlanta to live with her father, who works for a university, in South Carolina, step mother, and step baby sister. Octavia's mother, Yvonne, wants her daughter to have better life opportunities than she feels she can provide her daughter. Further, Yvonne wants Octavia...
"Leaving Atlanta" was first published by Warner Publishing on August 1, 2002. When Time Warner Book Group was sold to Hachette Book Group in 2006 the company became Grand Central Publishing under Hachette Book Group, which "Leaving Atlanta" is now published under.
The publisher, Grand Central Publishing, describes "Leaving Atlanta" as fiction and coming-of-age. As the book was inspired by and focuses on the Atlanta child murders of 1979 - 1981, the novel is also historical fiction.
In 2007, Aletha Spann of 30Nineteen Productions sought to renew the film rights for the novel. The film rights for the novel were officially bought by Spann in 2011. However, there is no known movie currently in production.
Melanie Benson Taylor addresses the diasporic effect of the specific brand of racially motivated murder: leaving via death or leaving to escape death in the case of Octavia. Jones and Toni Cade Bambara through "Those Bones are Not My Child", create a fictional picture of the very real diaspora post and pre Child Murder...
"Leaving Atlanta" has received several awards and accolades including being chosen in 2013 by Brazos Valley Reads, an organization lead by Texas A&M University’s Department of English. The program provided Jones an opportunity to travel to College Station for a public reading and attend other literary events.
After "Leaving Atlanta" was initially released, Bookpage acknowledged, as one of the best twenty-five debut novels of the decade in 2002. The Hurston/Wright Foundation also awarded the novel its award for Debut Fiction. Local to the events, "Leaving Atlanta" was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine and the “"B...
Jane Dystel, describes the novel as a “strongly grounded tale” that “hums with the rhythms of schoolyard life” in her 2002 Publishers Weekly review. In 2002, Kirkus Reviews described the novel as “technically ambitious, but not a story otherwise out of the ordinary. Leslie Marmon Silko called the book, "[a] wonderful n...
In a 2002 Book Page review Arlene McKanic accounts for Jones' writing by saying "but this powerful new novel isn’t what you might think. To her credit, Jones doesn’t present us with the point of view of the murderer," "What’s more remarkable is that she presents the voices of these children with rare precision." McKani...
A Gathering of Old Men is a novel by Ernest J. Gaines published in 1983.
Set on a 1970s Louisiana cane farm, the novel addresses racial discrimination and a bond that cannot be usurped.
In 1987 Volker Schlöndorff, a famous German director, made a film, also titled "A Gathering of Old Men" (aka "Murder on the Bayou"), which adheres closely to the novel. It stars Richard Widmark (as Sheriff Mapes), Louis Gossett Jr. (as Mathu), Holly Hunter (as Candy), Joe Seneca (as Clatoo), and Will Patton (as Lou Dim...
The Vanishing Half is a historical fiction novel by American author Brit Bennett. It is her second novel and was published by Riverhead Books in 2020. It debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list. HBO acquired the rights to develop a limited series with Bennett as executive producer. "The V...
The novel has a nonlinear narrative structure.
The novel debuted at number one on "The New York Times" fiction best-seller list. As of the week ending February 20, 2021, the novel has spent 38 weeks on the list.
It was selected for the "New York Times Book Review"s "10 Best Books of 2020" list.
Within a month of publication it was reported that HBO had acquired the rights for "low seven-figures" to develop a limited series with Brit Bennett as executive producer.
Queen Sugar is the debut novel of American writer Natalie Baszile, published by Penguin in 2014. Set in contemporary Louisiana, it tells the story of Charley Bordelon, a young African-American widow from Los Angeles, California, who moves to a rural town to manage a sugarcane farm she had unexpectedly inherited there f...
Charley's estranged older half-brother Ralph Angel, a former drug addict and the child of their father's relationship with his high school sweetheart in St. Joseph, returns to town with his son, Blue. Angel is deeply embittered that his father left him nothing, and he also resents Charley for having been raised by a ma...
Charley refuses to hire Angel. He finds low-paying menial labor in the rural community and slides back to drug abuse.
Charley meets a white farmer, Remy Newell, a divorcé who seems attracted to her. Their courtship is short lived after Remy makes insensitive racial comments. But after some encouragement from her aunt Violet, Charley decides to give Remy another chance. He asks his goddaughter, elected as Queen Sugar for the annual fes...
Miss Honey forces Charley to give Angel a job. He is resentful of the menial assignment and later tells Charley she should be ashamed of dating a white man. Charley fires him. To get revenge Angel steals the money Miss Honey keeps in her house and a statue. Charley's father had given her "The Cane Cutter", and she plan...
On Micah's birthday, Charley discovers "The Cane Cutter" is gone, and believes that she faces financial ruin. The rest of the family immediately thinks that Angel stole the statue but Miss Honey denies it; nonetheless, she refuses to let anyone call the police. A few days later Angel returns and confesses he stole the ...
Charley is devastated by the loss of the artwork and the death of her brother. Preparing to meet with Landy and Baron to accept their offer for her farm, she happens to tell Hollywood, a former friend of Angel, her predicament. He offers to give her the $50,000 she needs to complete harvesting. He has saved a small for...
Charley completes the harvest and prepares for the following season. She and Remy continue their relationship, and she starts the process of adopting her nephew Blue. She learns that Angel never sold "The Cane Cutter", and kept it in his trunk. After the statue is returned to Charley, she promises it to Blue when he gr...
"Queen Sugar" received mostly positive reviews. Critics praised its characters, conflict, use of its setting, and prose style, while some criticized its pacing. The novel was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's best books of 2014.
In 2014, the Oprah television network OWN negotiated a deal for the rights to adapt the book as a television series. It was created, directed, and executive produced by Ava DuVernay. Oprah Winfrey served as an executive producer.
The series airs on Oprah Winfrey Network and premiered on September 6, 2016. It was still running in 2021.
Baszile attended local schools. She initially studied finance and economics in college, as her father wanted her to go into his family business. She felt she most came alive in her English classes. She started working with her father in his business after college, but also continued her writing.
Baszile eventually changed fields and graduated from UCLA with an M.A. in Afro-American Studies and a MFA in Writing from Warren Wilson College. She started writing what became "Queen Sugar" inn the 1990s, exploring an African-American-themed tale of endurance and hope in the American South. She worked on the text for ...
Baszile attended a women writer's retreat in Hedgebrook. Her friend and novelist Sarah Manyika, who also attended, suggested that Baszile read part of a chapter from "Queen Sugar" to the group. Attendee Leigh Haber, book editor for "O, The Oprah Magazine", loved the novel and passed it to people at Harpo for their revi...
Salvage the Bones is a novel by American author Jesmyn Ward and published by Bloomsbury in 2011. The novel explores the plight of a working-class African-American family in Mississippi as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina and follows them through the aftermath of the storm. Ward, who had lived through Katrina, wrote t...
In an interview with the "Paris Review", Ward said she drew inspiration from "Medea" and the works of William Faulkner.
As a winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, the novel received a largely positive reception. The "LA Times" described it as an "under-the-radar" second novel, which deserves the award. The reviewer described the book as a successful depiction of Southern life and culture and "an intense book, with powerful, dir...
Iola Leroy, "or Shadows Uplifted", an 1892 novel by Frances E. W. Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century writing about women, it also deals with serious social issues of education for women,...
Iola Leroy, the principal character of the novel.
Harriet Johnson, Iola Leroy's grandmother. While a slave of Nancy Johnson, she resists a whipping. As a punishment, she is sold.
Robert Johnson. He is still a child when separated from his mother Harriet. His enslaver, Nancy Johnson, sees him as a "pet animal" and teaches him to read. As a young man, he becomes the leader of a group of slaves who decide to seek refuge with the Union army during the Civil War. He enlists in a colored regiment and...
Marie Leroy, Iola's mother. A small child when brutally separated from her mother Harriet Johnson, she finally becomes the slave of wealthy Eugene Leroy. When Eugene becomes seriously ill, she nurses him back to health. He sets her free, has her educated and marries her in a secret ceremony. Although she is so white th...
Harry Leroy, Iola's brother. Like Iola, he is educated in a North. The African ancestry of their mother is concealed from the children, and they are not allowed to pass their vacations at home, spending that time instead together with the parents in a northern holiday resort. When he learns that his father has died and...
Dr. Frank Latimer, the man who Iola finally marries. He was born into slavery as the son of an enslaved mother of predominantly European ancestry and a white man. After emancipation, his mother invested her hard earnings to pay for his studies. He graduated as a medical doctor and afterwards met his white grandmother, ...
Lucille Delany, a black woman with apparently no European ancestry, the founder of a school for "future wives and mothers", and the woman who Harry finally marries.
Tom Anderson, friend of Robert Johnson. He seeks refuge with the Union army together with Johnson, causes the commander to set Iola free, joins the army and dies in Iola's care from wounds he received while knowingly sacrificing himself in order to save his comrades.
Aunt Linda, enslaved cook of Nancy Johnson who has a special liking for Robert. She is illiterate and speaks in black dialect, yet she is among the black female characters of the novel who are intelligent, loyal to each other and of central importance to their community.
Uncle Daniel, elder friend of Robert Johnson. When Robert and his group seek refuge with the Union army, he stays behind because he doesn't want to break his promise to his absent master.
Dr. Gresham, military physician. He falls in love with Iola while he still thinks that she is white. When informed that she is "colored", his love helps him to overcome his prejudice, and he proposes to Iola at two different points of the story. When rejected for the second time, "sympathy, love, and admiration were bl...
Dr. Latrobe, physician from the South. He is mentioned only in chapters 26, "Open Questions", and 28, "Dr. Latrobe's Mistake". In a discussion, he voices the view of southern white supremacists.
In a North Carolina town which is only identified as "C—", a group of slaves led by Robert Johnson seek refuge with the Union army that is approaching in the course of the Civil War. Robert's friend Tom Anderson then informs the Union commander of a beautiful young woman held as slave in the neighborhood who is subsequ...
The narrative then returns to the events following Iola's rescue by the Union army: Robert Johnson and Tom Anderson join the army "to strike a blow for freedom", while Iola becomes a nurse in a military hospital. When Robert is entrusted to her care after being wounded, they tell each other their stories which indicate...
The family is reunited when they locate Harry who had been fighting in the Union army and met with his and Iola's mother during the war.
Much space is given to discussions in which the characters talk about themes such as temperance, religion, the position of women in society, alleged white superiority, racism and lynchings, and the color line.
Temperance: The damaging effects of alcohol are often discussed in the book. For example, after the war the black characters tell each other of two former masters who took to drink and ended up in the "pore-house" (chapters 18, 19). After Robert Johnson has found his long-lost mother, Aunt Linda pours three glasses of ...
Religion: Prayer plays an important role in the life of the black characters: Iola and Robert discover the first clue of their kinship when Iola sings a special hymn at the bedside of the wounded Robert, which he has learned from his mother (chapter 16). Both find Harriet, their lost grandmother and mother, during a pr...
When Iola's brother Harry learns that his mother and sister have been reduced to slavery, he asks how such a thing is possible in a "Christian country". The principal of his school gives the answer: "Christian in name" (chapter 14). After the war and the abolition of slavery, in a discussion with her uncle Robert and D...
In the course of their discussions, the characters also mention Islam. The black pastor, "Rev. Carmicle", speaks of the "imperfect creed" of "Mohammedanism". In another discussion, "Prof. Gradnor", a black professor from North Carolina, sees Islamic countries as "civilized" and compares them favorably to the southern U...
Women in society: The female characters who exert strong influence on the men in their roles as "moral forces owe something to Stowe and the cult of true womanhood", but they are neither "patterned after the white model" nor are they silent or submissive. On the contrary, "Harper shows the necessity for women's voice"....
After Iola and her uncle Robert have moved to the North, Iola tells her uncle that she wants to apply for a job as saleswoman. Robert earns enough so that she doesn't have "to go out to work", but she tells him,
Alleged white superiority: In chapter 17, Iola is teaching black children, when a "gentleman" asks to address the class. He talks about the "achievements of the white race" and then asks "how they did it."

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.