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44 items

• Americanah

  a Novel

  Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-

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  A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected.

• That Kind of Mother

  a Novel

  Alam, Rumaan

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  Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Buck

  Askaripour, Mateo,

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  A crackling, satirical debut novel about a young black man who accidentally impresses a CEO while serving his Starbucks order, catapulting him into the opportunity of a lifetime-a shot at stardom as the lone black salesman at an eccentric,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sellout

  Beatty, Paul

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  Raised in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens--improbably smack in the middle of downtown L.A.--the narrator of The Sellout resigned himself to the fate of all other middle-class Californians: "to die in the same bedroom you'd grown up in,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Gone Dead

  a Novel

  Benz, Chanelle,

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  Billie James' inheritance isn't much: a little money and a shack in the Mississippi Delta. The house once belonged to her father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when Billie was four years old. Though Billie was there when the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Parable of the Sower

  Butler, Octavia E.

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  In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

• What's Mine and Yours

  a Novel

  Coster, Naima, 1986-

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  When a county initiative in the Piedmont of North Carolina forces the students at a mostly black public school on the east side to move across town to a nearly all-white high school on the west, the community rises in outrage. For two…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Milwaukee Blues

  a Novel

  Dalembert, Louis-Philippe,

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  In this moving tribute set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the composite, fictionalized main character Emmett and victim of police violence is seen through the eyes of several individuals who were all touched by his life: the Pakistani shopkeeper…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Office of Historical Corrections

  a Novella and Stories

  Evans, Danielle,

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  The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history. Danielle Evans is widely acclaimed for her blisteringly smart voice…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Erasure

  a Novel

  Everett, Percival

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  Novelist, college profesor, woodworker, and fly fisherman, Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitive debut novel of a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Hot Comb

  Flowers, Ebony

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  Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women's lives and coming of age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular story "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Of One Blood

  Or, The Hidden Self

  Hopkins, Pauline E. (Pauline Elizabeth)

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  When Reuel Briggs, a medical student at Harvard, witnesses the performance of the beautiful singer Dianthe Lusk at a concert, he's infatuated by her talent and beauty. That next morning, Reuel is called to treat the victims of a train…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• A River of Stars

  a Novel

  Hua, Vanessa,

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  In a powerful debut novel about motherhood, immigration, and identity, a pregnant Chinese woman makes her way to California and stakes a claim to the American dream. Holed up with other moms-to-be in a secret maternity home in Los Angeles,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Kindest Lie

  a Novel

  Johnson, Nancy (Novelist)

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  It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An American Marriage

  Jones, Tayari,

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  Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Haunting of Hajji Hotak

  and Other Stories

  Kochai, Jamil Jan, 1992-

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  A luminous meditation on sons and fathers, ghosts of war, and living history that moves between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora. In playing "Metal Gear Solid V," a young man's video game experience turns into a surreal…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Other Americans

  Lalami, Laila, 1968-

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  Nora Guerraoui, a jazz composer, returns home to a small town in the Mojave after hearing that her father, owner of a popular restaurant there, has been killed in a suspicious hit-and-run car accident. Told by multiple narrators--Nora…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Victor LaValle's Destroyer

  LaValle, Victor, 1972-

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  On a dreary November night in 1792, Victor Frankenstein used natural--and unnatural-- science to reanimate the dead. Victor eventually died, but the monster never did. It hid away in Antarctica and thought itself free of humanity. But the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Bluebird, Bluebird

  a Novel

  Locke, Attica

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  Forced by duty to return to his racially divided East Texas hometown, an African-American Texas Ranger risks his job and reputation to investigate a highly charged double-murder case involving a black Chicago lawyer and a local white…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Lost Children Archive

  a Novel

  Luiselli, Valeria, 1983-

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  A novel about a family of four, on the cusp of fracture, who take a trip across America--a story told through varying points of view, and including archival documents and photographs.