While it’s critically important that we use this time to educate ourselves on the importance of Black Lives Matter and Black history, it’s also important to recognize that pain is not the only characteristic of the Black experience! So this week, we’re looking at books from Black authors which explore love, mystery, and friendship.
How To Love A Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs
Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret, these are the subject which sit at the heart of Alexia Arthurs’ debut book about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City, How to Love a Jamaican offers a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
Daughters Of Nri by Reni K Amayo
A gruesome war results in the old gods’ departure from earth. The only remnants of their existence lie in two girls. Twins, separated at birth. Goddesses who grow up believing that they are human. Daughters Of Nri explores their epic journey of self-discovery as they embark on a path back to one another. Though miles apart, both girls share an indestructible bond: they share the same blood, the same face, and possess the same unspoken magic, thought to have vanished with the lost gods.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
Marlon James weaves a tapestry of a breathtaking adventure through a world at once ancient and startlingly modern. And, against this exhilarating backdrop of magic and violence, he explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all. “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” is the first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star Trilogy.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for ‘kidnapping’ the white child she’s actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know – about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.
Ordinary People by Diana Evans
Two couples find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Melissa has a new baby and doesn’t want to let it change her. Damian has lost his father and intends not to let it get to him. Michael is still in love with Melissa but can’t quite get close enough to her to stay faithful. Stephanie just wants to live a normal, happy life on the commuter belt with Damian and their three children but his bereavement is getting in the way. Set in London to an exhilarating soundtrack, Ordinary People is an intimate study of identity and parenthood, sex and grief, friendship and ageing, and the fragile architecture of love.
