Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adult
Ifemelu leaves military-ruled Nigeria for the United States and learns, for the first time, what it means to be Black in America. Obinze, shut out after 9/11, builds an undocumented life in London. Hair, blogs, class, and the difference between becoming American and staying yourself.
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Nigeria, America, hair, blogs, and the gap between becoming American and remaining yourself. Race is something Ifemelu has to learn as an immigrant, not a costume she arrived wearing.
Adult. Long, with blog chapters on purpose. Adult relationships; not a campus coming-of-age in disguise.
When does Ifemelu perform Americanness, and when does she refuse the performance?
The blog posts are part of the novel. Treat them as scenes, not as extras.
Two titles that deepen the same conversation.
Adult
Chain-Gang All-StarsNana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Incarcerated people fight to the death on national television for a shot at freedom. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are partners and rivals inside a spectacle that sells Black pain as entertainment — with footnotes that will not let you watch from the couch.
Adult
JamesPercival Everett
A reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold away from his wife and daughter, he runs — and the raft journey down the Mississippi becomes his story of language, literacy, and who gets to be the narrator.
Adult
KindredOctavia E. Butler
On her twenty-sixth birthday, Dana is pulled from 1976 California to an antebellum Maryland plantation to save a drowning white boy — the ancestor she must keep alive so she can be born. Time travel makes slavery a present-tense problem she cannot theorize from a safe distance.
Adult
Martyr!Kaveh Akbar
Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American poet in recovery, hunts for meaning in death, family, and a painting that may be his mother. Orphaned, addicted, and allergic to easy transcendence, he turns martyrdom into a question instead of a costume.
Young adult
Every Body LookingCandice Iloh
A Finalist for the National Book Award When Ada leaves home for her freshman year at a Historically Black College, it’s the first time she’s ever been so far from her family—and the first time that she’s been able to make her own ...
Young adult
(Me) MothAmber McBride
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE A debut YA novel-in-verse by Amber McBride, Me (Moth) is about a teen girl who is grieving the deaths of her family, and a teen boy who crosses her path.
Ages 8–12
90 Miles to HavanaEnrique Flores-Galbis
Julian and his brothers leave Havana on Operation Pedro Pan and land in a Miami camp where bullies run the yard. Inspired by the author’s childhood. Pura Belpré Honor.
Ages 3–8
A dance like starlightKristy Dempsey
In a lyrical tale as beautiful as a dance en pointe, Kristy Dempsey and Floyd Cooper tell the story of one little ballerina who was inspired by Janet Collins to make her own dreams come true.
