African American Literature Fiction

When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother, Emma Jean, tells her bewildered daughter, "You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain't what you was supposed to be. So from now on, you gon' be a boy. It'll be a little strange at first, but you'll get used to it, and this'll be over after while." From this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves when he is visited by his mother armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all).

Felicia Lyons, a stressed-out stay-at-home mom, struggles to sprint ahead of the demands of motherhood while her husband spends long days at the office. Felicia taps, utters mantras, and breathes her way through most situations, but on some days, like when the children won't stop screaming her name or arguing over toy trucks and pretzel sticks, she wonders what it would be like to get in her car and drive away.

Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance.

Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on the “militancy” that characterized the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man’s reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy.

In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.

It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.

Love should burn slow, but with Ezra "Ethic" Okafor it is always fast and fleeting. After an accidental killing affects Alani, the woman he loves, she thinks he's a monster. Separated by tragedy, the pair endure a loss like nothing they have ever felt, and their connection is impossible to repair. Ethic is reduced to misery and raising his children alone once again. With Morgan in the throes of a passionate love affair and Bella in need of guidance that he can't provide, Ethic is in turmoil. He's failing as a man, and the fingerprint he is leaving on the world is a bloody one.

Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares. A mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up - but Gujaareh has known peace for too long. Someone must show them the way. Hope lies with two outcasts.

Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home.

African American history is the part of American history that looks at the history of African Americans or Black Americans. Of the 10.7 million Africans who were brought to the Americas until the 1860s, 450 thousand were shipped to what is now the United States. Most African Americans are descended from Africans who were brought directly from Africa to America and became slaves. The future slaves were originally captured in African wars or raids and transported in the Atlantic slave trade.

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in 20th-century literature. In this charged collection of 15 essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

Isolated from family and friends because of the one man she thought would be her happily ever after, Scotland is depressed, broke, and a shell of the woman she used to be. But when her man does the unthinkable, it is the last straw, causing Scotland to make a huge gamble in the name of revenge. But when that retaliation follows her home, adding yet another problem to her already hefty plate, Scotland must figure a way out of the hell she now calls life.

For over thirty years, The Journey Prize Stories has consistently introduced audiences to the next generation of great Canadian writers. The 33rd edition of Canada's most prestigious annual fiction anthology proudly continues this tradition by celebrating the best emerging Black writers in the country, as selected by a jury comprising internationally acclaimed, award-winning writers David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin.

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore, and Chicago is its beating heart. Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the “wealthiest Negro in America”, whose affluence catapulted his family to the heights of Black society. After the unexpected death of her only brother, Nelly becomes the premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage.

Teenager Kath Ella Sebolt wants desperately to escape the town that she equates with deprivation and lack of opportunity. Months after her boyfriend is killed during a clash between young people in the village and Halifax constables, she moves with her infant son to Montreal. After attending college as a single mother and ultimately marrying a white man, she discovers that as much as she tries, severing ties to her former village is not easy.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.

Healing requires separation. When Ethic discovers malice in a woman he thought was perfect, he walks away from their love. Keeping his family safe is his main priority, and falling for Alani Lenika Hill is dangerous. The history of their love haunts him, however, and getting over her isn't easy. Alani has beguiled his two youngest children and they crave her presence as much as Ethic. They want a mother. He wants a woman, but with ghosts and lies between them, the couple is forced apart yet again.

Do you remember your first love? Meagan will never forget hers because he held an important role in her life that should have prevented them from coming together as one. There were so many reasons for her and William not to be together, such as their 21 years age difference just to name one. Tragedy took the lives of those who would stand in their way and Megan was happy that it did...at first. It was those same people, may they rest in peace, that taught her the deadly game that provided her the keys to open Pandora’s Box at an early age, which sent her into William’s arms.

Combining the political intrigue of She Who Became the Sun with the gorgeous world-building of Children of Blood and Bone, Birth of a Dynasty is the start of a thrilling epic fantasy trilogy centered around three families’ fight for power in Ahkebulin, a land where magic is feared, giants are real, and prophecy holds sway.