Let the Dead Bury Their Dead
10 best books like Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (Randall Kenan): Washington Square, Jude the Obscure, Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ceremony, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, Native Guard, Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line, The Battle of Maldon
| Author | Henry James |
| ISBN | 0451528719 |
The plot of Washington Square has the simplicity of old-fashioned melodrama: a plain-looking, good-hearted young woman, the only child of a rich widower, is pursued by a charming but unscrupulous man who seeks the wealth she will presumably inherit. On this premise, Henry James constructed one of...
| Author | Thomas Hardy |
| ISBN | 0486452433 |
i have just discovered betterbooktitles.com, so i am including this, but it is a total spoiler, so be warned.
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Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table
| Author | Thomas Malory |
| ISBN | 0451528166 |
In a time when there were damsels in distress to save, and mythical dragons to slay, King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table were there to render justice in the face of any danger. From the incredible wizardry of Merlin to the undeniable passion of Sir Launcelot, these tales of Arthur and his knights...
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed, & remember
loneliness is still time spent
with the world.
To read Ocean Vuong's
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
is to be dazzled by gorgeous lyricism. I picked this up as part of my exploration of contemporary poetry I have...
| Author | Leslie Marmon Silko |
| ISBN | 0140086838 |
Tayo, a young Native American, has been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and the horrors of captivity have almost eroded his will to survive. His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
| Author | Unknown |
| ISBN | 0451528182 |
Contains the greatest "OH FUCK" moment in medieval literature!
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - listed here as written by Unknown, though I believe it may have been penned by that prolific Greek author Anonymous - is a classic tale from Arthurian legend in which the code of honor attributed...
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude
| Author | Ross Gay |
| ISBN | 0822963310 |
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—that tries to find solace in the processes of the garden and the orchard. That is, this is a book that studies the wisdom of the garden and orchard, those places where all—death,...
| Author | Natasha Trethewey |
| ISBN | 0618872655 |
Through elegiac verse that honors her mother and tells of her own fraught childhood, Natasha Trethewey confronts the racial legacy of her native Deep South -- where one of the first black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, was called into service during the Civil War. Trethewey's resonant and...
| Author | Charles W. Chesnutt |
| ISBN | 0141185023 |
Unlike the popular "Uncle Remus" stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt's tales probe psychological depths in black people unheard of before in Southern regional writing. They also expose the anguish of mixed-race men and women and the consequences of racial hatred, mob violence,...
| Author | Anonymous |
| ISBN | 0951620908 |
The Battle of Maldon
Composed in approx. 1100 AD
This narrative poetry right away made me think of « The Song of Roland.»
Taking my copy off the shelve, I went to compare the dates of these historical events that became legendary related poetry.
The battle in which Roland...
| Author | James Baldwin |
| ISBN | 0385334567 |
The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room,...
The Old Order: Stories of the South
| Author | Katherine Anne Porter |
| ISBN | 0156685191 |
5 stars for all six of the connected stories from The Leaning Tower. Taken separately, they are each wonderful. "The Source" and "The Old Order" detail the last years of a strong-willed grandmother, matriarch of her clan, and steerswoman for their fortunes. Moving and often endearing. "The Witness"...
| Author | LeAnne Howe |
| ISBN | 1879960613 |
"A dangerous enemy has arrived on our shores with weapons of fire . . . He's a very different kind of Wasano, bloodsucker, he always hungers for more".—from Shell Shaker
The action in this debut novel alternates between 1738, as a Choctaw family prepares for war against the English, and the...
