The Narrows

Author

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses

wench \'wench\ n. from Middle English "wenchel," 1 a: a girl, maid, young woman; a female child.

Tawawa House in many respects is...

Author

Ralph Ellison

First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects...

Author

Gary D. Schmidt

Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep—one who stays to help the Jones family, which is a little bit broken.

In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all...

Author	Lorraine Hansberry
ISBN	0375508333

"Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.

Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations...

Author

Jen Petro-Roy

In this epistolary middle-grade debut novel, a girl who's questioning her sexual orientation writes letters to her sister, who was sent away from their strict Catholic home after becoming pregnant.

Eleven-year-old Evie is heartbroken when her strict Catholic parents send her pregnant...

Author	Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
ISBN	1426460287

Being very desirous that one of the race so long distinguished in the cause of freedom for her intellectual worth as Mrs. Harper has had the honor of being should not at this late date in life make a blunder which might detract from her own good name I naturally proposed to await developments before deciding...

Author

Remy Lai

When eleven-year-old Jingwen moves to a new country, he feels like he’s landed on Mars. School is torture, making friends is impossible since he doesn’t speak English, and he's often stuck looking after his (extremely irritating) little brother, Yanghao.

To distract himself from the...

Author	Gwendolyn Brooks
ISBN	0883780615

The year 2017 marks the hundredth year after Gwendolyn Brooks' birth, so I felt it appropriate to begin my reading year with her only full length novel Maud Martha. A coming of age tale of Maud Martha Brown Phillips, Brooks short novel speaks of the African American experience in the 1940s.

The...