|
African American Fiction and Nonfiction September 2020
|
|
|
|
|
The yellow house
by Sarah M. Broom
Describes the author’s upbringing in a New Orleans East shotgun house as the unruly 13th child of a widowed mother, tracing a century of family history and the impact of class, race and Hurricane Katrina on her sense of identity.
|
|
|
Blacktop wasteland
by S. A. Cosby
Compelled by poverty to agree to a lucrative final heist that will allow him to go straight, a skilled getaway driver finds his efforts complicated by racial dynamics and the ghosts of his past.
|
|
|
Naked came the Florida man
by Tim Dorsey
Though another hurricane is coming, it can't deter the Sunshine State's Serge A. Storms from his latest scenic road trip: a cemetery tour. With his best bro Coleman he hits the highway in his gold '69 Plymouth Satellite on a grand tour of the past. Their odyssey includes a forgotten mass grave in Palm Beach County holding the remains of African Americans killed by the Great Hurricane of 1928 and the resting place of one world-famous television dolphin (RIP Flipper) from the 1960s. There are few things Serge loves more than solving a good mystery and bestowing justice on miscreants who sully his beloved home's good name. With his partner Bong Man, Florida's psycho superhero will find the truth in this hilariously violent delight.
|
|
|
A death in Harlem : a novel
by Karla F. C. Holloway
In this Harlem Renaissance mystery, Weldon Haynie Thomas is Harlem's first "colored" policeman, blessed with insight, humor, resourcefulness, and a deep intuition. (While Haynie is a fictional creation, the first African American policeman in NYC, Samuel Battle, also served during this time period, between 1911-1941.) "A Death in Harlem" improvises and extends the plot of Nella Larsen's "Passing" by asking "what happened after the fall?" Officer Thomas investigates the light-enough-to-pass woman who jumped? fell? was pushed? from the Hotel Theresa. By renowned African American studies scholar Karla Holloway professor, dean, and administrator at Duke University.
|
|
|
Riot baby
by Tochi Onyebuchi
The author of the award-winning young-adult novel Beasts Made of Night tackles youth, race and the carceral state with magical flair, in his adult-science-fiction debut.
|
|
|
Harlem
by C. N. Phillips
Seducing the man who would track down and kill her Harlem kingpin brother, Kleigh finds herself deeply in love and navigating life threats and impossible choices while struggling to hide her true identity.
|
|
|
Memphis
by Raynesha Pittman
As a teenager, Ethan Wade Carruthers ran away from Chicago, and his coke-addicted parents, and has now resurfaced in Memphis as “Joe,” a man determined to take over the city’s crime scene.
|
|
|
The Bittersweet Bride
by Vanessa Riley
Widow Theodosia Cecil needs a husband to help protect her son. The former flower seller turned estate owner posts an ad in the newspaper, and no one is more surprised than she when her first love, the man she thought dead, reappears. Playwright Ewan Fitzwilliam has been at war for six years. Now the second son of a powerful earl is back but his beloved Theo needs a husband and will not consider him. She believes Ewan left her in desperate straits so she denies the feelings she still harbors for him. Together they must overcome bitter lies and vengeful actions that ruined their youthful affair
|
|
|
The beauty in breaking : a memoir
by Michele Harper
A female, African American ER physician describes how her own life and encounters with her patients led her to realize that every human is broken and recognizing that and moving towards a place of healing can bring peace and happiness.
|
|
|
The sixth man : a memoir
by Andre Iguodala
The NBA swingman and All-Star shares insights into his remarkable career, discussing such topics as his 2012 Men's Basketball Olympics gold-medal win, his 2015 NBA championship with the Warriors and his off-court successes as a Silicon Valley insider.
|
|
|
The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X
by Les Payne
A revisionary portrait of the iconic civil rights leader draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with surviving family members, intelligence officers and political leaders to offer new insights into Malcolm X’s Depression-era youth, religious conversion and 1965 assassination.
|
|
|
Anti-racism (Words of Change series) : powerful voices, inspiring ideas
by Kenrya Rankin
Each page or spread showcases a passage from the writings or speeches of writers/activists in the POC or allied community- especially those who have been unheard in the past; words to enlighten, to prompt change, to provide encouragement, and to move readers to action
|
|
|
When I was white : a memoir
by Sarah Valentine
A coming-of-age memoir traces the author’s childhood as a white girl in the suburbs of Pittsburgh before she discovered that her father was a black man, a revelation that transformed her sense of identity and raised questions about family choices.
|
|
Lagniappe: African-American Labor
|
|
|
Crafting lives : African American artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900
by Catherine W. Bishir
From the colonial period onward, black artisans in southern cities--thousands of free and enslaved carpenters, coopers, dressmakers, blacksmiths, saddlers, shoemakers, bricklayers, shipwrights, cabinetmakers, tailors, and others--played vital roles in their communities. Yet only a very few black craftspeople have gained popular and scholarly attention. This in-depth portrayal of urban African American artisans in New Bern highlights the community's often unrecognized importance in the history of 19th-century black life.
|
|
|
Slavery by another name : the re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
by Douglas A. Blackmon
A sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. From the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II, under laws enacted specifically to intimidate blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these "debts," prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery
|
|
|
A. Philip Randolph and the struggle for civil rights
by Cornelius L. Bynum
A. Philip Randolph's career as a trade unionist and civil rights activist in the 1920s and 30s shaped the course of black protest in the mid-twentieth century. Examining his work in lobbying for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatening to lead a march on Washington in 1941, and establishing the Fair Employment Practice Committee, Randolph's push for African American equality took place within a broader progressive program of industrial reform. Some of Randolph's pioneering plans for engineering change served as foundational strategies in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
|
|
|
American work : four centuries of black and white labor
by Jacqueline Jones
A historical look at the social transformations of American labor through four centuries highlights how the changing economy, race relations, and the state of the nation affected the various races, particularly the African-American race, within the working class.
|
|
|
Railroads in the African American experience : a photographic journey
by Theodore Kornweibel
Surveys the African American railroad experience, from the work of slaves who laid rail and the activism of the famous Pullman Porters to the lives of current black railroad employees and passengers.
This book can not be checked out, but it can be viewed in the NC Room at the Main Library.
|
|
|
Power to the poor : Black-Brown coalition and the fight for economic justice, 1960-1974
by Gordon Keith Mantler
Demonstrates how Martin Luther King Jr.'s unfinished Poor People's Campaign became the era's most high-profile attempt at multiracial collaboration and sheds light on the interdependent relationship between racial identity and political coalition among African Americans and Mexican Americans. If you liked this, try To the Promised Land by Michael Honey.
|
|
|
These hands
by Margaret H. Mason
An African American man tells his grandson about a time when, despite all the wonderful things his hands could do, they could not touch bread at the Wonder Bread factory. JE In-between; ages 4 to 7 years
|
|
|
The upper room
by Mary Monroe
Maureen, a young Black girl torn between the remarkable powers of her mother and the harsh realities of life, comes of age, in a powerful, evocative tale set in a migrant labor camp in the bayous of the Florida Everglades.
|
|
Want more books about African American labor? Search the library's catalog for these titles: Waterman's Song by Cecelski
Black Worker's Remember by Michael Honey Civil Rights Unionism By Korstad Chained in Silence by LeFloria Challenge of Interracial Unionism by Letwin Cooking in Other Women's kitchens by Sharpless Racism in the Nation's Service by Yellin Labor of Innocents by Zipf
|
|
|
New Hanover County Library201 Chestnut Street Wilmington, North Carolina 28401 910-798-6301www.nhclibrary.org/
|
|
|