I’ve been reading a lot about Juneteenth today, which I first heard of perhaps five years ago, and have lately been learning more about. I’d like to recommend reading this piece by Jelani Cobb in the New Yorker and this piece by Tochi Onyebuchi at Tor.com (from last year). The former is short; the latter is long. Take Cobb’s piece as a frame in which to place Onyebuchi’s.
I’d love to ask you to recommend two (2) books you love that are written by Black people. (The limit is to avoid reduction to lists & to encourage sharing why you love them specifically!) I’ll start:
The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar (which I reviewed here) Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi (which I reviewed here)
So much love to you all. Fight for the liberation of all sentient beings.
I loved Nnedi Okorafor's Binti and immediately had to read the sequel, Binti: Home. Have just started Binti: The Night Masquerade and am still in love with this writer. <3
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson. This might be my favourite love story. I don't know. But the end was everything I ever wanted to read. It's beautiful and radically optimistic. It's the sort of book I would hold up and say, if I can write anything half as good as this I'll be satisfied with my choices as a writer. I love it.
It took me longer to decide on a second book, but I think I'll go with The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. It's such a unique take on the YA dystopia and the central metaphor about beauty is sharp without being one-dimensional.
Oh my, my top pick has to be Binti by Nnedi Okorofor. It is a stunning coming of age book about a young woman who has magical math powers and becomes friends with a sentient jellyfish alien. It is not as cheesy as I am afraid I have just made it sound, trust me!
Also Americanah by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a novel whose main character is a Nigerian woman who writes a blog about race. The observations made about race in this book really made me think and it is a compelling story about the immigrant experience AND about returning to your home country and the love people have for their countries.
I love love love Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and I recently read a really fun mystery by new friend Lynne Emery called A Darker Shade of Midnight, (Book 1 of the LaShaun Rousselle Mysteries).
Also, whenever I want to laugh out loud at the sheer audacity and playfulness of language, I pick up ZigZag Claybourne’s The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan. It’s fast and often bewildering, but it’s ENDOWED.
Because of the Amistad Books call, I finally bought all P Djèlí Clark’s novellas, and was just DELIGHTED by the opening pages of The Haunting of Tram Car 015.
Also, all the internet was talking about Kai Ashante Wilson‘s A Taste of Honey, so I bought that too.
First, I'm going to pick Version Control by Dexter Palmer. A time travel (or causality violation, if you want to go with the preferred term of the guy trying to invent it) story with some really interesting looks at interpersonal relationships and also sexism. Just a thought-provoking read. I've been looking forward to his Mary Toft, as well.
Second, Accordeon by Kaie Kellough, which is a dystopian future of sorts told in short sections with input from censors and also narrated by an unnamed Montreal.
I loved Nicky Drayden's The Prey of Gods so much. She immediately went on my "pre-order every novel they write" list. Temper was also great, and then Escaping Exodus blew me away this year. And it solidifies wombpunk as a thing after it and Hurley's The Stars are Legion, imo. :P Yes yes, that's three books, but The Prey of Gods, read it! You'll end up reading the rest, too.
Lots of love for so many books y'all have mentioned, but because it's freshest in my mind, the one I want to second is CL Polk's Witchmark. I dove so hard into that one and just devoured it and the sequel. So many great things about it, and I love that there's like, squadrons of people bicycling everywhere. Far from the most important bit, but I loved it so much.
2) How Long Til Black Future Month by NK Jemisin. I adored the depth and breadth she explores in her short stories in this anthology. Some are charming, some haunting, some bright, some very dark. It's stunning.
1) The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin - tremendous worldbuilding, an opening that seized me by the heart, and compelling insights on oppression, power, and being co-opted to perpetuate them — and liberated to resist.
2) Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosely - detective fiction informed by the trauma of Black experience. Fairly dark but gripped me.
1. Brown Girl In The Ring by the incomparable Nalo Hopkinson. This book; this absolute masterpiece of a book. I don't even remember now how! I came across the book; maybe because a Canadian friend was talking about how it was one of the only mainstream successful books penned by a Canadian actually set in Canada? Or maybe because it had organ-stealers in the synopsis, and I envisioned a powerful girl PI destroying evil.
What I got was so far beyond that there aren't even words. A deeply flawed protag, scarred by intergenerational trauma she wasn't even fully aware of. Learning to come fully into herself; to be the mother she deserved for her son. Vanquishing the literal embodiments of greed and hate her own kin had brought into the world. I'd rarely seen a protag like this; with her flaws unvarnished and her struggles so! reflective of the poverty I saw all around me.
And the language; I didn't know a book could do the sorts of things Hopkinson did with language! I'd never encountered patois--or if I had, it was used in the stereotypical ways so many white authors use it: to bring exoticism to one or two characters. But no; this was full-fledged plunging into the head of someone who used it with the fluency I did standard English; it was definitely hard! at first; head-hopping from person to person, all freely using this dialect I just. didn't understand. But it was also exhilarating. To be reading a book that wasn't written to my convenience as a white person, that made me work, and so made my understanding all the sweeter. And to be entirely submerged in this lyrical dialect that hit my ear like poetry or music--I was just coming to love poetry with Mary Oliver, and to realize that a book could read like poetry, with its ebbs and flows, and yet not be poetry? is still an observation I treasure.
2. We haven't talked a lot of middle-grade, and I have to rec Tanita Davis's Mare's War. Told in alternating timelines, it's the tale of two sisters, Octavia and Talia, and their road-trip with their grandmother, Mare.
Whose story as a member of the Women's Army Core of WWII makes up the 2nd timeline--with flashbacks interspersed as the girls discover this rich vein of history on their trip from California to Mississippi.
A. I love this book because it taught me about black contributions to the Women's Army Core, which I had no idea about. And about Juneteenth, in one of the most moving scenes I've ever read when the girls are in Emancipation Park in Houston, and Mare tells them the story of how the park came to be created amidst a stream of families celebrating Juneteenth.
B. Mare!!!! oh GOD I love Mare. Growing up in the segregated south, determined to make a better life for herself and her sister; going off to the Army Core. Being the world's sternest. fiercely loving grandmother, with her red car and her ubiquitous cigarette and her orneriness, which is so quintessentiallly sourthern U.S.
C. the girls--who're navigating being black while also growing up in a middle-class white neighborhood. So much of their struggle is holding on to heritage in a culture that demands assimilation.
I don't think, even with my adoration, I understood how revolutionary this book was, though, until I read Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. In it, she discusses how black women have been having creative family structures for decades, even as white culture promotes the nuclear family. Mare was an army vet; a single mother of Octavia and Talia's father; always and constantly surrounded by a fierce collective of women whose stories the girls learn alongside hers.
Cooper also talks about the trauma often perpetrated in black communities: the way that constant white supremacy can so easily turn into corrosive self-hatred; the way men, emasculated by white patriarchy, often turn to violence. The way poverty itself and its desperation breeds violence. And this's vividly eloquently portrayed in Mare's story. To escape the trauma--not only of white hatred but black poverty of the south--is her driving force, the girls come to learn.
These are truths Cooper got backlash for addressing in 2020, and Davis was highlighting them well over a decade before, in a middle-grade novel, written as much, she makes clear in the acknowledgments, for black girls to see themselves as for a universal audience, and I'm in awe of her courage.
I made the mistake of reading the comments on the Onyebuchi article. I am incensed, embarrassed, and ashamed at the responses I saw there. On Twitter, I follow dozens of amazing SFF authors and the agents and editors who represent them. It's easy to fall into the unexamined belief that the creators of the content within the genre represent the tenor of the genre's consumers, that the Sad Puppies hide in the shadows, present but largely silenced after their failed coup.
My recommendations are Clint Smith III's Counting Descent and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.
Counting Descent not only contains phenomenal poetry, but the layout is an important part of the book: pay attention to which poems face each other on the page, to the distance between poems that address related topics and what comes between them.
The Underground Railroad should be required reading for the SFF community (and it won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2017, as well as the Pulitzer). It's an absolute literary masterpiece that combines portal fantasy, alternate history, and an unyielding examination of America.
Mem by Bethany C. Morrow has so many fascinating things to say about memories, and the subtle way she handles race made me question which race my subconscious sees as the “default” in a deeper way than I had previously. The Book of Delight by Ross Gay is like a healing balm for these times. It’s not a saccharine collection of happy thoughts, but rather a thoughtful meditation on finding joy even amidst the terrible.
I think there is a balance between being trying to tell the stories of terrible things, while also capturing the fullness of the lives of people living through those terrible things. The moments of joy + meaning-making they created for themselves, despite the ongoing devastation of their personhood. The book struck that balance.
Also, a really wonderful amalgamation of science fiction + mystery. I love mysteries about learning ancestry.
Tender by Sofia Samatar--Much as I love Sofia's novels, I think I love her short stories best of all. They're so gorgeous and idiosyncratic.
Passion by June Jordan--Though any volume of June Jordan's poetry will do. I think Passion was the first book of hers I read. It's from 1980 but so very immediate.
I loved Nnedi Okorafor's Binti and immediately had to read the sequel, Binti: Home. Have just started Binti: The Night Masquerade and am still in love with this writer. <3
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson. This might be my favourite love story. I don't know. But the end was everything I ever wanted to read. It's beautiful and radically optimistic. It's the sort of book I would hold up and say, if I can write anything half as good as this I'll be satisfied with my choices as a writer. I love it.
It took me longer to decide on a second book, but I think I'll go with The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. It's such a unique take on the YA dystopia and the central metaphor about beauty is sharp without being one-dimensional.
Oh my, my top pick has to be Binti by Nnedi Okorofor. It is a stunning coming of age book about a young woman who has magical math powers and becomes friends with a sentient jellyfish alien. It is not as cheesy as I am afraid I have just made it sound, trust me!
Also Americanah by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a novel whose main character is a Nigerian woman who writes a blog about race. The observations made about race in this book really made me think and it is a compelling story about the immigrant experience AND about returning to your home country and the love people have for their countries.
Happy Juneteenth!
100 thousand kingdoms and Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin, for sure. Excellent works of fantasy!
I love love love Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and I recently read a really fun mystery by new friend Lynne Emery called A Darker Shade of Midnight, (Book 1 of the LaShaun Rousselle Mysteries).
Also, whenever I want to laugh out loud at the sheer audacity and playfulness of language, I pick up ZigZag Claybourne’s The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan. It’s fast and often bewildering, but it’s ENDOWED.
Because of the Amistad Books call, I finally bought all P Djèlí Clark’s novellas, and was just DELIGHTED by the opening pages of The Haunting of Tram Car 015.
Also, all the internet was talking about Kai Ashante Wilson‘s A Taste of Honey, so I bought that too.
First, I'm going to pick Version Control by Dexter Palmer. A time travel (or causality violation, if you want to go with the preferred term of the guy trying to invent it) story with some really interesting looks at interpersonal relationships and also sexism. Just a thought-provoking read. I've been looking forward to his Mary Toft, as well.
Second, Accordeon by Kaie Kellough, which is a dystopian future of sorts told in short sections with input from censors and also narrated by an unnamed Montreal.
I loved Nicky Drayden's The Prey of Gods so much. She immediately went on my "pre-order every novel they write" list. Temper was also great, and then Escaping Exodus blew me away this year. And it solidifies wombpunk as a thing after it and Hurley's The Stars are Legion, imo. :P Yes yes, that's three books, but The Prey of Gods, read it! You'll end up reading the rest, too.
Lots of love for so many books y'all have mentioned, but because it's freshest in my mind, the one I want to second is CL Polk's Witchmark. I dove so hard into that one and just devoured it and the sequel. So many great things about it, and I love that there's like, squadrons of people bicycling everywhere. Far from the most important bit, but I loved it so much.
1) Witchmark by CL Polk is AMAZING!
2) How Long Til Black Future Month by NK Jemisin. I adored the depth and breadth she explores in her short stories in this anthology. Some are charming, some haunting, some bright, some very dark. It's stunning.
1) The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin - tremendous worldbuilding, an opening that seized me by the heart, and compelling insights on oppression, power, and being co-opted to perpetuate them — and liberated to resist.
2) Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosely - detective fiction informed by the trauma of Black experience. Fairly dark but gripped me.
1. Kindred by Octavia Butler: A rough read but a good one.
2. What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah: Solid collection of short stories.
1. Brown Girl In The Ring by the incomparable Nalo Hopkinson. This book; this absolute masterpiece of a book. I don't even remember now how! I came across the book; maybe because a Canadian friend was talking about how it was one of the only mainstream successful books penned by a Canadian actually set in Canada? Or maybe because it had organ-stealers in the synopsis, and I envisioned a powerful girl PI destroying evil.
What I got was so far beyond that there aren't even words. A deeply flawed protag, scarred by intergenerational trauma she wasn't even fully aware of. Learning to come fully into herself; to be the mother she deserved for her son. Vanquishing the literal embodiments of greed and hate her own kin had brought into the world. I'd rarely seen a protag like this; with her flaws unvarnished and her struggles so! reflective of the poverty I saw all around me.
And the language; I didn't know a book could do the sorts of things Hopkinson did with language! I'd never encountered patois--or if I had, it was used in the stereotypical ways so many white authors use it: to bring exoticism to one or two characters. But no; this was full-fledged plunging into the head of someone who used it with the fluency I did standard English; it was definitely hard! at first; head-hopping from person to person, all freely using this dialect I just. didn't understand. But it was also exhilarating. To be reading a book that wasn't written to my convenience as a white person, that made me work, and so made my understanding all the sweeter. And to be entirely submerged in this lyrical dialect that hit my ear like poetry or music--I was just coming to love poetry with Mary Oliver, and to realize that a book could read like poetry, with its ebbs and flows, and yet not be poetry? is still an observation I treasure.
2. We haven't talked a lot of middle-grade, and I have to rec Tanita Davis's Mare's War. Told in alternating timelines, it's the tale of two sisters, Octavia and Talia, and their road-trip with their grandmother, Mare.
Whose story as a member of the Women's Army Core of WWII makes up the 2nd timeline--with flashbacks interspersed as the girls discover this rich vein of history on their trip from California to Mississippi.
A. I love this book because it taught me about black contributions to the Women's Army Core, which I had no idea about. And about Juneteenth, in one of the most moving scenes I've ever read when the girls are in Emancipation Park in Houston, and Mare tells them the story of how the park came to be created amidst a stream of families celebrating Juneteenth.
B. Mare!!!! oh GOD I love Mare. Growing up in the segregated south, determined to make a better life for herself and her sister; going off to the Army Core. Being the world's sternest. fiercely loving grandmother, with her red car and her ubiquitous cigarette and her orneriness, which is so quintessentiallly sourthern U.S.
C. the girls--who're navigating being black while also growing up in a middle-class white neighborhood. So much of their struggle is holding on to heritage in a culture that demands assimilation.
I don't think, even with my adoration, I understood how revolutionary this book was, though, until I read Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. In it, she discusses how black women have been having creative family structures for decades, even as white culture promotes the nuclear family. Mare was an army vet; a single mother of Octavia and Talia's father; always and constantly surrounded by a fierce collective of women whose stories the girls learn alongside hers.
Cooper also talks about the trauma often perpetrated in black communities: the way that constant white supremacy can so easily turn into corrosive self-hatred; the way men, emasculated by white patriarchy, often turn to violence. The way poverty itself and its desperation breeds violence. And this's vividly eloquently portrayed in Mare's story. To escape the trauma--not only of white hatred but black poverty of the south--is her driving force, the girls come to learn.
These are truths Cooper got backlash for addressing in 2020, and Davis was highlighting them well over a decade before, in a middle-grade novel, written as much, she makes clear in the acknowledgments, for black girls to see themselves as for a universal audience, and I'm in awe of her courage.
I made the mistake of reading the comments on the Onyebuchi article. I am incensed, embarrassed, and ashamed at the responses I saw there. On Twitter, I follow dozens of amazing SFF authors and the agents and editors who represent them. It's easy to fall into the unexamined belief that the creators of the content within the genre represent the tenor of the genre's consumers, that the Sad Puppies hide in the shadows, present but largely silenced after their failed coup.
My recommendations are Clint Smith III's Counting Descent and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.
Counting Descent not only contains phenomenal poetry, but the layout is an important part of the book: pay attention to which poems face each other on the page, to the distance between poems that address related topics and what comes between them.
The Underground Railroad should be required reading for the SFF community (and it won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2017, as well as the Pulitzer). It's an absolute literary masterpiece that combines portal fantasy, alternate history, and an unyielding examination of America.
Mem by Bethany C. Morrow has so many fascinating things to say about memories, and the subtle way she handles race made me question which race my subconscious sees as the “default” in a deeper way than I had previously. The Book of Delight by Ross Gay is like a healing balm for these times. It’s not a saccharine collection of happy thoughts, but rather a thoughtful meditation on finding joy even amidst the terrible.
Dear Church by Lenny Duncan, a Black Lutheran minister writing about how his church needs to confront its racist legacy.
Sofia Samatar’s debut novel, A Stranger in Olondria—just gorgeously evocative.
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon!
I think there is a balance between being trying to tell the stories of terrible things, while also capturing the fullness of the lives of people living through those terrible things. The moments of joy + meaning-making they created for themselves, despite the ongoing devastation of their personhood. The book struck that balance.
Also, a really wonderful amalgamation of science fiction + mystery. I love mysteries about learning ancestry.
Tender by Sofia Samatar--Much as I love Sofia's novels, I think I love her short stories best of all. They're so gorgeous and idiosyncratic.
Passion by June Jordan--Though any volume of June Jordan's poetry will do. I think Passion was the first book of hers I read. It's from 1980 but so very immediate.
The Murders of Molly Southborne and its sequels by Tade Thompson are a favourite of mine