Our missing hearts
Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts takes readers into the near future of the USA. A world of oppression is countered by a certain gentleness, warmth and creativity.
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Recitatif
Recitatif is a writerly experiment that sees the acclaimed Toni Morrison toying with her reader as she frames an insightful commentary on racial categorizations. First published in 1983, it is famously the only short story the Nobel-laureate ever wrote.
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Between the world and me
Between the world and me is a letter from a father to his son about living in the United States of America in a Black man’s body. There are moments in this book where the beauty of Coates’ prose is quite breath-taking, and the whole is sustained by an intellectual rigour that allows it to shine all the better
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Friday Black
Friday Black is the acclaimed first collection of short stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. He has a knack for locating the horror already existing in the everyday and drawing it to chilling yet strangely logical conclusions.
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Harlem Shuffle
Breaking with the much-needed, but often painful plunges into US history of the author’s previous novels, the portrayal of the Harlem Shuffle, and the reading experience as a whole are – as intended by the author – predominantly light-hearted and entertaining. It is a heist novel set in 1960s Harlem.
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The Night Watchman
When I start reading very thick books – The Nightwatchman with its nearly 500 pages is one of those – I’m often skeptical whether such bulk is really necessary. But I simply devoured this book in two days.
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Sister Outsider
Sister Outsider by African-American, lesbian, feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde is a foundational text for anyone interested in intersectionality and reflecting on their own social positions.
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Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
In Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Saidiya Hartman presents a careful meditation on histories of slavery and complicity.
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Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Audre Lorde’s biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name relates this iconic writer’s personal, poetic, political and sexual coming-of-age. Lorde was a self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and this recording of her early life is a powerful piece of writing. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the lived experiences of intersectional marginalisation, as told by one of the most strident and talented voices to talk about these realities.
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The Namesake
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s debut novel tells the story of the Ganguli family: Ashoke and Ashima, originally from Bengal, migrate to the North-eastern United States in the 1960s. They have two children there, and the novel follows the experiences of their firstborn son. It’s a novel about living in between places, cultures and assigned identities.
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