Welcome to the corner of Broadway and West 139th Street in New York City: Today, Kameeka is determined that she will finally claim her rightful title as the Hula-Hoopin' Queen of 139th Street! But today is also the beloved Miz Adeline's birthday – "I love Miz...
Let's start with the bottom line: read this. [Or listen – narrator Adenrele Ojo is superb.] I guarantee this stupendously epic, unforgettably affecting story of Aminata Diallo will haunt you long after you finish. Born in 1745, Aminata is 11 when she's violently abducted from her...
In what should have been a year-long contract of difficult labor as a "pawn" for a 9-year-old girl whose family cannot survive otherwise, becomes a horrific journey to the other side of the world. Named Magulu by her parents, she becomes Margru because of a...
I read the eponymous first chapter almost a year ago and then stopped. I listened to the same story – the absolute highlight in the disappointingly uneven collection Haiti Noir – so smoothly, lullingly read by Robin Miles, and again stopped. The book stayed on my desk...
In the small town of Caledonia, Iowa, Jewel stands out: she's "'half-Jamaican, a quarter white, and a quarter Mexican.'" As if to provide a physical embodiment of Jewel's hapa background, the audible producers cast Amandla Stenberg, who played the heartbreaking role of young Rue in the film version of The...
Theater producer/critic/playwright Warren Hoffman (The Passing Game) insists that audiences have been "duped" into believing that the Broadway musical "is the most innocent of art forms when, in fact, it is one of America's most powerful, influential, and even at times polemical arts precisely because...
When Oprah reinvented her book club in 2012, she elevated Cheryl Strayed's Wild to near mythic status (I found Wild so tedious, I didn't have the energy to write a post). Oprah's 2013 choice was a first novel that hasn't found quite that Wild level of ubiquitous...
An 85-year-old grandmother makes a special birthday trip from the U.S. to Tanzania where three generations celebrate with a surprise safari through Serengeti National Park. The story is special enough ...
What writer and musician James McBride initially thought might take just six months to write required 14 long years to produce his now-almost-20-year-old debut title, The Color of Water. "Mommy" – McBride never calls her anything else – was never a cooperative subject: she shared her memories in her...
Let's start with this fascinating article: "The One Thing White Writers Get Away With, But Authors of Color Don't" by PolicyMic’s Gracie Jin – go ahead, take a few minutes to read it. You'll see from that giant close-up photo that author Bill Cheng is indeed of...
Two sisters, born three months apart on the same Alabama plantation, could not have more different lives. As the daughter of a slave, Sarah is Master Allen's property; as the legitimate Mrs. Allen's youngest child, Clarissa is a pampered young lady of means. Playmates as...
For you DC-area-locals who were wondering, debut novelist A.X. Ahmad is one of us ...
The latest biography of "the world's most brilliant stand-up comedian" is the culmination of a project that took more than a decade (originally intended as a three-act screenplay) by screenwriter David Henry and his brother, musician Joe Henry. Born in 1940 in Peoria, IL, Richard...
"We are on our way to Budapest," 10-year-old Darling announces as NoViolet Bulawayo’s 2013 Booker longlisted debut novel opens. 'We' includes "Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina," banded together with plans to steal guavas as they sneak out of Paradise, the ironically named...
Arthur Flowers, a "blues-based" performance poet, musician, and professor, introduces himself as "Rickydoc Trickmaster," to render the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. into a biography for younger readers, as traditional Patua Indian scroll painter Manu Chitrakar brings Flowers' recitation to vibrant life. Their combined...
In segregated Greenville, North Carolina, 14-year-old Mason Steele has the rare talent to transcribe his father's impassioned descriptions of civil rights incidents into effective business letters determined to educate and change people's minds. His father's civil rights group rewards young Mason's efforts with a typewriter....
This week has been especially stormy and wet, so I thought I needed to throw in a rainbow in the midst of bursting clouds. The waking glee of three young children staying with their grandfather quickly turns to "[w]himper, sigh, cloudy sky," when their plans for...
Give me a story with two narratives interwoven through nonlinear timelines and, usually, I'll be one committed reader. The House Girl opens in 1852 rural Virginia with a teenage slave girl named Josephine, then fast forwards in the next chapter to Lina, an ambitious attorney...
Well, I've done it now. I've finished every Edward P. Jones book ever written ...
I think I was somehow predestined to read Mudbound when I did: just after I finished Barbara Kingsolver's mightily disappointing Flight Behavior, I turned next to Hillary Jordan's 2008 debut novel. While searching for an image of the book cover to load here, I noticed...
