Bahni Turpin Archives

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana [in Booklist]

12 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Sidik Fofana’s exquisite debut is further enhanced by eight pitch-perfect narrators (but where’s the cast list?!) who embody the collection’s eight interconnected stories. “Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain’t pretty,” but evictions are pending because the building has been sold to create “deluxe...

Mighty Justice (Young Readers’ Edition): The Untold Story of Civil Rights Trailblazer Dovey Johnson Roundtree by Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe, adapted by Jabari Asim [in School Library Journal]

24 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Until her death at 104 in 2018, Dovey Johnson Roundtree—“a Black woman born in the early twentieth century in the Jim Crow South” – shared a remarkable 24-year friendship with Katie McCabe, a self-described “white woman who came of age in 1950s Washington, DC.” Theirs...

Recitatif by Toni Morrison [in Booklist]

04 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In addition to 11 novels, Novel Prize-winning Toni Morrison wrote this “one and only short story” in 1980, collected in 1983’s Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, edited by Amiri and Amina Baraka. Posthumously published as a standalone volume, the story is paired...

These Women by Ivy Pochoda [in Booklist]

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Bahni Turpin opens and ends Pochoda’s thriller with electrifying energy as Feelia, the sole survivor of a serial killer who claimed 13 victims 15 years ago. All – including Feelia – had their throats slit, their heads covered in plastic bags, their bodies dumped. All...

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite [in Booklist]

06 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Ma likes to think her family is like Job’s, so much so that she and Dad named their daughters accordingly: Jemima Genesis, Keziah Leah, Keren Happuch. Generations on both sides have known tortuous tragedy, but no one is prepared when Kezi – a YouTube activist...

145th Street: Short Stories by Walter Dean Myers [in School Library Journal]

28 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW This 20th-anniversary edition features a 10-reader cast performing the original 10 stories, with additional "Bonus Content" that includes a dozen "Tributes" by literary luminaries, including Christopher Myers, Lois Lowry, and Jason Reynolds, extolling the late, great Walter Dean Myers's enduring legacy to diverse children's...

The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, Piper Kendrix Williams [in Booklist]

08 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW In their joint introduction, four The College of New Jersey colleagues – three African American women, one gay white man, all PhD-ed – declare, “Toni Morrison is our greatest living historian about love, race, nation, and just about everything else of consequence.” The Nobel...

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson [in Booklist]

19 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW National Book Award-winner Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn) exquisitely examines the (dis)connections of three generations of a Brooklyn family that is tenuously held together by Melody, whose coming-of-age ceremony is just beginning in her grandparents’ brownstone. Through 21 spare, dazzling chapters, Woodson reveals the past...

The Last Word: Audios of Posthumously Published Books – Part 2 [in Booklist]

04 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab American, Audio, Australian, Black/African American, European, Lebanese American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation, Vietnamese American

The one thing in life that’s guaranteed is, well, death. But books are certainly a lasting legacy. And sometimes, when we get the books after their creator has passed on, an audiobook can breathe new life into the text, animating from beyond. A bittersweet legacy, indeed, but...

Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary: Selected Works of Kathleen Collins by Kathleen Collins [in Booklist]

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Drama/Theater, Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW In 2014, a quarter-century after the 1988 death of filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins at 46 of breast cancer, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 movie, Losing Ground, one of the first films written and directed by an African American woman, inspiring new interest in the...

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney [in Booklist]

07 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Undoubtedly, Bahni Turpin is one of few narrators able to convincingly crisscross the gender spectrum with consistent agility. Here she begins as untethered Kollie, a Liberian immigrant teen in 2008, alternately dismissed and provoked by both white and African American peers at his Minnesota high school, until rage, violence,...

So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo [in Library Journal]

17 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

If you eschew potentially significant discomfort, then you're probably not ready to talk about race. Then again, denial is no longer an option: "These last few years, the rise of voices of color, coupled with the widespread dissemination of video proof of brutality and injustice...

Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon [in School Library Journal]

02 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Nicola Yoon’s superb debut begins and ends with books. Stories are how 18-year-old Madeline has survived with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency – "you know it as 'bubble baby disease’" – in her sanitized world that includes only her doctor mother and a nurse. She's been content...

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay

24 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Caribbean American, Fiction, Haitian, Haitian American, Memoir, Nonfiction

If I were to choose the one book that affected me most this year – the one that ran the entire spectrum from giddiest to maddest, from eye-opening in wonder to eye-scrunching in horror – this is it. Bad Feminist has forever changed the way I read,...

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

12 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction

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...

The House Girl by Tara Conklin

26 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific

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...

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

17 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Nonfiction

From the age of 16 when she took a biology class at a community college (making up for a failed high school freshman year because "she never showed up"), award-winning science writer Rebecca Skloot has seemingly spent the majority of her life preparing to write...

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

22 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction

I admit that when one of my favorite friends told me she voluntarily gave up enjoying the blooming delights on a family trip through Death Valley in order to finish The Help, I picked up the book for a second time, determined to find out...

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