#recitatif

Ooh you caught me right before I have to leave! Time x what I know about what you read leads to twelve grouped by genre with shorter recs.

Non-USA Realistic Fiction

The History of a Difficult Child by Mihret Sibhat - semi autobiographical, Ethiopia during the 80’s and 90’s from the point of view of a little girl who knows herself but can feel it awed away by societal and familial pressures and tragedies. Tw Cancer, period typical homophobia and misogyny, fundamentalism and violence. I don’t think the kid is hurt besides emotionally (severely) but it’s been 2 years

Half a Yellow Sun by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie - the story of Biafra, a Republic of what is now Nigeria, starved into submission, from the point of view of several different Anglo/Nigerians. Tw starvation, violence, misogyny, and it’s also been 2 years

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop - the point of view of a WWI ‘Chocolat’ Senegalese soldier suffering absolutely terrible PTSD compounded by racism.

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield - Jamaican-Canadian girl goes to Jamaica to visit her father, only to discover the colorism and patriarchy inherent, and the reasons why her mother wanted to leave and her father wanted to stay. Has cool patois glossary that gets used regularly in the book. Tw sexual assault and victim blaming

USA History/Fiction

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia - Great kids book where three little Black New Yorker girls go to meet their mother for the first time during the Civil Rights Movement. Tw police brutality if I remember correctly

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - Fantastic story of a girl who loves her neighborhood despite how much the world hates it, and how she deals with the murder of her childhood best friends because of gang violence and police brutality.

Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Patillo Beals - memoir of a woman who survived the high school version of the Ruby Bridges Story (the Little Rock Nine) and was one of the first Black students in a white school. Tw bombings, extreme racism, despair, stalking, and public scrutiny

Recitatif by Toni Morrison - the story of two best friends, one Black one white, and how their lives differed as they left the orphanage and grew up during the mid 1900s. Listen to the FREE LeVar Burton reading, his revelations at the end blew me out of the water. Please talk to me if you read/listen. Tw Period typical racism, ableism, misogyny, poverty and alcoholism

Fantasy (Varying Types)

The Deep by Rivers Solomon - A mermaid descended from the pregnant women pushed overboard from slave ships deals with basically being the Receiver of Memory (the Giver style) and decides to make her anger a problem for humanity (affectionate). Then, she falls in love.

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James - I cannot recommend this book enough. In a fantastic oral style in an African High Fantasy world, a man with a gift for tracking tells his life story and why he helped murder the prince (/deserved). Tw the first quarter of the book you won’t like him, sexual assault of EVERY kind not exaggerating in the least, murder, war, genital mutilation, child death, ableism, misogyny, classism, colorism, and more.

A Song Below the Water by Bethany C. Morrow - What if on top of misogynoir and police brutality in modern America, two teen girls had to deal with being repressed magical beings and having uncertain destined too? You might think it’s about mermaids …

Midnight Rooms by Donyae Coles - A Black English woman gets married off as breeding stock for a family infested by familial fae and moral decay. Tw Period typical racism, racism beyond what I think is period typical imo, physical and sexual assault, incest, pregnancy, cannibalism, misogyny, AKA ITS GOTHIC HORROR X MUSHROOMS* BAYBEE. And not in the ‘hee hee you had to be on mushrooms to write this’ normie ass take way.

*if you like Mexican Gothic, Sorrowland, and She is a Haunting, this one is the next one for you ;). This was the first or second out of those I read

Zadie Smith on

Recitatif

A Dance Class in Havana, Cuba, 2017

‘There's an interesting line in one of the Hemingway books, he says two men, he's in Cuba. Two men came towards him one was Cuban and one was black. [Toni Morrison pauses for a long time] 

Maybe they were BOTH Cuban, but you know he was making... the black man has no home, he doesn't belong in Cuba, he's outside of it. So I find in so much classical white literature this use to which black people are put as different, you know as separate.’