Literary Fiction by People of Color discussion

By all accounts, 2012 has been a phenomenal year for literary fiction in general and for writers of color in particular. Morrison, Pitts, Zadie, Diaz and of course Mosley were just a few of the literary titans to release books during the year and we still have three months to go. The demise of good books and literary fiction have obviously been greatly exaggerated. What awaits the reading public for 2013?

If there are any authors/books you're anticipating, please share them with us. If 2013 is half as good as 2012 we're in for a mighty good year!

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis will be released on January 15, 2013 I have this one on my wishlist it sounds like it will be a really good book.

I have The Twelve Tribes also on my list.

Here are a couple more by AOC:
The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord (Feb 5, 2013)
Apology: A Novel - Jon Pineda (June 4 2013)
Daughters Who Walk the Path - Yejide Kilando (Jan 29, 2013)
Sugar In the Blood: A Family's Story of Slaves and Empire - Andrea Stuart (Jan 23, 2013)
Find Sahara - Mukoma Wa Ngugi (June 4, 2013)
Litte Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery - Walter Mosley (May 28, 2013)

Here are a couple of stories that I am also interested in reading as they are about AAs but are written by non-AOC

Wash - Margaret Wrinkle (Feb 5, 2013)
very nice cover - but a difficult subject
Margaret Wrinkle’s luminous and affecting debut novel is the impassioned story of two men and a woman joined together by slave breeding in early-nineteenth-century Tennessee. Written as an accusation, a revelation, and a prayer, Wash challenges contemporary assumptions as it transcends time to revisit anew this explosive shard of our national history.

The House Girl - Tara Conklin (Feb 23, 2013)
Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice

Beverly wrote: "Litte Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery - Walter Mosley (May 28, 2013) ..."

Wait - you mean Easy isn't dead?

Wilhelmina wrote: "Beverly wrote: "Litte Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery - Walter Mosley (May 28, 2013) ..."

Wait - you mean Easy isn't dead?"

LOL That was left was open-ended it could have went either way.
I forgot if his new contract was for 2 or 3 Easy books.

Wilhelmina wrote: "Beverly wrote: "Litte Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery - Walter Mosley (May 28, 2013) ..."

Wait - you mean Easy isn't dead?"

That is too funny. This is what I understand:

Little Green (Mosley's new book), picks up where Blonde Ambition left off. That means Easy survived the plunge and is nursed back to health.

Sounds like some Bobby Ewing stuff going on here.

So Walter Mosley thinks that he can just lure me into getting this book so that I can find out what happened to Easy? Oh, he's probably right....

LOL

Wilhelmina wrote: "So Walter Mosley thinks that he can just lure me into getting this book so that I can find out what happened to Easy? Oh, he's probably right...."

I just want some more of Mouse :)

Wilhelmina wrote: "So Walter Mosley thinks that he can just lure me into getting this book so that I can find out what happened to Easy? Oh, he's probably right...."

haha...yes, you & me and a million others.

Wilhelmina wrote: "So Walter Mosley thinks that he can just lure me into getting this book so that I can find out what happened to Easy? Oh, he's probably right...."

Me too!!

Now have a US publishing date for Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (May 14, 2013)

Ghana Must Go - Taiye Selasi (Mar 5, 2013)

Kwaku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside the home he shares in Ghana with his second wife. The news of Kwaku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Ghana Must Go is their story.

Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go follows the Sais’ journey, moving with great elegance through time and place to share the truths hidden and lies told; the crimes committed in the name of love. In the wake of Kwaku’s death, the family gathers in Ghana, at their mother, Fola’s, new home. The eldest son and his new wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; their baby sister, now a young woman—all come together for the first time in years, each carrying secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart.

But the horrible fragility of the world they have built soon becomes clear, and Kwaku’s leaving begets a series of betrayals that none of them could have imagined. Splintered, alone, each navigates his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered—until, in Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge.

Ghana Must Go is at once a portrait of a family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from and our obligations to one another. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from West Africa to New England to London, Ghana Must Go teaches that the stories we share with one another can build a new future.

The Supremes At Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (Mar 12, 2013)
Edward Kelsey Moore

Told with wit, style, and compassion, this is the story of friendship among three women weathering the ups and downs of life in a small Midwestern town.

When Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean meet as teenagers in the mid-sixties, the civil rights movement is moving along and so are their everyday lives. Their regular gathering place is Earl's All-You-Can-Eat diner, the first black-owned business in downtown Plainview, Indiana. Dubbed the Supremes by their friends, the inseparable trio is watched over by big-hearted Earl during their complicated high school days, and then every Sunday after church as they marry, and have children and grandchildren. Sitting at the same table for almost forty years, these best friends grow up, gossip, and face the world together with pointed humor, some sorrow, and much joy. Meet Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean--once you meet them, they will be your friends forever...

Four intertwined love stories, three devoted friends, two lively ghosts, one hilarious and tender debut novel....

Edward Kelsey Moore lives and writes in Chicago, where he also enjoys a career as a professional cellist. Edward’s short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has been performed on National Public Radio

A couple of more upcoming titles:

Title = Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (Feb 5, 2013)
Author = Percival Everett
(I know a little confusing but his book is suppose to be along the lines of "I Am Not Sidney Poiter" so the title does make sense)

“Anything we take for granted, Mr. Everett means to show us, may turn out to be a lie.” —Wall Street Journal

A story inside a story inside a story. A man visits his aging father in a nursing home, where his father writes the novel he imagines his son would write. Or is it the novel that the son imagines his father would imagine, if he were to imagine the kind of novel the son would write?

Let’s simplify: a woman seeks an apprenticeship with a painter, claiming to be his long-lost daughter. A contractor-for-hire named Murphy can’t distinguish between the two brothers who employ him. And in Murphy’s troubled dreams, Nat Turner imagines the life of William Styron. These narratives twist together with anecdotes from the nursing home, each building on the other until they crest in a wild, outlandish excursion of the inmates led by the father. Anchoring these shifting plotlines is a running commentary between father and son that sheds doubt on the truthfulness of each story. Because, after all, what narrator can we ever trust?

Not only is Percival Everett by Virgil Russell a powerful, compassionate meditation on old age and its humiliations, it is an ingenious culmination of Everett’s recurring preoccupations. All of his prior work, his metaphysical and philosophical inquiries, his investigations into the nature of narrative, have led to this masterful book. Percival Everett has never been more cunning, more brilliant and subversive, than he is in this, his most important and elusive novel to date.

Domino Falls (Feb 19, 2013)
Steven Barnes and Tanaravive Due
The 2nd book in the paranormal series

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora - Emily Raboteau - Jan 8, 2013

On her ten-year journey back in time and around the globe, through the Bush years and into the age of Obama, Raboteau wanders to Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South to explore the complex and contradictory perspectives of Black Zionists. She talks to Rastafarians and African Hebrew Israelites, Evangelicals and Ethiopian Jews, and Katrina transplants from her own family—people that have risked everything in search of territory that is hard to define and harder to inhabit. Uniting memoir with historical and cultural investigation, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement and dispossession, citizenship and country in a disarmingly honest and refreshingly brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.

See Now Then: A Novel - Jamaica Kincaid - Feb 5 2013

The Gospel According to Cane - Courttia Newland (Feb 5 2013)

The Gospel According to Cane is a novel about inner-city youth in contemporary London. It’s a meditation on pain and loss, the burden of heritage, and how the past can blur the present. It’s about trust and the perceived lack of trust, disillusion, and its consequences. A world where everyone is the victim, and no one is to blame.

Review from Library Journal:

"A mother's love is unbreakable, as Frank O'Connor Award-nominee Newland demonstrates in his latest novel... The storytelling is as captivating as the story itself. Newland, a Jamaican-born British writer, seamlessly integrates the joy, fear, uncertainty, and sadness... Newland's prose is beautiful. His novel--part homecoming narrative in the vein of Toni Morrison's Beloved and part haunting tale of loss similar to Ernest Gaines's In My Father's House--will appeal to all lovers of literary fiction."

Good afternoon Wilhelmenia -

Sister Souljah has a new book - A DEEPER LOVE: THE PORSCHE SANTIAGA STORY set for 1/29/13 release.

http://www.amazon.com/Deeper-Love-Ins...

Thanks, Peggy!

Wow, I am behind on Easy Rawlin's mystery series. I have to catch up...

It has been a while for me also. A young cousin would tell when a new one came out, now that he has grown up gotten married and moved away I am not keeping up. I miss him, not to many folks in the family like to read like we do, always make family gathering easy to get through.

Did someone mention this already? Has anyone read anything by this author? Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson Release date: March 12, 2013

The World is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière 1/1/13

Stepping Stone / The Love Machine: Crosstown to Oblivion by Walter Mosley 4/2/13

I've read a couple of books by Nalo Hopkinson & I really enjoyed them. Science fiction mixed with Caribbean folklore.

I've read several of Hopkinson's books and loved them. I hope that Sister Mine is a good one!

Columbus wrote: "The World is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière 1/1/13

Stepping Stone / The Love Machine: Crosstown to Oblivion by Walter Mosley 4/2/13"

thanks for these.

Have you read any of the previous Crosstown to Oblivion books. I think I am going to try the Merge/Disciple one as I liked the blurbs on these two novellas.

If you are a fan of Walter Mosley - then you might be interested in the ebook only just released this week - Parishioner.

A brand-new, eBook original crime novel from bestselling author Walter Mosley, Parishioner is a portrait of a hardened criminal who regrets his past, but whose only hope for redemption is to sin again.

In a small town situated between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, a simple church of white stone sits atop a hill on the coast. This nameless house of worship is a sanctuary for the worst kinds of sinners: the congregation and even the clergy have broken all ten Commandments and more. Now they have gathered to seek forgiveness. Xavier Rule—Ecks to his friends—didn’t come to California in search of salvation but, thanks to the grace of this church, he has begun to learn to forgive himself and others for past misdeeds. One day a woman arrives to seek absolution for the guilt she has carried for years over her role in a scheme to kidnap three children and sell them on the black market. As part of atoning for his past life on the wrong side of the law, Ecks is assigned to find out what happened to the abducted children. As he follows the thin trail of the twenty-three-year-old crime, he must struggle against his old, lethal instincts—and learn when to give in to them.

Beverly wrote: "Columbus wrote: "The World is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière 1/1/13

Stepping Stone / The Love Machine: Crosstown to Oblivion by Walter Mosley 4/2/13"

thanks..."

Not familiar with the Crosstown books before this one or the ebook original. I'm certain I'll get it though, sounds enticing as ever. I love Walter Mosley's writing. Even enjoyed The Man in the Basement, so I'm a true fan.

Columbus wrote: " Even enjoyed The Man in the Basement, so I'm a true fan...."

Oh, so YOU are the guy who enjoyed it, Columbus! I knew that there was at least one person!

Just kidding, of course! I always think that Mosley is worth reading, even if it's not one of his best. He's willing to take chances, something that many authors with his kind of success won't do. I'm a true fan too.

Wilhelmina wrote: "Columbus wrote: " Even enjoyed The Man in the Basement, so I'm a true fan...."

Oh, so YOU are the guy who enjoyed it, Columbus! I knew that there was at least one person!

Just kidding, of course!..."

Yes, guilty as charged!

Here's another book from an author with buzz. Made the Granta list of six new voices to watch in '12:

Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta 8/13/13

Columbus wrote: "Here's another book from an author with buzz. Made the Granta list of six new voices to watch in '12:

Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta 8/13/13"

Thanks - I just put this on my list today.

Columbus wrote: "Here's another book from an author with buzz. Made the Granta list of six new voices to watch in '12:

Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta 8/13/13"

Sounds very good!

Has everyone checked out Beverly's great list? Look like 2013 will have good reading.

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/27...

Wilhelmina wrote: "Columbus wrote: "Here's another book from an author with buzz. Made the Granta list of six new voices to watch in '12:

Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta 8/13/13"

Sounds very good!

Has ev..."

Thanks Wilhelmina - but just wanted to note that not all of the authors are people of color but subject/characters are people of color.

One of the books did already publish in 2012 - The Twelve Tribes of Hattie - which I enjoyed.

And I just finished Searching for Zion and if these two books are any indication - yes, it will be a very good reading year.

I have a couple of more to add but others can add books to the list.

There are three upcoming books that I'm chomping at the bit to get to:

1) City of Devi: A Novel by Manil Suri
2) And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
3) The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam

#1&2 authors live in the US. #3 lives in the UK.

I learned about these from http://bookdragon.si.edu/. It's a multi-culti book review resource. The majority of books are by POC. And she's led me to many great reads.

Great resource, Ming. Thanks!

I had to include. Hope it's ok. In anticipation of the upcoming US presidential inauguration (from the School Library Journal, on resources to teach about the 57th inauguration:

http://www.slj.com/2013/01/industry-n...

Ming wrote: "There are three upcoming books that I'm chomping at the bit to get to:

1) City of Devi: A Novel by Manil Suri
2) And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
3) The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Asl..."

Thanks much for the website - I will be visiting the site often. :)

And thanks for the heads up on the upcoming books - I have read all of the authors before so will be interested in reading their new releases, especially Nadeem Aslam's as really enjoyed his book - The Wasted Vigil.

Good afternoon Wilhelmina -

Publishers' Weekly has a list of books by/about African Americans scheduled for release 9/2 - 3/13

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...

While many of the titles fall in the chic lit genre, there are others that might be of interest. Not included but worhy of mention:

THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS by Jeanne Theoharis. There will probably be comparisons with AT THE DARK END OF THE STREET: BLACK WOMEN, RAPE AND RESISTANCE - A NEW HISTORY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT FROM ROSA PARKS TO THE RISE OF BLACK POWER by Danielle McGuire

Al Roker's book - NEVER GOIN' BACK: WINNING THE WEIGHT-LOSS BATTLE FOR GOOD and Ian Smith's SHRED: THE REVOLUTIONARY DIET: 6 WEEKS 4 INCHES 2 SIZES

For the coffee table JOURNEY TO THE WOMAN I'VE COME TO LOVE - AFFIRMATIONS FROMWOMEN WHO HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THEMSELVES (Vol. 1) by Miki Turner

I'm really looking forward to A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Peggy, thanks so much for that PW link; it's compelling. PW's top 20 bestselling books accounting, a more general list, was rather under-whelming to me.

And through a share from BookDragon, I learned about an upcoming book by Jhumpa Lahiri: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-lowl...

check out this great list of women writers, and in particular the following books by PoC:

NoViolet Bulawayo's upcoming (JUNE) We Need New Names: A Novel

and

Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees: A Novel, due to come out in AUGUST.

(as always, it's dubious and strange to individuate the PoC from their looks, but maybe this is a conversation for another time...)

jo wrote: "check out this great list of women writers, and in particular the following books by PoC:

NoViolet Bulawayo's upcoming (JUNE) We Need New Names: A Novel

and

Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the ..."

Thanks - both of the books are on my tbr list (and a couple of others on the list)

On Melissa Harris-Perry's show on MSNBC this morning, one of the books recommended for this summer was Long Division by Kiese Laymon. It was just published in May. Has anyone read it yet?

Wilhelmina wrote: "On Melissa Harris-Perry's show on MSNBC this morning, one of the books recommended for this summer was Long Division by Kiese Laymon. It was just published in May. Has anyone read it yet?"

It is on my list to read (there are so many interesting titles being released this spring/summer_ and was glad that Melissa Harris-Perry included this book as one of her fiction reads.
The kindle (ebook) version was available in May but the print book will not be released until tomorrow June 11th. My library has already pre-ordered the book.

I will definitely put it on my to-read list!

Good news! If you're anything like me you simply love these things.

Publishers Weekly just released their Fall 2013 Book Announcements with over 14,000 titles in 20 categories including: Literary Fiction, Mysteries and even Performing Arts, Travel and Social Sciences.

PW typically charges for these big exhaustive book lists now so do yourself a favor and get it now while its free.

So, grab yourself a cup of Joe, throw back the BarcaLounger and watch your TBR book list grow!

Enjoy!

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...

this is a great resource. thank you so much. and yes, I grew my TBR list. I will add that The Lowland by Jhumpa is amazing. I read an ARC and it is amazing. an absolute must-read!