Aya tells the story of the studious and clear-sighted 19-year old Aya, her easy-going friends Adjoua and Bintou, and their meddling relatives and neighbors. It’s wryly funny, breezy account of the simple pleasures and private troubles of everyday life in Yop City. Set in 1970s Ivory Coast.
Writer Marguerite Abouet and illustrator Clément Oubrerie’s colorful Aya is now available in 2 large paperbacks. Aya: Life in Yop City contains volumes 1-3. Aya: Love in Yop City contains volumes 4 - 6.
Posts tagged "black"
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
Sheree R. Thomas(Editor)
ISBN 0446677248
This volume introduces black science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to the generations of readers who have not had the chance to explore the scope and diversity among African-American writers.
Contents
Fiction. Sister Lilith/Honoree Fanonne Jeffers —
The comet/W.E.B. Du Bois —
Chicage 1927/Jewelle Gomez —
Separation anxiety/Evie Evie Shockley —
Tasting songs/Leone Ross —
Can you wear my eyes/Kalamu ya Salaam —
Like daughter/Tananarive Due —
Greedy choke puppy/Nalo Hopkinson —
Rhythm travel/Amiri Baraka —
Buddy Bolden/Kalamu ya Salaam —
Aye, and Gomorrah…/Samuel R. Delany —
Ganger (ball lightning)/Nalo Hopkinson —
The becoming/Akua Lezli Hope —
The goophered grapevine/Charles W. Chestnutt —
The evening and the morning and the night/Octavia E. Butler —
Twice, at once, separated/Linda Addison —
Gimmile’s songs/Charles R. Saunders —
At the huts of Ajala/Nisi Shawl —
The woman in the wall/Steven Barnes —
Ark of bones/Henry Dumas —
Butta’s backyard barbecue/Tony Medina —
At life’s limits/Kiini Ibura Salaam —
The astral visitor Delta blues/Robert Fleming —
The space traders/Derrick Bell —
The pretended/Darryl A. Smith —
Hussy Strutt/Ama Patterson ; Essays. Racism and science fiction/Samuel R. Delany —
Why Blacks should read (and write) science fiction/Charles R. Saunders —
Black to the future/Walter Mosley —
Yet do I wonder/Paul D. Miller —
The monophobic response/Octavia E. Butler
Black No More: A Novel
George S. Schuyler
ISBN 037575380X
Modern Library Harlem Renaissance
What would happen to the race problem in America if black people turned white? Would everybody be happy? These questions and more are answered hilariously in Black No More, George S. Schuyler’s satiric romp. Black No More is the story of Max Disher, a dapper black rogue of an insurance man who, through a scientific transformation process, becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man. Matt dreams up a scam that allows him to become the leader of the Knights of Nordica, a white supremacist group, as well as to marry the white woman who rejected him when he was black. Black No More is a hysterical exploration of race and all its self-serving definitions. If you can’t beat them, turn into them.
Ishmael Reed, one of today’s top black satirists and the author of Mumbo Jumbo and Japanese by Spring, provides a spirited Introduction.
The fertile artistic period now known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920- 1930) gave birth to many of the world-renowned masters of black literature and is the model for today’s renaissance of black writers.
Three Strong Women
Marie Ndiaye, John Fletcher (Translation)
ISBN 0307594696
In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful.
This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.
With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits us to an immigrant experience rarely if ever examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.
Hold it ‘Til it Hurts
T. Geronimo Johnson
ISBN 1566893097
This powerful, stylish debut novel from New Orleans native and former Stegner fellow Johnson concerns a 22-year-old black man adopted and raised by a white couple who is trying to make sense and order of his life after three years of serving two Army tours in Afghanistan. Achilles and his younger brother Troy Conroy return to Hagerstown, Md., as their father’s wake is in progress. News of his death had failed to reach them at Bagram AFB, and soon after their return, Anna, their mother, divulges information about their birth parents. Both brothers are transracial adoptees with different biological parents, but “easygoing” Achilles only cares about taking care of the “reckless” Troy, who slips away to New Orleans, presumably on a quest to locate his biological parents. Achilles follows Troy to New Orleans where his trail mysteriously vanishes. In the course of his dogged search for Troy, Achilles sparks a romance with the “classic rich hippy” Ines Delesseppes, from whom he keeps secrets (such as his adoption). Hurricane Katrina forms and begins its march to New Orleans as Achilles, after getting a lead on his brother’s whereabouts from an old Army pal, leaves to track down the errant Troy in Atlanta where disturbing news awaits. The stark backstory fleshing out Achilles and Troy’s arduous combat duty over in “Goddamnistan” smartly plays off the thorough exploration of modern American attitudes on race, war, and family in this richly textured debut. (via Publishers Weekly)
A Free Man of Color (Benjamin January #1)
Barbara Hambly
ISBN 0553575260
A lush and haunting novel of a city steeped in decadent pleasures…and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d’Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted—by murder.
Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city’s finest company, has been strangled to death. With the authorities reluctant to become involved, Ben begins his own inquiry, which will take him through the seamy haunts of riverboatmen and into the huts of voodoo-worshipping slaves.
But soon the eyes of suspicion turn toward Ben—for, black as the slave who fathered him, this free man of color is still the perfect scapegoat….
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy
Nalo Hopkinson (Editor) Uppinder Mehan (Editor)
ISBN 155152158X
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South Asian and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British writers of color.
Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing. Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre “speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves.” It’s an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.
The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the “third world.” It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the “developing” nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.
The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.
Contributors include: Opal Palmer Adisa, Tobias Buckell, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Tamai Kobayashi, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree Renee Thomas and Greg Van Eekhout.
Reading the Ceiling
Dayo Forster
ISBN 0743295714
Reading the Ceiling is a remarkable achievement: fresh, funny and wholly authentic, it paints a compelling portrait of the modern African experience for women, and introduces a stunning new voice to contemporary fiction.
Ayodele has just turned 18. It’s definitely a milestone, but it isn’t the only one: she’s also decided — having now reached womanhood — that the time is right to lose her virginity. It’s an understandable decision, but what she doesn’t yet know is that her choice of suitor will have a drastic effect on the rest of her life…
Three men. Three paths. One will send Ayodele to Europe, to University and to a very different life — but it will be a voyage strewn with heartache. Another will send her around the globe on an epic journey, transforming her beyond recognition but at the cost of an almost unbearable loss. And another will see her remain in Africa, a wife and mother caught in a polygamous marriage. Each will change her irrevocably: but which will she choose?
In Reading the Ceiling, we are given the opportunity to see all three and the scope of Ayodele’s journeys is a beautiful testimony to the nature of fate, destiny, hope and love. In witnessing her transformations, Forster brilliantly captures the truth of what it means to be human, and what happens when what we do dictates what we are then forced to live with.
The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln
Stephan L. Carter
ISBN 030727263X
Expected publication: July 10th 2012
Stephen L. Carter’s thrilling new novel takes as its starting point an alternate history: President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. Two years later he is charged with overstepping his constitutional authority, both during and after the Civil War, and faces an impeachment trial …
Twenty-one-year-old Abigail Canner is a young black woman with a degree from Oberlin, a letter of employment from the law firm that has undertaken Lincoln’s defense, and the iron-strong conviction, learned from her late mother, that “whatever limitations society might place on ordinary negroes, they would never apply to her.” And so Abigail embarks on a life that defies the norms of every stratum of Washington society: working side by side with a white clerk, meeting the great and powerful of the nation, including the president himself. But when Lincoln’s lead counsel is found brutally murdered on the eve of the trial, Abigail is plunged into a treacherous web of intrigue and conspiracy reaching the highest levels of the divided government.
Here is a vividly imagined work of historical fiction that captures the emotional tenor of post–Civil War America, a brilliantly realized courtroom drama that explores the always contentious question of the nature of presidential authority, and a galvanizing story of political suspense.
Houseboy
Ferdinand Oyono, John Reed(Translator)
ISBN 0435905325
Houseboy is written in the form of a diary kept by Toundi, an innocent Cameroonian houseboy who is fascinated and awed by the white world, the world of his masters. When the head of his mission is killed in an accident, Toundi becomes the “boy” of the local Commandant. In an effort to improve himself, Toundi studies his new world closely—-too closely. Gradually his eyes are opened to its realities, and in the end it destroys him.
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