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Black Literature October 2020
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The good house : a novel
by Tananarive Due
Working to rebuild her law practice after her son commits suicide, Angela Toussaint journeys to the family home where the suicide took place, hoping for answers, and discovers an invisible, evil force that is driving locals to acts of violence. Reprint.
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The ballad of Black Tom
by Victor D. LaValle
In jazz age New York City, Charles Thomas Tester delivers an occult book to a reclusive sorceress in Queens that opens the door to deeper realm of magic, and in the process gets the unwanted attention of things that should not be disturbed
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White is for witching
by Helen Oyeyemi
Suffering from pica, a malady that causes her to eat nonedible items, sixteen-year-old Miranda helps to run the family bed-and-breakfast while witnessing her community's hostilities toward outsiders, a malice that erupts in violent and destructive ways
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Fledgling
by Octavia E. Butler
Shori, a seemingly young, amnesiac girl with frightening inhuman abilities and a thirst for blood, wanders the land, unaware that she is really a genetically altered, fifty-three-year-old vampire with a unique ability to walk in the light of day and that she is the only survivor of a brutal attack on her community, searching for who she is and who wants to destroy her. Reprint.
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Skin Folk : Stories
by Nalo Hopkinson
In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best spinning tales like “Precious,” in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In “A Habit of Waste,” a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she’s shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In “The Glass Bottle Trick,” the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband’s superstitions—to horrifying consequences.
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We cast a shadow : a novel
by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
In a near-future South where an increasing number of people with dark skin endure cosmetic procedures to pass as white, a father embarks on an obsessive quest to protect his son, who bears a dark, spreading birthmark. A first novel.
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Who fears death
by Nnedi Okorafor
"Born into post-apocalyptic Africa by a mother who was raped after the slaughter of her entire tribe, Onyesonwu is tutored by a shaman and discovers that her magical destiny is to end the genocide of her people. "
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The Gilda stories
by Jewelle Gomez
"Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler's Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez's sexy vampire novel."The Gilda Stories is groundbreaking not just for the wild lives it portrays, but for how it portrays them--communally, unapologetically, roaming fiercely over space and time."--Emma Donoghue, author of Room"Jewelle Gomez sees right into the heart. This is a book to give to those you want most to find their own strength."-Dorothy Allison"Gomez's women are savvy and bold, witha sense of ancestry and history. The author's compassion, affection, and respect for her characters are infectious."-Library Journal This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story. Jewelle Gomez is a writer, activist, and the author of many books including Forty-Three Septembers, Don't Explain, The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. The Gilda Stories was the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen UnitedStates cities. Alexis Pauline Gumbs was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee, and was awarded one of the first-ever "Too Sexy for 501c3" trophies. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. More praise for The Gilda Stories:"Jewelle's big-hearted novel pulls old rhythms out of the earth, the beauty shops and living rooms of black lesbian herstory, expressed by the dazzling vampire Gilda. Her resilience is a testament to black queer women's love, power, and creativity. Brilliant!"--Joan Steinau Lester, author of Black, White, Other "
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Babel-17 : Empire star
by Samuel R. Delany
Rydra Wong, a poet and code expert, is asked to break a code used by an enemy government, but discovers that the code is really a supersophisticated language, in a new edition of the classic Nebula Award-winning novel, which is accompanied by the short novel Empire Star, in which a simple-minded teenager is entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
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The tempest tales
by Walter Mosley
Refusing to go to hell in spite of his technical disqualification from heaven, murdered African-American everyman Tempest Landry is sent back to Harlem, where a guiding angel tries to convince him to accept judgment, the devil attempts to win over his soul, and Tempest himself wonders if sin is the same for black and white people.
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Dread nation
by Justina Ireland
When families go missing in Baltimore County, Jane McKeene, who is studying to become an Attendant, finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that has her fighting for her life against powerful enemies
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Beloved : a novel
by Toni Morrison
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl
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Mindscape : a novel
by Andrea Hairston
Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award and short-listed for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Mindscape takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epi-dimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protoge, Ellini, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?
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Indianapolis Public Library P.O. Box 211 Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-0211 317-275-4100www.indypl.org/ |
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