|
|
Black History Month: Own Voices: African American Historical Fiction for Teens |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rock and the River
by Kekla Magoon
Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award winner In this taut, eloquent first novel (Booklist, starred review), a young Black boy wrestles with conflicting notions of revolution and family loyalty as he becomes involved with the Black Panthers in 1968 Chicago. The Time: 1968 The Place: Chicago For thirteen-year-old Sam, it's not easy being the son of known civil rights activist Roland Childs. Especially when his older (and best friend), Stick, begins to drift away from him for no apparent reason. And then it happens: Sam finds something that changes everything forever. Sam has always had faith in his father, but when he finds literature about the Black Panthers under Stick's bed, he's not sure who to believe: his father or his best friend. Suddenly, nothing feels certain anymore. Sam wants to believe that his father is right: You can effect change without using violence. But as time goes on, Sam grows weary of standing by and watching as his friends and family suffer at the hands of racism in their own community. Sam beings to explore the Panthers with Stick, but soon he's involved in something far more serious--and more dangerous--than he could have ever predicted. Sam is faced with a difficult decision. Will he follow his father or his brother? His mind or his heart? The rock or the river?
|
|
|
|
Black Angels
by Linda Beatrice Brown
The compelling story of three young orphans who must survive on their own during the Civil War. It's near the end of the war, and rumors of emancipation are swirling. Eleven-year-old Luke decides to run away to freedom and join the Union Army. But he doesn't find the Yankee troops he was hoping for. Instead, he finds nine-year-old Daylily, lost in the woods after suffering an unspeakable tragedy. Her master set her free, but freedom so far has her scared and alone. Also lost in the woods is seven-year-old Caswell, the son of a plantation owner. He was only trying to find his Mamadear after the Yankees burned their house with all their fine things. He wanted to be brave. But alone in the woods with two slave children, he quickly loses all his courage, and comes to greatly depend upon his new friends. In the chaos and violence that follows, the three unrelated children discover a bond in each other stronger than family. A touching, beautifully written narrative, Black Angels is a riveting, special read.
|
|
|
|
Fire in the Streets
by Kekla Magoon
What means more, shared values or shared blood? Maxie's choice changes everything in this acclaimed companion to The Rock and the River. Bad things happen in the heat, they say. Maxie knows all about how fire can erupt at a moment's notice, especially now, in the sweltering Chicago summer of 1968. She is a Black Panther--or at least she wants to be one. Maxie believes in the movement. She wants to belong. She wants to join the struggle. But everyone keeps telling her she's too young. At fourteen, she's allowed to help out in the office, but she certainly can't help patrol the streets. Then Maxie realizes that there is a traitor in their midst, and if she can figure out who it is, it may be her ticket to becoming a real Panther. But when she learns the truth, the knowledge threatens to destroy her world. Maxie must decide: Is becoming a Panther worth paying the ultimate price?
|
|
|
|
Crossing Ebenezer Creek
by Tonya Bolden
Award-winning author Tonya Bolden sheds light on an unknown moment of the Civil War to readers in a searing, poetic novel about the dream of freedom.
|
|
|
|
Inventing Victoria
by Tonya Bolden
In a searing historical novel, Tonya Bolden illuminates post-Reconstruction America in an intimate portrait of a determined young woman who dares to seize the opportunity of a lifetime. As a young black woman in 1880s Savannah, Essie's dreams are very much at odds with her reality. Ashamed of her beginnings, but unwilling to accept the path currently available to her, Essie is trapped between the life she has and the life she wants. Until she meets a lady named Dorcas Vashon, the richest and most cultured black woman she's ever encountered. When Dorcas makes Essie an offer she can't refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education, and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, D. C. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.
|
|
|
|
Let Me Hear a Rhyme
by Tiffany D. Jackson
In this striking new novel by the critically acclaimed author of Allegedly and Monday's Not Coming, Tiffany D. Jackson tells the story of three Brooklyn teens who plot to turn their murdered friend into a major rap star by pretending he's still alive. Brooklyn, 1998. Biggie Smalls was right: Things done changed. But that doesn't mean that Quadir and Jarrell are cool letting their best friend Steph's music lie forgotten under his bed after he's murdered--not when his rhymes could turn any Bed Stuy corner into a party. With the help of Steph's younger sister Jasmine, they come up with a plan to promote Steph's music under a new rap name: the Architect. Soon, everyone wants a piece of him. When his demo catches the attention of a hotheaded music label rep, the trio must prove Steph's talent from beyond the grave.As the pressure of keeping their secret grows, Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are forced to confront the truth about what happened to Steph. Only, each has something to hide. And with everything riding on Steph's fame, they need to decide what they stand for or lose all that they've worked so hard to hold on to--including each other.
|
|
|
|
Becoming Beatriz
by Tami Charles
In 1984 Newark, Beatriz Mendez navigates romance, gang culture, and her family's past. After her gang-leader brother is killed, Beatriz gives up her dreams of dancing in order to run the gang. But her eyes are reopened to her dream of a career in dance when the school brainiac asks her to compete in a dance competition with him--but will the gang let her go?--
|
|
|
|
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come
by Mildred D. Taylor
In her tenth book, Mildred Taylor completes her sweeping saga about the Logan family of Mississippi, which is also the story of the civil rights movement in America of the 20th century. Cassie Logan, first met in Song of the Trees and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, is a young woman now, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated by the racist society of America, and the often violent confrontations that brought about change.--
|
|
|
|
The Awakening of Malcolm X
by Ilyasah Shabazz
A powerful fictionalized account of Malcolm X's adolescent years in jail, written by his daughter along with 2019 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe award-winning author.
|
|
|
|
A Sitting in St. James
by Rita Williams-Garcia
In 1860 Louisiana, eighty-year-old Madame Sylvie decides to sit for a portrait, as horrific stories that span generations from the big house and the fields are revealed.
|
|
|
|
For Lamb
by Lesa Cline-Ransome
An interracial friendship between two teenaged girls goes tragically wrong in this powerful historical novel set in the Jim Crow South. For Lamb follows a family striving to better their lives in the late 1930s Jackson, Mississippi. Lamb's mother is a hard-working, creative seamstress who cannot reveal she is a lesbian. Lamb's brother has a brilliant mind and has even earned a college scholarship for a black college up north- if only he could curb his impulsiveness and rebellious nature. Lamb herself is a quiet and studious girl. She is also naive. As she tentatively accepts the friendly overtures of a white girl who loans her a book she loves, she sets a off a calamitous series of events that pulls in her mother, charming hustler uncle, estranged father, and brother, and ends in a lynching.--
|
|
|
|
Aimé Césaire: No to Humiliation
by Nimrod
Set in 1930s Paris, Aimâe Câesaire, a poet and politician from Martinique, passionately opposes the suffering of former French colonies and launches the Negritude movement--
|
|
|
|
The Color of a Lie
by Kim Johnson
In 1955, a Black family relocates to the suburbs where they must pass for white, but dark secrets about the town and its inhabitants threaten their new home.
|
|
|
|
Ida, in Love and in Trouble
by Veronica Chambers
A historical novel about Ida B. Wells, from her teen years up through becoming an investigative journalist and civil rights crusader without peer--
|
|
|
|
My Life as a Chameleon
by Diana Anyakwo
It's 1990, and Lily is a sixteen-year-old girl living in Manchester, England. It has been five years since her father's death, and she is soon to return to her birthplace in Nigeria to reunite with her mother and siblings for the anniversary. As cold rain thunders on the British streets, Lily flashes back to her childhood in Lagos. The biracial daughter of a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, Lily lives a dual reality as a child, with moments of joy existing alongside her father's increasingly erratic and violent behavior, which is due to a stage illness Lily doesn't understand called schizophrenia. As the streets of Lagos erupt in violence due to a coup, things with Lily's father reach a breaking point, and she is sent away to live with a family in England. As a confused and shy child thrust into a foreign country, Lily must deal with a new school and new friends, while longing for what she left behind in Nigeria. In the vein of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, My Life As A Chameleon is is a powerful story of resilience and belonging across different cultures, and about how family secrets can destroy even the deepest bonds--
|
|
|
|
When the Mapou Sings
by Nadine Pinede
Infused with magical realism, this story blends first love and political intrigue with a quest for justice and self-determination in 1930s Haiti. Sixteen-year-old Lucille hopes to one day open a school alongside her best friend where girls just like them can learn what it means to be Haitian: to learn from the mountains and the forests around them, to carve, to sew, to draw, and to sing the songs of the Mapou, the sacred trees that dot the island nation. But when her friend vanishes without a trace, a dream--a gift from the Mapou--tells Lucille to go to her village's section chief, the local face of law, order, and corruption, which puts her life and her family's at risk. Forced to flee her home, Lucille takes a servant post with a wealthy Haitian woman from society's elite in Port-au-Prince. Despite a warning to avoid him, she falls in love with her employer's son. But when their relationship is found out, she must leave again--this time banished to another city to work for a visiting American writer and academic conducting fieldwork in Haiti. While Lucille's new employer studies vodou and works on the novel that will become Their Eyes Were Watching God, Lucille risks losing everything she cares about--and any chance of seeing her best friend again--as she fights to save their lives and secure her future in this novel in verse with the racing heart of a thriller.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|