The Steep and Thorny Way by Cat Winters

The Steep and Thorny Way
Fiction W73s
Cat Winters

Scene: Oregon, 1923.

Dramatis personae:

Hanalee Denney, daughter of a white woman and an African American man

Hank Denney, her father—a ghost

Greta Koning, Hanalee’s mother

Clyde Koning, doctor who treated Hank Denney the night he died, now Hanalee’s stepfather

Joe Adder, teenage boy convicted of accidentally killing Hank Denney

Members of the Ku Klux Klan

Townspeople of Elston, Oregon

Question: Was Hank Denney’s death an accident…or was it murder most foul?

(from publisher)

Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson

Negroland: A Memoir
Margo Jefferson
305.896073092
J358j

At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac—here is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of the author’s rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with distancing itself from whites and the black generality while tirelessly measuring itself against both.
 
Born in upper-crust black Chicago—her father was for years head of pediatrics at Provident, at the time the nation’s oldest black hospital; her mother was a socialite—Margo Jefferson has spent most of her life among (call them what you will) the colored aristocracy, the colored elite, the blue-vein society. Since the nineteenth century they have stood apart, these inhabitants of Negroland, “a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty.”
 
Reckoning with the strictures and demands of Negroland at crucial historical moments—the civil rights movement, the dawn of feminism, the fallacy of postracial America—Jefferson brilliantly charts the twists and turns of a life informed by psychological and moral contradictions. Aware as it is of heart-wrenching despair and depression, this book is a triumphant paean to the grace of perseverance.

(from Publisher)

Brown Girl Dreaming

Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
811 W8679br

 Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

(From Amazon.)

Saint Monkey

Saint Monkey
Jacinda Townsend
Fiction T664s

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she’ll never get out of Kentucky—but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County.

That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem—an offer she can’t resist, not even for Caroline. And in New York City the music never stops. Audrey flirts with love and takes the stage at the Apollo, with its fast-dancing crowds and blinding lights. But fortunes can turn fast in the city—young talent means tough competition, and for Audrey failure is always one step away. Meanwhile, Caroline sinks into the quiet anguish of a Black woman in a backwards country, where her ambitions and desires only slip further out of reach.

Jacinda Townsend’s remarkable first novel is a coming-of-age story made at once gripping and poignant by the wild energy of the Jazz Era and the stark realities of segregation. Marrying musical prose with lyric vernacular, Saint Monkey delivers a stirring portrait of American storytelling and marks the appearance of an auspicious new voice in literary fiction.

(From publisher.)

The Crossover

The Crossover
Kwame Alexander
Fiction Al27c

“A bolt of lightning on my kicks . . . The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I’m delivering,” raps twelve-year-old Josh Bell. Thanks to their dad, he and his twin brother, Jordan, are kings on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his
blood—he’s got mad beats, too, which help him find his rhythm when it’s all on the line.

As their winning season unfolds, things begin to change. When Jordan meets a girl, the twins’ bond unravels. Josh and Jordan must grow up on and off the court and realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their story’s heart-stopping climax proves a game-changer for the entire family. Told in dynamic verse, this fast and furious middle grade novel bounces with rhythm and bursts with heart.

(From publisher.)

America Street

    

America Street: A Multicultural Anthology of Stories

Ed. Anne Mazer

813 Am35 1993 

Fourteen short stories about growing up in America's diverse society. Written by such authors as Robert Cormier, Langston Hughes, Lensey Namioka, Grace Paley, Gary Soto, and Michele Wallace, they range from powerful to poignant to downright hilarious. Readers will come away from this collection understanding what it is like to be a migrant worker, an African-American child in a white school, or a Jewish child cast in a Christmas pageant. (School Library Journal)

Native Son

 

Native Son

Wright, Richard

Fiction W935n 1966

Traces the fall of a young black man in 1930s Chicago as his life loses all hope of redemption after he kills a white woman.

The Color Purple

 

The Color Purple

Walker, Alice

Fiction W1521c

Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s.

Calling the Wind

  

Calling the Wind: Twentieth Century African-American Short Stories

edited by Clarence Major

813.08 C133One school.

Compilation of short stories by African-American writers, including, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Claude McKay, Dorothy West, Alice Walker, Ernest J. Gaines, John McCluskey Jr., Henry Dumas, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Barak), and Ann Allen Shockley.

The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader

  

The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader

edited David Levering Lewis

810.8 P832

Collection of works by forty-five Renaissance figures. Includes short fiction and novel excerpts by Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and Jean Toomer; poems by Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay; as well as essays, manifestos, speeches, and nostalgic reminiscences from a number of writers.

Billie Holiday

   

Billie Holiday

Munoz, Jose and Sampaya, Carlos

GN M926b

This graphic novel weaves together episodes from Billie Holiday’s life, the calculating commentary of a cynical, burned-out newspaper reporter, and the memories of Alack Sinner, a former police officer whose life intersected with Holiday’s briefly but significantly.

Miracle's Boys

  

Miracle’s Boys

Woodson, Jacqueline

Fiction W868mi2001

Twelve-year-old Lafayette's close relationship with his older brother Charlie changes after Charlie is released from a detention home and blames Lafayette for the death of their mother.

If You Come Softly

  

If You Come Softly

Woodson, Jacqueline

Fiction W868i

After meeting at their private school in New York, fifteen-year-old Jeremiah, who is Black and whose parents are separated, and Ellie, who is White and whose mother has twice abandoned her, fall in love and then try to cope with people's reactions.

When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune

  

When Kambia Elaine Flew in From Neptune

Williams, Lori Aurelia

Fiction W673w2004

Shayla, an aspiring writer growing up in a poor section of Houston, can’t figure out the new girl next door, Kambia Elaine, who tells fantastic stories. She slowly realizes that Kambia Elaine needs help, but Shayla doesn’t know where to find it.

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

   

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Taylor, Mildred D.

Fiction T2162L

Four Black children growing up in rural Mississippi during the Depression experience racial antagonisms and hard times, but learn from their parents the pride and self-respect they need to survive.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Smith, Betty

Fiction Sm54t1947

A young Black girl in a shabby neighborhood lives with dreams in an innocent time before World War I.

Caucasia

  

Caucasia

Senn, Danzy

Fiction Se58c1999

In the 1960s, Birdie and her sister Cole try to support each other when their Black father and White mother finally separate. When Cole goes with her father to Brazil, Birdie has to face a federal investigation of her mother's political activities.

Push

   

Push

Sapphire

Fiction Sa 692pu1996

A courageous and determined young teacher opens up a new world of hope and redemption for sixteen-year-old Precious Jones, an abused young African American girl living in Harlem who was raped and left pregnant by her father.

Imani All Mine

   

Imani All Mine

Poter, Connie

Fiction P8334i

Relates the story of Tasha, an unwed fifteen-year-old mother who survives in the ghettos of Buffalo, New York and lives her life with fierce determination.

145th Street Short Stories

   

145th Street Short Stories

Myers, Walter Dean

Fiction M992o

Ten stories portray life on a block in Harlem.