Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack.
Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.
The past couple of weeks, we’ve been seeing finalists being announced for different book awards. I am a big proponent of not reading something just because someone “in authority” holds it in high regard, but there are some literary awards that I know I can go to for some good book recommendations.
And, if your book club likes to read the new, buzzy books, the ones I’ve rounded up below are perfect.
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
The grief from losing his parents drives Iranian American poet Cyrus Shams to alcoholism and an obsession with martyrdom. This obsession leads him to find out about certain mysteries surrounding his own family, starting with an Angel of Death uncle and his mother, who may not have been who she seemed.
James by Percival Everett
From the author of Erasure—what the new movie American Fiction was based on—comes a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but from Jim’s point of view. Jim is an enslaved man who learns he’s about to be sold to a white man in New Orleans, and so hides out until he can think of something that’ll keep him from being separated from his family. Then he meets Huck Finn — running from his own problems — and the two embark on their familiar story, this time with Jim’s full humanity on display.
Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan
This middle grade book is about Summer, a young girl who spends her summers in Alberta, Canada on the reservation where her mother grew up. Well, one summer, the discovery of unmarked children’s graves at the school her grandfather went to as a child lead to her learning of the horrors historically faced by Indigenous children.
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is the National Book Award-nominated author of A Little Devil in America, and here he aims his poetic eye at basketball. With his usual mix of the personal and communal, he looks at one of America’s favorite sports, examining its history, who makes it and who doesn’t, and LeBron James.
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Here, Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans, shares another tale illuminating the life of undocumented people living in the United States, this time in fiction form. The eponymous Catalina—she herself undocumented—goes to live with her undocumented grandparents following a tragedy. As she prepares to graduate from Harvard—after having gotten into certain bougie subcultures there—she’s faced with helping her grandparents, and the uncertainty of finding work after graduation as an undocumented person.
Suggestion Section
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English (US) · 