Staff Picks

This book was very interesting to me because it was the first time I had read a novel set in the US in the 20th century. Black Boy, by Richard Wright, is a memoir of Wright's childhood memories. He grew up fast in Mississippi, where he experienced hate, hunger, fear, and violence. Wright noticed that the white men in his life were being treated differently than the Black men, the Black men were treated like slaves for the white men. Wright always had dreams of escaping his life in the Jim Crow south and moving to Chicago for something better, and as an adult he was finally able to do that and start his new life where he wrote his this world-famous novel: Black Boy.

-Anonymous eleventh-grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy." Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races."

 

Wright's once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he headed north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to "hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo." Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate. "To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness," John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. "Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear."

One of the great American memoirs, Wright's account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

Find Black Boy in our online catalog.

Five years ago, Mohsin Hamid's bestselling novel Exit West won critical acclaim and landed on many Best of the Year lists, including a spot on the Booker Prize shortlist. This summer marks his return with The Last White Man, another magical realist fable, this time tackling issues of racism and identity. So far reception has been mostly positive, with Kirkus declaring it "a brilliantly realized allegory of racial transformation" while Oprah Daily calls it "another bracing achievement from a consummate master." The New York Times' reviewer, author David Gates, is more critical but still describes Hamid's approach in a way that makes it clear the book is worth a look. He quotes Hamid as saying "I believe fiction has a strange power … that enables it to destabilize the collective imaginings we inherit and reproduce," but then dismisses this lofty statement with the retort "Our imaginings certainly could use some destabilizing, although literary fiction hardly has the transformative clout its practitioners wish it had." While Gates is probably right that such literary fiction probably won't reach those who most need to receive its message, many readers will agree that it is still a very good starting point.

Publisher's Description:

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders's skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders's father and Oona's mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.

Find The Last White Man in our online catalog.