NYT 100 Notable Books of 2013 by Authors of African Descent

Book Description:

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.

As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelubeautiful, self-assureddeparts for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinzethe quiet, thoughtful son of a professorhad hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passionfor their homeland and for each otherthey will face the toughest decisions of their lives. Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in todays globalized world: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies most powerful and astonishing novel yet.

Book Description:

From the best-selling author of Brother, Im Dying and The Dew Breaker: a stunning new work of fiction that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a small seaside town where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing.

Claire Limy LanmClaire of the Sea Lightis an enchanting child born into love and tragedy in Ville Rose, Haiti. Claires mother died in childbirth, and on each of her birthdays Claire is taken by her father, Nozias, to visit her mothers grave. Nozias wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper, who lost a child of her own, so that Claire can have a better life.

But on the night of Claires seventh birthday, when at last he makes the wrenching decision to do so, she disappears. As Nozias and others look for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed among the community of men and women whose individual stories connect to Claire, to her parents, and to the town itself. Told with piercing lyricism and the economy of a fable, Claire of the Sea Light is a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores what it means to be a parent, child, neighbor, lover, and friend, while revealing the mysterious bonds we share with the natural world and with one another. Embracing the magic and heartbreak of ordinary life, it is Edwidge Danticats most spellbinding, astonishing book yet.

Book Description:

The arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family.

My newest Book Club pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by first-time novelist Ayana Mathis gives me that same feeling of connection. It spoke so deeply to me about what is unique and personal to the many generations of our Tribe. New voices, like Ayanas, are painting a rich and multilayered tapestry to bring the emotional center of the Great Migration to life. The Great Migration is a pivotal time in American history that affected our grandparents, our parents, our aunts and uncles, and now ultimately continues to impact all of us on the other side of it. Youll find the characters in The Twelve Tribes of Hattie are so familiar, its like going to a family reunion. For any book club, you hope to engage and connect with a story so that you feel expanded, inspired, enriched—like youve been somewhere special, that you otherwise wouldnt have gone. This is that kind of novel for every reader. For those of us who share the African American experience, and for all of us who share the human experience, I think it is a journey not to be missed.

I am honored to introduce you to Ayana Mathis and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. I believe you will love it as much as I do.Oprah Winfrey

About the Book

In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mothers monumental courage and the journey of a nation.

Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathiss The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream.

Book Description:

A remarkable literary debut shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize! The unflinching and powerful story of a young girls journey out of Zimbabwe and to America.


Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipos belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad.



But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of Americas famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. NoViolet Bulawayos debut calls to mind the great storytellers of displacement and arrival who have come before her-from Junot Diaz to Zadie Smith to J.M. Coetzee-while she tells a vivid, raw story all her own.

Book Description:

A 2013 National Book Award Winner!

Fleeing his violent master at the side of abolitionist John Brown at the height of the slavery debate in mid-nineteenth-century Kansas Territory, Henry pretends to be a girl to hide his identity throughout the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

From the bestselling author of The Color of Water and Song Yet Sung comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Browns antislavery crusadeand who must pass as a girl to survive.

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti and pro slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henrys master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave townwith Brown, who believes hes a girl.

Over the ensuing months, Henrywhom Brown nicknames Little Onionconceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859one of the great catalysts for the Civil War. An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBrides meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

Book Description:

We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. Harriet Tubman

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her lifeto drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. Dealing with these losses, one after another, made Jesmyn ask the question: Why? And as she began to write about the experience of living through all the dying, she realized the truthand it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle that fostered drug addiction and the dissolution of family and relationships. Jesmyn says the answer was so obvious she felt stupid for not seeing it. But it nagged at her until she knew she had to write about her community, to write their stories and her own.

Jesmyn grew up in poverty in rural Mississippi. She writes powerfully about the pressures this brings, on the men who can do no right and the women who stand in for family in a society where the men are often absent. She bravely tells her story, revisiting the agonizing losses of her only brother and her friends. As the sole member of her family to leave home and pursue higher education, she writes about this parallel American universe with the objectivity distance provides and the intimacy of utter familiarity. A brutal world rendered beautifully, Jesmyn Wards memoir will sit comfortably alongside Edwidge Danticats Brother, Im Dying, Tobias Wolffs This Boys Life, and Maya Angelous I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.