Now Available in Paperback! a 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee-Debut Fiction Africaville, by Jeffrey Colvin, explores notions of identity, passing, cross-racial relationships, the importance of place, and the meaning of home, while telling the larger story of the black experience in parts of Canada and the United States. Vibrant and lyrical, filled with colorful details, and told in a powerful, haunting voice, this extraordinary novel—as atmospheric and steeped in history as The Known World, Barracoon, The Underground Railroad, and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie—is a landmark work from a sure-to-be major literary talent. | The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award honors the best in Black literature. This year there were a total of 21 books honored in 4 categories, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and debut fiction. Check out the 2020 winners, finalists, and nominees ? | The $15,000 prize for the 2020 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence goes to Gabriel Bump for his debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong “This book is astonishing. You’ll be smiling even as your heart is breaking, and you’ll tip willingly into this world Bump offers you because what appears again and again are spectacular beams of light, also called love, also called hope, also called family. Gabriel Bump has established himself as a stunning talent to be reckoned with.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. More ? | Our society has historically conditioned White men to derive self-worth from a feeling of superiority over others—regardless of their level of skill or talent. People of color are the most severely impacted, as the news cycle continues to teach us. But Oluo shows how White male supremacy harms everyone, except for the wealthiest, most powerful of white men. And while powerful white men designed these systems to maintain a stranglehold on wealth and power, we are all complicit to varying degrees, depending on our level of racial, gender, and socioeconomic privilege. In Mediocre, however, Oluo shares that there is good news in that we have the power to create new, better systems—through our wallets, our votes, and our refusal to play by traditional rules that privilege arrogance and aggression over collaboration and community. More ? | An arranged marriage leads to unexpected desire, in the first book of Alyssa Cole’s Runaway Royals series… When Shanti Mohapi weds the king of Njaza, her dream of becoming a queen finally comes true. But it’s nothing like she imagined. Shanti and her husband may share an immediate and powerful attraction, but her subjects see her as an outsider, and everything she was taught about being the perfect wife goes disastrously wrong. More ? | Gods & Gangsters tells the tale of what happens when the right killers do the wrong job. When it comes to the tangled world of killing for cash, Asia, Persia, and Egypt are legendary. This trifecta of chaos is the crew that you turn to when you want the job done…and done with extreme prejudice. To put it bluntly, they’re the best in the game. But when a job comes along that threatens to turn killer against killer, things are bound to end in turmoil. More ? | AALBC actively promotes other independent booksellers because one bookstore, even a really massive one who steeply discounts the most popular titles, simply can not — indeed will not — showcase all of the good, or even great Black books that are available. There are approximately 100 Black-owned independent brick and mortar book stores. If we tripled the number of stores that would not be enough to serve our communities. The ongoing pandemic continues to threaten the ones that remain. Web based sites, like AALBC can certainly help supplement the dearth of physical stores, but web-based, Black-owned bookstores are under constant threat as the web coalesces under the control of a handful of ultra-powerful corporations. All of us, readers, authors, publishers, and booksellers, have a responsibility to support the Black Book Ecosystem with our dollars. A thriving and diverse community of booksellers is the only way to ensure our voices are heard and our stories are told with fidelity. | Dear Reader, As always, Reader thank you for your business and support. You are why I’ve been able to provide this platform, since 1998, and celebrate Black culture through books. Your paid subscription helps support this effort. Look out for exclusive deals for paid subscribers to our newsletter in the coming months. Peace and Love,
Troy Johnson
Founder & Webmaster, AALBC.com | This Newsletter is Sponsored by Amistad Consider sponsoring our eNewsletter or a dedicated mailing.
? AALBC.com eNewsletter — December 1, 2020 - Issue #308 | |
