The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray224 p.; Fiction/African-American
The Butler family has had their share of trials—as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest—but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives.
Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband Proctor are arrested, and in a heartbeat the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace. The worst part is, not even her sisters are sure exactly what happened.
As Althea awaits her fate, Lillian and Viola must come together in the house they grew up in to care for their sister’s teenage daughters. What unfolds is a stunning portrait of the heart and core of an American family in a story that is as page-turning as it is important.
The Object of Your Affections by Falguni Kothari368 p.; Fiction/Indian American
A young widow agrees to be the surrogate for her workaholic best friend, whose husband is pressuring her to finally start the family she’s promised him. As the pregnancy progresses, the dynamic between the couple and the widow changes in both surprising and unsurprising ways, forcing each to confront truths about themselves and their relationships with each other.
Negrophobia: An Urban Parable by Darius James208 p.; Satire/African-American
Darius James’s scabrous, unapologetically raunchy, truly hilarious, and deeply scary Negrophobia is a wild-eyed reckoning with the mutating insanity of American racism. A screenplay for the mind, a performance on the page, a work of poetry, a mad mix of genres and styles, a novel in the tradition of William S. Burroughs and Ishmael Reed that is like no other novel,
Negrophobia begins with the blonde bombshell Bubbles Brazil succumbing to a voodoo spell and entering the inner darkness of her own shiny being. Here crackheads parade in the guise of Muppets, Muslims beat conga drums, Negroes have numbers for names, and H. Rap Remus demands the total and instantaneous extermination of the white race through spontaneous combustion. By the end of it all, after going on a weird trip for the ages, Bubbles herself is strangely transformed.
Note: First published in 1992, out of print since 1993.
The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America, edited by Nikesh Shukla & Chimene Suleyman 336; Essays
From Trump's proposed border wall and travel ban to the marching of White Supremacists in Charlottesville, America is consumed by tensions over immigration and the question of which bodies are welcome. In this much-anticipated follow-up to the bestselling UK edition, hailed by Zadie Smith as "lively and vital," editors Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman hand the microphone to an incredible range of writers whose humanity and right to be here is under attack.
- Chigozie Obioma unpacks an Igbo proverb that helped him navigate his journey to America from Nigeria.
- Jenny Zhang analyzes cultural appropriation in 90s fashion, recalling her own pain and confusion as a teenager trying to fit in.
- Fatimah Asghar describes the flood of memory and emotion triggered by an encounter with an Uber driver from Kashmir.
- Alexander Chee writes of a visit to Korea that changed his relationship to his heritage.
These writers, and the many others in this singular collection, share powerful personal stories of living between cultures and languages while struggling to figure out who they are and where they belong. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, troubling and uplifting, the essays in The Good Immigrant come together to create a provocative, conversation-sparking, multivocal portrait of America now.
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