Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared for Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August.
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
JEF - Black Voices for Black History (Adult)
JEF - LGBTQIA Fiction (Adults)
MCL - National Book Award
MCL - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
JEF - LGBTQIA Fiction (Adults)
MCL - National Book Award
MCL - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Description
"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then from the sisters to each other, the novel draws readers into the experiences of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia"--
3) The help
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.
4) Beloved
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Black Voices | Adults PEQ
JEF - Classic Literature
JEF - Historical Fiction - Adults
MCL - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
JEF - Classic Literature
JEF - Historical Fiction - Adults
MCL - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Description
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose...
5) Sula
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal...
Author
Series
Summer beach volume 2
Language
English
Description
When real estate developers discover the hidden enclave of SANS--Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest and Nineveh--the home of African American elites, Olivia Jones fights to preserve her new Black utopia, leading her to define the meaning of love, friendship, community and family.
7) Love
Author
Language
English
Description
The late Bill Cosey, one-time owner of the Cosey Hotel and Resort, a hot spot for vacationing African-Americans, is kept alive through the memories of the women he loved and who were loved by him.
8) Passing
Author
Language
English
Description
"Nella Larsen's second novel, Passing, first published in 1929, is a fascinating exploration of race and identity set amidst the blossoming Harlem Renaissance. Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly light-skinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing for...
9) Kindred
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The visionary author's masterpiece pulls us-along with her Black female hero-through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now"--
10) Promise
Author
Language
English
Description
In the aftermath of a devastating tornado that rips through the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, at the height of the Great Depression, two women worlds apart-one black, one white; one a great-grandmother, the other a teenager-fight for their families' survival in this lyrical and powerful novel
"Gwin's gift shines in the complexity of her characters and their fraught relationships with each other, their capacity for courage and hope, coupled with their...
Author
Language
English
Description
"It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to, and abandoned, when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning...
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Black Voices | Adults PEQ
JEF - Black Voices for Black History (Adult)
JEF - Historical Fiction - Adults
JEF - Black Voices for Black History (Adult)
JEF - Historical Fiction - Adults
Description
A novel about black Americans in Florida that centers on the life of Janie and her three marriages.
Author
Series
Oprah's Book Club 2.0 volume 2012
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
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...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
1986, the heart of the Cold War. A young black woman working in an old boys' club, Marie Mitchell's FBI career has stalled out and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. Given the opportunity to join a task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. In the year that follows Marie observes Sankara,...
15) Changing faces
Author
Language
English
Description
Meet Whitney, Taylor, and Charisse, three women who have been best friends since high school. However, this devoted troika is about to discover a wave of unexpected troubles. Whitney is a plus-size woman who just can't turn down a box of Krispy Kremes or find a man who will stay put. Taylor is in a long-term relationship with a boyfriend who's allergic to commitment. Charisse is married, with two adorable children, but somehow doesn't have what she...
Author
Series
Reese's book club volume 2020
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar....
Author
Language
English
Description
"The New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker and Mrs. Lincoln's Rival imagines the inner life of Julia Grant, beloved as a Civil War general's wife and the First Lady, yet who grappled with a profound and complex relationship with the slave who was her namesake-until she forged a proud identity of her own. In 1844, Missouri belle Julia Dent met dazzling horseman Lieutenant Ulysses S Grant. Four years passed before their parents...
Author
Language
English
Description
In I almost forgot about you, Dr. Georgia Young's wonderful life--great friends, family, and successful career--aren't enough to keep her from feeling stuck and restless. When she decides to make some major changes in her life, quitting her job as an optometrist, and moving house, she finds herself on a wild journey that may or may not include a second chance at love. Like Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, I Almost Forgot About...
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