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Recommendations based on The Nickel Boysby Colson Whitehead
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The Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead
An escaped slave's daring escape to freedom, fighting against the brutality of slavery.
The story is told in the third person, focusing mainly on Cora. Scattered single chapters also focus on Cora's mother Mabel, the slavecatcher Ridgeway, a reluctant slave sympathizer named Ethel, and ... (Wikipedia)
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
A novel-in-verse that follows the interconnected lives of twelve British women of color.
Joint Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2019 Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve ... (Goodreads)
There There
by Tommy Orange
A powerful novel that follows the lives of twelve Native Americans living in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow.
The book begins with an essay by Orange, detailing "brief and jarring vignettes revealing the violence and genocide that Indigenous people have endured, and how it has been sanitized over the ... (Wikipedia)
Homegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Spanning centuries, the intertwining stories of two African sisters, their descendants, and the legacy of slavery.
Effia is raised by her mother, Baaba, who is cruel to her. Nevertheless she works hard to please her mother. Known as a beauty, Effia is intended to be married to the future chief of her village, but ... (Wikipedia)
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
A powerful tale of four friends navigating life's hardships and the devastating effects of trauma.
The novel follows the lives of four friends in New York City from college through to middle-age. It focuses particularly on Jude, a lawyer with a mysterious past, ambiguous ethnicity, and unexplained ... (Wikipedia)
A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
A Russian aristocrat's life of imprisonment in a grand hotel, discovering the beauty of life in confinement.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Rules of Civility—a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel With his breakout debut novel, ... (Goodreads)
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Post-apocalyptic exploration of a world drastically changed after a pandemic.
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse,, Station Eleven, tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of ... (Barnes & Noble)
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
A post-apocalyptic story of survival, hope, and the power of community.
This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with, 1984, or, The Handmaid's Tale," (John Green,, New York Times,)–now with a ... (Barnes & Noble)
An American Marriage
by Tayari Jones
A newlywed couple's lives are torn apart when the husband is wrongfully convicted of a crime. The novel explores love, loyalty, and injustice.
Roy, a sales representative for a textbook company, and Celestial, an artist specializing in custom made baby dolls, are newlyweds who live in Atlanta. After their first year of marriage they travel ... (Wikipedia)
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam War refugee returns to his homeland and struggles to reconcile conflicting loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be ... (Goodreads)
Go Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin
A young boy's struggle to reconcile his faith and family with his own identity.
“,Mountain,” Baldwin said, “is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.”, Go Tell It on the Mountain, originally published in 1953, is Baldwin’s first major work, a novel ... (Barnes & Noble)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
Pachinko
by Lee Min-jin
A saga spanning four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, struggling to survive and thrive amidst prejudice and poverty.
The novel takes place over the course of three books: Book I Gohyang/Hometown, Book II Motherland, and Book III Pachinko. In 1883, in the little island fishing village of Yeongdo , which is a ferry ... (Wikipedia)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
A letter from a son to his illiterate mother, exploring their family's history and his own coming-of-age as a gay Vietnamese-American.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began ... (Goodreads)
The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
A young man's exploration of friendship, identity and belonging in a rapidly changing world.
From the prize-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn , a daring, riotous, sweeping novel that spins the tale of two friends and their adventures in late 20th-century America. This is the story of two ... (Goodreads)
French Exit
by Patrick deWitt
A wealthy widow and her son flee to Paris to escape financial ruin, leading to a series of eccentric encounters. Darkly comedic and satirical.
Frances Price, a sixty-five year old wealthy widow, and her adult son Malcolm Price live together in New York City. When her financial planner reveals that she is completely insolvent, something he ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
The Orphan Master's Son
by Adam Johnson
A man's struggle to survive in a totalitarian North Korean regime and his journey to freedom.
Part 1 details Jun Do's upbringing in a state orphanage and his service to the state, including as a kidnapper of Japanese citizens , and later as a signal operator stationed on a fishing boat. Due ... (Wikipedia)
Disappearing Earth
by Julia Phillips
Two sisters go missing in a remote Russian town, unraveling the lives of its inhabitants. A haunting exploration of loss, identity, and community.
In an isolated town in Far Eastern part of Russia two young girls go missing. The literary review aggregator Book Marks reported that 75% of critics gave the novel a "rave" review and 25% gave it a ... (Wikipedia)
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Story of two sisters navigating a civil war in Nigeria, and the effects of colonialism.
The novel takes place in Nigeria prior to and during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The effect of the war is shown through the relationships of five people's lives including the twin daughters of ... (Wikipedia)
Before We Were Yours
by Lisa Wingate
Family torn apart is reunited across generations, revealing a powerful tale of resilience and hope.
Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the ... (Goodreads)
The Overstory
by Richard Powers
Nine strangers are brought together by their love for trees, leading to a fight to save the last of the remaining forests.
Nicholas Hoel, Mimi Ma, Adam Appich, Ray Brinkman, Dorothy Cazaly, Douglas Pavlicek, Neelay Mehta, Patricia Westerford, and Olivia Vandergriff are people who had unique relationships with trees which ... (Wikipedia)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
A family isolated from society, struggling to cope with prejudice and tragedy.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two ... (Goodreads)
News of the World
by Paulette Jiles
Captain Kidd travels through Texas in 1870, reading the news to townspeople. He is tasked with returning a young girl to her family.
The book opens in 1870 on the wild border between Texas and Indian Territory , where a 10-year-old girl has been released after four years of captivity. Kiowa raiders had killed her family and taken ... (Wikipedia)
Such a Fun Age
by Kiley Reid
A young black babysitter is accused of kidnapping the white child she cares for, exposing the complexities of race and privilege in modern America.
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her ... (Goodreads)
Washington Black
by Esi Edugyan
A young slave in Barbados becomes an assistant to a scientist and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and adventure.
Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, ... (Goodreads)
The Mothers
by Brit Bennett
An exploration of motherhood, faith, and identity in a close-knit Black community.
Living in Southern California, 17-year-old Nadia, grieving her mother's suicide, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Luke, a local pastor's son. She has an abortion and leaves her hometown to attend ... (Wikipedia)
Parable of the Talents
by Octavia E. Butler
A post-apocalyptic tale of survival, exploring themes of faith and power.
Parable of the Talents is told from the points of view of Lauren Oya Olamina and her daughter Larkin Olamina/Asha Vere. The novel consists of journal entries by Lauren and passages by Asha Vere. Four ... (Wikipedia)
The Thing Around Your Neck
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Collection of stories about the struggles and triumphs of Nigerian immigrants in America.
Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck map, with Adichie's signature emotional wisdom, the collision of two cultures and the deeply ... (Goodreads)
Hag-Seed
by Margaret Atwood
A modern retelling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" with a cast of unique characters.
Hag-Seed follows the life of Felix, once experimental Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg theatre festival, now an exiled man who speaks to his daughter's ghost. Felix's fall from the theatrical ... (Wikipedia)
