Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham
In Tola Rotimi Abraham’s debut novel, two young girls see the linkage of sex, money, and religion on the path to power.
Author: Kathleen Stone
Mother Is a Verb by Sarah Knott
Sarah Knott, an historian and faculty member at Indiana University Bloomington, has reached deep into archival material for stories of how mothers of the past spent their days.
Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, And Mine by Emily Bernard
Emily Bernard writes she is “most interested in blackness at its borders, where it meets whiteness, in fear and hope, in anguish and love.” She examines this intersection closely, with her own life as a case study, to see where the pieces fit together neatly, and where their edges collide.
The Ensemble by Aja Gabel
Gabel studied cello for years and her experience is evident as she spools out the plot, repeats motifs and varies the story’s tempo and dynamics. Music dictates the structure of the book, too, which is arranged in four parts, like a concerto, with a short coda at the end.
The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl
Hampl has been writing at the intersection of memoir and essay for most of her life. Now, displaying a heightened partnership of experience and reflection, she revisits people and events with insight produced by leisure and the ostensibly wasted day.