Search Results: Authors starting with D from Oasis in the Diaspora

Soho, 1994. 1. Fine. An unforgettable novel that shimmers with the wonder and terror of its author's native Haiti. Set in the island's impoverished villages and in New York's Haitian community, this is the story of Sophie Caco, who was conceived in an act of violence, abandoned by her mother and then summoned to America. In New York, Sophie discovers that Haiti imposes harsh rules on its own. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved. Hardcover
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Disney-Hyperion, 2004. 1st. Very Good. Jason is a basketball star and one of the most popular guys in school. Brainy Kyra isn't, but she doesn't much care what other people think. Under normal circumstances, Jason and Kyra would live in their separate worlds until graduation. But fate intervenes, and the unlikely duo is paired up for a class project. Although preconceived notions abound on both sides, Kyra soon realizes that Jason is not the dumb jock she anticipated. And Jason finds himself telling Kyra things he can't even tell his best friend. As the two become close and eventually start to fall in love, no one in school can believe it, especially Jason's ex-girlfriend, who is determined to get him back. Being together means navigating the obstacles that are coming their way-but staying apart may be impossible. Dana Davidson is a high school teacher who was the 2001 winner of the Newsweek WDIV Outstanding Teacher Award. This is her first book for young adults. Soft cover

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Penguin Publishing Group, 1997. Fine. A QPB and BOMC selection. The author's previous novel, 1959, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Bird Kinkaid is an African-American woman who has recently been plagued by nightmares: It is a month after she witnessed Alex, her closest friend, plunge eight stories to her death on the sidewalk below and her grief has turned into obsession. Was Alex killed or was it a suicide? Was it an accident or did the white art critic and sometimes lover Frank Burton push her to her death? The two women had an intense friendship, their lives intertwined by shared space, history, friends (and occasionally lovers), and a passion for art. Alex's death shatters Bird, compelling her to search for answers to her friend's death amidst the disparate strands of Alex's quixotic life. When she locates a series of bizarre video tapes among Alex's belongings, in which she discusses her friends, her artwork, and her turbulent love life, Bird has the key to solving both… Read More

Basic Books, 2006. Uncorrected proof. Good. Starting with a photograph and some writings left by her grandmother, Thulani Davis goes looking for the "white folk" in her family-a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. When Davis's grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a novel about her parents, Mississippi cotton farmers who met after the Civil War: Chloe Curry, a former slave from Alabama, married with several children, and Will Campbell, a white planter from Missouri who had never marriedIn this compelling intersection of genealogy, memoir, and Reconstruction history, Davis picks up where her grandmother left off. Her journey takes her from Missouri to Mississippi to Alabama, back to her home town in Virginia, and even to Sierra Leone. The Campbells lead her to locate not only their pioneer history but to find the previously unknown roots of her mother's family; to Civil War archives, where she… Read More

Grove Weidenfeld, 1992. 1st. Fine. Twelve-year-old Willie Tarrant, a black girl in Turner, Virginia, sees her family--and her whole world--turned upside down when eight college students stage a sit-in for civil rights at the local Woolworth's department store. Hardcover

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Aunt Lute Books, 1995. 1st. Fine. Three African-American writers, previously unpublished, rock the senses--from Africa to Thailand to Houston to Chicago. Rabie Harris writes about an old Jamaican woman put into a Texas home care facility by a guilt-ridden daughter. Gloria Yamato's poignant attempts to retrace the steps, in fiction, of those exact moments when African-Americans are forced into painful racialized consciousness. DeeAnne Davis uses the streets of Chicago as the setting for four chapters from her forthcoming novel. Softcover
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W.W. Norton, 1997. 1st. Fine. "All my life I have passed invisibly into the white world, and all my life I have felt that sudden and alarming moment of consciousness there, of remembering I am black. It may feel like emerging too quickly from deep in the ocean, or touching an electric fence, or like a deer paralyzed in the headlights of an oncoming car," writes Toi Derricotte, a light-skinned black woman and accomplished poet. This exquisitely written work began as sketchy journal entries over twenty years ago when Derricotte moved into an all-white neighborhood near New York City. "I wanted to capture the language of self-hate, the pain of re-emerging thought and buried memory and consciousness." The Black Notebooks is an intimate record of the author's encounters with family, neighbors, friends, students, and colleagues where she is forced to question what it means to be a black woman living in a racially divided world. Hardcover

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1993. 1. Fair. A debut novel by the 1987 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, about an artist on a journey of self-discovery—navigating a family secret, racism, and the conflict between marriage and career.“Skillfully evokes the mood of a decade when social change seemed not only possible but imminent.” —Washington Post Book WorldWhen a woman returns to her Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-residence to teach puppetry to schoolchildren, her homecoming also means grappling with artistic ambition, memories of rejected love, and shocking truths about her family. Softcover
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Simon and Schuster, 2003. 1. Very Good. Sixteen-year-old Jericho is awaiting initiation to the Warriors of Distinction, the oldest and most exclusive club in school—but how high a price will he have to pay to belong? Find out in this first novel in Sharon M. Draper’s Jericho Trilogy.When Jericho is invited to pledge for the Warriors of Distinction, he thinks his life can’t get any better. As the most exclusive club in school, the Warriors give the best parties, go out with the hottest girls, and great grades are a given. When Arielle, one of the finest girls in his class, starts coming on to him once the pledge announcements are made, Jericho is determined to do anything to become a member… But as the initiation week becomes progressively harrowing, Jericho is forced to make choices he’s not entirely comfortable with. And one member seems to have it in for the sole female pledge in the group…a pledge who will stop at nothing to show she can handle the pressure. But when is she being… Read More

Simon and Schuster, 2006. 1. Fine. When pale strangers enter fifteen-year-old Amari's village, her entire tribe welcomes them; for in her remote part of Africa, visitors are always a cause for celebration. But these strangers are not here to celebrate. They are here to capture the strongest, healthiest villagers and to murder the rest. They are slave traders. And in the time it takes a gun to fire, Amari's life as she's known it is destroyed, along with her family and village. Beaten, branded, and dragged onto a slave ship, Amari is forced to witness horrors worse than any nightmare and endure humiliations she had never thought possible -- including being sold to a plantation owner in the Carolinas who gives her to his sixteen-year-old son, Clay, as his birthday present. Now, survival and escape are all Amari dreams about. As she struggles to hold on to her memories in the face of backbreaking plantation work and daily degradation at the hands of Clay, she finds friendship in unexpected… Read More

Milkweed Editions, 1989. 1st. Good. Stories deal with the interaction between native Africans and American diplomats, volunteer workers, and missionaries Signed copy
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