Search Results: Titles starting with C from Oasis in the Diaspora

Random House Publishing Group, 2009. Uncorrected proof. Fair. “Poignant and gripping . . . a heartfelt portrayal of a family’s shameful secrets and the power of unconditional love.”–Tracy Price-Thompson, author of A Woman’s WorthPeople don’t usually name tornadoes, but that year, Daddy insisted. “Any twister that beautiful and that dangerous can only be female. Reminds me of a woman I used to know named Sophea.” He laughed. “Sophea, Sophea.”Dahlia’s life should be perfect. She’s a successful businesswoman with a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter. But Dahlia senses that something isn’t quite right. More and more often, she has the feeling of being lost in her own body, completely mystified by the simplest things, like traffic lights and car horns. These spells strike at anytime, anywhere. And though aware that she’s off balance, Dahlia has no idea what could be the cause.As Dahlia’s grasp on reality loosens, the signs lead to a traumatic event from her… Read More

Hyperion, 1994. Uncorrected proof. Very Good. “A funny, fresh novel about growing up African-American in 1960s Chicago” by an author who “writes like Terry McMillan’s kid sister” (Entertainment Weekly). In this hilarious and insightful coming-of-age novel, author April Sinclair introduces the charming Jean “Stevie” Stevenson, a young woman raised on Chicago’s South Side during an era of irrevocable social upheaval.   Curious and witty, bold but naïve, Stevie grows up debating the qualities of good hair and dark skin. As the years pass, her family and neighborhood are changed by the times, from the War on Poverty to race riots and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., from “Black Is Beautiful” to Black Power. Against this remarkable backdrop, Stevie makes the sometimes harrowing, often comic, always enthralling transformation into a young adult—socially aware, discovering her sexuality, and proud of her identity.   “Whether she’s dealing with a subject as… Read More

Simon & Schuster, 2004. 1st. Fine. Omar Tyree -- writing as The Urban Griot -- delivers a thrilling novel about a jaded college girl who when scorned becomes more lethal than the hardened criminal with whom she falls in love. When Janeia Goode, a beautiful undergrad studying psychology at Chicago State University, meets Warren Hamilton, known as Molasses --or Moe for short -- she knows he is dangerous, and yet she finds him to be exciting, mysterious, and undeniably sexy. Janeia realizes that she is a good girl in love with a bad boy -- and she must keep his life as a hit man a secret, or else. Although Moe does reveal to Janeia his life as a paid killer, and she seems to accept it, his skill as a notorious womanizer proves to be his most dangerous habit. After an attempt on Moe's life lands him in an emergency room, he begins to reconsider his many enemies, but he does not take into account the scorned women he has manipulated over the years, up to and including his current love, Janeia.… Read More

The Dial Press, 1965. 1. Good. The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement—a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person’s ability to affect change. “Anne Moody’s autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage.”—Chicago Tribune Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till’s lynching. Before then, she had “known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was . . . the fear of being killed just because I was black.” In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.A straight-A student who realized her dream of going to college when she won a basketball scholarship, she finally dared to join the NAACP in her junior year.… 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

Random House, 1975. 1st. Very Good. "A literary classic that remains vital to our understanding of the past, Corregidora is Gayl Jones's powerful debut novel, examining womanhood, sexuality, and the psychological residue of slavery. Jones masterfully tells the story of Ursa, a Kentucky blues singer, who, in the wake of a tragic loss, confronts her maternal history and the legacy of Corregidora, the Brazilian slave master who fathered both her mother and grandmother. Consumed and haunted by her hatred of the man who irrevocably shaped her life and the lives of her family, Ursa Corregidora must come to terms with a past that is never too distant from the present." -- Hard cover

Box 3

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947. 1st. Fair. Originally published in 1947, Ann Petry’s classic Country Place depicts a predominantly white community disillusioned by the indignities and corruption of small-town life. Johnnie Roane returns from four years of military service in World War II to his wife, Glory. They had been married just a year when he left Lennox, Connecticut, where both their families live and work. In his taxi ride home, Johnnie receives foreboding hints that all has not been well in his absence. Eager to mend his fraying marriage, Johnnie attempts to cajole Glory to recommit to their life together. But something sinister has taken place during the intervening years—an infidelity that has not gone unnoticed in the superficially placid New England town. Accompanied by a new foreword from Farah Jasmine Griffin on the enduring legacy of Petry’s oeuvre, Country Place complicates and builds on the legacy of a literary celebrity and one of the foremost African American writers… Read More

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. 1. Very Good. New York Times bestseller ∙ Newbery Medal Winner ∙Coretta Scott King Honor Award ∙2015 YALSA 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults∙ 2015 YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers ∙Publishers Weekly Best Book ∙ School Library Journal Best Book∙ Kirkus Best Book "A beautifully measured novel of life and line."--The New York Times Book Review"With a bolt of lightning on my kicks . . .The court is SIZZLING. My sweat is DRIZZLING. Stop all that quivering. Cuz tonight I'm delivering, " announces dread-locked, 12-year old Josh Bell. He and his twin brother Jordan are awesome on the court. But Josh has more than basketball in his blood, he's got mad beats, too, that tell his family's story in verse, in this fast and furious middle grade novel of family and brotherhood from Kwame Alexander.Josh and Jordan must come to grips with growing up on and off the court to realize breaking the rules comes at a terrible price, as their… Read More