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

Hyperion, 1999. 1st. Fine. From the bestselling author of "Coffee Will Make You Black" comes this sparkling new novel of self-knowledge starring Chicago DJ Daphne Dupree. At first Daphne fears her romance with Skylar, a handsome mediator, might never get to the next step, but as their relationship progresses, she finds that her yearning for someone to love ends with a discovery of herself. Hardcover

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HarperCollins, 2001. 1st. Fine. Joyce Mitchell was widowed far too young when her beloved husband, Mitch, died in a tragic accident five years ago. Since then she's kept her hands full and her mind and heart occupied by running The Sewing Circus, an all-girl group she founded to provide badly needed services like day care and job counseling to young women, many of whom are single mothers. More important, The Circus is a place for lively, wide-ranging, heart-to-heart discussions that will help members grow into what Joyce likes to call "twenty-first-century free women."All in all, Joyce has a full and rich life. She has her work, her family, her friends, and her town. But there are some nights when she crawls into bed alone and has to admit that something is missing. What she doesn't have is that red dress she keeps dreaming about or a social life that would accommodate it even if she braved the mail and bought one. To further complicate matters, she may not have The Sewing Circus much longer, as… Read More

Nan A. Talese, 2005. ""The Icarus Girl" is an astonishing achievement." --"Sunday Telegraph" (London) Jessamy "Jess" Harrison is eight years old. Sensitive, whimsical, possessed of an extraordinary and powerful imagination, she spends hours writing haiku, reading Shakespeare, or simply hiding in the dark warmth of the airing cupboard. As the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess just can't shake off the feeling of being alone wherever she goes, and the other kids in her class are wary of her tendency to succumb to terrified fits of screaming. Believing that a change from her English environment might be the perfect antidote to Jess's alarming mood swings, her parents whisk her off to Nigeria for the first time where she meets her mother's family--including her formidable grandfather. Jess's adjustment to Nigeria is only beginning when she encounters Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged little girl her own age. To Jess, it seems that, at last, she has found someone who will understand… Read More

New Press, 1994. 1. Pristine. Global awareness of the Caribbean has come a long way from Columbus' colossal geographic error, but few readers are familiar with the diverse legacy of literature that has come out of this besieged region.In an unprecedented collection, If I Could Write This in Fire brings together fiction from the French-, Spanish-, and English-speaking Caribbean, much of it translated here for the first time, and illustrates the bridges built from one island society to another as all struggled to respond to the shared experience of conquest.The fifteen selections deal with basic, underlying themes of the region's literature: the plantation, maroon society, colonial education, rural and urban life, women's changing roles in the modern Caribbean, exile, and the diaspora. Works include Jamaican author James Carnegie's powerful novella Wages Paid about a day in the life of a slave plantation, a selection by noted Guadeloupan novelist Simone Schwarz-Bart, Puerto Rican short stories… Read More

Simon and Schuster, 2009. 1. Fine. Imagine This is the sequel to Vickie Stringer's bestselling Let That Be the Reason, her stunning debut novel based on life as she knew it in the shocking underworld of the sex and drug trade.Vickie Stringer has gained a legion of fans for her portrayal of Pamela, a.k.a. Carmen, a woman who had it all but lost out when the love of her life left her penniless and alone to raise their son. Pamela refuses to remain powerless, though. She pulls herself up, becomes a major hustler in the street game, gains independence, and makes big money -- but the consequences are more dreadful than she ever imagined.Imagine This continues the saga of Pamela as she does jail time and has to decide who she really is: Pamela, a woman who, more than anything, loves her son and wants to be there to raise him; or Carmen, the ruthless baller, who does the crime, serves the time, and honors, at any expense, the code of the street. Softcover
ephemera
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Warner, 1989. 1st. Very Good. From the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower:After the near-extinction of humanity, a new kind of alien-human hybrid must come to terms with their identity -- before their powers destroy what is left of humankind. Since a nuclear war decimated the human population, the remaining humans began to rebuild their future by interbreeding with an alien race -- the Oankali -- who saved them from near-certain extinction. The Oankalis' greatest skill lies in the species' ability to constantly adapt and evolve, a process that is guided by their third sex, the ooloi, who are able to read and mutate genetic code. Now, for the first time in the humans' relationship with the Oankali, a human mother has given birth to an ooloi child: Jodahs. Throughout his childhood, Jodahs seemed to be a male human-alien hybrid. But when he reaches adolescence, Jodahs develops the ooloi abilities to shapeshift, manipulate DNA, cure and create disease, and more. Frightened and… Read More

Strebor Books, 2007. 1st. Fine. A controversial new novel from critically acclaimed Essence bestseller Reginald L. Hall explores the attraction of dating a bad boy from an entirely new angle.During college, Juan Jiles fell in love with Darrell, who convinced Juan to help him rob one of Philadelphia's largest banks. During the heist, Darnell is killed, and Juan escapes with more than $175,000. After mourning the loss of his lover, Juan begins rebuilding his life and uses the money to open a popular celebrity hair salon. Then along comes Bryant Thompson, a street thug with drugs, drama, and deception in tow. Juan falls in love with the hustling, muscle-bound Bryant and soon succumbs to Bryant's addictive world. Juan's life starts to spin out of control, and he realizes that his meeting Bryant didn't happen by chance. A story of a man doomed by passion, In Love with a Thug is by turns a humorous, tragic, and hard-hitting look at the cost of destructive love and the price some pay for true… Read More

A.A. Knopf, 2004. Pristine. M. G. Vassanji, author of The Book of Secrets, winner of the first Giller prize, brings us a novel that is rich in sensuous detail and political insight, and brilliantly captures the tyranny of history and memory, and questions one's role and responsibility in lawless times. Born in colonial Kenya, Vikram Lall comes of age at the same moment as the colony, which in 1953 is celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II even as the Mau Mau independence movement is challenging British rule. But while Kenya is being torn apart by idealism, doubt and violent political upheaval, Vic and his sister Deepa begin to search for their place in the world. Neither colonists nor African, neither white nor black, the Indian brother and sister find themselves somewhere in between in their band of playmates: Bill and Annie, British children, and Njoroge, an African boy. These are the friendships that will haunt the rest of their lives. We follow Vic from a changing Africa in the… Read More

Dutton, 1992. 1. Fine. Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and one of America's most talented novelists, Richard Wiley gives fresh proof of his scope and power in this major novel set in Africa.Jerry Neal, an American living in Lagos, is principal of an international school attended by children of Americans living abroad and the African elite. The wife he loved is dead, and guiding the education of the offspring of others is his chief source of satisfaction and self-esteem. He is a man floating free, with both the privileges and purposelessness of detachment. He remains a stranger in the teeming, tumultous city.But Neal's self-contained world is suddenly shattered. He finds himself in prison, the victim of a government power play and his involvement with a group of Nigerian dissidents. Stripped of his mantle of immunity, he becomes more emotionally human again, living in his own skin, feeling the chill of danger, the heat of desire. Against his will, schoolmaster Neal begins… Read More

Chatto & Windus, 1992. 1st. Very Good. Inspired by "The Tempest", the novelist rewrites the drama of Ariel, Caliban and Sycorax in a Caribbean setting, exploring the colonial conflicts of an imaginary island and one family. Hardcover

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2000. Fine. This debut novel by the two time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadIt is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it.  There are two warring factions within the department:  the Empiricists, who work by the book and dutifully check for striations on the winch cable and such; and the Intuitionists, who are simply able to enter the elevator cab in question, meditate, and intuit any defects.  Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and, it just so happens, has the highest accuracy rate in the entire department.  But when an elevator in a new city building goes into total freefall on… Read More

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012. Advance Reading Copy. Very Good. This debut novel by the two time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American ReadIt is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it.  There are two warring factions within the department:  the Empiricists, who work by the book and dutifully check for striations on the winch cable and such; and the Intuitionists, who are simply able to enter the elevator cab in question, meditate, and intuit any defects.  Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and, it just so happens, has the highest accuracy rate in the entire department.  But when an elevator in a new city building… Read More