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

Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993. 1. Fine. Parable of the Sower is the odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of "Paints", people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman, sets off on foot, moving north along the dangerous coastal highways. She is a "sharer", one who suffers from a hereditary trait called "hyperempathy", which causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own. Parable of the Sower is both a coming of age novel and a road novel, set in the near future, when the dying embers of our old civilization can either cool or be the catalyst for something new. Hardcover

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A.A. Knopf, 1998. 1. Pristine. This guide is intended to enhance your group's reading of Toni Morrison's Paradise, the powerful and extraordinary new novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Song of Solomon and Beloved. It is the 1970s, and the tiny, self-sufficient all-black town of Ruby, Oklahoma, has reached a crisis of conviction. Tracing its origins to the efforts of a strong and spiritual community of ex-slaves, Ruby prides itself on its uncompromising independence from the larger world. But the vicissitudes of the Sixties, from the Civil Rights movement to the Vietnam War, the counterculture to the generational conflict, inexorably touch Ruby and disturb its self-imposed isolation. In the scrubland outside of Ruby is an old Convent in which five women live, each seeking refuge and deliverance from a grim past. As the townspeople begin to lose their own convictions and succumb to the uncertainties of the times, they come to identify these unknown women with evil, and to use the Convent… Read More

Wild Trees Press, 1984. Fine. This is the first collection of short stories to be published by dramatist Cooper, who was named Black Playwright of the Year in 1978, and the first book to be published by a small press founded by Alice Walker and Robert Allen. These 12 well-crafted and unusual stories are multilayered in their meaning and have characters who transcend social, racial, and cultural classifications. The stories are mostly told in a conversational manner by a trusted female friend of the woman in the story or occasionally by a sister, while the main character remains silent. Cooper creates vividly the voice of the sister-witness, who has a natural affinity for the protagonist and a sense of the oppressed role of women in society. The stories include: "A Jewel for a Friend," "Color Me Real," "The Free and the Caged," "Liberated," and "Funeral Plans." ISBN 0-931125-00-6 (pbk.) : $7.95. Signed, Inscribed
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Strebor Books, 2007. 1st. Fine. Nikki Jenkins's novel imagines the life of a woman who experiences the best and worst of everyone around her—and tries to redeem every relationship she has, no matter how crazy and convoluted they become.Natalie Kelley's world is in danger of falling apart, and she is the only one who can keep that from happening. Her husband, Anderson—who has an undeniable history of adultery—is once again preoccupied with something other than work. And that's not all. Natalie has to deal with her own spoiled mother, drug-addicted sister, man-crazy best friend, and her own children who are too young to take care of themselves. Natalie goes through three days of her life, desperately clinging to the only life she knows and supporting everyone who relies on her, all at once. Her husband's actions verge on the edge of abusive, and it is only a matter of time before Natalie discovers what has been drawing him further away from their love—and the results will shock everyone.… Read More

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1996. 1st. Fine. An intimate, gripping novel of the antebellum Underground Railroad, based on the true story of a valiant Philadelphia freedwoman—a debut novel from the author of the “stunning memoir” Black Ice (New York Times)."A stunning achievement ... a deeply engrossing story." —The Philadelphia InquirerWith Price of a Child—the story of Ginnie Pryor (cook, mistress and servant to a Virginia planter) and her struggle with slavery in 1855—Lorene Cary continues has created a work that elevates the reputation she created with Black Ice, her memoir which won her comparisons to Maya Angelou and Richard Wright. In a novel that examines the price of freedom and the value of a child's life, Cary has created an authentic American heroine—a woman who finds voice for the appalling loss and bitterness of her past, and who creates within herself a new humanity. Hardcover
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Beacon Press, 2001. 1st. Fine. A powerful collection of stories by the acclaimed author of Mother to Mother This collection of Sindiwe Magona's short fiction, following the publication to wide acclaim of her novel Mother to Mother, ranges in location from rural Transkei, her homeland, and the black township of Guguletu, where she struggled to raise her children, to New York, where she immigrated. With vivid and perceptive prose, Magona creates memorable characters, both hilarious and tragic, who bring to life the rich and varied backgrounds and cultures of South Africa. Softcover

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