Influences
I often wonder when I’m reading something what the writer was reading while she or he was writing it. Sometimes it’s because I suspect the influence of a certain earlier work, sometimes it’s because the period or procedural details suggest a lot of research.
So in case anyone gives a hoot, this is a list of things I read or re-read during the period I was writing Underground Airlines (divided into a few different categories and using some sort of vaguely correct-looking bibliography format.)
Category 1: history of racism and slavery
Baptist, Edward A. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
Blackmon, Douglas. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Coates, Ta-Nahisi. “The Case for Reparations,” from The Atlantic Monthly, June 2014
Cover, Robert. Justice Accused: Antislavery and the Judicial Process
Farrow, Anne; Lang, Joel; & Frank, Jennifer. Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
Genovese, Eugene. The Political Economy of Slavery
Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll: The World The Slaves Made
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death
Various. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938
Category 2: speculative/”alternative-history” fiction
Martin, George R.R. (editor). Wild Cards anthology (volume 1)
Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
Harris, Robert. Fatherland
Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle
Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America
Category 3: classics of African American literature (fiction and non-)
Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man
Morrison, Toni. Beloved
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye
Rankine, Claudine. Citizen
Category 4: classics of African American literature which are ALSO speculative/”alternative-history” fiction (i.e. books that are literally sui generis, “of their own category”):
Butler, Octavia. Kindred
