Books for Juneteenth

 

On Juneteenth we reflect on the gap between legal freedom afforded by the Emancipation Proclamation and actual emancipation. In the period spanning from the surrender of the Confederacy on April 9, 1865, to June 19, 1865, while Union troops spread the news of freedom, many slave owners, despite knowing the Confederacy had surrendered, kept this crucial information from those they enslaved.

 
Worth noting is that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to Confederate states. Lincoln did not free slaves in Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia - Union states where he actually had the authority to do so. While Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri ended slavery in early 1865, Delaware and Kentucky did not abolish slavery until well after Juneteenth. 

Juneteenth 

Books About Racial Identity / Race Relations

The following novels examine racial identity and race relations in a variety of ways, styles, and genres. Book lovers (like me) in search offiction that not only entertains, but also examines the human condition, willfind what they’re looking for. Particularly those who are interested in howblack and white people often struggle to understand, accept, and get along witheach other. Getting in the way are superficial prejudices along with issues centralto who we are, why we differ, and how we nonetheless are tied together by ourcommonalities. The gap dividing the realities of our lives as fellow Americans and the more perfect union we're still headed toward remains in place.

 

*****

Black Buck by MateoAskaripour – Darren graduated valedictorianfrom his high school, yet rather than moving on to higher education, he worksat a Starbucks. He and his mother live in a spacious home, he is the manager athis job, regularly hangs out with his best friend, and he has a beautiful,supportive, girlfriend. So, he is content.

On a whim he talks a customer intotrying a different drink than usual. From this interaction the man offersDarren a career opportunity. Darren and two other recruits go through whatseems more like a fraternity hazing period than job training, and Darren (whois the only African American) is given the hardest time. He receives thenickname of Buck due to his previous place of employment, but its racialovertones are obvious. For every advantage that results, such as making goodmoney from his sales abilities, there is a downside, such as alienating peoplehe used to be close with. The plot veers from plausible to over-the-top as heeventually ends up running a worldwide top-secret organization that cranks out blacksalesperson success stories. Whether earnest or satirical in intent - BlackBuck is a unique, easy read.

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Caucasia by DanzySenna - For biracial people a layer ofcomplexity is added to the racial identity equation. If one’s skin color islight enough to pass as white, such as is the case with Birdie (but not hersister Cole who fits in with other kids at the Afrocentric school they attend),passing can create an easier life. Is a half-truth equal to a lie?

Readers who love action-filledplots will find this book set in the 1970’s to their liking, as will thoselooking for introspection on social issues. When Birdie and Cole’s parentssplit up, their black father takes Cole away from Boston to see if racialequality can be found elsewhere. Birdie is left behind with their white mother,but they end up on the run, living under false identities. Birdie longs for areunion with her sister and is wary of betraying her mother. Understanding yourselffrom a cultural viewpoint can get complicated when you belong to two sides butsociety insists on choosing one.

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The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow – Agirl is haunted by events that are only vaguelyremembered but form the fabric of each passing day. A father who has vanishedwithout a trace. A mother who left this world in the splashiest of ways, takingher own life along with those of her other children by leaping from the roof ofa building. There is a witness and a survivor. This book is the latter'sstory. 

She is her father's black daughterand her mother's white daughter. Her racial identity is thus both and neither,dependent on how one sees her, or how she chooses to see herself.  Alongwith her blackness and her whiteness and her status as one who has been takenin upon being abandoned, she is a proven survivor. The narrative moves back andforth in time, told from multiple perspectives, revealing the back story in asrandom a manner as the markings of heredity. Beneath longing, loneliness andconfusion is muted hope that a fall from great height can turn into flight.

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Go Set a Watchman byHarper Lee –This book features charactersfrom To Kill a Mockingbird years later. Jean Louise (aka Scout) is now a grownwoman contemplating marriage to Henry who remained in their hometown ofMaycomb, Alabama and followed the footsteps of her father Atticus into the lawprofession. If Scout wishes to return home and marry a father figure, she's allset. She now lives in New York City, a far cry from the small southern town shewas raised in.

Much has changed from the periodin which the events of Mockingbird take place to the 1950's setting of Go Set aWatchman. Closet bigots who once had enough good manners not to let it show inpolite society now feel free to express hostility openly. Count Henry andeven Atticus among those more willing to hear out the KKK than the emerging NAACP.Changing times to them means putting up a more aggressive fight againstprogress. Amazingly Scout has been clueless about her father's truesocial/political views until he is about 70 years old. Once in the know, shefeels betrayed and must figure out how to come to terms with it. Perhaps theAtticus Finch we know and love from the classic is simply too good to be true.Maybe the Watchman version is the more realistic depiction of a flesh and bloodman, rather than an idealized one, because his hypocrisy is made plain.

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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler – A wonderful blend of science fiction with literary fiction.The main character (Dana, a black woman recently wed to a white man in 1976)must keep an ancestor (who is white) from dying on several separate occasionsto sustain the family lineage. She doesn't need to keep Rufus (who she firstmeets as a boy) alive to old age, just long enough for him impregnate the womanwho will give birth to the most distant relative Dana is aware of.

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To protect Rufus she is repeatedlytransported to the era of slavery. He summons her subconsciously and perhapsconsciously as he grows older whenever he is in grave danger. Dana can returnto 1976 only when her own life is in immediate peril. The vehicle of haphazardtime travel is used to show that what happened in the past impacts our presentand shapes our future.

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Little Bee by ChrisCleave - Dual narration alternatesbetween two women. Sarah is a white magazine editor from England. Little Bee isa black undocumented refugee who gets out of a detention center after escapingfrom a violent landscape and must now stay under the radar.

The two women are as differentfrom each other as the places they are from. Sarah is older, a mother, a wifewhen she first meets Little Bee along with being another man's mistress. LittleBee is a teenager from a small Nigerian village which is rich in oil, but the wealthgenerated by black gold does not make it to someone in her position. What reachesher is violence, the barbaric cruelty of men. Learning to speak like thosefrom a safer place is not sufficient to stop them from ejecting Little Bee. Beingborn into privilege like Sarah does not mean tragedy cannot come calling. Despitesuperficial differences, common humanity allows them to connect with oneanother.

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The Man by IrvingWallace - This is a fictional account ofthe first black president. Senator Douglas Dilman isn’t elected to theposition, but rather, the president, vice president and others ahead of him inline are killed. The time is 1964 and Dilman is overwhelmed by an avalanche ofresponsibilities and pressure, plus being burdened by a lack of confidence inhim from those in his cabinet.

On the job training is especiallychallenging when it's the most difficult job in the world, particularly whenmany are resentful of your ascendancy, condescending about your ability to beup to the task, or both. There is no shortage of crisis for Dilman to deal withon the national and international stage. Once navigated, there's the matter of decidingwhether to run for re-election. Barack Obama later became our first non-fictionPOTUS. His election makes it seem that we have come a very long way from 1964but looks can be deceiving. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, sometimesfiction is far beyond the logistics of reality, and then there are occasionswhen fiction accurately predicts a reality we haven’t gotten to yet.

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Pym by Mat Johnson - An African American Literature professor’s primary focus ison examining Edgar Allan Poe’s only full-length novel. Poe’s race makes hiswriting inappropriate for the syllabus, which costs the professor his job. Thename of the book is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Chrisbelieves it holds the key to understanding White-Black race relations. Afterbeing fired, he and various members of his inner circle head off on a quest.Their destination is Antarctica. On this frozen terrain they discover a lostrace of creatures representing Whiteness that Poe wrote about in his novel.

When the world as we know itseemingly comes to an end, the motley crew members are perhaps now the lone civilizedsurvivors of Armageddon. And they have become slaves of the primitive creaturesin Antarctica. If they can escape, the opposite of the place they are beingheld captive, a tropical island representing Blackness that Poe also wroteabout, possibly awaits.

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The Sellout by Paul Beatty –Nearlyevery sentence of this book is a rambling, rapid fire joke with multiple punchlines delivered. Authored by a spoken word poet, it seems written to belistened to rather than read silently to yourself. The plot involves a blackman who was home schooled by his social scientist father, with every lessonbeing about racial identity. After his father is murdered by cops, the soninherits the family farm along with acquiring settlement money. He lives in a Californiatown that has literally been erased from the map. In addition to providingneighbors with incredible fruit, stellar weed, and crisis counseling in timesof mental emergencies, he is on a mission to reclaim recognition that the town exists.

He is friends with the last livingcast member of the Little Rascals, a man named Hominy who voluntarily insistson being the narrator's slave. I don't have an explanation for motive beyond notingthat this book is wildly satirical with every line meant to be taken with alarge grain of salt added to the social commentary. Besides being a slaveowner, he attempts to bring racial segregation back to their town one locationat a time, starting with a city bus driven by his crush. Readers are hit with everycultural reference under the sun along the topsy turvy way.

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When No One isWatching by Alyssa Cole – This story ofgentrification is made even more sinister than it is off the page. The settingis a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY rapidly undergoing changes. The Gifford Placecommunity has been predominantly African American for generations, but lately alot of the black folks have been moving away, and in their place has been thearrival of affluent white people. A black woman named Sydney Green encounters awhite man named Theo and his soon to be ex-girlfriend on a walking tour of theneighborhood. Sydney disapproves of what the tour is highlighting and what itis leaving out, the latter being contributions by the majority blackpopulation. She decides to create a tour of her own to counter it, andunemployed Theo volunteers to be her assistant.

Sydneydoes not hold back from expressing displeasure with gentrifying white people. Theoshrugs this off though and is not without charm. Since Sydney is convenientlysingle just as Theo is in the process of becoming, a potential love connectionis in the making. The book is written in alternating first person point of viewperspective - each chapter from Sydney's viewpoint followed by one from Theo's.Peculiar circumstances pile up and suspicions rise from mild to full blownconspiracy territory. Why are so many of their neighbors here one day - gonethe next? When did the neighborhood bodega change hands and become a far moreupscale store? Why isn't Syndey's best friend answering her texts? What doesthe company that's building a hospital in the neighborhood have to do with thevarious ominous things that are taking place? We find out in the closing pagesas the book races towards a thriller genre conclusion.

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24 Children's Books by Black AuthorsPlus 1 more with my highest recommendation