Today is Martin
Luther King Day in the U.S. This holiday
inspired me to take a look through Schatje’s Shelves for books dealing with
racism. I found 56 novels:
Sounder by William Armstrong traces the sorrow and abiding faith of a poor
African-American boy in the 19th century in the South.
In the Heat of the
Night by John Ball – A murder pits black, big-city homicide
expert Virgil Tibbs against the bigoted police department in a small Southern
town when they are forced to join forces to solve the crime.
Stones by William Bell - Garnet Havelock, who knows what it’s like to be on
the outside and not one of the crowd, becomes caught up in a mystery centred in
his community. As he and a friend draw
closer to the truth, they uncover a horrifying chapter in the town’s history,
and learn how deep-seated prejudices and persecution from the past can still
reverberate in the present.
Philida by André Brink - The year is 1832 and South Africa is rife with rumours
about the liberation of slaves. Philida,
the mother of four children by the son of her master, is sold but, unwilling to
accept this fate, Philida tests the limits of her freedom by setting off on a
journey determined to survive and be free.
Your Blues Ain't Like Mine
by Bebe Moore Campbell recalls the racially motivated murder of Emmett
Till, a black teenager killed for whistling at a white woman in
Mississippi in 1955.
New Boy by Tracy Chevalier - The tragedy of Othello
is transposed to a 1970's suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids
fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practice a
casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers.
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier – An English Quaker is stranded in Ohio in 1850 and forced
to rely on strangers. She becomes drawn
into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad.
More by Austin Clarke - Idora Morrison reflects on her life as a black
immigrant to Toronto.
The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke is set on the post-colonial West Indian island of
Bimshire in 1952. The novel unravels
over the course of 24 hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the
collective experience of a society informed by slavery.
The House Girl by Tara Conklin tells the story of two women: a seventeen-year-old slave planning her
escape from a plantation in 1853 Virginia and a young lawyer in 2004 New York
looking for a good plaintiff for a class action suit seeking reparation for the
descendants of American slaves.
Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor - Nineteen-year-old Mikey and his parents, Silas and
Lydia Ali, are members of the black middle class in post-apartheid South
Africa. Mikey discovers that he may be
the product of his mother's rape by a white police lieutenant and sets out to
explore his familial roots.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison chronicles the travels of a young, nameless black man
as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural
blindness.
Intruder in the
Dust by William Faulkner - An aging black who has long
refused to adopt the black's traditionally servile attitude is wrongfully accused
of murdering a white woman.
Fried Green
Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg -
Told in anecdote format, including short articles in the local newspaper by Dot
Weems, this story focuses on Mrs. Threadgoode, an old lady in a nursing home,
looking back on her life in Whistle Stop, Alabama. The book deals with a number
of themes including racism.
The Autobiography
of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines is a novel
in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived
110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of
the 1960's.
A Gathering of Old
Men by Ernest J. Gaines - Set on a Louisiana sugarcane
plantation in the 1970s, this is a depiction of racial tensions arising over
the death of a Cajun farmer at the hands of a black man.
Catherine Carmier by Ernest J. Gaines is a love story set in Louisiana, where
African-Americans, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy co-existence.
Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines introduces us to Marcus, a young African-American
man who refuses to kowtow to the racist customs that defined life in the South
in the 1940s. Marcus is awaiting trial for murder.
Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady is about a black Canadian who has spent his life trying
to pass as white.
A Time to Kill by John Grisham - Life becomes complicated in the backwoods town of
Clanton, Mississippi, when a black worker is brought to trial for the murder of
the two whites who raped and tortured his young daughter.
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom brings to life a thriving plantation in Virginia in
the decades before the Civil War.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi - Each chapter in the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, starting with her two daughters, separated by
circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in
charge of Cape Coast Castle,
while her half-sister Esi is held captive in the dungeons below.
Subsequent chapters follow their children and following generations.
Mama Flora’s Family by Alex Haley tells the story of Flora, a black girl born to a
sharecropping family in Mississippi who later moves to Memphis, Tennessee,
where her husband, Booker, is killed by white landowners.
Roots by Alex Haley re-captures his family's history in this drama of
eighteenth-century slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants.
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in West Africa
in 1745 and kidnapped at the age of 11 by slavers.
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson is about an emancipated and very educated slave who stows away on a ship bound for Africa.
A Patch of Blue by Elizabeth Kata tells the story of a blind white girl and a black man
who find love together.
The Secret Life of
Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is the coming-of-age story of Lily
Owen set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest.
The Invention of
Wings by Sue Monk Kidd - Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban
slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the
wealthy Grimke household where she serves as the handmaid of Sarah Grimke. What follows is their journeys over the next
thirty-five years as they dramatically shape each other’s destinies.
Places in the Heart by Thomas Kinkade - Edna Spalding is a woman recently widowed who
suddenly has to figure out how to support herself and two children during
Depression times. She is assisted by a
Black man and a blind boarder who understand the bigotries and harshness of
life in the 1930s.
To Kill a
Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee – In
the first novel, Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in 1930s Alabama defends a black
man accused of rape; the second is about a visit Scout makes to her father Atticus
twenty years later.
Small Island by Andrea Levy examines class, race, and prejudice in London in 1948,
when a new multiracial England began to form.
Missing Isaac by Valerie Fraser Luesse - It is 1965 when black
field hand Isaac Reynolds goes missing from a small town in Alabama. The townspeople's reactions range from concern to
indifference, but one boy will stop at nothing to find out what happened
to his unlikely friend.
The Twelve Tribes
of Hattie by Ayana Mathis begins with Hattie leaving the Jim
Crow South for a better life in Philadelphia.
Spanning the years 1925 to 1980, the book follows Hattie’s children as
they strive to find a place for themselves in the world.
Beloved by Toni Morrison tells the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who is
still shackled by memories of her murdered child.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - A young African American girl named Pecola grows up in Ohio during the years following the Great Depression. Pecola's dark skin colour means she is constantly called "ugly". As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness".
The Last Days of
Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley – A 91-year-old black man re-visits
his life and the events that shaped it. Racial
issues are addressed since he and his family were not always treated fairly.
The Housemaid’s
Daughter by Barbara Mutch gives a glimpse into South Africa in
the early to mid-1900’s, when Apartheid is becoming more of a threat and danger
to all who live there: black, white and coloured are all affected by the rules
and dangers of breaking those rules.
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks shows the life a black boy named Newton Winger who, at
a young age, learns how to deal with racism and prejudice.
Cry, the Beloved
Country by Alan Paton is about a black South African, Absalom
Kumalo, who murders a white man.
Too Late the
Phalarope by Alan Paton tells the story of Pieter, a white
policeman in South Africa, who has an affair with a native girl. He is betrayed
and reported, and thus brings shame on himself and his family.
The Street by
Ann Petry is about a young black woman and her struggle to raise her
son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the
later 1940s.
A Taste of Reality by Kimberla
Lawson Roby - When Anise, a black woman, applies for a promotion to manager of
human resources, she's impeded by a management team that wants an all-white
male staff. As Anise fights racism, job discrimination, and sexual harassment,
she also finds herself in the midst of a divorce from her light-skinned
husband, who wants a white wife.
Caucasia by Danzy Senna - Growing up in a biracial family in 1970s Boston,
Birdie has seen her family disintegrate due to the increasing racial tensions.
Her father and older sister move to Brazil, where they hope to find true racial
equality, while Birdie and her mother drift through the country, eventually
adopting new identities and settling in a small New Hampshire town
Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange - This novel about a black family living in St. Louis
in 1957 centers on Betsey, 13, who is restless, wants to "be
somebody" and is being bused to a white school. Her mother and grandmother
oppose and her father supports integration. When the father plans to take
Betsey and her siblings to demonstrate against a racist hotel, the mother
leaves home.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett - in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, as white socialite and a black maid join
together to write a tell-all book about work as a black maid in the South.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet
Beecher Stowe tells the trials of an old slave.
Published in 1852, this book won support for the anti-slavery cause in
the U.S.
The Confessions of
Nat Turner by William Styron is an accounting, from Nat Turner's
point of view, of the events that led to the only long-term revolt in the history
of American slavery.
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is the story of a boy and a runaway
slave Jim as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft.
The
Colour Purple by Alice Walker takes
place in the South and spans thirty years in the life of Celie, a poor southern
black woman. Alice Walker portrays the
life of an innocent girl who is put through physical and emotional abuse.
Meridian by Alice Walker takes a
complicated look at black-on-white and black-on-black relations. A large section of the novel deals with a
marriage between a white woman and a black man.
The Third Life of Grange
Copeland by Alice Walker - Black
tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head
North. After meeting an equally
humiliating existence there, he returns to Georgia, years later, to find his
son, Brownfield, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of the couple's youngest
daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third -- and final -- chance to
free himself from spiritual and social enslavement.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward - Through a portrait of a family,, the book examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead - The novel tells the story of Cora and Caesar, two slaves in the
southeastern United States during the 1800s who make a bid for freedom
from their Georgia plantations by following the Underground Railroad, which in the novel is an actual subway as opposed to a series of safe houses and secret routes.
Native
Son by Richard Wright explores
the race relations in Chicago in the 1940s. A black twenty-year old named
Bigger Thomas accidentally kills a prominent white woman and then tries to
cover it up.
