The Season of Styx Malone (2018) is a contemporary realistic middle grade novel written by Kekla Magoon. Caleb Franklin, 10, seeks a summer of unique adventures to prove he is the opposite of ordinary, despite his father’s insistence that Caleb and his brother Bobby Gene never stray beyond the town limits. Then Caleb meets Styx Malone, a cool, daring 16-year-old boy in the foster care system who shows the Franklin brothers a quick way to... Read The Season of Styx Malone Summary

Paul Beatty is the author of the 2015 novel The Sellout—a satire that makes fun of contemporary norms around race and identity. In the novel, Beatty applies his no-holds-barred idea of comedy to segregation, slavery, police brutality, and countless tragic and fraught issues that people typically treat with extreme seriousness and sensitivity. Through the main character, Me, the book provides an ironic and unexpected take on themes like Racial and Personal Identity and Capitalism’s Power... Read The Sellout Summary

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“The Sky is Gray” by African American writer Ernest J. Gaines is a short story within the collection Bloodline: Five Stories, first published in Negro Digest in August 1963 and in the collection in 1968. Gaines is best-known for his novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, published in 1971 and adapted into a television movie starring Cicely Tyson in 1974. Gaines is the winner of numerous awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award... Read The Sky Is Gray Summary

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Published in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk is an important contribution to African-American literature, American literature, and sociology. A collection of 14 essays, the work is Du Bois’s description of the state of the South and African Americans’ lives at the turn of the 20th century. This guide is based on the Amazon Classics Kindle book edition.In “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” Du Bois describes the psychological struggles of African Americans as... Read The Souls of Black Folk Summary

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The Temple of My Familiar (1989) is a novel by Alice Walker. It follows the intersecting lives of multiple characters across countries and lifetimes, exploring the themes of The Feminine Experience, The Historical Trauma of Colonization, and Spirituality in the Diaspora.Alice Walker is an internationally acclaimed and celebrated writer, poet, and activist. Her novel The Color Purple won a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983. Characters from this classic feature... Read The Temple of My Familiar Summary

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was published in 2009. Adichie had previously published two novels, making this text her third book and her first short story anthology. Some of the stories had been published previously in publications like The New Yorker and The Iowa Review. The book received praise, situating Adichie as a rising star of Nigerian literature. These short stories deal with problems of political conflict, immigration, artistic integrity, and... Read The Thing Around Your Neck Summary

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“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown is written from the perspective of a collective “we.” This group planted colorful perennial flowers, including aster, nasturtium, and delphinium (Line 1); filmed the flowers they planted blooming; then watched this video on fast forward (“Sped the video to see blossoms / brought in seconds,” Lines 11-12). At the end of the poem, the reader discovers that the collective “we” narrating the poem are Black men, and the sped-up video... Read The Tradition Summary

Published in 1995, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis is a realistic middle grade novel told from the point of view of 10-year-old Kenneth Watson. The Watson family lives in Flint, Michigan, in 1963. The early chapters of the book detail Kenny’s family life, school days, classmates, and older brother Byron’s exploits. When Byron takes one of his “adventures” too far, Kenny’s parents decide a family road trip to Birmingham, Alabama, is... Read The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 Summary

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First published in 1982, The Women of Brewster Place is Gloria Naylor’s debut novel and remains the African American author’s best-known work. The Women of Brewster Place was awarded the National Book Award for Best First Novel and was adapted into a miniseries in 1989 and a television show in 1990. Described as “a novel in seven stories,” the text consists of seven chapters that act as short stories, each one detailing the life of a Black woman living... Read The Women of Brewster Place Summary

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Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick: And Other Essays (2019) is a collection of personal essays that explore race, gender, and class in the US. McMillan Cottom is a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an influential public intellectual whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Thick situates McMillan Cottom’s personal experiences within sociological and structural analysis to link her experiences to... Read Thick: And Other Essays Summary

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