Looking for the next read? Want to support BAME authors? Have a look at the suggestions below!
As a young girl, I would sit in my room late into the night reading (damaging my eyes as my mother would say) I could never put a book down. I remember in secondary school during a class I was reading a book underneath the table. When the teacher saw me, he was confused as to what he should do and what was he going to do tell me to stop reading?
So I loved reading; however, my list had a lack of diversity. They were books that followed the tales of protagonists that did not represent me, I felt othered while engaging in my favourite hobby. It left me wanting novels written by BAME authors, and to my delight, I found them while at University. The books I have read left a lasting impression on me and below are just a few suggestions.
1. Lara by Bernadine Evaristo
Lara is a semi-autobiographical novel written in verse by Bernadine Evaristo. The story follows the journey of a young mixed-raced girl raised during 60s/70s Britain. The verses expose you to the trials that she endures as she searches for an identity in a then suburban area of Britain. Spanning 150 years of history from both her mother's white British side and her father's Nigerian side, you will witness the journey's Lara's ancestors took in search for security in space and identity. From her childhood to adulthood she retraces her ancestor's footsteps, travelling from London to Lagos to Bahia, Lara reveals a complex history filled with pain, love, exile and discrimination amongst others.
2. Graceland by Chris Abani
“Story is powerful. Story is fluid and it belongs to nobody.”
In GraceLand Abani reveals a distressing tale that is all too real for some living in postcolonial Nigeria. The story follows Elvis’ struggle to achieve his dreams; however, he soon realises that his aspirations cannot help him survive in the ghettos of Lagos. As a result, he is forced into a life of crime. Filled with disturbing traumatic incidents and insights into other people’s lives, such as Sunday, King of de Beggars, Innocent, Okon and others, GraceLand is a novel that immerses its readers into the life of the marginalised. Through this immersion, the book enables the readers to undergo a bildungsroman transforming them into beings who not only understand but listen to the oppressed.
3. Come Let Us Sing Anyway by Leone Ross
This is a novel that will no doubt shock you. It will leave you speechless. Come Let Us Sing Anyway comprises of short stories set in various locations revealing tales dealing with loneliness, desire, love and death. As each page turns the readers will find that anything can happen. From headless girls to a hymen collection, the novel explores various issues concerning the politics of the body, particularly the female body, and combines it with magical realism. These stories engage your mind filling you with multiple questions and leaving you wanting to reread it. Some pull at your heartstrings and some will make you put down the book in shock and think about what you have just read wondering if you can read more.
4. The Autobiography of My Mother By Jamaica Kincaid
“This fact of my mother dying at the moment I was born became a central motif of my life.”
The Autobiography of My Mother is a story very much about finding oneself, it is about desire, appreciation and exploration of one’s own body, all the processes and smells (yes smells) the body goes through. The Autobiography of My Mother details Xuela’s harrowing journey starting from the death of her mother at childbirth. We soon realise that the novel is not solely about Xuela’s mother, it is also about Xuela’s unborn children. The Main character rejects motherhood refusing to raise children as she considers pregnancy a burden to pleasure. The Autobiography of My Mother is a powerful and disturbing story that comes alive through your senses.
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beloved tugs on the heartstrings and leaves a lasting impression. Set in the 1870s in the aftermath of the civil war Morrison unleashes just some of the horrors experienced by African American's during that time. The story follows Sethe, a former slave who escaped to Ohio and ends up living in a haunted house with her daughter Denver and her mother-in-law Baby Suggs. Morrison tells Sethe's story on two different temporal lanes, one that looks at Sethe's life on the plantation and the other focuses on her and the other character's lives afterwards. This is a tale very much about freedom; freedom from slavery, from traumatic memories and actions. Just like the hauntings in this novel, these characters and their lives will stay with you.
Comentários