Book picks similar to
This Morning, This Evening, So Soon by James Baldwin
school-books
short-stories
classics
african-american-literature
White Stains - Anaïs Nin & Friends (Delectus Classics of Erotic Literature)
Anaïs Nin - 1995
Johnson. Anais Nin is said to have paid a dollar per page to produce typescripts of explicit erotica for his own private amusement. In 'Alice' a couple spying on another couple screwing in a public park become involved in a steamy group sex scene. In 'Florence', a New York office girl enjoys sex for the first time sleeping with two men in quick succession! In 'Memories' a man recounts his youth and his teenage initiation into sex by a variety of older women. This facsimile reproduction also contains an explicit sex manual, Love's Cyclopaedia, originally published with the stories. The intorduction by Dr. C.J. Schiener tells the story of the book's first clandestine edition by New York publisher Samuel Roth during the 1940s and all the evidence for attributing this anonymous work to Anais Nin.
THE DARKNESS
Stephen King - 2019
King. Do not let the lack of light stop you from discovering more adventures and stories that will keep you up at night and ignite the imagination. There is no place to hide in, THE DARKNESS!
The Longest Memory
Fred D'Aguiar - 1994
So will The Longest Memory, the powerful, beautifully crafted, internationally acclaimed fictional debut of prizewinning Guyanese poet Fred D'Aguiar. In language extraordinary for its tautness and resonance, The Longest Memory tells the story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave, who in 1810 attempts to flee a Virginia plantation - and of his father who inadvertently betrays him. The young slave's love for a white girl who slakes his forbidden thirst for learning and his painful relationship with his father are hauntingly evoked in this novel of astonishing lyrical simplicity. It is a measure of D'Aguiar's achievement and bravery that The Longest Memory is informed not only by the complicities between black slave and white master but also by the tensions among slaves themselves - between stoic survivalists and passionate rebels. Remarkable for its keenness of observation, subtlety, and restraint, The Longest Memory heralds the arrival of a major new voice in the contemporary literature of the African diaspora.
Finn's Hotel
James Joyce - 1923
Finn's Hotel is a luminous and often funny work, and it reveals Joyce's creative process during the transition between Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Soul City
Touré - 2007
Welcome to Soul City, where roses bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk along Cornbread Boulevard, musical genres become political platforms, and children use their allowance money to buy records from the Vinyl Man. Its an unusually peaceful and magical American community with a strong heritage and sense of unity--at least, thats how journalist Cadillac Jackson first finds it. When Jackson visits Soul City on a magazine assignment, a mayoral election is imminent and candidates from opposing parties are battling to control the citys soundtrack. Amidst the increasingly hostile campaign, Cadillac falls for Mahogany Sunflower, a beautiful Soul Cityzen, and begins a struggle to shed the embattled African-American identity hes been taught to adopt, in order to exist in a community where the content of his character really does determine a black mans identity. What he discovers reveals as much about himself as it does about human nature and the meaning of race in America.
The Book of Night Women
Marlon James - 2009
It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently--and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.
Last Resort
K.R. Griffiths - 2015
What should have been an idyllic vacation - a week of snowboarding at one of Canada's most beautiful ski resorts - becomes toxic when his wife tearfully confesses her infidelity. Overcome with grief, all Shane wants is to get away, but a freak storm has closed the roads, and it seems there will be no escape from his torment until the weather clears. Yet when Shane snaps and tries to leave the resort against all advice, he soon discovers that there is more on the mountain than just snow and trees.And things can always get worse...
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway - 1925
Contains several early Hemingway classics, including the famous Nick Adams stories. This volume introduces readers to the hallmarks of the famous Hemingway style: a lean, tough prose enlivened by an ear for the colloquial and an eye for the realistic."In Our Time" provides key insights into Hemingway's later works.
Breathing Room
Patricia Elam - 2001
But now they're at a crossroads where understanding may not be enough -- a place where they must risk it all to rediscover what they cherish most. Photographer Norma Simmons-Greer has a loving husband, a lively young son, and an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Probation officer Moxie Dilliard is as dedicated to her ideals as she is to her talented teenage daughter, Zadi. Best friends after meeting in college, Norma and Moxie are each other's reality check and reassurance. But suddenly the bond between them begins to unravel in unexpected ways. Anguished over the loss of her second child and her husband's recent withdrawal, Norma takes refuge in a complex love affair that puts her at odds with Moxie -- and with herself. Haunted by her beloved mother's inspiring yet disturbing emotional legacy, Moxie struggles to understand her friend, while her own refusal to compromise threatens to shatter her relationship with Zadi. And a devastating crisis will challenge both women to face the hardest of truths. With insight, humor, and heartbreaking immediacy, Patricia Elam presents a beautifully written portrait of two unforgettable women, and the teenager they both cherish, as they negotiate the ever-shifting terrain of friendship and identity. A wise, tender novel of what love can and cannot survive, Breathing Room is also an exploration of how the past can at once inspire and limit us, and of the pain -- and promise -- that accompany us on the journey we all share.
Anthem
Ayn Rand - 1938
In Anthem, Rand examines a frightening future in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values. Equality 7-2521 lives in the dark ages of the future where all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, and all traces of individualism have been wiped out. Despite such a restrictive environment, the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in him--a passion which he has been taught to call sinful. In a purely egalitarian world, Equality 7-2521 dares to stand apart from the herd--to think and choose for himself, to discover electricity, and to love the woman of his choice. Now he has been marked for death for committing the ultimate sin. In a world where the great "we" reign supreme, he has rediscovered the lost and holy word--"I."
Ain't Nothing Like A Brooklyn Bitch
Kellz Kimberly - 2015
At Seventeen years of age and fresh out of high school, Royal has had to work at a local strip club to make sure that she and her sister have whatever they need in order to maintain. Royal is all about making money and looking for a way out. There isn’t anyone that she has her eyes set on until she ends up meeting Pharaoh while returning home one night. At first, she downplays their blossoming relationship letting it be known that they’re just friends. Pharaoh plays along and figures that she’s just not your average chick, but he quickly switches things up on her and starts dating a girl name Bia. Just like Pharaoh knew she would, Royal shuts that relationship down and claims Pharaoh as her own. With a Love so unique and seemingly everlasting, one would think that things would be smooth sailing for the two of them. However, with a scorned ex-lover and a jealous best friend, the outcome will not turn out pretty. Join Royal as she carries the weight of the world on her shoulders and does what only a Brooklyn Bitch can do to make it out alive.
Electric Arches
Eve L. Ewing - 2017
Ewing's narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances, and identifies everyday objects - hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook - as precious icons.Her visual art is spare, playful, and poignant: a cereal box decoder ring that allows the wearer to understand what Black girls are saying; a teacher's angry, subversive message scrawled on the chalkboard. Electric Arches invites fresh conversations about race, gender, the city, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up.
Sugar
Bernice L. McFadden - 2000
Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered fifteen years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women's lives--and the life of an entire town.Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out--but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace. McFadden is the author of the novels Gathering of Waters, Glorious, and This Bitter Earth.
Her First Ball
Katherine Mansfield - 1921
She had not previously gone to a ball due to living deep in the country, and she goes to the ball with her cousins due to lacking any siblings of her own.