The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”

— James Baldwin

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James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, and their inevitable if unnameable tensions.[1]Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), andThe Devil Finds Work (1976).

Push by Sapphire

“… but you cant get all hung up on details when you are trying to survive…”

— Sapphire

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Ramona Lofton (born August 4, 1950), better known by her pen nameSapphire, is an American author and performance poet.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

“There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.”

— Octavia E. Butler

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Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer. A multiple-recipient of both the Hugoand Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive theMacArthur Fellowship, nicknamed the Genius Grant.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

— Edwidge Danticat

Get Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

from wikipedia:

Edwidge Danticat (Haitian Creole pronunciation: [ɛdwidʒ dãtika]; born January 19, 1969) is a Haitian-American author.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

— Zora Neale Hurston

Get Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

From wikipedia:

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author. Of Hurston's four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, and essays, she is best known for her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In addition to new editions of her work being published after a revival of interest in her in 1975, her manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in the Smithsonian archives.

Books to Read: The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil

With a lyrical ear and a fablist's heart, Josh Weil has constructed a stunning alternate world from a scrap of an idea (that Russsia was experimenting with sky mirrors to do away with the darkness in key northern cities) that tests the connection between two Russian brothers on two different paths.

In the section he read last night at LA's Skylight Books, the figure of the Ekranoplan - Caspian Sea Monster emerged as a hulking dark presence. 

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