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Recent Reviews
Kellie Carter Jackson
Rave The Minneapolis Star-Tribune Illuminating, informative and, ultimately, hopeful ... A book whose persuasion is both emotional and intellectual.
Kiley Reid
Mixed The Star Tribune In a world of multifaceted, ubiquitous social interactions, Kiley Reid is a master at exploring the minutiae ... Entertaining gems of insight, hidden throughout the book, are not enough to overcome a haphazard narrative arc, central conflicts that are trivial and acerbic and characters whose inner lives still feel unknown to us by its conclusion. While Come and Get It offers meaningful cultural analysis and critique of young Black and white women\'s financial and consumer lives, it does not work as well as a coherent, unified novel.
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Rave The Star Tribune Trenchant ... In fewer than 150 pages, Dangarembga deftly lays out the colonial history which her writing both springs from and exists in opposition to the essential difference between writing and publishing while Black and female, and how current Zimbabwean efforts to achieve gender equity in the country\'s institutions become polluted by postcolonial patriarchy. It\'s a tall order, but Dangarembga achieves it with grace, through a clear-eyed analysis of both her familial and national pasts.
Sidik Fofana
Rave Star Tribune ... bodacious ... A less gifted writer might not have rendered the subtleties so clearly, but Fofana deftly steers away from stereotypes and into the psychological interior of each character\'s life. And he does this so powerfully through voice ... One of Fofana\'s implicit arguments is that there are as many different kinds of Black English as there are Black people, and that we are perfectly capable of describing the circumstances of our own lives. Some may call what a community of working-class Black folks do to stay in their building in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood \'hustling.\' Others may call it \'organizing\' and still others may say it\'s \'breaking the rules.\' But individually and side by side, what the stories show is that no matter what you call it, Black ingenuity, Black greed and Black generosity are just as vivid, just as multifaceted as anyone else\'s ... And that although many may be grappling with a scarcity of wealth and property, we have never been poor in our command of language.
Cherie Jones
Mixed The Star Tribune Brutal ... a book of many things: of the limits of romantic and familial love; of intergenerational legacy, certainly; but more than anything else it is a book about the devastating reach of patriarchy on the most vulnerable members of society. The sheer amount of physical violence wielded by men against women and children in the novel left me gasping, and, frankly, depressed, whenever I picked it up ... I expect art to reflect all parts of life — even the most painful — but there were times when the novel\'s portrayal of its Barbadian protagonists tilted more toward the nihilistic than the realistic ... The plotting and intricate weaving of voices and timelines is powerful in moments, frustrating in others. I wanted to feel more like the story was unfolding on its own, rather than being manipulated by a very deft puppet master. In the same vein, I also wished that the women in the book were given at least a little agency in their lives, even if it wasn\'t enough to liberate them. Still, if you are looking for a story that explores power, bondage and freedom in the context of a small Caribbean community, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House has many revelations.
Wayétu Moore
Rave The Star Tribune ... a book of gripping realism ... This [middle] section is the shortest in the book, and feels a bit truncated. But it is followed by the gripping final section in Mam’s voice, narrating her harrowing journey to save her family. This is a memoir of redemption and loss, and of making peace with unresolved pasts. It functions both as a social history of a bloody conflict that is still largely misunderstood (or, worse, ignored) here in the West, and as a universal story of humankind’s ability to survive even the most brutal conflicts. As Moore writes movingly, \'There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then.\'
Sarah M. Broom
Rave The Minneapolis Star Tribune These passages stopped me cold. Not for their beauty or wisdom, although they certainly reflect these qualities. But there were so many other equally beautiful and wise passages throughout Broom’s moving 376-page narrative of personal, familial and place-based history. No, what stopped me was the knowledge that in delving deep into the complicated, sometimes exhausting specifics of the life and times of a single house, occupied by a single family over half a century, Broom has effectively told the story of black America in one fell swoop ... Reminiscent of Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Broom’s The Yellow House is only seemingly a personal memoir. At its core, it is a mythic rendering of the cost and brilliant tenacity of the American black family’s struggle to confront, wrestle with and resist destruction in \'the mouth of this dragon we call america,\' as writer Audre Lorde says.
Wayetu Moore
Rave Star Tribune Moore’s vivid characters, beguiling language and powerful subject matter engage us thoroughly. The book is unforgettable ... Magic, ghosts, transmogrification and all manner of hauntings are as commonplace as the casual death and dismemberment of Africans ... The novel examines some...colonial tensions and contradictions, but it leaves many others unexamined in its focus on the European colonial menace. Still, even with these fissures, the story is irresistibly evocative and fierce. She Would Be King is a masterfully wrought alternate history of magical black resistance and should not be missed.