Recommended Reading
“Niiwam” (Ousmane Sembène):
Thierno, a rural peasant whose young son has died due to poverty and disease, is determined to bury him in a Muslim cemetery. With the help of an old ragman, Thierno transports his son’s body on a crowded city bus from Dakar to Yoff. During his journey, as his emotions vacillate between grief, guilt, and fear of discovery, Thierno studies his fellow passengers, who represent a microcosm of Senegalese society. (Niiwam and Taaw. New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1992. Originally published in French in 1987.)
“Miss Lora” (Junot Díaz):
A high school student coming of age in 1980’s New Jersey struggles to overcome his guilt and shame after being sexually molested by an older woman (This Is How You Lose Her. New York: Riverhead Books, 2012). Note: In 2008, Díaz received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In 2013, “Miss Lora” won “the world’s richest prize for a single short story.”
“Without Inspection” (Edwidge Danticat):
A young Haitian refugee plunges to his death when the scaffolding to a building he is working on collapses. During the six and a half seconds it takes for his body to hit the ground, his life flashes before his eyes. (Everything Inside. New York: Vintage Books, 2020).
“Hell-Heaven” (Jhumpa Lahiri):
A middle-aged Bengali woman trapped in an arranged marriage finds herself irresistibly drawn to a younger man who represents her ideal of love and romance. (Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Random House, 2009).
“Everyday Use” (Alice Walker):
A young woman whose college education has caused her to despise her former life learns an important lesson about love, family, and legacy. (In Love and Trouble. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973).
“This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” (Sherman Alexie):
Two friends—Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire—leave their reservation in Washington and set out for Phoenix, Arizona, to retrieve Victor’s father’s ashes. (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: HarperPerennial, 1993).
“Las Vegas Charley” (Hisaye Yamamoto):
The story of Kazuyuki Matsumoto, a 62-year-old Japanese internment camp survivor, who lives in Las Vegas and works as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. (Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.)
“The Finkelstein 5” (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah):
Adjei-Brenyah explores themes of racial profiling, police brutality, the corrupt U.S. judicial system, and the murder of Black children by White vigilantes through the lenses of horror, humor, and Afrofuturism. (Friday Black. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2018).