18 books like River, Cross My Heart

What to read after River, Cross My Heart — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Roots Alex Haley · 1861 · ★ 4.4 · 476p · ≈ 15h · Challenging Roots is a novel written by Alex Haley and published in 1976. It portrays the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans

Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington · 1900 · ★ 4.1 · 168p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Booker T. Washington, the most recognized national leader, orator and educator, emerged from slavery in the deep south, to work for the betterment of African Americans in the post Reconstruction period. "Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he… Shares: Afro-Americans, Washington, African Americans

Song of Solomon Toni Morrison · 1634 · ★ 4.4 · 353p · ≈ 11h · Demanding Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans, Domestic fiction

What It Was George Pelecanos · 2012 In this hard-boiled noir, former police officer turned private investigator Derek Strange's search for a lost ring leads him down a twisted path of crime and corruption—and on the chase for a dangerous killer. Washington, DC, 1972. Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a private investigator. His former partner, Frank "Hound Dog" Vaughn, is still on the force. When a… Shares: Washington, African Americans

Right as Rain George Pelecanos · 2001 In this thrilling noir, ex-cop Derek Strange is hired by the mother of a slain police officer to investigate the killing, and quickly stumbles across a cop filled with guilt after being involved in the incident. Derek Strange is a black ex-cop in Washington DC who now makes a living running his own private detective agency. He is hired to investigate the killing of an off-duty black policeman… Shares: Washington, African Americans

A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry · 1958 · ★ 3.9 · 146p · ≈ 4h · Moderate This groundbreaking play starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeill, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands in the Broadway production which opened in 1959. Set on Chicago's South Side, the plot revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha, his son Travis and matriarch Lena, called Mama. When her deceased… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans

Paradise Toni Morrison · 1997 · ★ 4.4 · 336p · ≈ 11h · Moderate "Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons. Two brothers shot each other on New Year's Day. Trips to Demby for VD shots common. And what… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans, Domestic fiction

Leaving Atlanta Tayari Jones · 2002 · ★ 4.1 · 272p · ≈ 9h · Moderate "It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981. Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world… Shares: African American families, African Americans, Domestic fiction

A Map of the World Jane Hamilton · 1994 · ★ 3.8 · 389p · ≈ 12h · Moderate In the tradition of The Good Mother by Sue Miller and Before and After by Rosellen Brown, A Map of the World is the riveting story of how a single mistake can forever change the lives of everyone involved - in ways that are beyond imagination. One unremarkable June morning, Alice Goodwin is, as usual, trying to keep in check both her temper and her tendency to blame herself for her family's… Shares: Drowning, Domestic fiction

And this too shall pass E. Lynn Harris · 1996 · ★ 4.3 · 347p · ≈ 11h · Moderate A stellar quarterback, an ambitious sportscaster. What happens when rising stars collide?In And This Too Shall Pass, Harris takes us into the locker rooms and newsrooms of Chicago, where four lives are about to intersect in romance and scandal. At the heart of the novel is the celibate Zurich, a rookie quarterback for the Chicago Cougars whose trajectory for superstardom is interrupted by a… Shares: African American families, African Americans

Dirty Jersey Phillip Thomas Duck · 2008 · 253p · ≈ 8h · Moderate A chance encounter with Fiasco, one of the hottest rappers around, gives Eric Posey entry into a world where he is suddenly cool and has access to anything he's ever wanted, for the price of his sister, Kenya. Shares: African American families, African Americans

Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward · 2017 · ★ 4.0 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Moderate A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through… Shares: African American families, African Americans

The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois · 1903 · ★ 4.3 · 232p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Du Bois' 1903 collection of essays is a thoughtful, articulate exploration of the moral and intellectual issues surrounding the perception of blacks within American society. Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

Autobiography and Black identity politics Kenneth Mostern · 1999 · 287p · ≈ 9h · Moderate "Why has autobiography been central to African-American political speech throughout the twentieth century? What is it about the racialization process that persistently places African-Americans in the position of speaking from personal experience? In Autobiography and Black Identity Politics: Racialization in Twentieth-Century America Kenneth Mostern illustrates the relationship between narrative… Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

Going to Meet the Man James Baldwin · 1965 · ★ 4.4 · 226p · ≈ 7h · Moderate African-American fiction Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

Giovanni's Room James Baldwin · 1956 · ★ 4.3 · 185p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Considered an 'audacious' second novel, GIOVANNI'S ROOM is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity. Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

Intruder in the Dust William Faulkner · 1948 · 247p · ≈ 8h · Challenging Using his preferred stream-of-consciousness style the author tells a story of a black farmer in Mississippi accused of murdering a white man. Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

Mama Day Gloria Naylor · 1988 · ★ 4.2 · 312p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Mama day is about many things. It's the story of Ophelia and George two black American's and how they fall in love in try to reconcile their differences of upbringing and culture. It's about the dying culture of Gullah on the Georgia sea islands and it is even a reworking of Shakespeare's Tempest. Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans

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