18 books like Such a Fun Age
Sula
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the…
Shares: Noires américaines, African American women
Soul kiss
Left by her mother in the care of her aunts at the age of seven, Mariah dreams of her mother's return and of the father she has never met, eventually beginning a correspondence with him that leads to a tumultuous visit when she turns fourteen. A first novel.
Shares: Noires américaines, African American women
The secret life of bees
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest…
Shares: African American women, Race Relations
God Help the Child
Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child--the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment--weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused…
Shares: Noires américaines, Coming-of-age
Asymmetry
Explores the imbalances that spark and sustain dramatic human relations, tracing the overlapping stories of a young American editor's relationship with a famous older writer, an unexpected New York romance during the early years of the Iraq War and an Iraqi-American man who is detained by immigration officers in Heathrow.
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
In love & trouble
The desires and fears of the American black woman are explored with compassion and understanding in these thirteen short stories.
Admirers of The Color Purple will find in these stories more evidence of Walker's power to depict black women-women who vary greatly in background yet are bound together. Dating back to the early 1970s and 1980s, respectively, these short stories cover the Pulitzer…
Shares: African American women, Women
Talent
An English grad student struggling with her dissertation about the intellectual history of inspiration desperately searches for a perfect case study to anchor her thesis, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places.
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett’s chart topping novel, The Vanishing Half, is a story that tracks the lives of twin African American twin sisters who, after witnessing the murder of their father, run away at age 16. One sister begins passing as white and the other sister remains true to her identity. The Vanishing Half explores the intricacies of identity, family, and race in a provocative, but compassionate way.
Shares: African American women, Literary, Coming-of-age
Academy street
"A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer. Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely--a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess…
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age, Women
Beloved
Toni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the unassailable truths of experience and emotion with the vision of legend and imagination. It is the story--set in post-Civil War Ohio--of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked death in…
Shares: African American women, Race Relations
My Life, My Love, My Legacy
The life story of Coretta Scott King—wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), and singular twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist—as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds.
Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising parents in the Deep South, Coretta…
Shares: African American women, Women
Conversations With Friends
Frances is a coolheaded and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, they meet a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into her world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home…
Shares: Literary, Interpersonal relations, Coming-of-age
Our young man
282 pages ; 20 cm
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
Passing
First published to critical acclaim in 1929, Passing firmly established Nella Larsen's prominence among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Irene Redfield, the novel's protagonist, is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Her work arranging charity balls that gather Harlem's elite creates a…
Shares: African American women, Race Relations
All the ugly and wonderful things
"As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing…
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
No Such Thing as the Real World
Graduation from high school?A senior thesis?A betrayal by someone you love?A loss of innocence?The death of a parent?Losing the family you always wished you had?Facing a harsh reality?What's the line that separates childhood from the "real world"? And what happens when it's nothing you imagined it would be?Do you want to be a published author?The editors at HarperCollins invite you to submit a…
Shares: Interpersonal relations, Coming-of-age
A good country
"Laguna Beach, California, 2009. Alireza Courdee, a fourteen-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian immigrants into a happy-go-lucky stoner. He loses his virginity, takes up surfing, and sneaks away to all-night raves. For the first time, Reza--now Rez--feels…
Shares: Literary, Coming-of-age
The Universe Versus Alex Woods
The Universe Versus Alex Woods (2013) is the debut novel by Gavin Extence. The book won the Waterstones Eleven award, and was nominated for the National Book Awards.
Shares: Interpersonal relations, Coming-of-age