The Grafton Public Library presents…

Black Lives in America

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Book	Author	Dewey Number	Description
Ghost Boys	Rhodes, Jewell Parker	J FIC RHO	A 2019/2020 DCF title. Jerome, a 12-year-old black boy killed by a white Chicago police officer, must, along with the ghosts of Emmett Till and others, process what has happened and how.
The Nickel Boys	Whitehead, Colson	FIC WHI	Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school, Whitehead’s novel displays his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole.
The Stars Beneath Our Feet	Moore, David Barclay	J FIC MOO	A 2019/2020 DCF title. Multicultural Harlem lives again in this daringly diverse tale of growing up against the odds.
Sag Harbor	Whitehead, Colson	FIC WHI	“According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead.
A Mercy	Morrison, Toni	FIC MOR	An allusive, elusive little gem adds its own shadowy luster to the Nobel laureate’s shimmering body of work.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie	Mathis, Ayana	FIC MAT	The legacy of the Great Migration from the 1920s to the 1980s infuses this cutting, emotional collection of linked stories.
The Turner House	Flournoy, Angela	FIC FLO	A complicated portrait of the modern American family emerges in Flournoy's debut novel.
Washington Black	Edugyan, Esi	FIC EDU	High adventure fraught with cliffhanger twists marks this runaway-slave narrative, which leaps, sails, and soars from Caribbean cane fields to the fringes of the frozen Arctic and across a whole ocean.
Beloved	Morrison, Toni	FIC MOR	1988 Pulitzer Prize winner. Sethe escapes from slavery but is haunted by its heritage.
The Bluest Eye	Morrison, Toni	FIC MOR	Among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes.
The Underground Railroad	Whitehead, Colson	FIC WHI	What if the metaphorical Underground Railroad had been an actual…underground railroad, complete with steam locomotive pulling a “dilapidated box car” along a subterranean nexus of steel tracks?
The Hate U Give	Thomas, Angie	YA THO	2020 Vermont Reads book. Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter is a black girl and an expert at navigating the two worlds she exists in: her black neighborhood, and the other at Williamson Prep, her suburban, mostly white high school.
The Water Dancer	Coates, Ta-Nehisi	FIC COA	Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s, if less intensely realized.
Gone Too Long	Roy, Lori	FIC ROY	White supremacy and family secrets fuel the latest Southern gothic thriller by a two-time Edgar Award–winning author.
Just Mercy	Stevenson, Bryan	353.4 STE	A distinguished NYU law professor and MacArthur grant recipient offers the compelling story of the legal practice he founded to protect the rights of people on the margins of American society.
Celia: A Slave	McLaurin, Melton	345.73 MCL	A trial in the Pre-Civil War era illustrates a time in history.
The Hairstons	Wiencek, Henry	929.2 WIE	A look at the largest slaveholders in the South and black and white families they spawned.
Barracoon	Hurston, Zora Neale	306.362 HUR	A newly discovered work of anthropological and historical reportage by the canonical African-American writer.
Nobody	Hill, Marc Lamont	306.097 HIL	An impassioned analysis of headline-making cases of police shootings and other acts of “state violence” against blacks and other minorities.
Between the World and Me	Coates, Ta-Nehisi	305.8 COA	This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
Roots	Haley, Alex	929.2 HAL	Haley, who died in 1992, can no longer respond to those ongoing discussions, (of Roots) but it is to the good that his “genealogical novel,” so long in the making, is still around to spur them in the first place.
The Hemingses of Monticello	Gordon-Reed, Annette	920 GOR	2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for History.
The Yellow House	Broom, Sarah	920 BRO	Set in New Orleans, Broom’s lyrical style celebrates her family bonds. 2019 National Book Award winner