race | The Bossy Bookworm

6 hours ago

Review of Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison

The slim novel Blue Hour explores ambivalence about motherhood, unflinching details of the experience of miscarriage, relationship...

Aug 10

Review of Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

David Joy's mystery, Those We Thought We Knew, set in the North Carolina mountains, explores issues of racism, corruption, generational...

Aug 8

Review of A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America by Timothy Egan

In this narrative nonfiction, Egan explores the Klan's explosive growth and power in the 1920s in states like Indiana and beyond, while...

Jul 12

Review of Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Adjei-Brenyah's novel explores in disturbing detail a version of a society that may feel familiar: a corrupt, greedy prison system; the...

Jun 8

Review of Legendborn (The Legendborn Cycle #1) by Tracy Deonn

The first in the series sets up a strong young Black heroine who bucks tradition as she explores her own heritage, flexes her newfound...

Mar 14

Review of This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Harding bases his slim historical fiction novel This Other Eden on a real-life, racially integrated island off the coast of Maine,...

Feb 2

Review of Maame by Jessica George

Jessica George's debut Maame takes on big issues of race, culture, and the challenges of growing up between two cultures while shining in...

Dec 22, 2022

Review of Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan

I was intrigued by the issues raised in Blackwater Falls--police corruption, racial conflict, religious fervor and faith, secret...

Nov 2, 2022

Review of Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks's Horse digs into issues of race across three timelines, linked by a special bond between an enslaved man and a horse in...

Jul 20, 2022

Review of The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

The Personal Librarian is historical fiction about the real-life figure of Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian who...

Jun 23, 2022

Review of All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

All Her Little Secrets shines when Ellice Littlejohn wrests control of her increasingly dangerous circumstances and when racial issues...

May 18, 2022

Review of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

“In exposing our nation’s troubled roots, the 1619 Project challenges us to think about a country whose exceptionalism we treat as the...

May 12, 2022

Review of We Are Not Like Them by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza

In We Are Not Like Them, Pride and Piazza dig into a friendship of opposites, conflicts around race, and a police shooting, creating a...

Mar 31, 2022

Review of You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn

Penn's thoughtful memoir explores serious issues yet also made me laugh out loud. You Can't Be Serious is both thoughtful and playful,...

Mar 22, 2022

Review of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a fictional account of an interracial music duo's rise to success (and their famous split) in which...

Jan 28, 2022

Six Short Story Collections to Wow You

Bossy Short Story Love Some of my fellow readers have told me in the past that they don't gravitate toward short stories, whether because...

Jan 26, 2022

Review of Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James

In Admissions, Kendra James explores race, friendship, ambition, and the absurdities and rhythm of daily life during her time at a New...

Nov 2, 2021

Review of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste is consistently powerful, profound, disturbing, and absolutely necessary nonfiction reading from the brilliant Isabel Wilkerson....

Oct 1, 2021

Review of The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

ICYMI: Wiley Cash's The Last Ballad explores race relations and the fight for dignity in a 1929 North Carolina mill camp community....

Sep 29, 2021

Review of When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash

I loved Cash's Eastern North Carolina setting, the character of Sherriff Winston Barnes, and the pulsing racial, class-based, and family...

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