This list is not exhaustive by any means, but here are the books on my radar!
Congratulations to every BIPOC Adult Lit author celebrating their book’s birthday this week!
Check out this week's April releases below.
HANA KHAN CARRIES ON
by Uzma Jalaluddin
Sales are slow at Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, the only halal restaurant in the close-knit Golden Crescent neighborhood of Toronto. Hana waitresses there part time, but what she really wants is to tell stories on the radio. If she can just outshine her fellow intern at the city radio station, she may have a chance at landing a job. In the meantime, Hana pours her thoughts and dreams into a podcast, where she forms a lively relationship with one of her listeners. But soon she'll need all the support she can get: a new competing restaurant, a more upscale halal place, is about to open in the Golden Crescent, threatening her mother's restaurant.
When her mysterious aunt and her teenage cousin arrive from India for a surprise visit, they draw Hana into a long-buried family secret. A hate-motivated attack on their neighborhood complicates the situation further, as does Hana's growing attraction for Aydin, the young owner of the rival restaurant--who might not be a complete stranger after all.
As life on the Golden Crescent unravels, Hana must learn to use her voice, draw on the strength of her community and decide what her future should be.
WHEN STARS RAIN DOWN
by Angela Jackson-Brown
The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt senses a nameless storm brewing. She hopes this foreboding feeling won't overshadow her upcoming eighteenth birthday or the annual Founder's Day celebration in just a few weeks. She and her Grandma Birdie work as housekeepers for the white widow Miss Peggy, and Opal desperately wants some time to be young and carefree with her cousins and friends.
But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal's neighborhood, the tight-knit community is shaken in every way possible. Parsons's residents--both Black and white--are forced to acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post-Reconstruction era town. To complicate matters, Opal finds herself torn between two unexpected romantic interests--the son of her pastor, Cedric Perkins, and the grandson of the woman she works for, Jimmy Earl Ketchums. Both young men awaken emotions Opal has never felt before.
GHOST IN A BLACK GIRL'S THROAT
by Khalisa Rae
What happens when a Midwestern girl migrates to a haunted Southern town, whose river is a graveyard, whose streets bear the names of Southern slave owners? How can she build a home where Confederate symbols strategically stand in the center of town? Can she sage the chilling truths of her ancestors? What will she do to cope with the traumatizing ghostliness of the present-day South?
Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day. This debut poetry collection summons multiple hauntings--ghosts of matriarchs that came before, those that were slain, and those that continue to speak to us, but also those horrors women of color strive to put to rest. Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat examines the haunting feeling of facing past demons while grappling with sexism, racism, and bigotry. They are all present: ancestral ghosts, societal ghosts, and spiritual, internal hauntings. This book calls out for women to speak their truth in hopes of settling the ghosts or at least being at peace with them.
SOUTHBOUND
by Anjali Enjeti
A move at age ten from a Detroit suburb to Chattanooga in 1984 thrusts Anjali Enjeti into what feels like a new world replete with Confederate flags, Bible verses, and whiteness. It is here that she learns how to get her bearings as a mixed-race brown girl in the Deep South and begins to understand how identity can inspire, inform, and shape a commitment to activism. Her own evolution is a bumpy one, and along the way Enjeti, racially targeted as a child, must wrestle with her own complicity in white supremacy and bigotry as an adult.
CONSEQUENCES OF PASSION
by Yahrah St. John
Psychologist Shantel Wilson surprises herself by attending a bachelor auction as a favor to her friend--and bidding on his older brother. The outcome of her steamy night with Roman Lockett, heir apparent to an Atlanta football dynasty? She's expecting. Now Roman wants to claim her--and his child--yet Shantel needs more than a marriage of convenience from this man who put passion in her playbook...
MPLS SOUND
by Joseph Phillip Illidge & Hannibal Tabu
When Prince burst onto the pop scene in 1978, he put Minneapolis on the music map. Many up-and-coming bands followed the trail that he blazed. MPLS Sound is the story of one such group--Starchild, led by a young woman inspired by Prince to start her own revolution. Through her journey, we see from within exactly how His Royal Badness transformed the entire Minneapolis scene.
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