Racial justice books for white people: Fiction

By Micki Luckey
 
“And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up…. hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” From a passage in Toni Morrison’s Beloved that is engraved on the wall of the National Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

Beloved was the most read novel in this summer’s survey of books read by members of SURJ Bay Area. Nearly thirty members of SURJ — Showing Up for Racial Justice — voted on books for white people about racial justice, indicating those they have read and those they want to read. (The accompanying post is about nonfiction books recommended by our readers.) Other classic fiction that most respondents have read and loved include The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The survey included newer novels that treat similar themes, such as Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Beloved is the kind of book you never forget, no matter how long ago you read it. In an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air (NPR) when Beloved was published in 1987, Toni Morrison said that writing about slavery was impossible — the topic was too immense — so all she could do was write about people affected by slavery, which she did. The novel is based on the true story of a runaway slave who kills her young daughter rather than have her endure the brutalities the mother had experienced. In the book the ghost of the daughter appears years later and totally disrupts the mother’s life. In spite of the shock and pain, it is a story of survival that is written to convey deep, deep love. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize; Morrison wrote many novels and went on to win a Nobel Prize.

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple also won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1982 when the book was just published, Walker told a group of us at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco that she thought it would be so controversial that she would have to go into hiding. Her story about a Black family in the Deep South in the early 1900s portrays African American women who survive incest and rape, while painting a complex and honest picture of the African American men who commit these acts. Although it was banned in schools for its explicit depictions of violence and sexuality, including homosexuality, The Color Purple was highly successful and was made into a movie by Steven Spielberg.

The first well-known Black woman science fiction writer, Octavia Butler uses time travel in her novel Kindred to enable a twentieth century African American woman to experience slavery. Each complex and dangerous situation that confronts the main character enables her to save the life of a boy who grows up to be her ancestor. Because she can pass for a man, the novel explores the intersection of gender and race, and it also portrays mixed race couples. Kindred has been made into a stunning graphic novel.

Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston was originally published in 1937 but not appreciated until it was popularized by Alice Walker in the 70’s. The novel describes the changes in the life of an African American woman in the Deep South during her three marriages, only the last of which was based on love. Raised by her protective grandmother, dominated by her husbands, she endures hard farm labor and a major hurricane in her quest for self-determination and liberation. 

Fast forward to the present and the search for self and for love are still themes in Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2013. When a young Nigerian woman becomes a student in the United States she experiences race relations here and also notes the differences between Africans and African Americans. When she returns to Africa she reflects on the changes in the people and places she thought of as home. 

Another recent novel that moves from Africa to the U.S. and back is Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. The story starts in Ghana 300 years ago and follows the lives and descendants of two half-sisters who lived separate lives, one married to the British governor of the Cape Coast Castle and the other trapped in the dungeon below the castle and sold into slavery. As the book alternates chapters that tell stories of the seven generations that follow, it describes the challenges of people in war-torn tribal Africa enduring British colonizers, on the American plantation, in colorist African American society (facing the paper-bag test) of the post-Reconstruction era, in dope-houses of Harlem, and finally in the halls of Stanford University. An ambitious book with so many characters and constantly changing settings, the overarching theme of Homegoing is the durability of the imprint of captivity.

In contrast, the book The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas describes one community facing police brutality today. Thomas first wrote the story in response to the murder of Oscar Grant, then expanded it to the novel on which a movie was based. The main character is the only witness when a friend is shot by the police. Shattered emotionally, she is challenged to find her voice as the murder is investigated. She is buoyed by the closeness of family—even with family members on different sides of complex issues. She also recognizes the challenges of code-switching as she finds her true friends in her elite high school. 

Turning attention to urban Indians in Oakland, CA, the powerful novel There There by Tommy Orange describes the opportunities and misfortunes faced by a diverse group of Native Americans challenged by distractions of city life as they try to uphold their traditions. For different reasons, they all attend a Powwow at the Oakland Coliseum that is intended to preserve their heritage but unexpectedly moves toward disaster. 

Numerous SURJ members cited There There as a book they want to read, in addition to those who have read it. Other books on the list that people want to read include Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, the story of impoverished children facing the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, and Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell, the story of a boy from Chicago who, unschooled in the ways of the 1950s South, is killed for speaking to a white girl, a fictionalized version of Emmett Till’s tragedy.

Also on the to-read list is The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, the tale of a runaway slave who uses a series of trains that are literally underground and transport her to different places that are each a metaphor for an aspect of racialized society. Another is Them by Nathan McCall, which tells how a gentrifying (and naïve) white couple meets foibles and ultimately disaster when they move into a Black neighborhood in Atlanta. Last to mention here, The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea portrays an extensive Mexican-American family gathered in San Diego for the final birthday party of their patriarch. The family members share complicated relationships, some with memories of earlier days in Mexico and a Seattle resident who is forced to see what he has given up.

In addition to the books in the survey, numerous people suggested other titles to add to the list. With more coming all the time (new novels by Colson Whitehead and TaNehisi Coates have just been published), the list will undoubtedly continue to grow. Reading novels is an effective way to educate ourselves about the current and historical experiences of BIPOC without burdening them directly with the telling of it. We can learn about much that is often invisible to us: the pain, joys, challenges and daily details of life as well as the unresolved struggles, transformations and victories they experience.