Cultural Heritage Through FictionLike this list

100 items

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

  a Novel

  Jeffers, Honoree Fanonne, 1967-

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  Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Henna Artist

  Joshi, Alka,

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  Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist - and confidante - to the wealthy women of the upper class. But…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Secret Keeper of Jaipur

  Joshi, Alka,

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  henna artist Lakshmi arranges for her protégé, Malik, to intern at the Jaipur Palace in this tale rich in character, atmosphere, and lavish storytelling. It’s the spring of 1969, and Lakshmi, now married to Dr. Jay Kumar, directs the Healing Garden…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• We Are the Brennans

  Lange, Tracey,

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  We Are the Brennans explores the staying power of shame — and the redemptive power of love — in an Irish Catholic family torn apart by secrets. When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Tattooist of Auschwitz

  a Novel

  Morris, Heather (Screenwriter),

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  In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist),…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Night Watchman

  a Novel

  Erdrich, Louise,

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  Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Pachinko

  Lee, Min Jin,

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  In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Sankofa

  Onuzo, Chibundu,

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  “A beautiful exploration of the often complex parameters of freedom, prejudice, and individual sense of self. Chibundu Onuzo has written a captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Girl With the Louding Voice

  a Novel

  Daré, Abi,

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  The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Honor

  a Novel

  Umrigar, Thrity N.,

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  When Indian American journalist Smita returns to India to write the story of a young widow Meena and the murder of her husband, it’s Smita’s first time back since her family left when she was a child. Both Smita and Meena were raised in a culture…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba

  Cleeton, Chanel,

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  A feud rages in Gilded Age New York City between newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. When Grace Harrington lands a job at Hearst's newspaper in 1896, she’s caught in a cutthroat world where one scoop can make or break your…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Convenience Store Woman

  Murata, Sayaka, 1979-

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  Tokyo resident Keiko Furukara has never fit in - neither in her family, nor in school - but when at the age of 18 she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of national convenience store chain Smile Mart, she realizes instantly that she has found…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Americanah

  Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-

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  Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• If I Had Your Face

  a Novel

  Cha, Frances,

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  Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul “room salon,” an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Five Wounds

  a Novel

  Quade, Kirstin Valdez,

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  The debut novel about a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice. It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Last Train to Key West

  Cleeton, Chanel,

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  In 1935 three women are forever changed when one of the most powerful hurricanes in history barrels toward the Florida Keys.

• Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

  Soyinka, Wole,

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  In an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in ritualistic practices. Dr. Menka shares the grisly news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Homeland Elegies

  Akhtar, Ayad

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  A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Mountains Sing

  a Novel

  Nguyẽ̂n, Phan Qué̂ Mai, 1973-

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  The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Indigo Girl

  a Novel

  Boyd, Natasha,

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  The year is 1739. Eliza Lucas is 16-years-old when her father leaves her in charge of their family's three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British…Read moreRead more of this annotation