Cultural books set in United States of America (18)
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1.
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo EN
Country: North America / 
United States of America
United States of America
Description:
From the New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award longlist title The Poet X comes a dazzling novel in prose about a girl with talent, pride, and a drive to feed the soul that keeps her fire burning bright. Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions—doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Even though she dreams of working as a c... continue
2.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
In this powerful and timely novel, National Book Award winning author Louise Erdrich explores how the burdens of history, and especially identity, appropriation, exploitation, and violence done to human beings in the name of justice, manifest in ordinary lives today. Revolving around a small independent bookstore in contemporary Minneapolis, The Sentence follows a turbulent year in the life of a strong though vulnerable Ojibwe woman named Tookie. After serving part of an outrageously long sentence, Tookie, who "learned to read with murderous attention" while in prison, naturally gravitates tow... continue
3.
How the Word Is Passed : A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith, III EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Poet and contributor to The Atlantic Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving... continue
4.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its... continue
5.
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a de... continue
6.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
A New York Times Bestseller and National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Red at the Bone, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for... continue
7.
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! Winner of the Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe for New Talent Author Award Filled with mystery and an intriguingly rich magic system, Tracy Deonn’s YA contemporary fantasy Legendborn offers the dark allure of City of Bones with a modern-day twist on a classic legend and a lot of Southern Black Girl Magic. After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a m... continue
8.
My Monticello : Fiction by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America. Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlotte... continue
9.
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
"Compelling . . . The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations." --ROBIN WALL KIMMERER
10.
Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Explains how developing a wider ecological consciousness can foster an increased understanding of both nature's generosity and the reciprocal relationship humans have with the natural world.
11.
The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness. The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight agai... continue
12.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
The biblical account of Cain and Abel is echoed in the history of two generations of the Trask family in California.
13.
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
When the janitor teaches Beth Harmon how to play chess, she discovers a way to escape every day life in the orphanage. It soon becomes clear that she has talent as she goes on to play in championships.
14.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • One of the greatest novels of the twentieth century is the story of a family of Southern aristocrats on the brink of personal and financial ruin. The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest no... continue
15.
The Crucible by Arthur Miller EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
Arthur Miller's depiction of innocent men and women destroyed by malicious rumour, The Crucible is a powerful indictment of McCarthyism and the 'frontier mentality' of Cold War America, published in Penguin Modern Classics. Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' - and the American anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating... continue
16.
The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
"A heartbreakingly resonant debut, The Turtle House is a tender, big-hearted story about women, family, and the complicated history of Texas. These characters, and their tentative, flawed stumblings toward grace, will stay with me."--Elizabeth Wetmore, author of Valentine "Sweeping yet intimate, Amanda Churchill's Turtle House spans cultures and continents. Minnie and her granddaughter Lia are unforgettable protagonists, whose grit and grace will inspire you. Together, they find a way through in this gripping debut."--Vanessa Hua, author of Forbidden City Moving between late 1990s small-town T... continue
17.
The White Boy Shuffle : A Novel by Paul Beatty EN
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
A slapstick satire on race relations featuring Gunnar Kaufman, a black writer from Santa Monica who becomes famous by saying all the right things whites want to hear. The novel pokes fun at both blacks and whites. A first novel.
18.
Country: North America / United States of America
United States of America
Description:
"My Antonia(1918) depicts the pioneering period of European settlement on the tall-grass prairie of the American midwest, with its beautiful yet terrifying landscape, rich ethnic mix of immigrants and native-born Americans, and communities who share life's joys and sorrows"-- back cover.