Read Around North America Challenge

Read at least one book by an author from each country in North America.

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Best books from North America (1223)
551.

Caribbean Chemistry: Tales from St. Kitts by Christopher Vanier EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
Charming and vividly evocative... I feel as if I have got to know these islands, and almost to have been there.' Helena Drysdale, author of Strangerland Ah, to be an embryo again. Christopher Vanier's story begins where we all do, conception. Set in 1940s and 1950s on the Caribbean island of St Kitts and beset by a troubled colonial legacy, both Christopher and his island yearn for independence. Vanier recalls the mischief of an island childhood: giving his baby brother to an ungrateful monkey, sneaking out to the cinema after school hours, hair-raising jaunts on a volcano, disastrous experime... continue

552.

The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Caryl Phillips's The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its center is Monica Johnson—cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner—and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Phillips intertwines her modern narrative with the childhood of one of literature's most enigmatic lost boys, as he deftly conjures young Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights, and his ragged existence before Mr.... continue

553.

The Final Passage by Caryl Phillips EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Trouble with her mother and her new husband convinces nineteen-year-old Leila to emigrate from her Caribbean island to England.


555.

Cambridge by Caryl Phillips EN

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Description:
" ... A prim and increasingly apprehensive Englishwoman observing the peculiarities -- and barely veiled brutality -- of a sugar plantation in the nineteenth-century West Indies. A devout black slave whose profoundly Christian sense of justice is about to cost him his life ... As a suspenseful and inescapably damming portrait of the schizophrenia of slavery, Caryl Phillip's book belongs in the company of Beloved and The Confessions of Nat Turner." From the book jacket.

556.

Omeros by Derek Walcott EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Description:
A poem of circular narrative design, titled with the Greek name for Homer, which simultaneously charts two currents of history: the visible history charted in events -- the tribal losses of the American Indian, the tragedy of African enslavement -- and the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile.

557.

I Am Farmer: Growing an Environmental Movement in Cameroon by Baptiste & Miranda Paul EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and text highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! Discover the true story of how environmentalist Farmer Tantoh is transforming the landscape in his home country of Cameroon. When Tantoh Nforba was a child, his fellow students mocked him for his interest in gardening. Today he's an environmental hero, bringing clean water and bountiful gardens to the central African nation of Cameroon. Authors Miranda Paul and Baptiste Paul share Farmer Tantoh's inspiring story.

558.

Sounding Ground by Vladimir Lucien EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Winner of: 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Vladimir Lucien is a young poet with so many gifts; his poetry is intelligent, musical, gritty in observation, graceful in method. His poems contain stories of ancestors, immediate family, the history embedded in his language choices as a St Lucian writer, and heroes such as Walter Rodney, C. L. R. James, Kamau Brathwaite, and a local steelbandsman. Although never overtly political, there's an oblique and often witty politics embedded in the poems, as where observing the rise of a grandfather out of rural poverty into the style of coloni... continue

559.

Neg Maron : Freedom Fighter by Michael Aubertin EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
"Neg Maron: Freedom Fighter is a captivating piece of Caribbean literature set on the enchanting island of St. Lucia, West Indies. As the title suggests, Neg Maron: Freedom Fighter explores, among other things, the physical and psychological struggle fro emancipation."-- Foreword (p. ix).

560.

Silk Cotton & Other Trees : Poems by Hazel Simmons-McDonald EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Hazel Simmonds-McDonald, a writer whose works have previously appeared in such notable journals as Savacou, The Literary Review and The Atlanta Review, provides poetry lovers with a rare treat with her debut novel of collected power, Silk Cotton and Other Trees.Artistically inspired, her poems are textured works of sound and rhythm which reveal a true ear for cadence. There is a refreshing experimentation with form and metre, ranging from the skilful manipulation of the traditional sonnet forms to free verse and prose poetry. In content, the themes are occasionally haunting and unsettling, for... continue