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 (1137)
501.

Delia's Way by Olga Berrocal Essex EN

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Description:
Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. Growing up in Panama City in the 1950s, young Delia Pineda is aware of a strained relationship because of her mother's past. Delia's growth is marked by a blossoming compassion for her tormented family and a firm conviction to lead a different life, free from unspeakable bonds of deception that keep the family together. "A quintessential coming-of-age novel... a haunting tale of sibiling rivalry"--Booklist

502.

Only God Can Make a Tree by Bertram Roach EN

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Description:
Adrian is the son of a black Caribbean woman and an Irish immigrant father, and is blessed with the pale skin and European features to allow him social mobility in the rigidly hierarchical society of twentieth-century Caribbean life. He falls in love, but is offered the opportunity to improve his social standing, and thus the rest of his life, if he can suppress his heart's desire and decide with his head. Will he choose Julia, the only woman he has ever really loved, and settle for being an overseer, or will he opt for the plantation- owner's daughter, Alice Mills, who could provide him with ... continue

503.

Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction Caryl Phillips' ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora. It tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through different epochs and continents- one as a missionary to Liberia in the 1830s, one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American West later that century, and one a GI posted to a Yorkshire village in the Second World War. 'Epic and frequently astonishing' The Times 'Its resonance continues to deepen' New York Times

504.

Dancing in the Dark by Caryl Phillips EN

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Description:
In this searing novel, Caryl Phillips reimagines the life of the first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune.After years of struggling for success on the stage, Bert Williams (1874—1922), the child of recent immigrants from the Bahamas, made the radical decision to don blackface makeup and play the “coon.” Behind this mask he became a Broadway headliner–as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and W. C. Fields, who called him “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.” It is this dichotomy at Williams’ core that Phillip... continue

505.

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

506.

The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips EN

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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

507.

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.


509.

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.

510.

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.