Audre is being sent to live in America with her father because her strictly religious mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's daughter. Her grandmother Queenie tries to reassure her granddaughter that she won't lose her roots. Minneapolis. Mabel is trying to figure out why she feels the way she feels-- about her ex Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods. When Audre and her father come for dinner, Mabel falls hard for Audre and is determined to take care of her as she tries to navigate an American high school. But when test results reveal why Mabel has been feeling low-key sick all summer, it's Audre who is caring for Mabel as they face a deeply uncertain future.
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. When an older fellow slave seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.
Born on Water Island in the Virgin Islands during a hurricane, which is considered bad luck, twelve-year-old Caroline falls in love with another girl--and together they set out in a hurricane to find Caroline's missing mother.
An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born "with one foot on the other side." Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities. Ada begins her life in the south of Nigeria as a troubled baby and a source of deep concern to her family. Her parents, Saul and Saachi, successfully prayed her into existence, but as she grows into a volatile and splintered child, it becomes clear that something went terribly awry. When Ada comes of age and moves to America for college, the group of selves within her grows in power and agency. A traumatic assault leads to a crystallization of her alternate selves: Asụghara and Saint Vincent. As Ada fades into the background of her own mind and these selves, now protective, now hedonistic, move into control, Ada's life spirals in a dark and dangerous direction. Narrated from the perspective of the various selves within Ada, and based in the author's realities, Freshwater explores the metaphysics of identity and mental health, plunging the reader into the mystery of being and self. Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace, heralding the arrival of a fierce new literary voice.
An anthology of fiction by gay, black men. The works of 23 writers are represented, from Bill Wright's Your Mother from Cleveland, to A. Cinque Hicks' Spice.
This collection draws together twenty-five stories selected from two ground breaking anthologies published by MaThoko Books, an imprint of Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) in South Africa. The first volume, Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction won the 26th Lambda Literary Award. In 2017 Queer Africa 2: New fiction added fresh material to the LGBTIQA+ literary landscape.;Stories from Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, South Africa, Botswana, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe celebrate the diversity and fluidity of queer and African identifications and expressions.
