Next 5 TBR: Volume 4 — Femmeuary and Black History Month continued

Hello, biblios!

It might seem impressive that I got through five books in only the first 12 days of February, but two of those books were under 200 pages, so ... that helped.

So it's time for my TBR for the second half of Femmeuary and Black History Month. As noted previously, I'm combining these two observances and reading only books by Black American women authors this month.

I completely forgot to order a couple of them earlier in the month, though, so pardon my very basic photo artistry here, haha.

I am reeeeeally excited about all of these books, TBH.

1. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

I've never read anything by Butler, and while I'm generally not a big sci-fi fan, this sounds absolutely amazing to me. Plus, I know she's a total legend and is adored by millions.

2. The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker

A visionary cast of characters weave together their past and present in a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales.

It is the story of the dispossessed and displaced, of peoples whose history is ancient and whose future is yet to come. Here we meet Lissie, a woman of many pasts; Arveyda the great guitarist and his Latin American wife who has had to flee her homeland; Suwelo, the history teacher, and his former wife Fanny who has fallen in love with spirits. Hovering tantalizingly above their stories are Miss Celie and Shug, the beloved characters from The Color Purple.

I have of course read and loved The Color Purple, and I'm intrigued by meeting Celie and Shug again in this book. Plus, "fallen in love with spirits" was kind of all I needed to know to want to read this one.

3. A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War Two. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of Black society and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. 

In 1982, Evelyn’s daughter, Jackie, is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband’s drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life. Jackie must decide if the promise of her husband is worth the near certainty he’ll leave again. 

Jackie’s son, T.C., loves the creative process of growing marijuana more than the weed itself. He finds something hypnotic about training the seedlings, testing the levels, trimming the leaves, drying the buds. He was a square before Hurricane Katrina, but the New Orleans he knew didn’t survive the storm, and in its wake he was changed too. Now, fresh out of a four-month stint for possession with the intent to distribute, he decides to start over—until an old friend convinces him to stake his new beginning on one last deal. 

For Evelyn, Jim Crow is an ongoing reality, and in its wake new threats spring up to haunt her descendants. A Kind of Freedom is an urgent novel that explores the legacy of racial disparity in the South through a poignant and redemptive family history.

I have a fascination with New Orleans (despite never having been there, and not likely to ever go) and I absolutely love this kind of family saga — especially about the kind of family we don't get nearly enough stories about in literature.

4. The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

After their mother can no longer care for them, young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados to live with their grandmother Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. 

Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother’s limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations, accompanies her grandmother in her role as a midwife, and investigates their mother’s mysterious life. 

When the father they barely know comes to Bird Hill to reclaim his daughters, and both Phaedra and Dionne must choose between the Brooklyn they once knew and loved or the Barbados of their family.  

This just sounds so captivating, and I love coming-of-age stories that don't follow the typical path or focus on the expected (i.e. cis het white kids in American suburbia). Girls discovering who they are will always be an interest of mine.

5. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother’s death and her family’s bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably together.

Another much-beloved author I've yet to read! The synopsis doesn't sound totally unique, but that doesn't worry me because from reviews I've read from friends and acquaintances, the book definitely distinguishes itself from similar stories.

So that should get me through the end of February! And if all of these hold up as well as I imagine them to from the synopses, it's going to be a kick-ass month.

Have you read any of these? Have any suggestions for further reading I'd enjoy if I love any of them? Do tell!