Lists
by Rhianna Walton, February 16, 2021 8:26 AM
“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.” (W. E. B. Du Bois)
In a Powells.com interview a few years back, writer Jesmyn Ward explained her affinity for the classics this way: “The reason that I like to use classical myths as models is because African American writers and African American stories are usually understood as occurring in some kind of vacuum — because of slavery….Yet, something that is so great about African American art is that we incorporate aspects of our lost African heritage with aspects of the various people in this country whom we've mixed with and encountered.”
I’ve been thinking about Ward’s answer ever since, and eager to explore how other Black writers are using classical themes and characters to explore modern issues. While this list isn’t exclusive to American authors, the books below share some of the themes and preoccupations of pioneering Americans like Phillis Wheatley, William Sanders Scarborough, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, who explored the centrality of classical Western, African, and Afro-Caribbean texts and traditions in Black cultural identity.
Salvage the Bones
by Jesmyn Ward
Ward’s writing is rooted equally in the present day and the tropes of Greek mythology. Her debut novel, Salvage the Bones, takes place in the savage days before and after Hurricane Katrina, and tells the story of Esch, a pregnant teen, and her brothers. If Salvage simply related the terror and aftermath of Katrina, it would be enough; if the novel dove into the intelligence and hopelessness of an impoverished, spurned girl, it would be enough. But it does both, with Ward’s keen eye for the realities of life and history in the Deep South and her limitless capacity to elevate the ordinary into poetry. (Want more? Sing, Unburied, Sing draws on Medea, Macbeth, and another myth-inflected American classic, Toni Morrison’s Beloved.)
Freshwater
by Akwaeke Emezi
I just finished reading this fascinating, fast-paced novel, which explores gender and sexual identity, cultural dislocation, and mental illness through the lens of the Nigerian spiritual entity, the ogbanje. By attaching the main character’s gender fluidity and depression to a traditional Nigerian narrative of gods and possession, Emezi questions the Western impulse to pathologize difference while expanding the reader’s understanding of the possible.
Of One Blood
by Pauline Hopkins
Pauline Hopkins wrote Of One Blood in 1902, but it holds up as a thrilling and romantic melodrama. White-passing Harvard student Reuel Briggs takes a job on an archaeological research trip to a lost city in Ethiopia in order to secure a better future for himself and his fiancé. Through many twists and turns, the story explores American slavery and identity, but more centrally, depicts Ethiopia and Africa more broadly as centers of cultural and technological innovation — in effect, using the enticing tropes of Victorian melodrama to reverse American prejudices about Africa and Black Americans. Perhaps more of a classic itself than inspired by one, Of One Blood nevertheless leans on contemporaneous myths about Africa and Black culture to make its argument for racial justice.
Love in Color
by Bolu Babalola
If you’re looking for a way to join your love of romance with Black History Month, Babalola’s addictive anthology of love stories from around the world is a great place to start. Love in Color focuses on West African folktales, but travels to Greece, the Middle East, and imaginary locations, using myths and folktales to build stories about strong women discovering their worth and desires. It’s a joy to read.
Dark Matter
Edited by Sheree R. Thomas
Thomas’s fantastic anthology of speculative fiction spans over a century of stories, novel excerpts, and critical essays by Black writers. Drawing on a variety of literary traditions long dominated by white authors — vampire lit, high fantasy, hard sci-fi, even biblical retellings — the authors and essayists featured in Dark Matter showcase the diverse range of Black fantasy and sci-fi writing, subvert longstanding tropes, and lay claim to envisioning the Black future.
The Icarus Girl
by Helen Oyeyemi
The prolific Oyeyemi wrote this ambitious psychodrama just shy of her 19th birthday. The Icarus Girl knits together the Icarus myth (as metaphor) with an exploration of the potentially frightening, liminal space of being “half” — half Nigerian and half twin, with one foot each in the geographies and spiritual traditions of England and Nigeria. This isn’t as polished as Oyeyemi’s more recent work, but it’s super creepy and thought-provoking.
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
by Marlon James
Speaking of ambitious novels, Marlon James’s latest follows two almost mythic characters as they track a boy across the African continent. From the first paragraph, reading Black Leopard, Red Wolf is like being drop-kicked into the splash page of the trippiest superhero comic you can imagine. Picture Ovid meets Black Panther meets Tolkien meets Octavia E. Butler and you will begin to understand James’s labyrinthine world building, which manifests as a tangle of African and Western literary tropes, aesthetics, and pop cultural references, blending, colliding, and shifting around each other to create a brutal, magical place where the truth belongs to the most captivating speaker. If you’re looking to get lost in an epic, James won’t disappoint.
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
If you somehow made it through high school and college without reading Beloved, now is your moment. A story of guilt, possession, and impossible choices, Morrison’s now classic novel draws on the myth of Medea, as well as the true story of escaped slave Margaret Garner, to explore the trauma of slavery and how it haunts the escaped and freed people at the center of this novel. If you have read Beloved, another great option is Morrison’s award-winning Song of Solomon, which draws on African American, Indigenous, and biblical tropes to tell a beautiful, complicated coming-of-age story with elements of magical realism.
An Orchestra of Minorities
by Chigozie Obioma
In this dramatic love story by Nigerian writer Obioma, a lonely farmer’s chi, or life force, argues for the farmer’s worth to the Creator sitting in judgment of him for a possible murder. Drawing equally on Igbo literary tradition and Homer’s The Odyssey, An Orchestra of Minorities is a funny, infuriating, and satisfying read.
The Annotated African American Folktales
Edited by Henry Louis Gates and Maria Tatar
Gates and Tatar collect and explore a huge selection of African American folklore extending from before the Revolutionary War through the early 20th century. Adding to the work of folklorists like Zora Neale Hurston and Virginia Hamilton, The Annotated African American Folktales brings together African, Caribbean, Latin American, and North American stories, displaying the heterogeneous nature of the canon, as well as its complexity and literary merit.
Find more book lists and recommendations on our Black History Month page.
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