Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
I first read Things Fall Apart three summers ago, and Achebe’s simple, cutting prose still pulses, like I’ve just turned the last page and closed the book on the table. Okonkwo’s tale is a story of resilience and of weakness, of fury and tragedy. His inner strength fades into fallen hubris as his world flips by the hands of the White colonizer, leaving him tumbling into the abyss. Achebe’s work makes us question the worth of individual willpower in this apathetic world where “what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
— Andrei Li, Sci + Tech Editor
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
A classic of the Harlem Renaissance, Their Eyes Were Watching God is American writer Zora Neale Hurston’s best known work. It follows protagonist Janie Crawford through central and southern Florida as she transforms from a “vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny.” In this novel, Hurston interrogates traditional gender roles and explores the liberatory capacity of Black women – liberation from domestic violence, from racial history, and from their own self-doubt. Hurston’s writing is compact and concise, but her words are as vivid as they are lyrical, and Janie’s voice rings loud and clear.
— Catey Fifield, Managing Editor
The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power by Desmond Cole
In this book, journalist and activist Desmond Cole travels across Canada to document the stories of Black Canadian communities. He explores how anti-Black racism is embedded in Canadian institutions such as the police, the education system, and the immigration system while also highlighting how Black communities are resisting these injust systems. He also draws on his own lived experiences as a Black Lives Matter activist and journalist, reflecting on how those two roles can complement rather than contradict each other.
— Emma Bainbridge, News Editor
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Composed as an open letter to his only son, Between the World and Me is an intimate exploration of the author’s own experience with Black identity, excellence, familial love, and violent injustice. Following his journey from a young boy in Maryland to a student at Howard University before he started his career as a professional writer and journalist, the book revolves around his coming to terms with the inherent corporeality of his humanity. Through his beautiful prose, Coates tenders the complexities, both joyous and tragic, of the experiences and relationships that came together to shape the world in his mind.
— Elaine Yang, Features Editor
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A haunting tale by acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved explores the complex relationships within the life of female protagonist Sethe in a reconciliation with her past. Told through a disjointed timeline, Morrison utilizes the magical realism genre to tell the story of a woman haunted by the actions of her past life while struggling to survive on the plantation. Sethe sheds bits and pieces of her former self to readers by recounting her lived experiences, creating an air of anticipation for what’s next to come. Morrison’s every word sags beneath an emotional weight, forcing readers to encounter how the history of slavery is not merely a fragment in the past, but is intimately intertwined with our present reality.
— Sena Ho, News Editor