Hello Challenge Readers!

Welcome to the May Challenge. This month’s author is: Toni Morrison!

A Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Morrison wrote with depth and heart that was both brutally honest and astonishingly beautiful. Her books examine the African American experience, both it’s joys and it’s heartbreak and the long lasting effects of slavery and racism. If you haven’t read any of Morrison’s novels, this is a perfect time to read one of these lyrical novels which include Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye and Beloved as well as several others.

If you would like to read books that are similar to Toni Morrison, check the list below. I’ve listed books that focus on the African-American experience and on racism in American rather than on books that may be similar to Morrison’s unique writing style. Choose something that interests you and maybe push the boundaries of your usual reading preferences.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

The Known World by Edward Jones

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I’m planning on reading Homegoing by Gyasi about two half-sisters born in Africa with two very different destinies, one who is enslaved and sent to America and the other who marries a white man and lives in relative luxury.  I’m looking forward to see how their stories unfold.

What about you – what will you be reading in May?