Titles listed alphabetically by author. Click the book cover or title to buy a copy!
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Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir by Curtis ChinHachette, 2023. Nonfiction. This memoir by writer, filmmaker, and activist Curtis Chin follows his experiences growing up in Detroit in the 1970s and 80s – specifically, growing up in Chung’s, his parents’ Chinese restaurant. Chin structures his book into sections a la a Chinese menu (Tea, Appetizers and Soups, Rice and Noodles, etc). From the opening line, “For here or to go?” the book makes one feel like they’ve slid up next to Curtis, listening to his experiences about growing up in a Chinese immigrant community in the diversity of Detroit, and how it shaped his thinking on politics, love, relationships, and more. The selection committee praises the vulnerability and accessibility of the writing, the author’s discussion of race and the AIDs epidemic, and binding it through shared history, pop culture, and food. |
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Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots by Morgan JerkinsHarper Perennial, 2021. Nonfiction. Morgan Jerkins creates a personal and community genealogy through her memoir about tracking her parents’ family histories through the Great Migration. Utilizing a mix of her own experiences, historical research, and recollections of her family and others she meets on her ancestral journey, Jerkins is able to give the reader a clear emotional core as she looks into how history is passed on among Black Americans – through memory, food, music, language, and more. The selection committee valued how this book uses the Great Migration and Black history of the South as a throughline to important historical and racial context to issues that continue today, in a way that cultivates knowledge and reflection. |
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Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford with art by Jeffery Boston WeatherfordAtheneum Books, 2023. Poetry. Hybrid in form, and even more expansive in what it has to say, Kin: Rooted in Hope is a book created by, and about, a Black family and its generations. Poet and children’s author Carole Boston Weatherford and her son, artist Jeffery Boston Weatherford, collaborated on this book that gives voice to their earliest enslaved ancestors back to the founding of Maryland. With each poem and its accompanying illustration, Carole and Jeffery tell their family story through each of their kin and the world they lived in: the Chesapeake Bay, the plantation house, Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, and more. The selection committee was enthralled by how Kin uses art and poetry to illuminate what can’t be said by historical records (when they are available), in a vital story that is about Maryland’s past and its present. |