"Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be recieved as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmers daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard,...

"Salma Khatun is hopeful about Blenheim, the suburban development into which she, her husband, and their son have just moved. The Bangladeshi family needs a fresh start, and Blenheim feels like just the place. Soon after they move in, Salma spots her white neighbor, Tom Hutton, ripping out the anti-racist banner her son put in the front garden. Avoiding confrontation, Salma takes the banner inside and puts it in her window. But the next morning, she...

Raised in a conservative and emotionally volatile Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur who took her to the suburbs. She's gotten to follow her dreams, completing an undergraduate degree in Art and landing a good job at the local college. As a traditional wife, she also raises their two school-aged daughters, takes care of the house, and has dinner ready when her husband gets...

Lydia Harper never intended to purchase a slave until she witnesses a woman being beaten in the street.

When Gil, a Black teen from Brooklyn, struggles to fit in at his primarily white Manhattan prep school, he wages a clandestine war against the racist administration, parents, and students, while working with other Black students to ensure their voices are finally heard.

In 1959 Montana, when a fatal car accident shatters his world, 10-year-old Lucas finds himself confronting crime and vengeance, humor and heroism, all against the backdrop of growing up during the Space Race, the brutal racism of segregation and the hope of a new generation to move us forward.

Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters—Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims, Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator, and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie's inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world, and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must...

In 1950s Tennessee, ten-year-old David's racist father refuses to let him associate with his best friend Malcolm, an African American boy.

Growing up in a small Mississippi River town, Fannie Leary works at the local café, trying to hold her own in a world of slow expectations and hard boundaries. Dreaming that her cooking will be her ticket out of Persia, she cleaves to Mattie, the irrepressible black woman who runs the kitchen; to Will, the troubled, quiet boy she falls in love with; and eventually to Sheila Jones, a reclusive young girl who has returned with her mother from California...

Noenka is a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by the passionate romances of the present but haunted by society's expectations and her ancestral past.--