Short BIPOC Books To Round Out Your Summer Reading

Keiko Furukura has never quite fit in, but since she was 18 and applied to a convenience store job in Tokyo on a whim, she feels like she at least has some things figured out. Like, she knows how to dress and act when she’s at work in order to look like she belongs, even if there is a “real” her that exists outside this persona. But now, at 36, the normalcy she thought she’d maintained since her teenage years starts to crumble once her younger sister gives birth, and those close to Keiko start pressuring her to achieve society-set milestones. Giving in, she attempts a deal of sorts with a questionable co-worker, and though her life now appears to be “normal,” to her, it feels like anything but.

Last year, Bigolas Dickolas had Book Twitter in a tizzy over this book. It’s a beautifully written epistolary romance blended with truly creative speculative worlds. Red and Blue are two agents fighting on opposite sides of a time war. Blue’s side is a sort of organic hive mind, while Red’s is peak technology. Throughout the book, the two women travel through time on missions to change the outcome of the war and eventually notice the other’s handiwork. This leads to what is, at first, an exchange of taunting letters but turns into admiration and love. Technically, they aren’t really traveling to parallel universes, but the times they travel to are so different that they feel like different worlds.

This classic work by Jones was edited by Toni Morrison while she was still at Random House. In it, a tragedy sends Kentucky blues singer Ursa into the muck of her maternal history—both her mother and grandmother were fathered by the same Brazilian slave master, Corregidora. And let’s just say that if Corregidora has no haters left, it means Ursa has left this earthly plane. Her hatred of the man roils around in her as she contends with all his abuse has meant for generations of her family.

This Nebula Award-winning novella is lyrical and centered on revenge. In this dystopian world, Jewel is working as a courtesan in an upscale House, or elite brothel, when one of her fellow courtesans is killed. During a secret ceremony to honor their fallen sister, she comes back to life. Not only that, but the undead courtesan remembers being murdered and wants revenge — for her death and all the other abuses suffered by her and other courtesans at the hands of the House’s wealthy clientele.

From International Booker Prize winner Diop comes this 1806 Paris-set novel. As the renowned botanist Michel Adanson breathes his last breaths, he speaks a woman’s name. Turns out he wrote about the woman on his mind, Maram, in his as yet unpublished memoir that documents his time in Senegal—when he found out about a young noblewoman who was sold into slavery, escaped, and was rumored to be the fabled revenant.