Hi, I'm Nicole and I just finished working on my 4th novel.

Spida’s Daughter: Blood and Silence

It is situated firmly in the Jamaica which does not appear on any tourist website. The Jamaica we all experience but prefer to hide. An adult psychological dark romance with crime fiction elements, it follows the secret relationship between an innocent university student and a feared gang enforcer as they struggle to save him from the very organization that created him.

You can find the entire novel on my page 100% Free (part 1 is pinned at the top).

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https://nicolelittlejohnwrites.substack.com/

I recently read James by Percival Everett and was curious if there is a historical basis for the slaves' exaggeration of their dialect to better navigate relationships with whites. It seems unlikely to me and that this is purely a literary device, especially to the extent to which it's emphasized. Curious if anyone had any insight on this or sources related to it. Much thanks for any comments on it.

Go Tell It on the Mountain: What else can I say but..breathtaking. The way Baldwin structures the novel like a sermon, centering it around the three prayers before culminating in John's internal struggle between perceived salvation and damnation, is something for the ages.

Their Eyes Were Watching God: Beyond having some of the greatest opening pages I've ever read, the hurricane sequence--and everything that follows--is exactly why Hurston deserves all of the flowers.

Omeros: I'm not sure anyone else could've taken the scale of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, stripped them down into something deeply human and relatable, transplanted them to the Caribbean, written them in such a refined linguistic hybrid, and still have it be this immersive. With all the excitement around The Odyssey film (which I loved), Walcott's interpretation is just as riveting.

A Mercy: The setting is the first thing that grabbed me. It almost feels like a pre-colonial reimagining of some of Morrison's earlier work, pairing her trademark psychological depth with a haunting blurring of myth and history. A short novel, but an impactful one.

A couple that are missing from the list:

- God Help the Child — Toni Morrison

- The Great Mann — Kyra Davis Lurie

This is book 3 in the series. I am just beginning but I enjoyed the first two. I really like Tananarive Due’s writing.

Welcome to Suggest Me Sunday! Here you can ask for book suggestions of any kind. Looking for a book similar to the one you just finished? Looking for a classic on a subject you're interested? Maybe you haven't read a book since high school and are looking for recommendations on books to get you back into reading. All are welcome here.

Ask away!

At the age of 13, I was sexually assaulted by 3 different men that changed the trajectory of my life forever. This is my story.

Available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Looking for readers of a historical African American novel that takes place in the back woods in the deep South. Celia, an African American woman finds herself attracted to a forbidden love. She yearns for his touch until he is taken and sold to an owner some 60 miles away. Burdened by the heaving pressure of her unruly superior, Celia, at 7 months pregnant is forced to run to a destination that will change her life forever.

While trudging through rough waters, high temperatures and a highly published death threat throughout the county; Celia is haunted by the wiles of a close enemy lurking behind. It is not the dread of the pack of dogs racing to her demise, but the fear of Miss Sunshine, a jealous woman who has promised to give her a sentence of torture and death, if found.

Her plight is weighed with much strife, but with each striking pain and unspeakable trauma - there is a witted ambition that Celia becomes the victor in the most bizarre circumstances.

'Dark Sunshine' by Jo Anne is the series that will have you coming back for more. Allow the tears; echoes of the past; laughter, joy and triumphs run wild in this master mind of a 2 part series: Dark Sunshine and Dark Sunshine: Shantae's Secret.

Explore more at www.darksunshineaudiobooks.com

The book from what I read and saw on her TikTok is about 2 boys who rob a drug dealer and one of the boys falls in love with the dealers little sister. Meanwhile the little sister is supposed to be in a relationship with her brothers opp. It’s so good so far I just wanna be able to read a book allll the way through!!

Happy Free Talk Friday, folks! Here you can talk about whatever you want, books are not required. Got something you wanna get off your chest? What have you been watching or listening to? How has your week been? Let us know!

Hi friends, I'm Aami (pronouncedAh-me)! I'm a long-time writer but a first-time poster. I'm working on romantic comedy short stories that often features a detailed pregnancy/fetal development subplot (a theme I include in all my writing).

​I am working up the courage to share my work for the very first time to get some constructive criticism. Would this subreddit be open to me sharing a quick, hooky paragraph or two in a future post? Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in reading!

The writing is absolutely gorgeous, and the characters are so textured, almost like they're tangible! I've missed fluid text that almost feels like you're dreaming during the day. I can't wait to keep going with this one!

Update: Still reading it, no spoilers please.

Hey yall

Looking for some good & positice black books that don't have negative tropes of black pain, drugs/alcohol, or stereotypical etc. Where the characters are doing something beneficial with their lives and the MMC is a black man down bad for a black woman. I'm also open to all genres if you have suggestions outside of romance!

Summary

This book chronicles the movement of Black Americans migrating out of the pre-civil rights south from about 1915 - 1970ish now known as The Great Migration.

This is a narrative non-fiction that uses a parallel structure. The book follows 3 different people who migrated from 3 different states in the south to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Ms Wilkerson interviewed hundreds of people and even reenacted the drive from Lousiana to California.

Through each person's narrative, we follow their lives starting in the south, the details of their journey and lives in the new world. At the macro level, we get the political, economic, and social context of the time and the impacts of the migration on both the north and the south, and how the migration changed Black culture.

Review

I love the diversity of stories we get through just 3 characters. One was a former sharecropper working a blue collar job in Chicago, the other a former fruit picker who ended up being an operator on the train that he escaped the south from, traveling back and forth from north to south, and the last was a doctor, who mingled with the black elite in Atlanta and became part of the black elite in LA.

I appreciate the *detail* we get in this book. Info on the name of the train lines our families took out of the south, population data, the type of jobs black people could get in the north at the time, their day-to day, where they lives, names of historical black enclaves in the north, clothing details, etc.

I cried all throughout this book. While yes, I am a crybaby and I get sensitive about my people, this will hit the feels of any Black American deeply because we have ALL been impacted by the migration, whether we are from families that stayed or left. This was a migration that took place out of our people's desperation and pure determination to live dignified lives. I appreciate that Ms Wilkerson took the time to make the connections between our migration out of the south and the many immigrants all over the world who make the decision to upend their entire lives in the pursuit of something better.

Rating: 5/5

Hey all - dropping by to bring attention to a new rule in the list. Most folks here have been incredible with calling out AI and all the reasons it’s bad. We’ve added a new rule you can use for flagging going forward. AI has no place when it comes to health, the environment, and if you love and respect art.
- mods

I follow a ton of Black women/femme booktubers, bit I have such a hard time finding Black men that read Black books on Booktube.

Do you know any Black men that read Black books on YouTube you can recommend?

Right now the only one I follow is Dezmond Zee.

I know there has to be others, right?

Hey all, hope this request makes sense.

I am looking to support Black authors that write horror (or even mystery/thriller type books) set in New Orleans, however anything with an Americana vibe Id be open to.

I stopped quickly in a bookstore the other day and noted a few (mostly non horror type) books set in New York/New England areas and....while well and good, I love my swamps and the specific cultural history of NOLA. Was hoping yall might have suggestions in this area.

Also open to any Indigenous authors who might have written anything along this line.

Thanks in advance!

This was good. I won’t say I loved it but it was good read. I saw this suggested to me when I read The Reformatory last year. I started it and didn’t finish. The ending was crazy, and I didn’t expected it. Check this out if and when you get a chance.

I am interested in reading about Alexander the Great. I looked up some novels, but now I'm confused because a lot of authors have written about him, such as Philip Freeman, Jacob Abbott, Robin Lane Fox and so on . I would like some suggestions on which author I should read

This is my first book by a Cameroonian author, and I am beyond pleased. Beyond pleased not because it wasn’t a traumatic book (title is telling), but because it is so incredibly well written.

I can’t even find the words to describe how exquisite Xaviere’s writing is. I mean, she spent about 12 pages describing the first time Bessem and Fatima met, and that’s coming from someone who usually does not enjoy overly descriptive books. Somehow, she made every page worth reading. This book is so love-letter coded.

Fatima and Bessem meet in August 2004. Bessem notices Fatima for the first time on the football field, muscular, focused, the only woman playing, and completely at ease. Barely 20 pages into the book, I already knew the beginning and the end of their story. I even had a hazy idea of the middle, but I also knew there was so much more to learn.

It is such a sad story, and I wanted to know every part of it because their story didn’t end after Fatima’s “disappearance” following a police raid at the only gay bar in town.

In Cameroon, where same-sex relationships are criminalized, the odds are stacked against Bessem and Fatima from the very beginning. Things become even worse when Fatima’s older brother, Mahamadou, a staunch hypocrite of a Muslim, discovers their relationship. He violently assaults them, an incident that ultimately precedes the police raid. To be frank, because of the reality of living in a country where same-sex relationships are punishable by law, I couldn’t help but think both women should have been much more careful.

The relationship between Fatima and Bessem felt like genuine love. I loved reading about their time together because it felt so real. Of course they had ups and downs like every relationship, but the love Bessem had for Fatima never disappeared. Even thirteen years after Fatima vanished, she was still searching for her in every place she could think of.

Thirteen years later, Bessem is now a university professor living a relatively quiet life, occasionally and secretly dating other women, but she has never truly moved on. After unexpectedly seeing a mutual friend, the last person who may have seen Fatima, she embarks on one final search for her lost love.

Beyond the romance, I also learned so much about Cameroon’s culture, religion, politics (as much as a fictional novel can teach), and the Anglophone-Francophone conflict. And can we talk about Jamal? Bessem’s male best friend, who is also gay, marrying a woman… sigh. The many ways people are forced to survive in societies that refuse to let them live authentically.

When I finished reading this book, all I could say was, wow… wow… wow. Zero complaints. It really does end in tears. I happened to finish it on a flight, and maybe if I hadn’t been surrounded by strangers, I might have cried.

This was such a beautiful debut for me into Cameroonian literature, and I will definitely be reading more from Musih Tedji Xaviere. It is heartbreaking, beautifully written, and one of the best-written books I’ve read this year.