82 books like Raybearer

Written in 46 short vignettes, this is a coming-of-age story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago. Yet the novel is anything but one protagonist’s story, as it consistently juxtaposes Esperanza’s story with stories of secondary characters who make a brief appearance in the novel to seldom reappear and tie loose ends of the “sub-plots”: Marin, Louie, Alicia, Geraldo, Rafaela, Minerva, and others. Narrative continuity via a protagonist’s psychological journey that is a key trait of coming-of-age novels, or of mainstream Western or realist novels at large, is repeatedly disrupted here, making the reader wonder, who is the novel’s protagonist?: Esperanza, Mango Street, or its Brown community, or young Latina girls and women in a 20th century USA, alluded by “las Mujeres” to whom the book is dedicated.

This moving novel is right from the headlines of today reflecting real-life events. 

The story follows a 12-year-old boy named Jerome who is shot and killed by a white police officer after he mistakes Jerome's toy gun for a real one. Jerome becomes a ghost who meets another ghost, that of Emmett Till, a black boy who was murdered in 1955.

Through Till's story, Jerome learns about other "ghost boys" left to roam society, trying to stop society from repeating itself. 

When it comes to unforgettable protagonists fifteen-year-old Starr Carter definitely tops the list. Her father, Maverick, is also someone that I was left wanting to know more about and, luckily, Concrete Rose (Thomas’s follow-up to THUG), gives us the backstory to his life.

The Hate U Give details Starr’s journey as she struggles with deciding whether or not to testify in front of a grand jury after her best friend, Khalil, is killed by a police officer. The settings of the novel are critical to Starr’s inner conflict as she grapples with having to navigate between her home in Garden Heights, a tight-knit but underserved community where the lack of good schools and employment opportunities allows gangs and gun violence to flourish, and the wealthy neighbourhood where she attends private school.

If I have a Roman Empire, it’s this series. I think about the triplets of Fennbirn regularly.

This book follows three triplets who are fated to kill each other so one may wear the crown. I loved the way Blake peeks inside each of the sister’s heads and writes this complicated dynamic between them. I mean, the fact that they’re sisters and they have to kill each other is the baseline for complications.

It is dark and visceral, and I truly felt like I was with each sister when their POV came up.

I did not initially include this book until I took a class of middle school English students to the library and more than half of them went to the graphic novel shelves. Who better to tell the story of the U.S. version of concentration camps – internment camps for loyal U.S. citizens of Japanese descent – than George Takei of Star Trek fame (and more)?

Pictures really do tell more than a thousand words. Takei’s autobiographical novel offers moments of joy but paints an infuriating picture of the United States at its worst in the Twentieth Century. The loyalty of Takei’s father to the nation that imprisoned the family and so many others can seem like a contradiction, but it is perhaps the most rewarding component of the book. The illustrations are excellent.

This fantasy, set in a reimagined Italy, literally made me want to dive into the world.

I am still thinking about the romance of the book and the predicament Alessa finds herself in. Oh, and did I mention all the delicious food within the book? I could basically taste the gelato.

While I was heavily invested in the romance, I thought the plot was so interesting and well-woven into the story.

So many of the books I read flinch from letting there be truly bad consequences to the protagonist’s actions, but this one is impressive in how little it pulls its punches.

When I picked it up, I wasn’t as familiar with the Persian folklore that inspired it as I am with other novels, but it made me want to go read the tales it’s based on. I also found the writing lovely, a cut above many of the novels I read. And for bonus points, it has queer representation, too!

Let’s start from the beginning, why don’t we? Any list of fantasy by authors of African descent would, in my opinion, be incomplete without the inclusion of the original oral tales of fantastic beings and events that sparked our imaginations.

Ògbójú Ọdẹ nínú Igbó Irúnmọlẹ̀, the Yoruba-language novel (published in 1938, and translated by Wole Soyinka in 2013 to become Forest of a Thousand Daemons) features the hallmarks of what we’ve come to love in contemporary fantasy: monsters and battles, spellbinders and royalty, warriors and heroes, all presented like the campfire tale that it is.

I remember reading this and immediately regretting that I couldn’t experience it for the first time again. It’s that exhilarating.

If Fagunwa offered us Africa-steeped proto-fantasy tales, then Charles Saunders brought said tales into the global mainstream of contemporary fantasy with his novels of the titular Imaro.

Saunders’ work was more in the mold of Conan the Barbarian than Lord of the Rings, but it drew on various empires of the African continent (particularly the western and southern regions) in a way that was rich and seminal for its time.

I recommend Imaro because what Saunders, as the first black author in the sword-and-sorcery genre, did back in the 1980s is what I’m trying to do for our current times: reach beyond simplistic representations of the African self in the fantastic and offer something nuanced, complex and ultimately satisfying.

The warrior’s quest has been a staple of African legends for as long as Africans have told stories.

It’s no surprise that the quest is also a staple of modern epic fantasy storytelling, and that Rwizi, inspired by kingdoms south of the continent, offers us this in his Scarlet Odyssey series. But only after reading it will you realise, like I did, that Rwizi also subverts the quest, turning over everything it has stood for by presenting us with a man who refuses to become a warrior but agrees to embark on a quest anyway.

A band of outcasts going on a treacherous journey to obtain something that will save their people? Take my money already.