BROWSE BOOK REVIEWS

African-American Fiction for Women (page 2)

FICTION

Released: Sept. 2, 2003

THE GOOD HOUSE

by Tananarive Due

"Spread the good juju. Due weaves a stronger net than ever."

Due returns to the supernatural fiction she mines so well in the series begun with My Soul to Keep (1997) and The Living Blood (2001), though her latest falls outside that series. Read full book review >

NONFICTION

Released: Jan. 1, 2003

FREEDOM IN THE FAMILY: A MOTHER-DAUGHTER MEMOIR OF THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

by Tananarive Due, Patricia Stephens Due

"Occasionally disjointed, but readers will quite likely be both charmed and educated by these dedicated, candid, brilliant women."

Two generations of civil-rights insights from an activist in her 60s and her daughter, a newspaper reporter turned novelist (The Living Blood, 2001, etc.). Read full book review >

FICTION

Released: July 3, 2001

I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS

by Pearl Cleage

"More a bully pulpit than a novel."

An Oprah Book Club author (also see Mitchard, below) returns with a relentlessly on-message companion novel to What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997), this one featuring Ava's older sister Joyce, a strong woman who finally finds a man who's good enough. Read full book review >

FICTION

Released: April 10, 2001

THE LIVING BLOOD

by Tananarive Due

"My Soul to Keep is already underway as a film, and probably as a series. Clearly Due plans a third volume, focused most likely on Fana. This installment is enriched by its large cast of appealing characters tied by blood, and by its author's abiding humanity."

Due follows The Black Rose (2000), a novel written from Alex Haley's posthumous notes, with this sequel to her gripping My Soul to Keep (1997). Read full book review >

FICTION

Released: Oct. 3, 1995

BLOODCHILD: NOVELLAS AND STORIES

by Octavia E. Butler

"Splendid pieces, set forth in calm, lucid prose with never a word wasted."

Essentially a novelist, Butler (Parable of the Sower, 1994, etc.) confesses that she finds short fiction arduous and frustrating. Read full book review >

FICTION

Released: Dec. 8, 1993

PARABLE OF THE SOWER

by Octavia E. Butler

"A vanishingly thin plot and dreadfully preachy: imperfections for which Butler's usual virtues—lucid prose, a realistic progression of events, and splendid texture—unfortunately fail to compensate."

Diary of teenager Lauren Olamina, 2024-27, as she struggles to survive the collapse of civilization and formulate a new religion that spells out her notion of God as change: from the author of Clay's Ark, the Xenogenesis series, etc. Only walled enclaves like Robledo, California, stand against total descent into barbarism, criminality, and madness; even so, one by one the enclaves are being overrun by drug-crazed ``Paints.'' Olamina's younger brother Keith, tiring of his father's strictures and determined to make a life for himself outside, runs away, to live by robbery, murder, and drug-dealing—and quickly ends up horribly dead. Read full book review >

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