A Word About Awards

THE TREES by Percival Everett   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2022, PEN/Faulkner Longlist 2022, PEN/Jean Stein Finalist 2022   Date Read: January 3, 2023   The Trees is a puzzler – part historical fiction, part sci-fi zombie apocalypse – but oh so satisfying. What you initially think are a couple of local murders of retribution become a national phenomenon, gathering white bodies in a cosmic search for justice that never came.   The initial murders we are privy to follow a pattern – the white victim is strangled with barbed wire, beaten horrifically and his balls are chopped off. Making this even more macabre is the body of a black man is always found at the scene and often goes missing after it’s been bagged.    The initial victims in Money, MS are members of the white mob that killed Emmett Till, as well as his accuser, a white girl at the time, who later recanted and confessed she contrived the entire thing. The heartbreaking part of this is that it’s all...

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM by Yaa Gyasi   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Longlist 2022, Orange Finalist 2021, PEN/Faulkner Longlist 2021   Date Read: February 22, 2022   Gifty’s family is from Ghana but all she’s ever known is Alabama. Much like her name, Gifty has many gifts that help her survive a chaotic upbringing, full of loss and a reserved love when she longed for open affection. We are able to see Gifty as the vulnerable child she was, growing up in a racist south, and the woman she has become – an intelligent, searching scientist, looking for answers where there are likely to be none.   Gifty’s first loss is that of her father, the Chin Chin Man, who is unable to take the otherness of his black skin in Alabama and retreats back to Ghana with promises to return. Of course, his presence never materializes and he starts another family in Ghana, leaving Gifty, her mother and her brother, Nana, to fend for themselves. What was a meager two-income family dw...