Whyteface
by A. Igoni Barrett
Graywolf, Aug. 4
In Whyteface, a Nigerian man mysteriously wakes up White and embarks on a journey through Europe and through notions of race, ethnicity, nationality, and belonging. Barrett’s sharp satire and humor illuminate some of the most absurd conceptions of Africa and African immigrants.
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Save a Seat for Me
Notes on American Fatherhood
by Mark Anthony Neal
Simon & Schuster, Aug. 4
Neal, a leading scholar of Black masculinity, reveals the private lives—and scrutinizes the public expectations—of Black fathers while posing a new vision of Black fatherhood. Using his life as a father as a backdrop, Save a Seat for Me is vulnerable, attentive, reflective, emotionally mature, and erudite, all of which society claims Black fathers are not.
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Triage
by Claudia Rankine
Graywolf, Aug. 4
Rankine’s latest book defies genre and ponders how to respond to the most concerted racist movement in generations. Triage narrates where we all have likely been: yearning for overwhelming antiracist action and feeling overwhelmed from all the racism.
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The People’s Historian
The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn
by Dave Zirin
Dutton, Aug. 4
Zirin provides a heavily researched and carefully composed life story of a legendary historian whose scholarship remains relevant in this time of historical erasure. He acquaints readers with the man behind A People’s History of the United States.
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A Tender Age
by Chang-rae Lee
Riverhead Books, Aug. 11
Lee’s protagonist is a Korean American preteen navigating parental expectations and racist bullying in a New York suburb in the 1970s. It all comes to a head in this gripping novel, inspired by Lee’s own childhood.
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The Book of Chuck
by Latoya Watkins
Tiny Reparations Books, Aug. 18
Curses can be gifts. An inherited family curse moves through four generations in Texas, as Watkins contemplates legacy, inheritance, visions, and love in this fascinating novel.
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Mahalia Jackson Moving on Up a Little Higher
The Story of an American Civil Rights Pioneer
by Timothy B. Tyson and Mary D. Williams
Liverlight, Aug. 18
This biography presents Mahalia Jackson as the greatest gospel singer of her generation and a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. Timothy B. Tyson and Mary D. Williams trace Jackson’s journey from poverty to international acclaim and activism.
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Seasons of Fury
Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America
by Rozina Ali
Crown, Aug. 25
Islamophobia is pervasive in U.S. society, and the War on Terror in the wake of 9/11 only accelerated the war on Muslim Americans. Told through the stories of four Muslim families across eight decades, Seasons of Fury narrates in captivating detail a history of U.S. policies and narratives that have yielded Islamophobic ideas, surveillance, and persecution.
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Dèy
by Edwidge Danticat
Knopf, Aug. 25
The title comes from a Haitian Kreyòl word for mourning. After a random act of violence in Miami, a Haitian American woman is left traumatized and must find the strength to open up, grieve, find home, and negotiate family.