Asali Solomon

A classic novel by the author of Passing--part of the Modern Library Torchbearers series, featuring women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance. Born to a white Danish mother and a Black father, and raised largely by her white step-family, Helga Crane has long struggled to find a sense of belonging in the racially segregated American society of the early twentieth century. Quicksand follows her journey teaching at an all-Black school in the South, to her subsequent move to Harlem, and eventually, to Copenhagen, as she attempts to carve out a sense of self that is free from the constraints of category--of being reduced to labels like mother versus wife, White versus Black, American versus Danish. Ultimately, these categories are slippery and unstable, but they are also constantly reinforced upon her, and Helen finds that her own perception of self is constantly negated by the rigidity of how others perceive her. With intriguing autobiographical parallels to Larsen's own life, Quicksand offers an engrossing page-turner about a women's quest to find herself--and investigates whether genuine self-discovery is possible in the first place.

From the award-winning author Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete is a tender, surprising novel of two women at midlife who rediscover themselves--and perhaps each other--inspired by Mrs. Dalloway, Sula, and Audre Lorde's Zami. "I didn't feel like I was reading this novel--I felt like I was living it." --Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House Liselle Belmont is having a dinner party. It seems a strange occasion--her husband, Winn, has lost his bid for the state legislature--but what better way to thank key supporters than a feast? Liselle was never sure about her husband becoming a politician, never sure about the limelight, never sure about the life of fundraising and stump speeches. Then an FBI agent calls to warn her that Winn might be facing corruption charges. An avalanche of questions tumbles around her: Is it possible he's guilty? Who are they to each other; who have they become? How much of herself has she lost--and was it worth it? And just this minute, how will she make it through this dinner party? Across town, Selena Octave is making her way through the same day, the same way she always does--one foot in front of the other, keeping quiet and focused, trying not to see the terrors all around her. Homelessness, starving children, the very living horrors of history that made America possible: these and other thoughts have made it difficult for her to live an easy life. The only time she was ever really happy was with Liselle, back in college. But they've lost touch, so much so that when they ran into each other at a drugstore just after Obama was elected president, they barely spoke. But as the day wears on, memories of Liselle begin to shift Selena's path. The Days of Afrekete is a deft, expertly layered, naturally funny, and deeply human examination of two women coming back to themselves at midlife. It is a watchful celebration of our choices and where they take us, the people who change us, and how we can reimagine ourselves even when our lives seem set.

A Denver Post Best Fiction Book of the Year An elegant, vibrant, startling coming-of-age novel for anyone who has ever felt the shame of being alive Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she celebrates Kwanzaa, or because she's forbidden from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe it's because she call her father -a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" instead of "Daddy," or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the martyrs" and discuss "the community." Disgruntled, effortlessly funny and achingly poignant, follows Kenya from West Philadelphia to the suburbs, from public school to private, and from childhood through adolescence, as she grows increasingly disgruntled by her inability to find any place or thing or person that feels like home. A coming-of-age tale, a portrait of Philadelphia in the late eighties and early nineties, and an examination of the impossible double-binds of race, Disgruntled by Asali Solomon is a novel about the desire to rise above the limitations of the narratives we're given and the painful struggle to craft fresh ones we can call our own.

Asali Solomon's characters are vivid misfits a heathen at Jesus camp, a scheming prep-school student, a middle-aged mom pining for her salsa-dancing salad days, a scheming twentysomething virgin, a college stud in love with his weight-lifting partner, a lonely girl in love with a yellow dress. The kids in "Get Down "are trapped between their own good breeding and their burning desire to join the house party of sex, romance, and bad behavior that seems to be happening on some other block, down some other, more dangerous street. "Get Down "is, in the words of Edward P. Jones, "touching and sensitively observed . . . from the first word to the last.""