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SJPL Recommends: Facing Racism Through Fiction

These novels explore the themes of prejudice, discrimination, immigration, social justice, and the struggles faced by marginalized communities in the United States and beyond. Most titles are also available in an alternate format, such as an ebook or audiobook, and reflect diverse cultural perspectives.

San José Public Library

50 items

  • Ana Falcón, along with her husband Lucho and their two young children, has fled the economic and political strife of Peru for a chance at a new life in New York City in the 1990s. Being undocumented, however, has significantly curtailed…
    BookNew York, New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2019] — FICTION Rivero
  • Three generations of women from one immigrant family trying to reconcile the home they left behind with the life they're building in America.-Novelist
    BookNew York, New York : Viking, [2018] — FICTION Castillo
  • "A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected"-- Provided by publisher
    BookNew York : Anchor Books, a division of Random House LLC, 2014. — FICTION Adichie
  • This debut novel explores the lives of two families in New York City during the 2008 financial crisis. A heartfelt and engaging story that examines the American Dream through the eyes of an African immigrant family.
    BookNew York : Random House, [2017] — FICTION Mbue
  • "Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved" is a towering…
    BookNew York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. — FICTION Morrison
  • An opportunistic gym teacher and a starry-eyed misfit find the realization of their ambitions tied to the downfall of an innocent Muslim girl who has been wrongly implicated in a terrorist attack. -Novelist
    Large PrintNew York : Random House Large Print, [2020] — LARGE PRINT FICTION Majumdar
  • "One Navajo family, on a New Mexico reservation, struggles to survive in a world no longer theirs in the years just before and after World War II." -Publisher provided
    BookFICTION Silko
  • A young doctor finds his arrival home to Hawai’i coinciding with the awakening of the Mauna Loa volcano and its dangerous path toward their village, unearthing long-held secrets simmering below the surface that meld past and present.-…
    BookNew York, NY : HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020] — FICTION Tsukiyam
  • "Like her mother, Rue is an all-knowing midwife, healer, and conjurer of curses on the plantation of Marse Charles. Moving back and forth in time between the years before and after the Civil War, this novel tells the story of Rue, the…
    BookNew York : Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2020] — FICTION Atakora
  • "The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why--she doesn't know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on…
    BookNew York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020] — FICTION Chang
  • "Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother to her young son, Eddie, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs, and quickly forms an addiction. One day she…
    BookNew York : Little, Brown and Company, 2015. — FICTION Hannaham
  • A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and…
    Book[Place of publication not identified] : Penguin Books, 2015. — FICTION Ng
  • A darkly funny and heartfelt debut novel about what it means to grow up young and black on the south side of Chicago when it feels like your choices are slim to none. Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence,…
    BookChapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2020. — FICTION Bump
  • "Laguna Beach, California, 2009. Alireza Courdee, a fourteen-year-old straight-A student and chemistry whiz, takes his first hit of pot. In as long as it takes to inhale and exhale, he is transformed from the high-achieving son of Iranian…
    BookNew York : Bloomsbury USA, 2017. — FICTION Khadivi
  • A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part…
    BookNew York : Little, Brown and Company, 2020. — FICTION Akhtar
  • Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from…
    BookNew York : Riverhead Books, [2020] — FICTION Zhang
  • "In her stunning debut, Souvankham Thammavongsa captures the day-to-day lives of immigrants and refugees in a nameless city, illuminating hopes, disappointments, love affairs, and above all, the pursuit of a place to belong. An ex-boxer…
    BookNew York : Little, Brown and Company, [2020] — FICTION Thammavo
  • "In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two…
    BookFICTION Baldwin
  • "From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play."-- Provided by publisher.
    BookNew York : Pantheon Books, [2020] — FICTION Yu
  • "Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book…
    BookYA FICTION Ellison