To love is to see and to be loved is to be seen: Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola
Love in Colour transports you into a better world. It makes you question your definition of love. It challenges you to be loved loudly and unashamedly. This is clearly a writer who understands romance and it is evident just how much she loves love. Bolu wants readers to know that to love is to see and to be loved is to be seen: it is the action of acceptance, the acceptance of others and the acceptance of self.
Real and riveting, In Every Mirror She’s Black is the perfect read
Imagine the thrilling pacing of gripping genre fiction, the socio-political urgency of literary fiction, and the sharp clarity of non-fiction all thrown together to tell a story that has never been told before: the story of Black women in Sweden. Solitude is the real story of In Every Mirror She’s Black, a unique distillation of commercial and literary fiction that ultimately hits like a tragedy.
“I am not a planner”: A conversation with Chibundu Onuzo
I had the privilege of chatting to the fresh-faced Chibundu Onuzo over Zoom a few days after the publication of her third novel, Sankofa. We talked about her relationship to writing as a profession and what it’s like for a non-planner to fashion a novel out of a PhD.
Abi Daré’s debut charts a new path for Nigerian literature
Abi Daré’s was one of the many middle-class Lagosian families who hired house girls for various domestic chores, and she noticed growing up how poorly these were treated. The Girl with the Louding Voice gives voice to the silenced and is a timeless story about a strong girl chasing her dreams.
“I needed to write a book that reflected reality”: A conversation with Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström
Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström’s fiction debut is a striking story. A unique distillation of commercial and literary fiction that feels like a tragedy, In Every Mirror She’s Black is an unputdownable read many have called “the perfect book club book”.
Chibundu Onuzo’s third novel, Sankofa, comes at the right time
Following The Spider King’s Daughter and Welcome to Lagos, Sankofa marks a departure from Lagosian life and tells the story of a mixed-race British woman’s search for her long-lost West African father.
Deadly Sacrifice brings us the first Black female police detective in UK fiction
A unique thriller that dives deep into the world of human trafficking and African ritual sacrifices, Deadly Sacrifice is based on the true 2001 news story in which a Black boy’s torso was found in the Thames.
The coming-of-age story of a Nigerian trans woman that will change you
The Death of Vivek Oji is primarily interested in all the ways that love manifests itself and how limited understandings of sexuality constrain a more expansive understanding of everything love can be.
AFRICANJUJUISM
You might like
Bestselling romance author Donna Hill tries her hand at historical fiction
When the fiery, Malcolm X-loving urban poet Anita gets on a bus and meets a reserved, MLK-supporting Southerner who is moving to Harlem for the cause, it is love at first sight. What makes this historical romance necessary is its willingness to recruit love’s lessons on empathetic understanding to, as bell hooks might have it, disarm the legitimacy of any politics that attempts to exist without it.
"A Pride and Prejudice Remix" that packs a punch
It is always wonderful to see Black love poured into a timeless story of star-crossed love thriving against all odds. In spite of the weighty social issues that come with the territory, Pride is a deeply representative retelling that foregrounds Black people’s right to exist in a canon that has always pretended they do not. From the original’s classism to its silences on slavery, this novel gently gestures to Jane Austen’s prejudices in a fun, fresh way.
OPEN WATER: An ethereal meditation on Black love and art
In this slow and steady tale of Black love, we experience the world through the eyes of a young Londoner whose relationship buckles under the excruciating pressure occasioned by being a Black man in a white supremacist world that wants you dead. But don’t let generic phrases like black love fool you: this is also a novel about photography, mental health, pain, joy, music, vulnerability, and ultimately salvation.