READING BLACK LIVES

BOOK GROUP
The Reading Black Lives Book Group was founded in 2020 by Denise Woodin with a commitment to read books written by Black authors from the U.S. and abroad. Genres include contemporary novels, historical fiction, mysteries, and biographies. Join us for a discussion and fellowship on the book we have just read. All are welcome!
For more information, please contact [email protected].
In the tradition of The Glass Castle, this “gorgeous” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice) and deeply felt literary memoir from Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu tells the “incredible story” (Malala Yousafzai) about the push and pull of belonging, the seismic emotional toll of family secrets, and the heart it takes to pull through.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY VULTURE, TIME, ESQUIRE, NPR, AND VOGUE!

​“A magnificent, complex assessment of selfhood and why it matters” (Elle), Aftershocks depicts the way she hauled herself from the wreckage of her life’s perpetual quaking, the means by which she has finally come to understand that the only ground firm enough to count on is the one written into existence by her own hand.

“Full of narrative risk and untrammeled lyricism” (The Washington Post), Aftershocks joins the likes of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and William Styron’s Darkness Visible, and does for race identity what Maggie Nelson does for gender identity in The Argonauts.
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​Aftershocks by  Nadia Owusu

About The Author
Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urban planner. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her lyric essay So Devilish a Fire won the Atlas Review chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Guardian, Bon Appétit, Electric Literature, The Paris Review Daily, and Catapult. Aftershocks is her first book.
credit: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Nadia-Owusu/150781252​
Summary
Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, her father would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. Her Armenian American mother, who abandoned Nadia when she was two, would periodically reappear, only to vanish again. Her father, a Ghanaian, the great hero of her life, died when she was thirteen. After his passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo.

With these and other ruptures, Nadia arrived in New York as a young woman feeling stateless, motherless, and uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.
credit: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Aftershocks/Nadia-Owusu/9781982111236​

Upcoming Reads in 2026

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Previous Reads

  1. ​Deacon King Kong – by James McBride
  2. Beloved – by Toni Morrison
  3. Such a Fun Age – by Kiley Reid
  4. The Vanishing Half – by Brit Bennett 
  5. An American Marriage – by Tayari Jones
  6. The Good Lord Bird – by James McBride
  7. If Beale Street Could Talk – by James Baldwin 
  8. Memorial – by Bryan Washington 
  9. Their Eyes Were Watching God – by Zora Neale Hurston
  10. Americanah – by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
  11. The Watsons Go to Birmingham – by Christopher Paul Curtis
  12. Washington Black – by Esi Edugyan
  13. Devil in a Blue Dress – by Walter Mosley
  14. Girl, Woman, Other – by Bernadine Evaristo
  15. On Beauty – by Zadie Smith
  16. On the Rooftop - by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
  17. Harlem Shuffle – by Colson Whitehead
  18. When We Were Birds – by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
  19. The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois - by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers​
  20. How Beautiful We Were - by Imbolo Mbue
  21. The Sellout - by Paul Beatty
  22. The Violin Conspiracy - by Brendan Slocumb
  23. Hidden Figures - by Margot Lee Shetterly
  24. The House of Eve - by Sadeqa Johnson
  25. Take My Hand - by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
  26. The Known World - by Edward P. Jones
  27. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - by James McBride
  28. Black Cake - by Charmaine Wilkerson
  29. Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People - by Tiya Miles
  30. One of Our Kind - by Nicola Yoon
  31. The Fraud - by Zadie Smith
  32. James - by Percival Everett
  33. The Mothers - by Brit Bennett
  34. ​Homegoing - by Yaa Gyasi
  35. ​The Wedding - by Dorothy West
  36. ​The Street - by Ann Petry
  37. Come and Get It - by Kiley Reid
  38. Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home - by Jonathan Capehart
  39. Dream Count - by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  40. Hell of a Book - by Jason Mott
  41. Passing  -  by Nella Larsen
  42. ​The Wilderness -  by Angela Flournoy
  43. Harlem Rhapsody ​by Victoria Christopher Murray
  44. The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter