5 of my favorite multicultural books on love

It's been 20 years since the publication of Like Water for Chocolate. Let's just let that sink in for a minute.

OK, so now that I've made some of you feel really old, what I loved about the book and the movie was that I hadn't read romance from the perspective of anyone but white writers for pretty much all of my young life back then with the exception of Nikki Giovanni's Love Poemsand Alice Walker's The Temple of My Familiar.

So the discovery of Like Water for Chocolate and Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel was amazing. I could finally read love stories that I saw myself in. There's an impact that fiction in particular has on the reader, and I loved developing empathy and understanding for protagonists in love as a nerdy romantic.

The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel
I'm not ashamed to tell you that I loved this book very much, although in retrospect it was more Harlequin-like than literary. It was all New Agey and unrequited love. It was also my first multimedia experience, but only because the paperback came with a CD in the back that I never listened to. I lost the original hardcover, but found the paperback on sale and I still have it in the house. I don't know why. But it should give you some indication of the romantic nature of the title, at least.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 
If you don't know the story of Janie and Teacake, please don't tell me that you saw what you needed to see if you watched the Halle Berry reproduction because it just doesn't do the love story that Zora crafted justice. This was my first experience with a romantic story written from the purview of a black woman in love as she came of age and I feel lucky that I get to say that.

The Captain's Verses: Love Poems by Pablo Neruda
My perpetual crush on poetry began with Ntozake Shange and Audre Lorde, but it completely soared when I was somehow introduced to Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. My Spanish still leaves a lot to be desired, but somehow, when I read his poetry in English or Spanish, it hardly matters. If you haven't seen it, Il Postino will make you love Pablo Neruda even more. (Should you need further evidence of my obsession with him, here you go.)

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
The first book of Murakami's that I read was What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , which is very entertaining, but not nearly as beautiful as this endearing and funny love story. I'm reading it now and I have a feeling I'm about to fall down the Murakami fiction rabbit hole. I can't even think about that last 1,000-pager he just published without needing to sit down.


What are you favorite love poems and books? For even more, check out my twin-book-brain strong cookie's list from the 15 authors meme. She includes Paulo Coelho, Sandra Cisneros and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, among many others that I'm also big fans of.

7 Modern Black History Books That Should be Required Reading

Book blogs and publishers have started recommending Black History Month titles, but those titles tend to be imprint/publishing-house specific. There's nothing wrong with that, but it means that some titles might escape your notice. I love big books, but I especially adore giant books about black history, which I read for fun. So, there will be at least one other list like this before February is out. But for now...


The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration This is one of my favorite books from the past 20 years. I can't recommend it enough. Ta-Nehisi Coates agrees. As a work of superior journalism, it has few peers. You've certainly heard about the Great Migration before and maybe your grandparents or parents told you all you need to know. But the narrative power and style of Isabel Wilkerson as applied to more than 1,000 interviews is educational and inspirational nonetheless. Here's my Q&A with her from 2010 ahead of her appearance at the Texas Book Festival.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
There were some big questions that remained unanswered in Marable's book, but it's still an incredible biography. I'm sad that he didn't live to see its publication. My 2011 Q&A with Zaheer Ali.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol by Nell Irvin Painter
This was worth reading to find out more about the woman beyond her "Ain't I a Woman" speech. Not only did she bare her breasts in public in the context of this speech, since her audience was treating her like she was a man, but she was also a shrewd marketer of her image. The photograph we associate most with her says beneath it, "I sell the shadow to support the substance."

Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom This is one of my favorite biographies in the past decade, in addition to Alice Walker: A Life and Wrapped in Rainbows, the biography of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd. Catherine Clinton writes about Tubman not just as the Moses of her people, but also as a woman who was married multiple times, including once when she was past retirement age, and adopted many children with her last husband.

At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle McGuire 
I was profoundly moved by reading this thorough history of black women like Rosa Parks and learning a fuller history of how sexual assault was used against them (us) in the racist South. It was jarring and well-researched. In comparison to most black history lessons and stories, it was far more nuanced. 

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
There isn't a black person in American who is unaffected by the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration of black men and women in our country. Michelle Alexander's important book shows just how bleak modern incarceration is and how racism impacts not just prisoners and ex-convicts but society at large. 

Disintegration by Eugene Robinson
A lot has been made of the post-racial nature of America - are we or aren't we? Eugene Robinson doesn't answer that, and for good reason - instead he looks at how black America has become so diffuse that its impact from decades past, mainly during America's segregated era, has disintegrated along class and geographical lines.