Memphis

October 1, 2021

Following some attention-getting short stories, Ali's Good Intentions features a young British Pakistani man named Nur who must break it to his family on New Year's Eve that the woman he truly loves isn't Pakistani but Black (60,000-copy first printing). Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Banwo's When We Were Birds brings together Yejide, raised in a Port Angeles house built on the remains of a plantation whose owners enslaved her ancestors and left unprepared by her mother for her task in life--ferrying the city's souls into the afterlife--and Darwin, who must disregard the religious commandments of his true-believing Rastafarian mother and accept the only job he can find: that of grave digger. Stuck on her dissertation about the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou, Taiwanese American Ingrid Yang follows down a mysterious archival reference in Chou's Disorientation and ends up acknowledging her anger with academia and white institutions generally. Following up Clark's own questions about the children of victims of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, On a Night of a Thousand Stars features Paloma, an Argentine diplomat's college-age daughter, whose probing questions about her father's involvement in the military dictatorship put her family, her sense of self, and her very life in danger (30,000-copy first printing). In Friedman's Here Lies, climate change-mauled 2040s Louisiana requires cremation rather than burial at death, and Alma fights to reclaim her mother's ashes for a final journey. Cofounder of the Lit Camp Writers Conference, Kravetz reimagines events surrounding the composition of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., which are related from the perspectives of Plath's psychiatrist, a nasty rival poet, and a curator years later (100,000-copy first printing). A Canadian film and television producer (she's responsible for the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie), Nawaz crafts the story of a feckless young woman whose new imam expects better of her, and though there's the risk that Jameela Green Ruins Everything, she is on the case in an absurdist sort of way when he disappears. In Ronan's Chevy's in the Hole, a white man struggling to kick his drug habit and a Black woman working as an urban farmer try to make a go of it together in Flint, MI, as the water is becoming poisoned, with family histories woven in (50,000-copy first printing). In Stringfellow's Memphis, ten-year-old Joan flees her father's violence with her mother and sister to the house built in the historic Black district of Memphis by her grandfather, who was lynched only days after becoming the city's first Black detective.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2021
This vivid debut novel examines the tragedies, joys, and deep connections of one extraordinary Memphis family throughout three generations. Based on Stringfellow's own family history, the story unreels from the perspectives of various characters during different eras in alternating chapters. For Miriam, returning with two children in tow to share her childhood home with her sister and troubled nephew is a difficult escape from her abusive war-veteran husband. But Miriam's eldest child, Joan, offers the novel's opening point of view. She has lived through her parent's dysfunctional relationship, and she is the survivor of a terrible trauma that occurred when she was a toddler. Now that she is on the cusp of growing up, disturbing memories resurface and begin to shape her understanding of the women in her family. Her coming of age is startling, and she is the strongest character in a story populated with unforgettable characters. Stringfellow's prose is evocative as she describes each scene in detail and steadily builds the many layers of this complex African American family's history. A powerful family saga from a promising writer.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 31, 2022
Stringfellow’s vibrant debut celebrates the resilience of women over multiple generations in a Black Memphis family, as well as the city that is central to their lives. In 1995, Miriam North flees her abusive husband with their two daughters, returning to Memphis to live with her sister, August, in the house Miriam and August grew up in. Stringfellow tells the story in bits and pieces, moving backward and forward in time; there’s a hint early on that Derek, August’s 15-year-old son, harmed Miriam’s 10-year-old daughter, Joan, when they were younger. The reunion—and the tension felt by Joan—sets the stage for an unearthing of family secrets and an exploration of the traumas each generation has survived. As the narrative stretches further into the past, the reader learns about Miriam’s mother, Hazel, and how she endured the aftermath of her husband’s lynching in the 1950s. Stringfellow romanticizes Memphis—“Magnolias were white with bloom and as fragrant as honeysuckle.... There was music. There was always music in Memphis”—even as she lays bare its history of racism and violence. Just when this starts to feel sentimental, the author makes it achingly real. This satisfies like a bowl of butter pecan. Agent: Soumeya Roberts, HG Literary.