Mickey and Sylvia, two black girls living in a small Virginia town, find their lives turned upside when the civil rights movement arrives in town in the form of eight courageous black college students. Reprint.

1959: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

DAVIS, Thulani

United States

Perennial

A QPB and BOMC selection. The author's previous novel, 1959, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Bird Kinkaid is an African-American woman who has recently been plagued by nightmares: It is a month after she witnessed Alex, her closest friend, plunge eight stories to her death on the sidewalk below and her grief has turned into obsession. Was Alex killed or was it a suicide? Was it an accident or did the white art critic and sometimes lover Frank Burton push her to her death? The two women had an intense friendship, their lives intertwined by shared space, history, friends (and occasionally lovers), and a passion for art. Alex's death shatters Bird, compelling her to search for answers to her friend's death amidst the disparate strands of Alex's quixotic life. When she locates a series of bizarre video tapes among Alex's belongings, in which she discusses her friends, her artwork, and her turbulent love life, Bird has the key to solving both the mystery of her friend's death and her own long-hidden demons.Alive with wit and sensibility, Maker of Saints is a fascinating and provocative novel about love, art, jealousy, and friendship in a funky, glitzy, New York demimonde.

The Maker of Saints

Penguin??Books

The frustration and tragedy of segregation, the exhilaration and rising tension of the protest and the fears of Willie Tarrant are set against a passionate background of jazzomania, the one escape available to the beleaguered inhabitants of the black community of a Virginia ghetto.

1959

Contemporary

Hamish Hamilton

Starting with a photograph and some writings left by her grandmother, Thulani Davis goes looking for the "white folk" in her family-a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. When Davis's grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a novel about her parents, Mississippi cotton farmers who met after the Civil War: Chloe Curry, a former slave from Alabama, married with several children, and Will Campbell, a white planter from Missouri who had never marriedIn this compelling intersection of genealogy, memoir, and Reconstruction history, Davis picks up where her grandmother left off. Her journey takes her from Missouri to Mississippi to Alabama, back to her home town in Virginia, and even to Sierra Leone. The Campbells lead her to locate not only their pioneer history but to find the previously unknown roots of her mother's family; to Civil War archives, where she discovers the records of the Campbells who fought with Confederate troops; to the Silver Creek plantation in Yazoo, Mississippi, where the two branches of her family history became one; and to a county near her Virginia hometown where both families started their American journey, completely unknown to each other. My Confederate Kinfolk examines the origins of some of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a family black or white and offers an immensely compelling, intellectually challenging alternative.

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Civitas Books

Starting from a photograph and writings left by her grandmother, acclaimed African-American novelist Thulani Davis goes looking for the white folk” in her family, a Scots-Irish family of cotton planters unknown to her-and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. Her journey challenges us to examine the origins of some of our most deeply ingrained notions about what makes a family black or white, and offers an immensely compelling, intellectually challenging alternative.

Cynthia "Bird" Kincaid, deeply disturbed by the apparent suicide of her best friend, launches her own investigation into the dead young woman's quixotic and often reckless life. 30,000 first printing. Tour.

Maker of Saints

Scribner

Twelve-year-old Willie Tarrant, a black girl in Turner, Virginia, sees her family--and her whole world--turned upside down when eight college students stage a sit-in for civil rights at the local Woolworth's department store.

Grove Weidenfeld

Thulani Davis's 1959 is a powerful, poignant coming-of-age novel that captures a dramatic moment in American history as clearly as a photograph. It's the summer of 1959 and Willie Tarrant of Turner, Virginia, is twelve. Her father and other adults in the town are worried about integration -- how it will affect their children's safety and the quality of their education -- but for Willie it's just another problem she's going to have to deal with, like her chores and beginning to go out with boys. Willie and her friends -- kids from good families with good grades -- are being groomed to be sent in the first wave. Before this can happen, though, eight black college students, wearing suits and fresh haircuts, go into the Woolworth's lunch counter -- changing everything. In 1959 one of the most talented writers of her generation has written a book that will become a classic of civil rights literature.

GROVE PRESS

Playing the Changes

Poetry

Grove Pr

Playing the Changes (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

Now back in print, this collection of Thulani Davis's poetry is a remarkable, galvanic experience reminiscent of the visionary beauty and fiery resolution of Sonia Sanchez or Ntozake Shange. These are poems of visceral impact, whether they speak of the shattering of a love, the violence of history or modern life, or the "whole body of God, weighing down on one nail." There are poems of passionate sensuality and stunning loss. This is the work, Ishmael Reed wrote, of "a formidable poet . . . inimitable . . . a serious artist who deserves serious readers."

Wesleyan University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DAVIS, Thulani. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by DAVIS, Thulani

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by DAVIS, Thulani. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

1959: A Novel

The Maker of Saints

1959

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Discovers Her Roots

Maker of Saints

1959

1959: A Novel

Playing the Changes

Playing the Changes (Wesleyan Poetry Series)