28 Questions: A love story for our times and for all time

Literature & Fiction

Schneider, Indyana

Contemporary

Scribner UK

Kink: stories

Greenwell, Garth

Kwon, R.O.

An Evening Standard 'One to Watch' in 2022\nA POWERFUL MEMOIR AND MANIFESTO CHALLENGING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A BLACK MAN IN BRITAIN\nYou’re a black man.\nAggressive. Athletic. 
Feared. Fetishised. 
Policed. Politicised.\nIt’s limiting. It’s tiring. And it’s not true.\nIn this important and inspiring book, Obioma Ugoala tells his own story as he examines the problems with how race, sex and masculinity are portrayed and experienced by Black men – and how to change that.\n‘Whipsmart and refreshingly vulnerable. In this book, Obioma Ugoala brilliantly exposes the systems and the individuals that have long perpetuated dangerous and irresponsible ideals around Blackness and masculinity.’ Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie\n“A blisteringly honest take on contemporary Britishness that manages to be both nuanced and shocking. Highly recommended.” Afua Hirsch, author of Brit(ish)\n"A valiant venture of a book that is somehow both tender memoir and unflinching excavation of the sociological blights that affect both self and society. Looking outward, inwards and forward, it lucidly explores complicated truths. Hopeful and honest, uncomfortable and encouraging, it is a book this country needs." Bolu Babalola, author of Love in Colour\n“An urgent, personal, compassionate book that never backs away from the difficulty of what we are facing but provides a forgiving mirror and a useable map so we can truly reflect & navigate. Obioma Ugoala’s treatise should be a set text for a world in crisis.” Deborah Frances White\n'In his enquiring memoir, he astutely explores where the expectations of his race and masculinity meet, unpicking and challenging his past experiences of prejudice. His personal stories are told in the context of the wider culture, and the book is a compassionate rallying cry to be more conscious.' Evening Standard\n‘Why can’t I be seen for who I am? What is the problem with my normal penis?’\nObioma Ugoala is an actor, activist, singer, writer, Arsenal supporter and rugby player. A brother, son and loyal friend whose passions and influences range from Mozart to Mariah Carey, from The Karate Kid to Sidney Poitier. He is also a man of mixed Nigerian and Irish heritage and throughout his life, whether in the classroom, the changing room, the rehearsal room or the bedroom, he has had to contend with people failing to address their own prejudices about what they conceive a Black man to be.\nIn this ground-breaking and revealing account, Ugoala confronts these prejudices head on, challenging notions of race, sex and masculinity that have over centuries become embedded in British society, poisoning the public discourse and blighting people’s lives – including, on occasion, his own. With unflinching honesty, Ugoala talks about his own experiences and challenges us all to face our personal failings, while offering a vision of a more positive future if we dare to do better.

The Problem with My Normal : Myths of Race, Sex and Masculinity

Biographies & Memoirs

Ugoala, Obioma

Historical

A searing memoir of American racism from a Somali-American who survived hardships in his birth country only to experience firsthand the dehumanization of Black people in his adopted land, the United States.\n“No one told me about America.”\nBorn in Somalia and raised in a valley among nomads, Boyah Farah grew up with a code of male bravado that helped him survive deprivation, disease, and civil war. Arriving in America, he believed that the code that had saved him would help him succeed in this new country. But instead of safety and freedom, Boyah found systemic racism, police brutality, and intense prejudice in all areas of life, including the workplace. He learned firsthand not only what it meant to be an African in America, but what it means to be African American. The code of masculinity that shaped generations of men in his family could not prepare Farah for the painful realities of life in the United States.\nLyrical yet unsparing, America Made Me a Black Man is the first book-length examination of American racism from an African perspective. With a singular poetic voice brimming with imagery, Boyah Farah challenges us to face difficult truths about the destructive forces that threaten Black lives. By affirming that there is a “melancholy redemption in possessing a Black body in America,” he also attempts to heal a fracture in Black men’s identity in this unforgettable book.

AMERICA MADE ME A BLACK MAN

Boyah J Farah

"A dazzling wild ride of a novel – daring, fresh, entertaining, and magical. Mona Awad is a powerful and poetic storyteller, telling us something new and profound here about the connection between suffering and elation. When I was away from this book, I longed to get back to it." — George Saunders, New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo "Wild and exhilarating and so fresh it takes your breath away, All's Well is an utterly delicious novel of pain and vitality, Shakespeare and the uncanny, and our own subtle moral failures when we brush up against the pain of others. Mona Awad's talent is so vital that it absolutely roars out of her. " — Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies "Tragic, macabre, and wicked. I laughed out loud the whole way through. One of the funniest books I’ve read in years." — Heather O'Neill, author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel "Really funny ... The satirical targets, all brilliantly hit, include useless physios, entitled students, internet advertising and — for all you romantics out there — love!" Wendy Holden in the Daily Mail Miranda Fitch’s life is a waking nightmare. The accident that ended her burgeoning acting career left her with excruciating, chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers. And now she’s on the verge of losing her job as a college theater director. Determined to put on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised, and cost, her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers. That’s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda’s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what’s coming to them, and the invisible, doubted pain that’s kept her from the spotlight is made known. With prose Margaret Atwood has described as “no punches pulled, no hilarities dodged...genius,” Mona Awad has concocted her most potent, subversive novel yet. All’s Well is the story of a woman at her breaking point and a formidable, piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.

All's Well

AWAD, MONA

Rouge

Mona Awad

‘Searing and beautifully rendered’ 
Koa Beck, author of White Feminism\n'This story of love, loss and resilient female friendship is a definite must read.’ 
Tola Rotimi Abraham, author of Black Sunday\n'Unflinching and cuts to the core' 
Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters Street\n‘An accomplished and emotional triumph’ 
Louise Beech, author of How To Be Brave\nWhat can I do?’ she asked. You can fight, I thought, you can fight for your daughters. But then again, who was I to speak of such things When Gozie and Obianuju meet in August 1978, it is nothing short of fate. He is the perfect man: charismatic, handsome, Christian, and – most importantly – Igbo. He reminds her of her beloved Uncle Ikenna, her mother’s brother who disappeared fighting in the Civil War that devastated Nigeria less than a decade before. It is why, when Gozie asks her to marry him within months of meeting, she says yes, despite her lingering and uncertain feelings for Akin – a man her mother would never accept, as his tribe fought on the other side of the war. Akin makes her feel heard, understood, intelligent; Gozie makes her heart flutter.\nFor Uju, the daughter her mother never wanted, marriage would mean the attainment of that long elusive state of womanhood, and something else she has desired all her life – her mother’s approval. All will be well; he is the perfect match, the country will soon be democratic again and the economy is growing, or so she thinks …\nLoosely based on the stories of real women known to the author, Tomorrow I Become a Woman follows a complex relationship between mother and daughter as they grapple to come to terms with tremendous loss. This powerful debut by Aiwanose Odafen is a sensitive exploration of a woman’s struggle to meet societal and cultural expectations within the confines of a difficult marriage, a tribute to female friendship and a love story that spans two decades and continents against a backdrop of political turmoil and a fast-changing world.

Tomorrow I Become a Woman

Odafen, Aiwanose

Untitled book 2

Aiwanose Odafen

"A knockout of a novel...we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021's best." --O, The Oprah Magazine\n‘A poignant and beautifully written tale’ – Financial Times 
A Grazia 'Best Book of 2021'\nI often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country. 
Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north. 
How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro's deportation and the family's splintering--the costs they've all been living with ever since. 
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks. Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America? 
Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family--for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.\n"An exquisitely told story of family, war, and migration, this is a novel our increasingly divided country wants and needs to read." --R.O. Kwon, Electric Literature

Infinite Country: A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick

Engel, Patricia

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