Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (264 pages)
A black woman from the twentieth century, Dana is repeatedly brought back in time by her slave-owning ancestor Rufus when his life is endangered. She chooses to save him, knowing that because of her actions a free-born black woman will eventually become his slave and her own grandmother. When forced to live the life of a slave, Dana realizes she is not as strong as her ancestors. Unable to will herself back to her own time and unable to tolerate the institution of slavery, she attempts to run away and is caught within a few hours, while her illiterate ancestor Alice succeeds in eluding capture for four days even though she cannot read a map. Alice is captured, beaten, and sold as a slave to Rufus. As Dana is sent back and forth through time, she continues to save Rufus's life, attempting during each visit to care for Alice, even as she is encouraging Alice to remain with Rufus and thus ensure Dana's own birth generations later.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (368 pages)
This is the soulful tale of Jessie Sullivan, a middle-aged woman whose stifled dreams and desires take shape during an extended stay on Egret Island, where she is caring for her troubled mother, Nelle. Once she returns to her childhood home, Jessie is forced to confront not only her relationship with her estranged mother, but her other emotional ties as well. After decades of marriage to Hugh, her practical yet conventional husband, Jessie starts to question whether she is craving an independence she never had the chance to experience. After she meets Brother Thomas, a handsome monk who has yet to take his final vows, Jessie is forced to decide whether passion can coexist with comfort, or if the two are mutually exclusive. As her soul begins to reawaken, Jessie must also confront the circumstances of her father's death, a tragedy that continues to haunt Jessie and Nelle over thirty years later. By boldly tackling such major themes as love, betrayal,
 grief, and forgiveness, The Mermaid Chair forces readers to question whether moral issues can always be interpreted in black or white.

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (480 pages)
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature, with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss and found wellsprings of love and
 attachment. This memoir was written in 1995, before Obama held political office, and focuses on his personal history and experience rather than policy issues.

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (150 pages)
Published in 1939, this book is one of the most striking examples of the "Hollywood novel" in American fiction and the savagery lurking beneath the Hollywood dream. Tod Hackett, a young set designer ? who thinks of himself as a painter and artist, but who works in Hollywood painting backdrops and scenery for a living ? becomes involved in the lives of several individuals who have been warped by their proximity to the artificial world of Hollywood. He falls in love with Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who lives nearby. Between his work in the studio and his introduction to Faye's friends, he is soon interacting with numerous Hollywood hangers-on, including a cowboy who lives in the hills above the studios and works as an extra in cowboy movies, his Mexican friend who keeps fighting cocks, and Homer Simpson, a hapless businessman whom Faye is taking advantage of. (Yes, the animated TV character is named after him.)








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