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Recommendations based on Say You're One of Themby Uwem Akpan
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Purple Hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A young girl's struggle to find her place in a family and society torn apart by political turmoil.
A previously published edition of ISBN 9781616202415 can be found, here., Fifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Jaja lead a privileged life in Enugu, Nigeria. They live in a beautiful house, ... (Goodreads)
Little Bee
by Chris Cleave
A Nigerian refugee's quest for survival and a British woman's search for redemption.
Using alternating first-person perspectives , the novel tells the stories of Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee, and Sarah O'Rourke (née Summers), a magazine editor from Surrey . After spending two years ... (Wikipedia)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
A woman's journey of self-discovery, liberation and empowerment.
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three ... (Goodreads)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
by Carson McCullers
Exploring the lives of diverse characters in a small Southern town, unearthing secrets and desires.
The book begins with a focus on the relationship between two close friends, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos, deaf-mutes who have lived together for several years. Antonapoulos becomes mentally ... (Wikipedia)
Cry, the Beloved Country
by Alan Paton
A journey of faith in a divided land, seeking justice and reconciliation.
In the remote village of Ndotsheni, in the Natal province of eastern South Africa , the Reverend Stephen Kumalo receives a letter from a fellow minister summoning him to Johannesburg . He is needed ... (Wikipedia)
Cutting for Stone
by Abraham Verghese
A sweeping journey of two twin brothers and their search for identity, belonging and family.
The story is told by the protagonist, Marion Stone. He and his conjoined twin Shiva are born at Mission Hospital (called "Missing" in accordance with the local pronunciation), Addis Ababa , in ... (Wikipedia)
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
An epic tale of family and loyalty set in a rural Wisconsin landscape.
Forte's Children Edgar comes from a line of dog breeders. After buying a farm, his grandfather, John Sawtelle, rents out the farmland and starts dog breeding . He and his wife have two sons, Edgar's ... (Wikipedia)
White Oleander
by Janet Fitch
A young girl's struggles to survive in a series of foster homes, finding strength in her resilience.
Astrid Magnussen is a 12-year-old girl living in Los Angeles , California with her mother, Ingrid Magnussen, a self-centered and eccentric poet. Astrid's father, Klaus Anders, left before Astrid was ... (Wikipedia)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
What Is the What
by Dave Eggers
A young African refugee's journey from Sudan to America, struggling to survive and keep his culture alive.
Achak is separated from his family during the Second Sudanese Civil War when the Arab militia, referred to as murahaleen (which is Arabic for the deported), wipes out his Dinka village, Marial Bai . ... (Wikipedia)
Back Roads
by Tawni O'Dell
After his mother's imprisonment, a young man struggles to care for his three younger sisters in a small Pennsylvania town.
Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking beer and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead he's marooned in the ... (Wikipedia)
The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
A man's attempt to rebuild his life in a small Newfoundland town, discovering compassion and joy.
The story centers around Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York , whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland . Shortly after his parents' joint suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive ... (Wikipedia)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
A young boy's quest to find the lock that matches a mysterious key his father left behind.
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and ... (Goodreads)
The Heretic's Daughter
by Kathleen Kent
A dramatic tale of one family's survival during the Salem Witch Trials.
A courageous woman fights to survive the darkest days of the Salem Witch Trials in this "heart-wrenching story of family love and sacrifice" (,USA Today,). Salem, 1752. Sarah Carrier Chapman, weak ... (Barnes & Noble)
A Bend in the River
by V.S. Naipaul
Salim, an Indian-African merchant, navigates the political and social upheavals of post-colonial Africa.
Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small but growing city in the country's remote interior. Salim ... (Wikipedia)
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes
An exploration of memory and its impact on the present, looking at the choices we make in life.
By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be ... (Goodreads)
Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Collection of stories exploring the struggles of Indian-American immigrants in the US.
A married couple, Shukumar and Shoba, live as strangers in their house until an electrical outage brings them together when all of sudden "they [are] able to talk to each other again" in the four ... (Wikipedia)
The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck
A story of humble farmers facing the struggles of poverty and the upheaval of social change.
The story begins on Wang Lung 's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future ... (Wikipedia)
The Island of Dr. Moreau
by H.G. Wells
A shipwrecked man's encounters with a mad scientist's experiments in animal-human hybridization.
The Island of Doctor Moreau is the account of Edward Prendick, an Englishman with a scientific education who survives a shipwreck in the southern Pacific Ocean. A passing ship called Ipecacuanha ... (Wikipedia)
Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe
An anti-slavery novel exploring themes of morality, faith, and justice.
The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with ... (Wikipedia)
I Know This Much Is True
by Wally Lamb
A man's journey of self-discovery, coming to terms with family trauma and understanding his identity.
The novel takes place in Three Rivers, Connecticut in the early 1990s. Dominick Birdsey's identical twin , Thomas Birdsey, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia . With medication, Thomas is able to ... (Wikipedia)
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.
The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories
by Flannery O'Connor
A collection of stories that explore themes of race, faith, and morality in the South.
Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she ... (Goodreads)
Yellow Crocus
by Laila Ibrahim
A story of courage and resilience in the face of slavery and racism in the Antebellum South.
Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. ... (Goodreads)
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A diplomat's mission to a distant planet, exploring themes of gender and identity.
The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen, a coalition of humanoid worlds. , Ai travels to the Gethen planetary system ... (Wikipedia)
Moloka'i
by Alan Brennert
A young Hawaiian girl is diagnosed with leprosy and sent to live in a settlement on Moloka'i, where she learns to survive and thrive.
This richly imagined novel, set in Hawai'i more than a century ago, is an extraordinary epic of a little-known time and place—-and a deeply moving testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Two cousins create a comic book superhero and find success and adventure in 1940s New York.
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier as a refugee in New York City , where he comes to live with his 17-year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. With the help of his ... (Wikipedia)
Cold Comfort Farm
by Stella Gibbons
A young woman moves to the countryside to bring order to the chaotic lives of her relatives.
Following the death of her parents, the book's heroine, Flora Poste, finds she is possessed "of every art and grace save that of earning her own living". She decides to take advantage of the fact ... (Wikipedia)
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
A young Indian-American's journey of reconciling two different cultures and his own identity.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta , India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Ashoke is an engineering student at the ... (Wikipedia)
