In celebration of Black History Month, we’ll be highlighting a diverse range of books – poetry, novels, memoirs and more – all written by Black American authors. Each of these works moved, engaged, delighted, enraged, and excited Island Free Library readers’ this past year, and we’ll be featuring one title every day through the month of February.
Today’s work is P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout, a cinematic, genre-bending novella set in 1915 Macon, GA, where the Klan is growing, and monsters of all kind are afoot. Some Ku Kluxers are demonic beings – the kind that must be hunted and destroyed – and Maryse Boudreaux is a resistance fighter that hunts them down. With The Birth of the Nation taking the country by storm, can the world be saved? History, politics, fantasy and horror of the deepest sort are intertwined in this fast-paced, compelling read that was both the 2021 Nebula and the 2021 Locus Award winner.
P. Djèlí Clark is an Afro-Caribbean-American writer of speculative fiction, including short stories, novellas, and his first full-length novel, A Master of Djinn, which was published last summer. Clark was born in Queen, raised in Trinidad and Tobago and Houston, Texas, and now lives and writes in CT, where he is a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut. Stay tuned for a new book tomorrow!