New Titles in Ethnic Studies

The Ethnic Studies Collection at College Library will be soon be expecting some new titles covering topics ranging from sociology to family, from fiction to criminology. The first of the newest additions is Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Praised upon its release, Friday Black is a dystopian story collection full of violence and heart. It’s described as a “piercingly raw debut story collection from a young writer with an explosive voice; a treacherously surreal, and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it’s like to be young and black in America.”

Another addition to the collection is Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom. McMillan Cottom is an award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed. In this book of essays, she addresses black womanhood, beauty in a capitalist society, class mobility and much more. Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad and All the Single Ladies, gives praise, saying, “Thick is gorgeous, incisive, and hard. Tressie McMillan Cottom is among America’s most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time and she is at her very best here. These essays enlighten and complicate and push conversations further. They are blisteringly smart and beautifully written. They are also, simply, a pleasure to read.”

And the final book we would like to introduce is The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America, edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman. With all of this tension over immigration, The Good Immigrant highlights the personal stories of over two dozen writers and their experiences living between cultures and languages, while also trying to figure out who they are and where they belong. Some of the authors include Chigozie Obioma, Jenny Zhang, Fatimah Asghar, and Alexander Chee.

These are just three of the twelve titles selected. Many of the newest additions in the collection were selected in honor of Black History Month, by our ISIP intern, Kayla Vang. You’ll be able to find them in the Ethnic Studies Collection, located in Room 1193 on the first floor of College Library, along with other great books.

If there are any suggestions for the collections, the library would love to hear about it!