The Most Notable BIPOC Books Out This Week

This is Abdulrazak Gurnah’s first novel since his 2021 Nobel Prize win. In it, three young people — Karim, Fauzia, and Badar — come of age in Tanzania at the turn of the 21st century. Karim has returned home from college with new confidence, and Fauzia sees in him a chance for escape. Together, they help Badar see a life outside of poverty, even if he’s still uncertain about his future. Though they are together, they’ll have to determine what their ever-changing world has in store for each of them.

First thing’s first: Aunt Tigress is a fire title if I ever saw one. It’s also queer and steeped in First Nation and Chinese mythology, so it just has a lot going on, in the best way.

Tam is taking a break from being a monster. Kind of. She hasn’t eaten anyone in years, but her new existence is sad and muted. Then, a lot happens at once: her estranged Aunt Tigress is found murdered and skinned, and she inherits a zombie fox as well as old enemies. Now there’s a tentacled monstrosity following her across the city, and the girl she feels she’s falling for might end up being a dangerous thing, too. On top of all that, it’s basically the end of the world, and she’s not sure if she even deserves a happy ending.

This cult-centered book has three perspectives: Faruq Zaidi’s, a young journalist; Odo’s, the Black infantryman who served during the Vietnam War and who leads The Nameless cult; and a documentary script that lays out the circumstances surrounding The Nameless beefing with a Texas fundamentalist church. But let’s focus on Faruq for a minute. After his father dies, he buries himself in his work by becoming enmeshed in a cult called The Nameless. The cult is led by the aforementioned Odo, and though Faruq is skeptical and the new teachings he encounters (like how “there is no god but The Nameless,” for example) are at odds with his atheist beliefs, he finds Odo’s pull increasingly harder to resist.

New Stephen Graham Jones is always cause for celebration, and his latest offers up his usual Indigenous-centered horror. This time, it largely takes place out west, in 1912. It’s also full of sweet, sweet revenge.

The diary of a Lutheran pastor from 1912 is found a hundred years after it was written, and what is in it is almost unbelievable. The pastor recorded his interviews with a Blackfeet man named Good Stab, who can not seem to die, and who has a taste for blood. Good Stab is connected to a slow massacre that traces all the way back to the very real Marias Massacre, in which 217 Blackfeet people were killed by the US Army.