Here are 100 books that Mama fans have personally recommended if you like
Mama.
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I’ve spent my career with my students exploring microbes in all kinds of worlds, from cosmetics on our skin to the glaciers of Antarctica. In Antarctica, I discovered bizarre bacteria that form giant red blobs; we call them the “red nose” life form. In our lab at Kenyon College, we isolated new microbes from a student’s beauty blenders. These experiences, and those of the books I list here, inspire the microbial adventures of my science fiction. If microbes could talk, how would they deal with us? Find out in my novel, Brain Plague. And I hope you enjoy all the microbial tales on this list!
What if reproduction required people to mate with another species—creatures more alien than bacteria?
In this book, Lilith Iyapo awakes after a nuclear war to find her alien saviors expect just that. The alien Oankali are organisms whose cells modify their own genes to perfection. But their genes run short of diversity, until they are compelled to share genes with a population as alien to them as—humans.
This disturbing novel asks us how much of our own humanity would we trade for survival? Would I welcome a half-alien child if its monstrous traits cured cancer? A science fiction novel that made me imagine the biological dilemmas of gene exchange.
'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century' JUNOT DIAZ
'Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same' GLORIA STEINEM
One woman is called upon to reconstruct humanity in this hopeful, thought-provoking novel by the bestselling, award-winning author. For readers of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin.
When Lilith lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I chose these stories because as a Black woman, seeing characters like me in stories as the main character instead of the sidekick or friend is always so refreshing. Like the main characters of my own novels, Black women taking charge is something to be celebrated.
Prepare yourself for a future where death no longer exists. In the world of Scythe, humanity is now governed by a computer system so advanced that poverty, illness, and mortality no longer plague the human race. Instead, a group of people known as Scythes decides who lives and who dies in an attempt at population control.
Enter Citra…a young woman with a good head on her shoulders. She boldly accepts the opportunity to be trained as a scythe. Citra must decide just what kind of executioner she wants to be and if she has what it takes to judge the value of human life.
"A true successor to The Hunger Games." Maggie Stiefvater
In a perfect world, what is there left to fear? A chilling and thought-provoking sci-fi novel from New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman.
A dark, gripping and witty thriller in which the only thing humanity has control over is death.
In a world where disease, war and crime have been eliminated, the only way to die is to be randomly killed ("gleaned") by professional scythes. Citra and Rowan are teenagers who have been selected to be scythes' apprentices, and despite wanting nothing to do with the vocation, they must learn…
I chose these stories because as a Black woman, seeing characters like me in stories as the main character instead of the sidekick or friend is always so refreshing. Like the main characters of my own novels, Black women taking charge is something to be celebrated.
This group of graphic novels will take you on a time traveling, inter-dimensional, coming-of-age journey for a group of 12-year-old girls. I include this choice because of the versatility of the characters. It's easy for the reader to see themselves in any of the leads including Tiff Quilkin, a smart, video game-loving young woman from a mixed-race family. She learns a lot about herself as a Black woman, learns about what it means to have white loved ones in modern society, and learns about what she stands for as an individual. It is her quick thinking that helps the others navigate the future they are suddenly transported to and it is her prudent planning that gives the girls a way to escape when they are being hunted.
As a whole, Paper Girls is an amazing series. The fact that a young Black woman plays an integral part in the story…
Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Eisner Award winning series Paper
Girls is coming Amazon Prime Video in July 2022!
From Brian K. Vaughan,
#1 New York Times bestselling writer of SAGA, and Cliff Chiang, legendary artist
of WONDER WOMAN, comes the first volume of an all-new ongoing
adventure.
In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old
newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban
drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this smash-hit series about
nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.
Collecting Issues
#1-5 for only $9.99! "Along with Paper Girls,…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Reading certain texts in the Bible growing up began my love for all things supernatural. The more I studied the subject and understood the worldview of the biblical authors and of other ancient cultures, the more I began to see these scenes in vivid color. With my passion for theological study (personally and as part of a master’s program), my work as a police officer, and my love for fantasy fiction perfectly positions me to write stories in which deep supernatural elements intersect with the gritty and real space of everyday life.
Adeyemi’s book features wonderful powers and magic, all set in an epic setting.
The masterful way she writes, the supernatural world she paints, and her expert use of story elements all caused me to emote out loud in fits of “oh my god!”, “don’t do it!”, and “I can’t stand (insert person)!” while reading the book.
I’m always a sucker for writers who construct worlds in which powers fall into categories.
I love the idea of wondering which type of power would be best and which one would I want to have in real life.
Tomi Adeyemi conjures a stunning world of dark magic and danger in her West African-inspired fantasy debut Children of Blood and Bone. Winner of the Tonight Show Summer Reads with Jimmy Fallon.
They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise.
Zelie remembers when the soil of Orisha hummed with magic. When different clans ruled - Burners igniting flames, Tiders beckoning waves, and Zelie's Reaper mother summoning forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, anyone with powers was targeted and killed, leaving Zelie without…
My taste in music is as eclectic as my bookshelf. I read everything from poetry to Greek tragedies and listen to both historical and contemporary music. When I first imagined Shelby’s story, I aimed to capture how music transforms us, how it shifts our moods and shapes our memories. As I set out to write the first draft, I had never heard of social-emotional learning. However, writing this book, along with my YA novel, A Song for the Road, inspired me to pursue a master’s degree in Humanities focusing on Social-emotional Learning and Creative Writing. I also teach teens and adults how to write compelling emotional fiction.
I have a soft spot for books about writers, the journey to becoming one, and the creative life in general. This book surprised me and delighted my writerly heart, especially when protagonist Dani decides to write letters to her favorite Black women writers about a secret she’s afraid to share with her family. When a DJ friend dares her to fall in love with him in just three days, this gritty, urban, and heart-rending story unexpectedly takes on a rom-com energy that just works.
As a social-emotional learning researcher, I was also wowed by how this writing/music/personal trauma narrative explores various forms of love: platonic, familial, romantic, and self-love.
“Readers won’t be able to get enough of these dope-ass characters.” —Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Clap When You Land
Hitch meets The Sun Is Also a Star in this “mega swoon-worthy, effortlessly cool” (Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author) novel about a self-professed teen love doctor with a popular radio segment who believes he can get a girl who hates all things romance to fall in love with him in only three dates.
Prince Jones is the guy with all the answers—or so it seems. After all, at seventeen, he has his own segment on Detroit’s popular hip-hop show,…
Few things bother me more than the negative stereotypes that portray Detroit as a deserted city in ruins - a crime-infested, neglected place where residents don’t care about their connections to the city’s history or its future. Detroit is a proud, living city. As a historical archaeologist at Wayne State University, I’ve been on the front lines of leading community-based archaeology projects in Detroit for the past decade. These projects involve advocacy for more inclusive historic preservation efforts, youth training initiatives, collaborative exhibits, and lots of interactions with the media and public. I view historical archaeology as a tool for serving local community interests, unearthing underrepresented histories, and addressing the legacies of social justice issues.
Slavery and its legacy is a northern problem too. Detroiters were slaveholders, but that is a fact that we’ve collectively spent decades, if not centuries, denying and neglecting. Tiya Miles’ gripping history of slavery and freedom reveals the stories of the enslaved Native and African American people who were present in Detroit since the city’s initial decades of European colonization. Her historical narratives, crafted from meticulous archival research, reintroduce readers to the long-forgotten people whose coerced labor laid the foundation for the city’s physical infrastructure and scaffolded the livelihoods of its free residents. The Dawn of Detroit is a stark reminder of how the roots of contemporary inequities run deep through the city’s history.
In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit, a place wildly remote yet at the centre of national and international conflict. The result is fascinating history, little-explored and eloquently told, of the limits of freedom in early America, one that adds new layers of complexity that completely change our understanding of slavery's American legacy.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
For more than thirty years, I worked as journalist covering the biggest news stories of the day—at Newsweek magazine (where I became the publication’s first African-American top editor), then as a news executive at NBC News and CNN. Now, I keep a hand in that world as a judge of several prestigious journalism awards while taking a longer view in my own work as a contributor for CBS Sunday Morning, Washington Post book reviewer, and author of narrative non-fiction books with a focus on key personalities and turning points in Black History.
An Alabama native who moved to Detroit as a young child, renowned Black press reporter Herb Boyd paints a lively, knowing portrait of the world that his fellow Southern migrants and their offspring made in his hometown. The sweeping study examines the role that Blacks played in shaping the American car industry and autoworkers union, and fleshes out the backstories of legends who were raised or came of age in Detroit and went on to transform our national culture, from Malcolm X and Aretha Franklin to record mogul Barry Gordy and the young local musicians who became the superstars of Motown Records.
The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric.
Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as race riots were engulfing the city. Though he did not grasp their full significance at the time, this critical moment would be one of many he witnessed that would mold his political activism and exposed a…
Fresh out of journalism school I stumbled on a strike at a machine shop in Pilsen, a neighborhood once home to Chicago’s most famous labor struggles, by then becoming a hip gentrified enclave. Drinking steaming atole with Polish, Mexican, and Puerto Rican workers in a frigid Chicago winter, I was captivated by the solidarity and determination to fight for their jobs and rights, in what appeared to be a losing battle. After covering labor struggles by Puerto Rican teachers, Mexican miners, Colombian bottlers, Chicago warehouse workers, and many others, my enthusiasm for such stories is constantly reignited -- by the workers fighting against all odds and the writers telling their stories, including those featured here.
The name “Detroit” too often conjures images of poverty-porn: gorgeously crumbling buildings, post-apocalyptic urban decay, lost souls wandering cracked streets. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying shatters this image with unfettered energy. It chronicles the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the auto plants of the 1960s-1970s, a refreshing reminder of the power of intersectional labor organizing; a raw look at the racism of the mainstream labor movement; and a very human chronicle of the struggles and flaws of courageous everyday workers at this critical time and place in history.
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely heralded as one the most important books on the black liberation movement.
Marvin Surkin received his PhD in political science from New York University and is a specialist in comparative urban politics and social change. He worked at the center of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit.
Dan Georgakas is a writer, historian, and activist with a long-time interest…
Few things bother me more than the negative stereotypes that portray Detroit as a deserted city in ruins - a crime-infested, neglected place where residents don’t care about their connections to the city’s history or its future. Detroit is a proud, living city. As a historical archaeologist at Wayne State University, I’ve been on the front lines of leading community-based archaeology projects in Detroit for the past decade. These projects involve advocacy for more inclusive historic preservation efforts, youth training initiatives, collaborative exhibits, and lots of interactions with the media and public. I view historical archaeology as a tool for serving local community interests, unearthing underrepresented histories, and addressing the legacies of social justice issues.
Detroit 1967 is a compilation of twenty essays and reflections about the racially-charged uprising that began on July 23, 1967 and was, at the time, the deadliest civil disturbance in United States history. Until this volume was published during the uprising’s 50th anniversary year, there were few, if any, attempts by scholars to confront the falsehoods that confused understandings of the events and their lasting consequences. Fifty years on, there is no consensus about exactly how the uprising started. In fact, we’re not even at a point of agreement on what to call the events. The terms “rebellion”, “riot”, “uprising”, “disturbance”, and “insurrection” are used differentially, often according to one’s race, age, and place of residence. Detroit 1967 is one of the first conversations about the uprising to cross racial and generational lines, and to recognize the experiences of those involved on both sides. The volume is a critical…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I have always been both a nature lover and committed urbanite, and those twin passions have shaped my approach to history. My very first published writing (when I was ten years old) was an essay about a willow tree in an urban park I loved in Minneapolis, MN. Now, as a historian, I have written about guerrilla gardening in the shadow of the Berlin wall, forestry outside Detroit, and working-class foraging practices in the nineteenth century. My interest in urban nature remains not just academic, but personal. On weekends, you’ll find me mapping native and invasive species with my ten-year-old son along the River Rouge in Dearborn, MI.
Nature takes on different meanings in the landscape of the post-industrial city. On a city block in the middle of a shrinking city, the return of green space can signify abandonment, disinvestment, and decay instead of healing, flourishing, or balance. Cialdella brings much needed nuance and historical context to the place of nature in postindustrial Detroit, providing a wider range of stories about the ways in which gardens and green, from the wide expanse of Belle Isle to urban potato patches and backyard sunflowers, have helped connect communities to the city and each other. Nature in the city doesn’t replace people; it helps them flourish.
Motor City Green is a history of green spaces in metropolitan Detroit from the late nineteenth- to early twenty-first century. The book focuses primarily on the history of gardens and parks in the city of Detroit and its suburbs in southeast Michigan. Cialdella argues Detroit residents used green space to address problems created by the city's industrial rise and decline, and racial segregation and economic inequality. As the city's social landscape became increasingly uncontrollable, Detroiters turned to parks, gardens, yards, and other outdoor spaces to relieve the negative social and environmental consequences of industrial capitalism. Motor City Green looks to…
