This page is dedicated to a growing list of texts that have either excited or inspired me, improved my understanding of the world or triggered unexpected feelings that have pushed me to think more deeply or differently about life and human interaction.

 

Items in each category are listed in no particular order.

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Novels, Short Story Collections & Plays

• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

• Jagua Nana, by Cyprian Ekwensi

• Black Sunday, by Tola Rotimi Abraham

• The House of Hunger, by Dambudzo Marechera

• Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebayo

• The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James

• The Trees, by Percival Everett

• A Dance of the Forests, by Wole Soyinka

• Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

• All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

• Daughters Who Walk This Path, by Yejide Kilanko

• In Dependence, by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

• A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

 

Flash Fiction

• Light, by Lesley Nneka Arimah

• Foucault and Pencil, by Lydia Davis

 

Non-Fiction (Books, Essays & Journal Articles)

• The Tragic Sense of Life, by Miguel de Unamuno

• On the Abolition of All Political Parties, by Simone Weil

• Break Every Rule, by Carole Maso

• Bluets, by Maggie Nelson

• & Other Stories, by Eloghosa Osunde

• On Quitting Academia, by Malcolm Gaskill

• Unsinkable City, by Wole Soyinka

• The Dis(order) of Things, by Julia Bell

• When Losing is Likely, by Brad East

• The Unexemplary Simone Weil, by Alexa Hazel

• Art and Property Now, by John Berger

• A Load of Shit, by John Berger

• Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life, by Jenny Boully

• Leave the Dead Some Room to Dance: Postcolonial Founding and the Problem of Inheritance in Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests, by David Thomas Suell

• 'Colonialism Had Never Really Ended': My Life in the Shadow of Cecil Rhodes, by Simukai Chigudu

 

Poetry

• She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks, by M. NourbeSe Philip

• The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, by Wendell Berry

• The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, by Kei Miller

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Interviews with Writers & Artists

• Chris Abani by Colm Tóibín, July 2006 (BOMB Magazine)

• Etel Adnan by Lisa Robertson, April 2014 (BOMB Magazine)

• Oral History Project: Odili Donald Odita by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, November 2020 (BOMB Magazine)

• Open to Possibility: Jesse Wine Interviewed by Cassie Packard, January 2021 (BOMB Magazine)

• Percival Everett, The Art of Fiction No. 235, Summer 2017 (The Paris Review)

• James Baldwin: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations by James Baldwin and Quincy Troupe, December 2014 (Melville House)

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