Books like 'Punks: New & Selected Poems'
Readers who enjoyed Punks: New & Selected Poems by John Keene also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsBy the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the greatest practitioners of the American short story, a writer who had not only found his own voice but imprinted it in the imaginations of thousands of readers... -
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLangston Hughes's first book of poetry, including the following classic, poignant and moving Proem, The Weary Blues, Jazzonia, Negro Dancers, The Cat And The Saxophone (2 A.M... -
For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsIn celebration of its highly anticipated Broadway revival, Ntozake Shange’s classic, award-winning play centering the wide-ranging experiences of Black women, now with introductions by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown... -
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford
Rated: 4.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsPoetry. Frank Stanford was called by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alan Dugan a brilliant poet, ample in his work, like Whitman. He was the founder of Lost Roads Publishers and the author of a number of important works, among them the epic THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU, reprinted by Lost Roads under the editorship of Forrest Gander and C.D. Wright... -
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The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA beautiful lyrical story that introduces the concept of individuality, accepting of others differences, and respect for those around us.This is a tale about conformism and individualism, as Mr. Plumbean's expression of creativity and individuality challenges his neighbor's ideas about the importance of having a “neat street.” By repainting his house to reflect his colorful dreams, Mr... -
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water... -
A Royal Visit to Victory Street by Pam Howes
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom Amazon charts bestseller Pam Howes comes an emotional and uplifting saga about the power of family and a community trying to rebuild their lives after the terrible war that nearly destroyed everything…1956, Liverpool. With the shadow of the war looming over them and bomb craters littering the surrounding streets, hope feels far away for the residents of Victory Street... -
Selected Poems by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWith the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night... -
Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings“The civil rights struggle,” said The New York Times Book Review, “found eloquent expression in [Baldwin’s] novels. His historical importance is indisputable.” Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin’s reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence... -
Midnight by Beverly Jenkins
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn a time of peril, she fears nothing—except the forbidden passions of her heart. In Boston, revolution is in the wind—yet none would ever suspect Faith Kingston of treason. But under cover of darkness, the beautiful daughter of a Tory tavern owner becomes the notorious spy “Lady Midnight,” passing valuable secrets to the rebels... -
Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDiane McKinney-Whetstone's lyrical first novel, Tumbling, vividly captures a tightly knit African-American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the forties and fifties. Its central characters, Herbie and Noon, are a loving but unconventional couple whose marriage remains unconsummated for many years as Noon struggles to repossess her sexuality after a brutal attack in her past... -
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSet in North Carolina, these are stories about blacks and whites, young and old, rural and sophisticated, the real and fantastical. Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, nominated for the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award, and given the Lambda Award... -
Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSelected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world... -
Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn a poor town in Kansas, an African American family struggles. At its centre sits Sandy Rodgers - a young boy attempting to find purpose amid the chaos, meagreness and music of his surroundings... -
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Mrs. Wiggins by Mary Monroe
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNew York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe returns to the Deep South Depression-era town of her scandalous Mama Ruby series, in this tale of a woman determined to have a respectable life--and she'll do anything to keep it...The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going... -
Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsThe stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work... -
Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness by Bob Kaufman
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPublished in 1965, Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness assembles ten years' work of Bob Kaufman, celebrated in San Francisco as the original Beat and in France as "the American Rimbaud."Kaufman, one of fourteen children born in Louisiana to a German Jewish father and a Black Catholic mothers, ran away to sea when he was thirteen, circling the globe nine times in the next twenty years... -
Collected Poems by Robert Hayden
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRobert Hayden (1913-1980) was one of the most important African-American poets of the twentieth century. He left behind an exquisite body of work, collected in this definitive edition, including American Journal , which was nominated for a National Book Award in its first publication... -
A Chorus Line: The Complete Book of the Musical by James Kirkwood Jr., Michael Bennett
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings(Applause Books). It is hard to believe that over 25 years have passed since A Chorus Line first electrified a New York audience. The memories of the show's birth in 1975, not to mention those of its 15-year-life and poignant death, remain incandescent and not just because nothing so exciting has happened to the American musical since... -
Collected Poems, 1912-1944 by H.D.
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOf special significance are the "Uncollected and Unpublished Poems (1912-1944)," the third section of the book, written mainly in the 1930s, during H. D.'s supposed "fallow" period. As these pages reveal, she was in fact writing a great deal of important poetry at the time, although publishing only a small part of it... -
Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLeo is an Italian writer in his thirties. Thomas, his German lover, is dead. On a plane to Munich, Thomas?s home town, Leo slips into a reverie of their meeting and life in Paris, nights in Thomas?s flat in Montmartre and a desperate, drug-induced flight through the forests of northern France that spells the end for Leo and Thomas? languid, erotic life together. Leo travels to find anonymity... -
Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“No one except perhaps Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams has aimed so high and achieved so much in the American theater.”—John Lahr, The New Yorker“A swelling battle hymn of transporting beauty. Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material... -
Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a boy like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed... -
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNtozake Shange's most beloved novel, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, is the story of three "colored girls," three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college and living with other artists in Los Angeles, trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories, and her dreams... -
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The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry “One of the truly imaginative writers of our time.” — Los Angles Times Book Review You never know what Charles Simic is up to until you reach the end of the line or the bottom of the paragraph. Waiting for you might be a kiss. Or a bludgeon. A smile at the absurdities of society, or a wistful, grim memory of World War II. He puns, pulls pranks... -
The Short Stories by Langston Hughes
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963--the most comprehensive available--showcases Langston Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and artistic concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and others never before collected...Categorized as:
black-mc poc-mc fiction classics anthologies 20th-century literary-fiction historical -
Flow Chart by John Ashbery
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsReticent, shy, unfailingly modern, Ashbery is as unorthodox [as] any of the great twentieth-century creators: Breton, Stravinsky, Picasso," observed Jeremy Reed in Britain's "Poetry Review," "We are privileged to be around at a time when he is writing... -
Confessions in B-Flat by Donna Hill
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsEssence bestselling author Donna Hill brings us an emotional love story set against the powerful backdrop of the civil rights movement in New York City... -
Sweet Little Lies by Michele Grant
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsReprinted Edition "Grant entices, captivates, and mesmerizes." --RT Book Reviews Christina Brinsley is that girl. You know the one: a little bougie, a little opinionated, knows it all, has it all, and is a total perfectionist. But Christina's perfectly crafted world isn't really so perfect... -
Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsStarting in 1970, Jean Genet—petty thief, prostitute, modernist master—spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring... -
Time's Witness by Michael Malone
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThings have changed in Hillston, North Carolina. A young black man is on Death Row and the Klan is again rearing its head, while a dirty tricks campaign is mounting against the womanizing candidate for state governor - who also happens to be the husband of Hillston chief of police's true love... -
I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots by Susan Straight
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBeginning in the late 1950s, this novel tells the story of Marietta Cook, a tall girl growing up in Pine Gardens, a Gullah-speaking village in South Carolina. When Marietta's mother dies, she heads to Charleston in search of her uncle - only to find a lover and return pregnant with twins two years later... -
A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn airline captain crafts a riveting, adventurous novel inspired by the remarkable true life of pioneer aviatrix Bessie Coleman, a Black woman who learned to fly at the dawn of aviation and found freedom in the air A few years after the Wright brothers’ first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their heads... -
The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and the Stories by Nella Larsen, Marita Golden
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA light-skinned beauty who spends years passing for white finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. A restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. A mother's confrontation with tragedy tests her loyalty to her race... -
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Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsPublished to celebrate forty years of City Lights publishing, which began with the letterpress printing of this book in 1955.It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book, and it has been reprinted twenty-one times, having never been out of print. The original edition contained the first twenty-seven poems to which the author has now added eighteen new verses... -
Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe bestselling tale-powerful, compassionate, humorous-of the three Lovejoy sisters reunited in their hometown of Mulberry, Georgia, on the occasion of their mother’s death. As the emotionally scarred Lovejoys prepare for their mother’s funeral, the spirit of the selfish and manipulative Mudear hovers above them, complaining about her daughters’ “ugly ways” in death as she did in life... -
The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA visionary cast of characters weave together their past and present in a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales.It is the story of the dispossessed and displaced, of peoples whose history is ancient and whose future is yet to come... -
The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTwo sisters. One unassuming haven. Endless opportunities for grace.During Jim Crow America, there was only one place Black Americans could safely refuel their vehicles along what would eventually become iconic Route 66. But more than just a place to refuel, it was a place to fill up the soul, build community, and find strength... -
Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe extraordinary tragicomedy of race, class and manners.From the Trade Paperback edition... -
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? by Mahmoud Darwish, Jeffrey Sacks
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt once an intimate autobiography and a collective memory of the Palestinian people, Darwish’s intertwined poems are collective cries, songs, and glimpses of the human condition. Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? is a poetry of myth and history, of exile and suspended time, of an identity bound to his displaced people and to the rich Arabic language... -
You Know Better by Tina McElroy Ansa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIt is the spring weekend of the Peach Blossom Festival in the tiny middle Georgia town of Mulberry, but things are far from sweet for the Pines women. LaShawndra, an eighteen-year-old hoochie-mama who wants nothing more out of life than to dance in a music video, has messed up...again. But this time she isn't sticking around to hear about it... -
Ravensong by Lee Maracle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLee Maracle, author of the best-selling I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism, sets this novel in an urban Native American community on the Pacific Northwest coast in the early 1950s. Ravensong is by turns damning, humorous, inspirational, and prophetic... -
Scent of Apples: A Collection of Stories by Bienvenido N. Santos
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis collection of sixteen short stories brings the work of a distinguished Filipino writer to the attention of an American audience. Bienvenido N. Santos first came to the United States in 1941, and since then, he has lived intermittently here and in the Philippines, writing in English about his experiences... -
Passing by Samaria by Sharon Ewell Foster
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhen the discovery of a schoolmate's lynched body puts her own life in jeopardy, Alena is sent by her parents from her beloved Mississippi home. With thousands of other African-Americans, Alena begins making her way north to the Promised Land of turn-of-the-century Chicago... -
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The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Fortunes of WangrinAmadou Hampâté BâTranslated by Aina Pavolini Taylor with an Introduction by F. Abiola IreleWinner of the Grand Prix Litteraire de l'Afrique Noire"I think this is perhaps the best African novel on colonialism and it draws very richly on various modes of oral literature...Categorized as:
black-mc poc-mc fiction historical-fiction 20th-century journey contemporary action-adventure -
The Man Who Cried I Am: A Novel by John A. Williams
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsGenerally recognized as one of the most important novels of the tumultuous 1960s, The Man Who Cried I Am vividly evokes the harsh era of segregation that presaged the expatriation of African American intellectuals. Through the eyes of journalist Max Reddick, and with penetrating fictional portraits of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, among other historical figures, John A... -
Poems by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Sex, death, political passion, these are the simple objects to which I give my elegiac heart"Winner of the first Renato Poggioli/William Weaver Award of PEN American CenterPier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975), who is best known in this country as an inspired filmmaker, was also the most outspoken and original Italian writer of his generation, the author of distinguished and controversial novels and... -
Unholy Ghosts by Richard Zimler
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA novel of adventure, personal disclosure, violence, and finally--a strange redemption... -
Joe Turner's Come and Gone by August Wilson
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHerald Loomis turns up at a boardinghouse to look for his missing wife... -
The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIt is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor...
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