Scottsboro

By: Ellen Feldman
Published in New York, W. W. Norton, 2008

Alice Whittier, an ambitious, young and the only woman journalist in The New Order; in New York City, flew to Alabama to cover the case of innocent nine African-American young men accused of raping two white women in a train.  A case, in 1931, that tried and sentenced eight to death and one 13 year old to prison in four days by a white only jury. With her passion and social conscience she ended up fighting to save them. The case appeal, the protesters in the North, American communist party with Alice research on the background of Ruby Bates, one of the accusers, who was changing her story, made this fictional story put back on life the case of Scottsboro Boys. will she be able to make Ruby to tell the truth in a racist and sexist culture of Alabama?

The Street Sweeper:

By: Elliot Perlman
Published in Sydney NSW, Vintage, 2011

Lamont Williams, an African American, is out of prison and working a caretaker in a cancer hospital. He becomes a friend with one of the patients, Henryk Mandelbrot, an elderly holocaust survivor in Auschwitz camp. At the same time, a historian professor, Adam Zignelik, whose life and job is falling apart, starts a research about African America being part of liberating concentration camps in WWII.

July’s People

By: Nadine Gordimer
Published in London, Cape, 1981

Maureen and Bam Smales, a white liberal family with their three children escape the civil war  with the help of their servant July, and hide out in his village in rural South Africa. Another battle starts when the roles of servant and master start to change alongside with Maureen and Bam relationship and their children.

The Queen of Palmyra

By: Minrose Gwin

Published in New York: Harper Perennial, 2010

Florence Forrest, a young girl, lives in Millwood Mississippi, spends days at her grandparents’ house and afternoons with their housekeeper Zenie’s (named for Zenobia, the queen of Palmyra) family in “Shake Rag” a black neighbourhood. Florence can’t figure out her mother, Martha, fear of her father, Win, a burial insurance salesman until Zenie’s niece, Eva, comes to town to sell insurance to earn money for college when her father will never be the same.

The Cleansing of Mohammed
By: Chris McCourt
Published in Sydney, NSW by Fourth Estate, 2012

Gool Mahommed  a young Afghan, returns to Broken Hill, South Wales, Australia from his homeland after five years, he was sent back by his mentor Abdullah , a camel driver and mullah. His dreams were to fit in the Australian-English way of life and owning a submarine shipping line. Alice Mercer born in Broken Hill, meets Mahommed in train trip they are immediately drawn to each other, but the prejudice of others will create tension between them, with the outbreak of WWI in 1914, a story based  loosely on true events showing how seeds of terrorism are sown.

Fruit of the Lemon

by: Andrea Levy
Published in London, Headline, 1999

Faith Jackson, twenty two year old, daughter of conservative Jamaican migrants in UK, starts her new life enjoying her freedom sharing a flat with other three roommates and her new job in the costume department of the BBC. She becomes more aware of the hidden racism all around her and the ignorance of her white friends she suffers of nervous breakdown that made her parents to send her back to Jamaica on a holiday where she finds family and a sense of who she is searching her family tree with the help of Aunt Coral.

A Black Englishman

By: Carolyn Slaughter
Published in London, Faber and Faber, 2004

Isabel in her early twenties travel with her newlywed Neville Webb, a military man to India, escaping Wales with the sadness of losing her fiancé and the suffering of WWI. They arrive to Punjab in 1920 a time when the country was involved in violent clashes between religious and social sects and struggling to free itself from British rule. While her husband was away from home in a mission for ten months, Isabel  was ill with malaria, she met Samresh Singh, so called black Englishman, an Indian doctor educated at the best British schools and graduated from Oxford,  They fall in love that neither has known before, but she underestimate her husband anger and the extent of his revenge.

The Cry of the Go-Away Bird

By: Andrea Eames
Published in London, Harvill Secker, 2011

Elise, a 13 year old second generation British-Zimbabwean living in a country farm with her mother and her black nanny Beauty, moves to another farm after her mother remarried to Steve near Harare. Elise always consider herself as African, but in the 1990s, when the violence and the farm invasions begin in Zimbabwe, troubles has started for her being bullied at school, friends are forces to flee the country, fall in love and confront the escalating horror in her land.

Mudbound

By Hillary Jordan

Published in Chapel Hill N.C., Algonquin Books, 2008

Two families, one white (Henry, a farm owner and Laura, a city girl) and one black (Hap, a farmer and a preacher and Florence, a midwife and housekeeper for Laura) in Mississippi Delta rural area in the year 1946/47, two returning veterans of WWII (Jamie, Henry’s brother and Ronsel Hap’s son) knew the world was changing, but back home it did not.These are the narrators of realities of the racism of the time and place from different perspectives. Laura found a companion with Florence, Jamie understand Ronsel  but not the community they are living in.

The Boy Next Door

by: : Irene Sabatini
Published in London, Sceptre, 2009

Black Lindiwe and white Ian are living in a formerly white neighbourhood in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, a country with millions struggling to get on with their lives, a nation racked by corruption and racism in the years followed the freedom from British colonial rule.

A relationship between the two started when they were teenagers in 1980. Ian will be imprisoned for a year convicted of killing her stepmother then freed quickly and decided to depart to South Africa. They were brought back together to face the challenge of being a mixed race couple, the hostility of Lindiwe mother; a social climber in new Zimbabwe, and Ian mental illness. Will they find happiness in such a wide turmoil and culture clashes in a declining economic and social situation?