New African-American Fiction

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We've selected our personal favorites from the year's best fiction by African-American writers in honor of Black History Month. While our choices include new works by veteran writers, an exciting group of first-novelists is featured as well as the work of an important but neglected member of the Harlem Renaissance. All of these writers explore the dynamics of family life, the hard choices and compromises women have to make, the burden and inspiration of legacies both sorrowful and affirming, and the need to redefine success. A pervasive sense of a society in transition, perhaps a culture in jeopardy, also shapes these powerful, poetic tales.

Cartier, Xam. Muse-Echo Blues. Harmony; dist. by Crown, 1991, $18 (0-517-57793-3).

A young composer is …