Leila Mottley has been reading and writing since she was little, and she was named Oakland’s Youth Poet Laureate in 2018 at age 16. She read deeply and widely, following in the footsteps of her father, a playwright. But when we asked her to tell us which books meant the most to her, she picked five from her vast collection: She said the novels Sula, by Toni Morrison, and Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, are two of his absolute favourites. , as are books by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara and National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. (Watch Mottley’s fabulous encounter with Oprah for Oprah’s Book Club Conversation, streaming now on Oprah Daily, to learn more from the young literary star about how important these writers are to her.)
Mottley cites Their Eyes Were Watching God, the American classic by Zora Neale Hurston which was brought to a wide audience by Alice Walker, and Gorilla, My Love, a stunning and still largely unknown work by the late and great Toni Cade Bambara as two others essential and permanent parts of its library, which is appropriate, because these canonical works were written by black women who opened doors and paved the way for a new generation of writers and readers.
“These are some of the titles that have most directly influenced the way I think about and approach writing,” says Mottley, “although I have a million extra books that I love as a reader. ” It’s clear that Mottley’s passion for reading fueled his enormous talent as a writer. Here is the full list:
Sula takes you through the lives and divergent paths of two best friends: Nel and Sula, who live with their families in The Bottom, a mostly black community in Ohio that was a “gift” from a “homeowner” of slaves to his former slaves. Nel, who stays in The Bottom, gets married and becomes the town’s matriarch, is seen as the epitome of “good”. Sula, who moves to the city, where she has multiple relationships, some with white men, is despised for her aversion to convention. Once fiercely close, Nel and Sula turn around but continue to keep close to them a terrible secret that they share. It is only after Sula’s death that Nel begins to understand the complexities of “good” versus “evil” and regains her love for her lost friend.
2
Collect the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward
This powerful novel, which won Ward’s National Book Award, is set in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and follows the Bautiste family in the 12 days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Esch, the tale’s 14-year-old narrator, tells the story of her family, including the death of her mother in childbirth, which left Esch and her three brothers to live in misery with Claude, their alcoholic father. The storm hits and devastates, but the Bautists survive. Both brutal and poetic, Ward’s is an epic saga of struggle, resilience and love.
3
Gorilla, my love, by Toni Cade Bambara
Toni Cade Bambara died far too soon, in 1995, at the age of 56. An activist, filmmaker, and fiction writer whose editor-in-chief was Toni Morrison, she once observed, “The writer’s job is to make revolution irresistible. Sample any book of his work to get a taste of his singular aesthetic, a fiction that reads like jazz improvisation. To begin with, this superb collection of 15 stories offers us unforgettable characters who together form a portrait of black life in America, seen through the dazzling lens of Bambara.
