Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week, I am featuring works by North American women writers. This is in commemoration of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, celebrated every March 8. This week, I am featuring the works of female North American writers I am looking forward to. Here are some works by North American women writers on my ever-growing reading list.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: Love
Author: Toni Morrison
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Publishing Date: 2003
No. of Pages: 202

Synopsis: 

May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida – even L: all women obsessed with Bill Cosey. The wealthy owner of the famous Cosey’s Hotel and Resort, he shapes their yearnings for father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend, yearnings that dominate the lives of these women long after his death. Yet while he is either the void in, or the center of, their stories, he himself is driven by secret forces – a troubled past and a spellbinding woman named Celestial.

This audacious exploration into the nature of love – its appetite, its sublime possession, its dread – is rich in characters, striking scenes, and a profound understanding of how alive the past can be.

A major addition to the canon of one of the world’s literary masters.

Title: Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Publishing Date: 2008
No. of Pages: 202

Synopsis: 

Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston’s first novel, originally published in 1934, tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, “a living exultation” of a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there’s also Mehaley and Big’Oman, as well as the scheming Hattie, who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attention. Even after becoming the popular pastor of Zion Hope, where his sermons and prayers for cleansing rouse the congregation’s fervor, John has to confess that though he is a preacher on Sundays, he is a “natchel man” the rest of the week. And on in this sympathetic portrait of a man and his community, Zora Neale Hurston shows that faith, tolerance, and good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and the physical. That she makes this age-old dilemma come so alive is a tribute to her understanding of the vagaries of human nature.

Title: Oryx and Crake
Author: Margaret Atwood
Publisher: Anchor Books
Publishing Date: May 2004
No. of Pages: 374

Synopsis:

Oryx and Crake, the first book of the MaddAddam trilogy, is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey – with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake – through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.

Title: Evening Primrose
Author: Kopano Matlwa
Publisher: Quercus
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 149
Country: South Africa

Synopsis:

When Masechaba finally achieves her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, her ambition is tested as she faces the stark reality of South Africa’s public health care system. As she leaves her deeply religious mother and makes friends with the politically minded Nyasha, Masechaba’s eyes are opened to the rising xenophobic tension that carries echoes of apartheid. Battling her inner demons, she must decide if she should take a stand to help her best friend, even if it comes at a high personal cost.

A powerfully insightful novel from one of the foremost voices of South Africa’s “Born Free” generation, Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender, and the medical profession with tenderness and urgency.

Title: Into the Forest
Author: Jean Hegland
Publisher: The Dial Press
Publishing Date: September 1998
No. of Pages: 241

Synopsis:

Eva, eighteen, and Nell, seventeen, are sisters, adolescents on the threshold of womanhood – and for them anything should be possible. But suddenly their lives are turned upside down, their dreams pushed into the shadows, as sickness and anarchy rage across a country on the brink of collapse. In a time of suspicion and superstition, of anger, hunger, and fear, Eva and Nell are left to forage through the forest, and their past, for the keys to survival. They must blaze a new path into the future as pioneers and pilgrims – not only creatures of the new world, but creators of it. Gripping and unforgettable, Into the Forest is a passionate and poignant tale of stirring sensuality and profound inspiration – a novel that will move you and surprise you and touch you to the core.

Title: The Women of Brewster Place
Author: Gloria Naylor
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 1986
No. of Pages: 192

Synopsis:

Brewster Place: a blind alley feeding into a dead end. Seven women have made their way there, and each has her own story in this extraordinary novel by Gloria Naylor. The women of Brewster Place are “hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased.” From a variety of backgrounds, with individual goals and dreams, they experience, fight against – and sometimes transcend – the fate of black women in America today.