Top 10 books about roots

Nadia Owusu is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and raised in Italy, Ethiopia, England, Ghana, and Uganda. Her first book, Aftershocks, A Memoir, topped many most-anticipated lists, including The New York Times, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and TIME.

At the Guardian she tagged ten of the "the best works that explore notions of home," including:

There There by Tommy Orange

For Native Americans, Tommy Orange writes, US cities represent “buried ancestral land ... unreturnable covered memory”. There There is populated by a large cast of characters who know freeways better than they know rivers. Still, they occupy a liminal space. They are rooted to a stolen past and present. To a big powwow in Oakland, each character carries their own specific aim: self-knowledge, reunion, redemption. Some want to rob the event to repay a debt. But, they are all linked by their desire “to be recognised as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue