Six books on family roots and grief

Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015.

Jones's new memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, describes how owning his homosexuality required distancing himself from his mother's love, and was recently named winner of the nonfiction Kirkus Prize.

At The Week magazine he shared six favorite books on family roots and grief, including:

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilker­son (2010).

Without a doubt, this is the book I have recommended the most in the past decade. Drawing on incredible research and countless interviews, Wilkerson follows three black Southerners who — like millions of others in the 20th century — moved north to escape Jim Crow's caste system. Few other books have better helped me locate my family and personal history in the broader context of American history.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Warmth of Other Suns is among Ibram X. Kendi's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue