With so many books available, where do you start? Here’s a small sample of titles to choose from.

Author Events
Saturday, Nov. 22
300 NE Second Ave., Miami FL 33132

Roots and Reckonings: Family, Memory and Caribbean Identity
Camille U. Adams, Monique Clesca
Geoffrey Philp
12 p.m.
Building 8, 3rd Floor • Room 8302

In “How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir,” Camille U. Adams maps the fault lines between mother and child against the backdrop of Trinidad’s colonial violence and her family’s legacy of abandonment. Tormented by her mother’s presence and haunted by her absence, Adams presents an account of survival and self-determination, reimagining the meaning of escape, its cost, and what comes after. In “Silence and Resistance: Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti,” Monique Clesca recounts surviving Haiti’s 2010 earthquake while confronting a past marked by state terror, domestic violence, and generational secrets. Set against Haiti’s rich history, this powerful memoir explores love, trauma, and identity as she uncovers her father’s dark legacy, navigates betrayal, and seeks healing, ultimately discovering strength and freedom in breaking the chains of silence. Created for readers ages 10-17, “Unstoppable You: 50 Quotes from Marcus Garvey to Inspire Greatness” is Jamaican poet, novelist and playwright Geoffrey Philp’s guide to help Black teens build confidence, clarity, and purpose using Garvey’s timeless words. Included are reflections on creativity, leadership, purpose, and legacy; bold affirmations; and real-life stories of Black heroes who lived Garvey’s message. Moderated by Chantalle F. Verna, associate professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University and author of “Haiti and the Uses of America: Post U.S.-Occupation Promises.”

Watch Out for Falling Iguanas
Edwidge Danticat
2 p.m.
Children’s Alley
In “Watch Out for Falling Iguanas,” young Leila sets off for school on a rare chilly day in Miami. Her walk is filled with curious encounters, like roaming peacocks and chickens crossing the road, but she can’t stop thinking about her grandmother’s warning to watch out for falling iguanas. And so begins an unexpected adventure to discover why those tropical creatures fall from trees during cold fronts. Grades K-3.

Memoir of Mothers and Daughters
Sasha Bonét
Sasha Bonét’s “The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters” is a meditation on Black motherhood. Bonét grew up far from the plantations that shaped her ancestors, yet each generation carried the legacy of Black motherhood rooted in slavery. Determined to interrupt this tradition, she seeks to create a way of mothering that honors that legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it.

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
Marlene Daut
Marlene Daut explores a riveting life of a man who was born enslaved and eventually crowned himself King Henry I. This essential biography unravels the enigma of the man who was Haiti’s only sovereign, in a story of geopolitical clashes but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, and heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval. Enslaved for the first 30 years of his life, Jean‑Jacques Dessalines joined the revolution that abolished slavery in Haiti, became a general of the new French Republic, and after learning that France once again supported slavery, declared war on his former allies.

The Turner House
Angela Flournoy
“The Turner House” marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family. The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone—and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts—and shapes—their family’s future.

Hell of a Book
Jason Mott
A Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives “Hell of a Book” and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.