All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

Selected by literary editor Benjamin Schwarz as one of the best books of 2006, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, this book was reviewed as follows by The Atlantic in November 2006: “These stories—formal in tone, precise in style, intricately imagined, and arrestingly specific in their evocation of place and time—offer an intimate and impressively varied look at African American life in Washington, D.C., throughout the twentieth century.” Jones does for Washington what James Joyce did for Dublin, giving it a richness and vividness that is both literal and metaphoric. Though set in a range of times and specific places in our nation’s capital, the stories consistently explore the ways in which people negotiate between their own needs and the demands of their families and their communities. All Aunt Hagar’s Children lends itself naturally to discussion not only of the enduring challenges of race in post–Civil War America, but also of the myriad complexities of life in an extended family.