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In Reading Color

8 Beautiful BIPOC Family Sagas To Lose Yourself In

Anne Mai Yee Jansen

Contributor

Anne Mai Yee Jansen is a literature and ethnic studies professor and a lifelong story lover. She exists on a steady diet of books, hot chocolate, and dragon boating. After spending over a decade in the Midwest and the Appalachians, she returned to the sun and sandstone of California’s central coast where she currently resides with her partner, offspring, and feline companions. Find her on Instagram @dreaminginstories

Dundurn Press

Udonwa’s family is at war — a war of relationships, played out under the tyranny of a monster dad. Age twelve, Udonwa has a peculiar love for her father, Reverend Leonard Ilechukwu, who favours her. As she grows up, pieces of a sinister picture emerge that shake her life to the core. No longer the person she thought she was, Udonwa launches into a period of extreme change, and parts of her life spiral into chaos as she finds herself torn between her love for her father and an underlying need to free herself. This vivid family saga is engrossing, deeply unsettling, and finally uplifting.

Just as the long, dark nights of wintertime lend themselves to picking up a nice, thick book, so do summertime’s abundant daylight hours. And whether it’s the balmy weather or the fact that kids of all ages (and their teachers) are out of school during these vast stretches of sunshine, lots of people strike out on family vacations.

This summer’s travel trends indicate that the quest for family time outranks both relaxing and discovering new places. In fact, they report that nearly two-thirds of 2024’s summer travelers are taking trips to facilitate quality family time. Seems like the perfect time to grab a book that focuses on family dynamics, whether or not your own travel plans align with the trends.

But you don’t even need travel plans with the family sagas on this list. Whether you’re craving family time, missing your family, or enjoying your found family, the BIPOC family sagas on this list will dish up all the family drama you could ever dream of.

If there’s one thing family sagas are great for, it’s a heaping helping of all kinds of love, tears, tension, confusion, frustration, joy, and unpredictability. And where these BIPOC family sagas are concerned, there’s no shortage of characters (in every sense of the word) to be found. So make yourself comfortable and stay awhile because you might not be able to put these books down until you’re out of pages!

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo book cover

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

The members of the magical Marte family gather for a mysterious reason: Flor has invited them to a wake for herself, even though she’s still alive. Given that she possesses the power to predict the details of others’ deaths, this invitation is especially curious. As her sisters, niece, and daughter gather for this unusual event, the tensions and secrets between them start to surface. As if the magic sprinkled throughout the novel wasn’t enough on its own, the strong female characters and exploration of the relationship between the family’s roots in the Dominican Republic and their lives in the United States make this a thoughtful and engaging read.

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson book cover

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Black Cake is a fascinating read. The premise: upon Eleanor Bennett’s death, her grown children, Benny and Byron, learn that they have another sibling. Admittedly, they learn a whole lot more than that in the voice recording she left with them (along with a recipe for their family’s black cake). Thus begins the unraveling of the family’s tangled past — a past that impacts Benny and Byron (because: intergenerational trauma) and which they’ll need to reckon with in order to heal. Let’s just say there’s so much wrapped up in this family’s journey that it’s no wonder the book inspired its own miniseries less than two years after its publication.

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina book cover

Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina

A horror story (and an extremely well-written one at that) may not be the most obvious kind of family saga, but Indian Burial Ground fits the bill. When Noemi Broussard’s boyfriend is killed in a car accident, it understandably turns her life upside down. But when Louie, Noemi’s uncle, returns to the reservation for the first time since she was a child, it turns out something way worse than reckless drivers is plaguing the community. From creepy neighbors to disturbed friends, rumors of monsters reverberate across generations. If Noemi and Louie want to figure out what really happened, they’ll have to contend with both family and community traumas first.

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang book cover

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

The Chao family is no longer really operating as a family unit — Leo runs the family restaurant, his wife Winnie is living in a Buddhist sanctuary, and their three sons have scattered (or are trying to, anyway). Yet when all of them end up in town at the same time, Leo is found dead in the freezer, and it appears to be foul play. The trail that ensues expands beyond the dysfunctional family with its exploration of a wide array of issues that will easily allow readers to understand how the novel was influenced by The Brothers Karamazov.

Grown Women by Sarai Johnson book cover

Grown Women by Sarai Johnson

Corinna’s birth is the spark for her teenage mother, young grandmother, and somewhat cold great-grandmother to come together for once. It’s not an easy read — there’s addiction, abuse, and poverty (among other challenges) — but the women’s story is compelling. When the older three women determine to raise Corinna together, it’s unclear what that will look like. Nothing is expected in this complex and fascinating tale of a family of women determined to be there for their girl.

The Apology by Jimin Han book cover

The Apology by Jimin Han

I love a story narrated from beyond the grave, and The Apology doesn’t disappoint. Traversing continents and eras, narrator Hak Jeonga’s posthumous storytelling uncovers deep family secrets that stem from colonialism and the political rift between North and South Korea. Starting with a bus accident and the looming threat of a marriage that appears to have everything to do with a decades-old family secret, the novel has a sense of inevitability that drives it toward its final conclusion.

Las Madres by Esmeralda Santiago book cover

Las Madres by Esmeralda Santiago

Las Madres is about mothers and daughters as much as it’s about found family. Luz, Ada, and Shirley call themselves las madres to Marysol (Luz’s daughter) and Graciela (Ada and Shirley’s daughter). Luz was in a traumatic accident as a teenager and struggles to remember details of her life since then. When Marysol wants to find out more about her family’s past, the five women plan a trip to Puerto Rico so she can learn more about Luz’s life. As the novel unfolds and unanticipated challenges confront the travelers, the dual time-period narrative reveals the events lost to the past.

Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown book cover

Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown

Bringing your crush home to meet your family can often be nerve-wracking, but when Nickie Montrose brings Felix home to meet her grandmother, mother, and aunt, she has no idea how much it’ll freak her family out. That’s because they never told her about the curse that affects all the women in the family — a curse that causes the death of anyone a Montrose woman loves. Nickie’s actions act as the spark that causes generations of secrets to surface, revealing the truths that lie with the foundations of the curse, the family’s relationship with Hoodoo, and her grandmother’s past in New Orleans.

Let the Saga Continue!

You’ll find some amazing intergenerational family sagas on this list, or you might want to check out this list of generational sagas by Asian and Asian American writers.