Recommendations
Books Like Paradise by Toni Morrison
For readers of the all-Black Oklahoma community novel
If you loved Paradise — the all-Black town of Ruby, the attack on the Convent, and Morrison's meditation on who gets to define a perfect community — these books share the same theological seriousness, the same interest in the ideal community and its inevitable contradictions, and the same engagement with African American history.
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Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
The first part of the trilogy — the essential predecessor; Sethe's slavery past and the community of 124 Bluestone Road is the companion to Ruby's founding and its consequences.
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Buy on AmazonJazz
by Toni Morrison
The second part of the trilogy — Harlem 1926; the structural middle that connects the slavery past of Beloved to the post-Reconstruction community of Paradise; the companion that completes the panorama.
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Buy on AmazonSong of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's breakthrough novel — the companion in her fiction about African American communities and the tension between the ancestral past and the present; the Seven Days and their violence are the companion to Ruby's violent attempt to maintain its perfection.
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Buy on AmazonThe Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Walker's Pulitzer-winning novel — the companion in African American women's fiction about violence against women, community, and healing; Celie's letters are the companion to the Convent women's histories of damage and recovery.
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Buy on AmazonInvisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Ellison's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in African American fiction about the ideal community and the ideology of Black separatism; the Brotherhood and the narrator's disillusionment are the companion to Ruby's founding ideology and its consequences.
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Buy on AmazonHousekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson
Robinson's debut novel — the companion in literary fiction about women who refuse to be defined by their communities' expectations; Ruth and Sylvie's refusal of the social script is the companion to the Convent women's refusal of what Ruby expects.
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Buy on AmazonThe Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin's science fiction masterpiece about an anarchist utopia — the companion in American fiction about the ideal community and its inevitable contradictions; where Morrison's Paradise examines a Black American utopia, Le Guin examines an anarchist utopia, and both find the same tensions.
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Buy on AmazonGilead
by Marilynne Robinson
Robinson's Pulitzer-winning novel — John Ames's letter to his young son in Gilead, Iowa; the companion in American fiction about the ideal religious community and what it excludes; John Ames's Gilead and Ruby's founding families share the same impulse toward a perfection that requires drawing boundaries.
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