Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Michelle Coles, winner of the 2022 Grateful American Book Prize for her debut novel, Black Was the Ink:

Homegoing: A Novel by Yaa Gyasi. “Thanks to [the author’s] instinctive storytelling gifts, [Homegoing] leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries,” says the New York Times of this 2016 bestseller. “By its conclusion, the characters’ tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight.”

Patriotic Picks is a monthly feature in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.