If I asked an avid reader, on the spot, what their favorite book of all time is, they might struggle. I know I would. The favorite would depend on my mood, my current read, the person asking. It’s a deeply personal and hard question to answer. When asked to recommend her three favorite books, Ciera Burch, author of Something Kindred, had as hard a time with it as I would. But she persevered and picked, in my opinion, three fantastic books.
So, what are Ciera’s three favorite reads?
Answering the question “what is your favorite book?” has always felt like such a Herculean task whenever I’ve been asked. As someone whose love of books started long before I ever actually learned to read, it’s the best and worst question. I’m always torn. Should I offer up my favorite books from when I was a kid? My favorite books now? My favorite books of all time?
For this, I’m going to pick three of an endless number of books, starting with one that’s almost always top of mind.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
In the process of cleaning out her garage one day, my Mommom handed me my aunt’s old, weathered copy of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry when I was about 8 or 9 and I was immediately hooked. Despite all the books I’d read up the point and the fact that it was set in an era very different from the one I was growing in, it was the first book I’d ever read where I saw characters that reminded me of myself and my family.
Cassie Logan was the first smart, brave, Black girl I read about who had her own story rather than just playing a small role in someone else’s. Her family was loving and their community was close-knit and the emotion mired in the history of their family’s land blew me away as a kid…and still does, since I reread the whole series every few years.
My love for deep, emotional family dynamics began with Cassie and the Logan family as much as it did my own. There were so many moments while writing my YA, Something Kindred, and trying to describe my made up Southern town of Coldwater, Maryland that I found myself remembering being a kid again, fully immersed in reading about Cassie’s outdoor adventures in the red-brown dirt and her trips to Strawberry, Mississippi.
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Kindred is one of those books that forces you into the main character’s shoes and has you imagining what choices you’d make alongside them. At least, that much is true for me as a Black woman. Time travel is a fun concept but an especially fraught one if considered realistically for, well, most people.
Kindred shows exactly why.
I have so much to say about this book that I’d probably ramble on forever, which is exactly what I did to my best friend and college roommate, Molly, after I finished it for the first time. The layers! The historical comparison of the past and present (and past again, since the present of the book is actually the 1970s)! The racial and familial and generational dynamics!
Dana is a remarkable character whose (often limited) choices are as commendable as they are reprehensible or sympathetic or shocking to read. I was constantly doubting her, and yet I never doubted her. She is one of the most human characters I’ve ever read—human, as in containing all facets of humanity, fully fleshed out as if she were someone I could meet on a bus and not only in the pages of a book.
There are about a hundred reasons this book is finally, thankfully, deservedly considered a classic…but again, I won’t ramble, I promise.
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
When I was querying the initial draft of what eventually became Something Kindred, I used We Are Okay as a comp title. It was purely wishful thinking on my end, largely because it was the emotion of this book I was comparing—I wanted to write something that could make others feel even half as much as I did while reading this because this book meant so much to me.
I can only describe We Are Okay as quiet. As lonely and raw and painful and gorgeous and fragile. It fully captured and echoed my own emotions back to me while I was in a particular state of loneliness and somehow managed to make me feel less alone for a little over 200 pages. The sheer complexity and interweaving of grief and love and friendship burrowed itself into my mind and took up residence there in 2018 and has never left.
Something Kindred by Ciera Burch is available now in hardcover and e-book.
Vanessa Le author photo credit NT Lam. Featured image designed by Jon Negroni. Read more articles by Brianna Robinson here.
Brianna Robinson is a book publicist and Sarah Lawrence College alum. She lives in New York with too many books and two enthusiastic dachshunds. You can find her on twitter @blrobins2.
