Jewell Parker Rhodes Books in Order

Raised in the Louisiana bayou, Marie Laveau travels to New Orleans seeking her missing mother and answers about her visions. A voodoo doctor offers instruction, drawing her into ceremonies, manipulation, and the violence of a slaveholding city.

In 1921 Tulsa, aspiring magician Joe flees a lynch mob after a white woman's cry leads to a rape accusation. Mary must find the courage to clear him as racial violence threatens the prosperous Black community around them.

This guide teaches fiction writing with particular attention to African American authors. Exercises, journal prompts, and examples address character, plot, viewpoint, dialogue, and revision, alongside encouragement from established writers and resources for publishing and developing a writing practice.

Anna Douglass and German Jewish intellectual Ottilie Assing share love for Frederick Douglass while struggling with jealousy and competing ideas of fulfillment. The novel imagines their relationships, recovering the personal tensions behind the abolitionist's public life.

Designed for African American writers, this guide explores turning lived experience into nonfiction. Advice on voice, research, memory, and revision is accompanied by literary excerpts and insights from established authors about expressing identity and sustaining a writing practice.

Doctor Marie Levant leaves Chicago for New Orleans, drawn toward the legacy of her ancestor Marie Laveau. Discovering women of color being abused and turned undead, she confronts horrors that connect the city's slaveholding past with its present.

Jewell Parker Rhodes recalls the grandmother who raised her and four abandoned siblings despite poverty. Stories shared on the front porch offered comfort, wisdom, and a lasting sense of belonging, shaping how she faced both ordinary hardships and profound family upheaval.

New Orleans doctor Marie Levant investigates bloodless bodies whose spirits refuse to rest. Dreams warn her of an African vampire born from colonial oppression, and the threat becomes personal as it targets her family and other descendants of Marie Laveau.

Lanesha's ability to see spirits isolates her from classmates, though Mama Ya-Ya provides a loving home. When Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans and the levees fail, the girl must draw on her strengths to survive the flood.

Marie Levant arrives in the Louisiana town of DeLaire, where an elderly woman expects her to stop sickness and death. Mysterious corpses and reluctant witnesses complicate her investigation as an approaching hurricane threatens the region with further destruction.

Ten-year-old Sugar works on a Mississippi plantation after emancipation and dreams of a wider world. When Chinese laborers arrive, her new friendships challenge local suspicions and give her a chance to bridge divisions within the plantation community.

During a summer with her grandmother, city girl Maddy discovers the beauty and possible magic of the bayou. Her family's spiritual legacy takes on new urgency when an oil leak threatens the waters and creatures she has come to love.

Fifth-grader Deja explores the history of the vanished Twin Towers with friends Ben and Sabeen. Classroom lessons lead to questions about community and identity, while her father's anger at the subject suggests a connection she does not yet understand.

After police mistake his toy gun for a weapon, twelve-year-old Jerome is killed and watches his grieving community as a ghost. Encounters with Emmett Till and the officer's daughter help him explore the racism behind his death.

Bullied and unjustly arrested at his mostly white prep school, Donte turns to fencing under a former Olympian's guidance. Training to challenge his tormentor gives him a way to confront the racism that shapes his treatment.

Driving his family three thousand miles toward Los Angeles, Nate reflects on the marriage and decisions that brought him there. As his wife and daughters sleep, doubts about leaving his mother and losing his sense of self shadow their promised fresh start.

Haunted by the fire that killed her parents, Addy joins a wilderness program with five other Black city children. When a forest fire threatens their camp, she must combine new survival skills with courage to help her friends escape.

Zane follows a treasure map into Manhattan with friends Kiko and Jack and his dog. A sailor’s knowledge of hidden Black history offers guidance, but a rival skateboard crew and uncertain loyalties make the search for buried gold increasingly dangerous.

In 1889, Will and his father leave Texas to seek land in the Oklahoma rush. Their hopes for ownership and freedom face rough terrain, bandits, and racism, while befriending a mysterious Union soldier brings further danger along the way.