In Jason Mott’s People Like Us: A Novel, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world scarred by gun violence. One is on a global book tour in the wake of a big prize win; the other is to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. As their storylines merge, People Like Us turns wickedly funny and achingly sad. When Zelu, the lead character in Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author: A Novel, is fired from her job and receives yet another rejection from a publisher, she decides to write something just for herself. But her sci-fi story about a war of androids and AI unexpectedly sets her on a journey that will change the future of humanity and the robots that come next.
Buy People Like Us: A Novel – Mott
Buy Death of the Author: A Novel – Okorafor
JASON MOTT’s poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary journals, and he has published five novels. His first, The Returned, was a New York Times bestseller and turned into a TV series that ran for two seasons; his fourth, Hell of a Book, received the National Book Award for Fiction in 2021. He has a BFA in fiction and an MFA in poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. People Like Us (Dutton) is his latest novel.
