About the Book
'What's Mine and Yours is a book about parents who try and fail and then try again. An extraordinary cast of characters, nuanced and full of insight. Read this book.' -ANGIE CRUZ, author of Dominicana
In the Piedmont of North Carolina, two families' paths become unexpectedly intertwined over twenty years. Jade and Lacey May are two mothers determined to give their children the opportunities they never had. After a harrowing loss, Jade wants to hand down the tools her son, Gee, will need to survive in America as a sensitive young Black man.
Meanwhile, Lacey May, having left the husband she loves, strives to protect her three half-Latina daughters from their charming father's influence. When a county initiative draws students from the largely Black east side of town into a predominantly white high school on the west, each mother stands on different sides of the integration debate. Gee meets Lacey May's daughter Noelle during the school play, and their families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers make choices that will haunt them for decades to come.
What's Mine and Yours is an expansive yet intimate multigenerational tapestry of motherhood, identity, and the legacies we inherit. It explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them apart and how they come back together.
About the Author :
Naima Coster lives in Brooklyn. She has an MA in English from Fordham University and an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Guernica and The Sunday Times, among others. She was awarded the Brooklyn Non-Fiction Prize from the Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival for her personal essay "Remembering When Brooklyn Was Mine" in The New York Times. Her debut Halsey Street was a Finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.
Review :
What's Mine And Yours dips into many genres - part coming-of-age novel, part family saga, part social commentary, it doesn't shy away from addressing racial tension, the hopelessness of addiction and how sometimes the choices parents make to better their kids' lives end up doing the opposite.
With clear focus, Coster looks at race, class and family in an original, gripping and compassionate way... A heart-wrenching generous story about deep love and passion
What's Mine and Yours is a book about parents who try and fail and then try again. An extraordinary cast of characters, nuanced and full of insight. It's about children who hold their loved ones accountable. It reveals in absolutely engrossing and tension-filled prose how a tragedy haunts a family. Coster is a master storyteller through and through. Read this book.
At its heart, What's Mine and Yours is a coming-of-age story - one that, in its foreground, examines the unraveling of marriages, complexities of siblinghood and reckonings with parents. Beneath it all lie tragedy and myriad loves that are tender and rich and fraught.
A deeply layered but lightly crafted look at what it means to be a family. If you loved The Vanishing Half, you'll love What's Mine And Yours.
Naima Coster is definitely a writer to watch. Her clear-eyed writing interrogates race, class, and family in a refreshing and thoroughly engaging way.
A multi-generational story about class, motherhood and race . . . written with such passion, it would make a great TV series
The novel discusses how the actions of a parent can permanently impact a child, exploring race, class and identity over a 20-year period.
Naima Coster's What's Mine and Yours moves from moment to moment of startling grace. This expansive, generous novel tackles big themes - systemic racism, the reverberations of gun violence, class inequity - but it always feels thrillingly personal. Multiple times, it moved me to tears. An exquisite and vital portrait of family, place, and the bonds that transform our lives, What's Mine and Yours is more than a beautiful read - it's an essential one, destined to be talked about for years to come as a book that saw the world and spoke the truth with tenderness, wisdom, and love.
What's Mine And Yours is a powerful and timely family saga about the complex webs forged by love and tragedy - gripping, generous, and deeply felt. It's a moving examination of what we inherit, and what it means to love both wholeheartedly and imperfectly. This is a book, in other words, for anyone who's ever had a family.
What's Mine and Yours explodes with love, passion, and their piercing aftermath. Naima Coster renders two unforgettable families, their labyrinthine bonds and heartaches, with propulsive and startling clarity. This is a novel of scorching beauty.
Naima Coster weaves a beautiful tapestry of voices together in What's Mine and Yours. This is a sprawling, moving narrative about the messiness of love and family, mothering, race, and community. Here we follow two families connected by place and circumstance as they try to free themselves of those bonds. The result? Rich, complex individual stories that merge to form a satisfying, startling end.
Moving fluidly between perspectives and time, What's Mine and Yours is a mesmerizing story of two families brought together through choice and circumstance in one North Carolina town. Naima Coster is a storyteller of astounding clarity and compassion.
