Book Recs For Those Who Loved Sinners

This past spring, Ryan Coogler's Sinners was the talk of movies, earning about $360 million at the box office (and counting!). To literature lovers who can't get enough of Sinners, here are some book recommendations that expand on some of the concepts depicted in the movie or will keep you equally as satisfied. 

You can't talk about Chicago culture without mentioning its deep history with blues music. Resulting from The Great Migration, many Black Mississippians brought their love of blues to Chicago, a motif that was prevalent throughout the movie. In both Chicago Blues by Wilbert Jones and Chicago Blues by David Whiteis, real-life accounts of blues artists are depicted, showcasing the music genre that has shaped Chicago culture to this day. 

In most movies about the Black American experience during the Jim Crow era, the threat of the Ku Klux Klan is one that cannot be ignored—Sinners being no different. In both Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff and P.Djèlí Clark's Ring Shout, Or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times Black characters still resist against the violence and threats that opposing forces throw at them.

LaTanya McQueen' southern gothic horror When the Reckoning Comes offers a compelling tale of what happens when the ghosts of history are not only never reckoned with but also turned into places of amusement for those who attempt to minimize its dark past. 

The presence of Native Americans had a brief, but extremely profound role in the movie that did not go unnoticed by those who are aware of the impact indigenous cultures have on American history. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones offers a deeper, more centralized narrative between indigenous culture and vampirism. 

Irish Americans have an extremely rich and complex history both before and after immigrating to the U.S. In Joseph O' Connor's Days Without End, a young Irish man leaves Ireland to escape from political and economic strife. Later going on to fight in both the Indian Wars and Civil War, this novel reflects how Irish immigrants, who have a history of being victims of oppression themselves, became entangled with the violence of American colonialism and oppression.