Naima Coster – författare

'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.

'Take What You Can is so brilliantly, unbelievably good I have a burning in my heart from gulping it down too fast. It is somehow both taut and expansive-a literary feat I don't understand-and it's about the pleasure, grief, and devotion of daughters, mothers, lovers, wives. But mostly it's about the coming together and coming apart of a singular epic friendship between two women. Love is utterly bewildering, and nobody writes about it better than Naima Coster' Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and WreckVal and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other, bonding as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now, they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. And when Milly suggests Val move to New York to raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it's a resounding yes. However, Val and Milly are no longer the girls they once were. Milly is a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, and Val, is a brilliant journalist, struggling to write her first book and fit into her old friend's new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they've grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to a rift that began all those years ago in France. What they've long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood..."A magnificent book of emotional precision and startling insight, as awake to beauty and light as it is unafraid of the shadows, Take What You Can had me spellbound as I tore through it' Megha Majumdar, National Book Award finalist for A Guardian and a Thief and bestselling author of A Burning'Long after reading the last page of Naima Coster's latest exploration of love, I still feel Milly and Val pulsing through my soul. Their story of a shaky friendship amid the disorienting chaos of new motherhood made me feel seen, understood, and literally breathless, gasping at the precise, sophisticated ways these women know how to cut each other, then doctor the wounds. Take What You Can is the kind of novel you'll be hungry to share with your own friends, debating who's right, who's wrong, and who could use a hug the most' Dawnie Walton, Women's Prize longlisted author of The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

'Take What You Can is so brilliantly, unbelievably good I have a burning in my heart from gulping it down too fast. It is somehow both taut and expansive-a literary feat I don't understand-and it's about the pleasure, grief, and devotion of daughters, mothers, lovers, wives. But mostly it's about the coming together and coming apart of a singular epic friendship between two women. Love is utterly bewildering, and nobody writes about it better than Naima Coster' Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and WreckVal and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other, bonding as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now, they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. And when Milly suggests Val move to New York to raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it's a resounding yes. However, Val and Milly are no longer the girls they once were. Milly is a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, and Val, is a brilliant journalist, struggling to write her first book and fit into her old friend's new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they've grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to a rift that began all those years ago in France. What they've long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood..."A magnificent book of emotional precision and startling insight, as awake to beauty and light as it is unafraid of the shadows, Take What You Can had me spellbound as I tore through it' Megha Majumdar, National Book Award finalist for A Guardian and a Thief and bestselling author of A Burning'Long after reading the last page of Naima Coster's latest exploration of love, I still feel Milly and Val pulsing through my soul. Their story of a shaky friendship amid the disorienting chaos of new motherhood made me feel seen, understood, and literally breathless, gasping at the precise, sophisticated ways these women know how to cut each other, then doctor the wounds. Take What You Can is the kind of novel you'll be hungry to share with your own friends, debating who's right, who's wrong, and who could use a hug the most' Dawnie Walton, Women's Prize longlisted author of The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy. Even her mother, Mirella, has abandoned the family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic. That took courage. It’s also unforgivable.When Penelope moves into the attic apartment of the affluent Harpers, she thinks she’s found a semblance of family—and maybe even love. But her world is upended again when she receives a postcard from Mirella asking for reconciliation. As old wounds are reopened, and secrets revealed, a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins.An engrossing debut, Halsey Street shifts between the perspectives of these two captivating, troubled women. Mirella has one last chance to win back the heart of the daughter she’d lost long before leaving New York, and for Penelope, it’s time to break free of the hold of the past and start navigating her own life.