If you liked
Books like The Good Lord Bird
by James McBride
The Good Lord Bird is James McBride's National Book Award winner — a twelve-year-old enslaved boy falls in with the abolitionist John Brown in 1856 Bleeding Kansas and is dressed as a girl named Onion through the 1859 Harpers Ferry attack. The Ethan Hawke Showtime series brought it a second readership. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
Jamesby Percival Everett
“James by Percival Everett 2024 review. A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim, in his own voice. The most important American novel of 2024 and the right Everett entry point.”
The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead
“The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 2016 review. Cora, a slave on a Georgia plantation, escapes north via an actual underground railroad, a literalized version of the metaphor. Pulitzer Prize 2017 and the National Book Award winner that defined the contemporary Black literary moment.”
Deacon King Kongby James McBride
“Deacon King Kong by James McBride 2020 review. An elderly deacon at a Brooklyn housing project shoots a local drug dealer in the face in September 1969. Oprah Book Club 2020 and the canonical contemporary American comic-literary novel.”
Belovedby Toni Morrison
“Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.”
Lincoln in the Bardoby George Saunders
“Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 2017 review. Abraham Lincoln's eleven-year-old son Willie dies and Lincoln returns to the Georgetown cemetery. The Bardo is populated by the cemetery's reluctant dead. Man Booker Prize 2017.”
Song of Solomonby Toni Morrison
“Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 1977 review. Macon "Milkman" Dead III, born into a comfortable Black family in 1930s Michigan, travels south to discover his ancestral history. Morrison's third novel and one of her two unquestioned masterpieces alongside Beloved.”
FAQ
Common questions about The Good Lord Bird read-alikes
- What is the closest match for The Good Lord Bird?
- James. Both contemporary American novels in conscious dialogue with the Mark Twain tradition; both sustain a first-person voice across hundreds of pages from inside a Black narrator that nineteenth-century American literary fiction did not allow to speak directly. McBride writes more comic and Everett writes sharper but the project is in the same family.
- I want more James McBride.
- Deacon King Kong (2020, the Brooklyn-projects ensemble) and The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (2023, the Pennsylvania-small-town ensemble) are the canonical late-career McBride. The Color of Water (1995, the memoir of his white Jewish mother) is the earlier essential work.
- I want another novel about American abolitionist history.
- The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead's speculative-historical Pulitzer winner) and Beloved (Toni Morrison's post-Emancipation novel) are the canonical contemporary picks. Lincoln in the Bardo handles the Civil War from inside the bereaved Union president's consciousness.
- I want a comic-literary historical novel.
- Lincoln in the Bardo (Saunders's 166-voice ensemble) is the closest structural cousin. James and Deacon King Kong are the closest tonal cousins.
The original