“What’s Mine and Yours” by Naima Coster is 2022 OMOB Selection

Maryland Humanities is pleased to announce the selection of What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster for the 2022 One Maryland One Book program. What’s Mine and Yours is a multigenerational saga featuring two North Carolina families. They collide in ways that neither is prepared for when Black students from the east side of the county are integrated into the predominantly white schools on the west side. Readers will follow these families over decades as they break apart and come back together. Parade called the novel “an intimate portrait of love, motherhood, class and race.”

What’s Mine and Yours was chosen by a committee of librarians, educators, authors, and bibliophiles in February from nearly 300 titles suggested last fall by readers across the state for the theme, “New Beginnings.” The Author Tour and other One Maryland One Book programming will occur in the fall. Maryland Humanities will announce details on the tour this summer.

“With What’s Mine and Yours, Naima Coster explores familial relationships with a clear sense of the world around her and the moment we live in,” says Lindsey Baker, Executive Director at Maryland Humanities. “The novel is riveting and thought-provoking, inviting readers into the lives of her complex, layered characters. I’m excited to hear and take part in conversations about this great book.”

Coster says: “I am thrilled that What’s Mine and Yours has been selected for One Maryland One Book 2022. My book is about characters who must remake their lives—and whose lives are remade—after tragedy, opportunity, love lost and gained. It’s a story that takes seriously both the difficulty and promise of ‘new beginnings’ as it follows two families whose paths intersect and diverge over twenty years,” she says. “I am honored that the book will find readers across the state of Maryland this year and that I will be able to join in the conversation. Thank you!”

About the Book

What’s Mine and Yours is a multigenerational saga featuring two North Carolina families who connect in ways that neither is prepared for. Jade is determined to protect her son, Gee, as he finds his way as an anxious, sensitive, young Black man. Lacey May refuses to see her half-Colombian daughters—Noelle, Margarita, and Diane—as anything other than white. Events reach a boiling point when an initiative is set in motion to bring Black students from the east side of the county to the predominantly white schools on the west side.

About the Author
Naima Coster is the author of two novels, What’s Mine and Yours, an instant New York Times bestseller, and her debut, Halsey Street, which was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Naima’s stories and essays have appeared in Elle, Time, Kweli, The New York Times, The Cut, The Sunday Times, Catapult, and elsewhere. In 2020, she received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honor.

Naima has taught writing for over a decade in community settings, youth programs, and universities. She currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She occasionally writes the newsletter, Bloom How You Must. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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Learn more about What's Mine and Yours and One Maryland One Book here.