As Pietrobon points out, before the Civil Rights Act, road-tripping for people of color was perilous. I would argue that the hazards persist to this day. For instance, in Gretchen Soren’s Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights and Candacy Taylor’s Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, the authors take a critical look at the dangers of the road for Black Americans. With this in mind, there are a ton of road novels that depart from the tradition of writers like Kerouac and Steinbeck. These contemporary road novels consider the ways a person’s body influences how they are able to move across the roadways. They also encourage readers to think differently about the road novel as an American genre. It’s summertime, and the road beckons. The U.S. is tentatively opening back up, but there is still a lot of fear around flying with COVID-19 out there. Because of this, a lot of people are considering going on road trips. Before you hit the road, take a look at these books that engage the road novel genre (even while some of them are memoirs and others are genre mash-ups). They’ll challenge you take a detour from Route 66 fantasies and think deeply about the asphalt arteries that link this country’s vital points to one another.
Fiction
Nonfiction
There’s one more book I have to mention, even though it’s specifically not a road novel. Mia Bay’s Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance is a powerful collection of essays exploring what it means to travel globally as a Black woman. If you’re craving more books about the road, here are some suggestions that should get you rolling on your readerly journey.
