A 2024 National Book Foundation Science + Literature Selection
“DIGGING STARS spans generations and continents to tell the intensely personal story of Athandwa, an astrophysicist navigating grief, mental health challenges, and the politics of practicing science. Through a vivid cast of characters, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma asks fundamental questions about the scientific enterprise and eschews simple answers, instead revealing an underlying complexity, deeply entwined with the social context in which science is practiced. Athandwa’s sharp wit and love of the night sky suffuses the novel with a sense of wonder.”
“An utterly remarkable novel of real ambition and heft by a truly significant young writer. ”
Blending drama and satire while examining the complexities of colonialism, racism, and what it means to be American, Digging Stars probes the emotional universes of love, friendship, family, and nationhood.
With admission to The Program, an elite interdisciplinary graduate cohort at the forefront of astronomy and technology, Rosa’s dreams are finally within reach. Her research into the cosmos follows in the footsteps of her astronomer father’s revolutionary work in Bantu geometries and Indigenous astronomies. A bona fide genius, he transformed the scientific landscape by fusing the best of Western and Indigenous scientific thought. Yet since his death during her childhood, Rosa has been plagued by anxiety attacks she dubs “The Terrors”—and by unresolved questions about her father’s life. Who is his mysterious friend Mr. C? Who was her father, really?
Ambitious, hungry for success, and determined to soar, Rosa joins the ranks of America’s smartest. Her cohort of talented Fellows includes Shaniqua, her roommate, who is analyzing melanin molecules and their capacity to conduct electricity; Richard, an expert in quantum mechanics; Mausi, studying Indigenous American scientific thought; and Péralte, Rosa’s estranged stepbrother whose obsessive videogaming has inspired him to become a programmer. Her classmates challenge Rosa’s understanding of identity, personhood, the ethics of technology, and, most painfully, her adulation of her father, whose legacy is more complicated than it appears.
Digging Stars is a paean to the cosmos and a celebration of the democratic spirit of knowledge. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s characters explode the rigid matrices of the academy to prove that science, art, technology, and history are all planets orbiting the same sun.
“Tshuma’s novel is cerebral yet passionate, a heady stew of science, family drama, and political intrigue.”
“Excellent…Tshuma is nuanced yet explosive as she explores the intersection of science, identity and grief. The novel brims with insights about astronomy, technology and Indigenous folklore, and it thoughtfully questions how those ideas interact with race and heritage. Additionally, every description of space, science and math is rendered in moving prose that is both figuratively and emotionally charged.”
“Sumptuous, propulsive, and radiant. Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is unafraid to scale the stars. What a liberating thrill to read this book!”
“How to write a deeply felt, vividly imagined page-turner about Afro-futurism, astronomy, and astrobiology? Ask Novuyo Rosa Tshuma. DIGGING STARS is vital, ambitious, and reaches high as the cosmos that inspire its characters’ lives and journeys. Pulsing with energy and mystery, this is a novel you won’t soon forget.”
“DIGGING STARS is an extraordinarily unique portrait. The real stars of this canny undoing of the hubris of settler futurism are Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s disarmingly brilliant words.”
“Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s virtuosic, word-drunk sentences cast bridges across the abysses of history and the gaps between the stars. In DIGGING STARS, she chronicles a family’s fractures and a young woman’s determination to conquer the terrors of both outer and inner space. This is a brave and moving book.”
“A smart, incisive novel that blends a gripping coming-of-age story with a poignant story about loss, all the while asking us to consider: What compromises are we willing to make to achieve our highest ambitions and how much do we owe our own history?”