The Native American story is painfully alive in an impressive second novel that moves from 19th-century massacres to present-day Oakland

The Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange’s astonishing 2018 debut novel, There There , offered a kaleido­scopic portrait of urban Native American identity. Composed of an all-Native cast, it ruminated on power, storytelling, dispossession, erasure and historical memory. The novel’s off-the-wall structure placed its central event – a mass shooting at an Oakland powwow – at the book’s end, leaving its aftermath largely unattended.

Now comes an emotionally incandescent and structurally riveting second novel, Wandering Stars. A companion to There There, it brings news about Orvil Red Feather, who was hit by a bullet while dancing at the event. It tells, too, the story of Orvil’s younger brothers Loother and Lony; their great-aunt Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, in whose care they have been since losing their drug-addicted mother to suicide; and Jacquie Red Feather, Opal’s half-sister and the boys’ estranged “real grandma”, a recovering alcoholic who is living “her sobriety, moment by moment, step by step, day by day”. The novel’s first sections, however, belong not to these people but to their ancestors, beginning with Jude Star, a survivor of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre.

The singer announced her next record on Instagram with a photo of herself riding a horse and wearing red, white and blue

The countdown to Beyoncé’s next album, Act II, is officially on, marked by the superstar herself on Instagram. In a post that doubled as the album art drop, Beyoncé revealed an image of herself riding a white horse, holding an American flag, decked out in red, white and blue.

“This album has been over five years in the making,” wrote Beyoncé in the accompanying caption. “It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed … and it was very clear that I wasn’t.” In 2016, the singer faced backlash from the mainstream country community after releasing a country song.

Engineers need to be sensitive to how exclusion occurs or they risk making health inequity worse, say Prof Steven Johnson and Prof Jonathan Ensor

The independent review on equity in medical devices once again highlights the multiple ways in which medical technology development can lead to solutions whereby the benefits are distributed inequitably across society, or can further exacerbate health inequalities ( UK report reveals bias within medical tools and devices, 11 March ). While the report is welcome, the challenge facing scientists and engineers is how to innovate medical devices differently to respond to longstanding societal biases and inequalities.

This means doing two things. First, it is essential to move beyond a superficial engagement with patients. As the report emphasises, technology development cannot be based only on the expertise of engineers or the knowledge of healthcare professionals. It needs to respond to the different social, cultural and health experiences of diverse groups of people. To be effective, this means recognising differences and actively supporting marginalised groups to represent themselves.

Five other former officers who admitted to subjecting two Black men to numerous acts of racist torture are due to be sentenced

A former Mississippi sheriff’s deputy was sentenced on Tuesday to about 20 years in prison for his part in torturing two Black men last year.

Hunter Elward was sentenced by US district judge Tom Lee, who handed down a 241-month sentence. Lee is also due to sentence five other former law enforcement officers who admitted to subjecting Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to numerous acts of racist torture.

Little action has been taken on issue at one of UK’s most notorious jails, Independent Monitoring Board says

Black prisoners are disproportionately subjected to the use of force inside one of Britain’s most notorious jails, a report has found.

The annual report of the Independent Monitoring Board, a statutory body that monitors the treatment of prisoners, found that from June 2022 to May 2023, black prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs were subjected to 43% of use-of-force incidents although they formed just 27% of the prison population.

She is the world’s most listened-to French-speaking artist – but in France, hostility towards her goes beyond the far right

Since the start of her career, Aya Nakamura has faced setbacks, discrimination and harassment every step of the way. Nakamura is a music superstar. She is the most-listened -to French-speaking artist in the world, and the only woman to feature in the country’s top 20 best-selling albums of 2023. Her 2018 hit Djadja has reached almost 1bn listens on YouTube, and in 2021 her second album surpassed 1bn streams on Spotify. When she announced two concerts at the legendary Bercy arena in Paris last year, tickets sold out in 15 minutes – unprecedented for a French-speaking artist.

Yet from shows where presenters struggle to pronounce her name to public debate about the unorthodox way she uses the French language , the French-Malian singer can, it seems, never be judged solely on her music.

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

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After scapegoating minorities and migrants, the Chega party appears poised to play a prominent role

For years, Evalina Dias has diligently worked to combat racism in Portugal. But just how much remains to be done was brought into sharp relief last Sunday, she says, as the far-right Chega party – led by a politician whose views have been described by one opponent as “often xenophobic, racist” – catapulted into the country’s top echelons of power.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Dias, a board member with Djass, Portugal’s Association of African Descendants. “We had no idea that there were so many racists in Portugal. It’s like they were hidden.”