Edited by Corona Zhang
So you’ve watched Youtube videos by Black creators. You watched TV shows (Insecure, Dear White People...) and masterful movies like The Hate U Give, BlacKkKlansman, 13th, Moonlight, Fences, Sorry to Bother You, 12 Years a Slave….
Now what?
Pull yourself away from the screen and bring your eyes to gaze upon the works of Black authors, which is to witness some of the most gripping, beautiful, painful, transformative stories written. Period. Drink these words slowly and gasp, laugh, tumble, plummet, float, shatter, and burn.
This is a short list, just a taste.
This is required reading.
Autobiography:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
“Kendi dissects why in a society where so few people consider themselves to be racist the divisions and inequalities of racism remain so prevalent. How to Be an Antiracist punctures the myths of a post-racial America, examining what racism really is—and what we should do about it.”—Time
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone)
Novels:
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize Winning Author
“You can't go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they're transcendent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them."--Barack Obama
Homecoming by Yaa Gyasi
Winner of the PEN/ Hemingway Award, Winner of the NBCC's John Leonard Award, Shortlisted for the British Book Award - Debut of the Year, A New York Times Notable Book, A Washington Post Notable Book
“Thanks to Ms. Gyasi’s instinctive storytelling gifts, the book leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries. . . . By its conclusion, the characters’ tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight.” —The New York Times
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
“Real Life is one of the finest fiction debuts I've read in the last decade—elegant and brutal, handled by an author whose attention to the heart is unlike any other's. A magnificent novel.”
—Esmé Weijun Wang
Fantasy:
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy Book 1) by Marlon James
Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize, Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award
"Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth Trilogy, Book 1 by N.K. Jemisin
The first in the three-time Hugo award-winning Broken Earth Trilogy
"N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy is the best new speculative fiction I've read in a long time . . . Intricate [and] captivating."―Literary Hub
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
“You will be changed. You will be ready to rise up and reclaim your own magic!” ―New York Times-bestselling author Dhonielle Clayton
Feminist Thought:
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
“[Sister Outsider is] another indication of the depth of analysis that black women writers are contributing to feminist thought.”—Barbara Christian, PhD, author of Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis
A powerful study of the women's movement in the U.S. from abolitionist days to the present that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders.
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
"With the publication of Black Feminist Thought, black feminism has moved to a new level. Her work sets a standard for the discussion of black women's lives, experiences, and thought that demands rigorous attention to the complexity of these experiences and an exploration of a multiplicity of responses." -- Women's Review of Books
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