7 must read books on black history

Winner of the 1977 Newbery Medal, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is a novel about life in southern Mississippi during the Great Depression and the Jim Crow era. It’s heartbreaking and illuminating to watch 9-year old Cassie Logan learn that racial terror is just the way of life she must become accustomed to in order to survive.

But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies

Akasha Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith

This book is essential reading if you want to understand some of the foundations of Black feminist scholarship. With contributions from Alice Walker, Michelle Wallace, and the Combahee River Collective, this anthology is critical to examining the ways anti-blackness and gender discrimination combine to shape the experiences of black women.

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi

In this stunning debut by Ghanian-American novelist Yaa Gyasi, readers meet the descendant of an Asante woman named Maame through her two daughters, separated half-sisters. One sister, Effia marries the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, where her sister Esi is tortured and held captive in the slave dungeons right below her. Homegoing follows these two families, separated by the brutality and complexities of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

I'm Telling the Truth but I'm Lying

Bassey Ikpi

In this remarkable collection of memoir in essays, Nigerian-American immigrant and former slam poet, Bassey Ikpi explores her life through her experiences with mental illness and Bipolar II Disorder. Just as the title says, I’m Telling The Truth But I’m Lying is an exercise in radical honesty, while also navigating the ways our minds inform our perspectives.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Edwidge Danticat

Published when she was only 25, Breath, Eyes, Memory is Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat's first novel. The book’s main character, Sophie, is raised by her aunt in Haiti and is the product of a violent rape. When Sophie turns 12, she’s suddenly ripped from her life in the village, and sent to Brooklyn to live with her mother. Breath, Eyes, Memory explores Sophie’s complicated relationship with her mother, and her struggles to the break cycle of intergenerational trauma.

How We Fight for Our Lives

Saeed Jones

Winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, Saeed Jones’s beautiful memoir tells how he — as a young, black, gay man from the South — had to fight to claim his own identity. Exploring complicated relationships with his family, friends, and lovers, Jones paints a compelling portrait of the beauty of queerness, race, love, and self-actualization.

The New Jim Crow

Michelle Alexander

Often called "the Bible” of criminal justice reform, Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book about how the U.S. has decimated communities of color through mass incarceration fueled countless social movements protesting this modern day form of slavery. The book is a crucial read if you want to understand the link between slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and racism in the United States.