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50 great articles and essays by black authors and writers, james baldwin, notes of a native son, stranger in the village, a talk to teachers, 15 more essays by james baldwin, zadie smith, the secret history of black england, 15 more essays by zadie smith, toni morrison, nobel lecture, rediscovering black history, the site of memory, 10 more essays by toni morrison, bad feminist, tragedy. call. compassion. response., a place where we are everything, 10 more essays by roxane gay, malcolm gladwell, the naked face, black like them, six degrees of lois weisberg, 25 more essays by malcolm gladwell, john mcwhorter, antiracism, our flawed new religion, english is not normal, the world’s most efficient languages, 15 more essays by john mcwhorter, have i even told you yet about the courts i’ve loved, how do we change america by keeanga-yamahtta taylor, barack x by jelani cobb, magic actions by tobi haslett, 75 more essays about politics, walking while black, walking while black by garnette cadogan, black men and public spaces by brent staples, twelve minutes and a life by mitchell s. jackson, ‘the way to survive it was to make a’s’ by mosi secret, putting myself together by jamaica kincaid, 50 more essays about growing up, see also…, 150 great articles and essays.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

The case for reparations, the first white president, letter to my son, 10 more essays by ta-nehisi coates, nicole hannah-jones, america wasn’t a democracy, until black americans made it one, the resegregation of jefferson county, a prescription for more black doctors, choosing a school for my daughter, samantha irby, if every day is a rainy day, what am i saving for, the worst friend date i ever had, my bachelorette application, colson whitehead, the year of living postracially, lost and found, kiese laymon, how to slowly kill yourself and others in america, "our kind of ridiculous, 5 more essays by kiese laymon, ibram x. kendi, the american nightmare, who gets to be afraid in america, phoebe robinson, being a boss, how to be single, emily bernard, adoption has been a journey, why i forgave my father's mistress, black american motherhood, thirteen ways of looking at a black man by henry louis gates, my black privilege by thomas chatterton williams, my mustache, my self by wesley morris.

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Our Favorite Essays by Black Writers About Race and Identity

Books & Culture

A personal and critical lens to blackness in america from our archives.

It’s fitting that two of the first three essays in this roundup are centered on examining the Black American experience as one of horror. In a year when radical right-wing activists are truly leaning in, we’ve already seen record numbers of anti-LGBTQ legislation, the very real possibility of the end of Roe v. Wade, and more fervent redlining measures to keep Black people (and other marginalized communities) from voting. Gun violence is at an all time high, in particular mass shootings.

Since the success of Jordan Peele’s runaway hit film Get Out , there has been a steady rise in films depicting the Black American experience for the fraught, nuanced, dangerous life that it can be. This narrative isn’t entirely new, but this is the first time these films have gained critical acclaim and commercial attention. The reason is simple. Whatever the cause—social media, an increasingly diverse population—America can’t run from itself anymore. Our entertainment is finally asking the question that Black people have been asking for generations: In America, who is the real boogeyman?

Naturally, the discourse and critical analyses must follow suit. But it doesn’t stop there: the essays on this list span far and wide when it comes to subject matter, critical lens, and personal narrative. There are essays about Black friendship, the radical nature of Black people taking rest, and the affirmation of Black women writing for themselves, telling their own stories. Icons like Michelle Obama, Toni Morrison, and Gayle Jones get a deep dive, and we learn that we should always have been listening to Octavia Butler. This Juneteenth, I hope you’re taking a moment to reflect, on America’s troubled legacy, and to celebrate the ways that Black people continue to thrive.

Modern Horror Is the Perfect Genre for Capturing the Black Experience

Cree Myles writes about the contemporary Black creators rewriting the horror genre and growing the canon:

“Racism is a horror and should be explored as such. White folks have made it clear that they don’t think that’s true. Someone else needs to tell the story.”

Modern Narratives of Black Love and Friendship Are Centering Iconic Trios

Darise Jeanbaptiste writes about how Insecure and Nobody’s Magic illustrate the intricacy of evolving Black relationships:

“The power of the triptych is that it offers three experiences in addition to the fourth, which emerges when all three are viewed or read together.”

I Was Surrounded by “Final Girls” in School, Knowing I’d Never Be One

Whitney Washington writes that the erasure of Black women in slasher films has larger implications about race in America:

“Long before the realities of American life, it was slasher movies that taught me how invisible, ignored, and ultimately expendable Black women are. There was no list of rules long enough to keep me safe from the insidiousness of white supremacy… More than anything, slasher movies showed me that my role was to always be a supporting character, risking my life to be the voice of reason ensuring that the white girl makes it to the finish line.”

“Palmares” Is An Example of What Grows When Black Women Choose Silence

Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies , writes that Gayl Jones’ decades-long absence from public life illuminates the power of restorative quiet:

“These women’s silences should not be interpreted as a lack of understanding or awareness, but rather as an abundance of both, most especially the knowledge of what to keep close to the vest, and the implications for failing to do so. They know better than to explain themselves, their powers and their origins, their beliefs and reasons, their magic. These women are silent not because they don’t know anything. They are silent because they know better.”

Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” Showed Me How Race and Gender Are Intertwined

For the 50th anniversary of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye , Koritha Mitchell writes how the novel taught her that being a Black woman is more than just Blackness or womanhood:

“I didn’t have the gift of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of ‘intersectionality,’ but The Bluest Eye revealed how, in my presence, racism and sexism would always collide to produce negative experiences that others could dodge. It was not simply being Black or being dark-skinned that mattered; it was being those things while also being female.”

The Delicate Balancing Act of Black Women’s Memoir

Koritha Mitchell writes about how Michelle Obama’s Becoming illustrates larger tensions for Black women writing about themselves:

“In other words, when Black women remain enigmas while seeming to share so much, they create proxies at a distance from their psychic and spiritual realities because they are so rarely safe in public. Despite the release of her memoir, audiences will never be privy to who Michelle Obama actually knows herself to be, and that is more than appropriate.”

50 Years Later, the Demands of “The Black Manifesto” Are Still Unmet

Carla Bell writes about James Forman’s famous 1969 address, The Black Manifesto , and its contemporary resonances:

“But the Manifesto is as vital a roadmap in our marches and protests today as the day it was first delivered. We, black people in America, remain compelled by the power and purpose of The Black Manifesto, and we continue to demand our full rights as a people of this decadent society.”

You Should Have Been Listening to Octavia Butler This Whole Time

Alicia A. Wallace writes that Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower isn’t just a prescient dystopia—it’s a monument to the wisdom of Black women and girls:

Through her protagonist Lauren Olamina, Butler has been telling the world for decades that it was not going to last in its capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic form for much longer. She showed us the way injustice would cause the earth to burn, and the importance of community building for survival and revolution. Through Parable of the Sowe r, we had a better future in our hands, but we did not listen.

The Book You Need to Fully Understand How Racism Operates in America

Darryl Robertson writes about Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning and its examination of the history of overt and covert bigotry:

“While How to Be an Antiracist is an informative and necessary read, it is his National Book Award-winning, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America that deserves extra attention. If we want to uproot the current racist system, it’s mandatory that we understand how racism was constructed. Stamped does just that.”

I Reject the Imaginary White Man Judging My Work

Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts turns to Black writers as inspiration for resisting white expectations:

“…it doesn’t only matter that I’m a Black woman telling my story. What matters is the lens through which I’m telling it. And sometimes, many times, that lens, if we’re not careful, can be tainted by the ever-present consciousness of Whiteness as the default.”

Toni Morrison Gave My Own Story Back to Me

The incomparable literary powerhouse showed Brandon Taylor how to stop letting white people dictate the shape of his narrative:

“That’s the magic of Toni Morrison. Once you read her, the world is never the same. It’s deeper, brighter, darker, more beautiful and terrible than you could ever imagine. Her work opens the world and ushers you out into it. She resurfaced the very texture and nature of my imagination and what I could conceive of as possible for writing and for art, for life.”

Art Must Engage With Black Vitality, Not Just Black Pain

Jennifer Baker writes that books like The Fire This Time give depth and nuance to a reflection of Blackness in America:

“These essays provided a deeper connection because Black pain was part of the story; Black identity, self-recognition, our own awareness brokered every page. Black pain was not the sole criterion for the anthology’s existence.”

When Black Characters Wear White Masks

Jennifer Baker writes that whiteface in literature isn’t a disavowal of Blackness, but a commentary on privilege:

“Whiteface stories interrogate the mentality that it’s better to be white while examining how societal gains as well as societal “norms” inflict this way of thinking on Black people. Being white isn’t better, but, for some of these characters, it seems a hell of a lot easier, or at least preferable to dealing with racism.”

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14 influential essays from Black writers on America's problems with race

• Business leaders are calling for people to reflect on civil rights this Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
• Black literary experts shared their top nonfiction essay and article picks on race. 
• The list includes "A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin.

For many, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a time of reflection on the life of one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders. It's also an important time for people who support racial justice to educate themselves on the experiences of Black people in America. 

Business leaders like TIAA CEO Thasunda Duckett Brown and others are encouraging people to reflect on King's life's work, and one way to do that is to read his essays and the work of others dedicated to the same mission he had: racial equity. 

Insider asked Black literary and historical experts to share their favorite works of journalism on race by Black authors. Here are the top pieces they recommended everyone read to better understand the quest for Black liberation in America:

An earlier version of this article was published on June 14, 2020.

"Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" and "The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States" by Ida B. Wells

In 1892, investigative journalist, activist, and NAACP founding member Ida B. Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." Three years later, she followed up with more research and detail in "The Red Record." 

Shirley Moody-Turner, associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Penn State University recommended everyone read these two texts, saying they hold "many parallels to our own moment."  

"In these two pamphlets, Wells exposes the pervasive use of lynching and white mob violence against African American men and women. She discredits the myths used by white mobs to justify the killing of African Americans and exposes Northern and international audiences to the growing racial violence and terror perpetrated against Black people in the South in the years following the Civil War," Moody-Turner told Business Insider. 

Read  "Southern Horrors" here and "The Red Record" here >>

"On Juneteenth" by Annette Gordon-Reed

In this collection of essays, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed combines memoir and history to help readers understand the complexities out of which Juneteenth was born. She also argues how racial and ethnic hierarchies remain in society today, said Moody-Turner. 

"Gordon-Reed invites readers to see Juneteenth as a time to grapple with the complexities of race and enslavement in the US, to re-think our origin stories about race and slavery's central role in the formation of both Texas and the US, and to consider how, as Gordon-Reed so eloquently puts it, 'echoes of the past remain, leaving their traces in the people and events of the present and future.'"

Purchase "On Juneteenth" here>>

"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates, best-selling author and national correspondent for The Atlantic, made waves when he published his 2014 article "The Case for Reparations," in which he called for "collective introspection" on reparations for Black Americans subjected to centuries of racism and violence. 

"In his now famed essay for The Atlantic, journalist, author, and essayist, Ta-Nehisi Coates traces how slavery, segregation, and discriminatory racial policies underpin ongoing and systemic economic and racial disparities," Moody-Turner said. 

"Coates provides deep historical context punctuated by individual and collective stories that compel us to reconsider the case for reparations," she added.  

Read it here>>

"The Idea of America" by Nikole Hannah-Jones and the "1619 Project" by The New York Times

In "The Idea of America," Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones traces America's history from 1619 onward, the year slavery began in the US. She explores how the history of slavery is inseparable from the rise of America's democracy in her essay that's part of The New York Times' larger "1619 Project," which is the outlet's ongoing project created in 2019 to re-examine the impact of slavery in the US. 

"In her unflinching look at the legacy of slavery and the underside of American democracy and capitalism, Hannah-Jones asks, 'what if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we [Black Americans] have never been the problem but the solution,'" said Moody-Turner, who recommended readers read the whole "1619 Project" as well. 

Read "The Idea of America" here and the rest of the "1619 Project here>>

"Many Thousands Gone" by James Baldwin

In "Many Thousands Gone," James Arthur Baldwin, American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist lays out how white America is not ready to fully recognize Black people as people. It's a must read, according to Jimmy Worthy II, assistant professor of English at The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

"Baldwin's essay reminds us that in America, the very idea of Black persons conjures an amalgamation of specters, fears, threats, anxieties, guilts, and memories that must be extinguished as part of the labor to forget histories deemed too uncomfortable to remember," Worthy said.

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 13 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights activists were arrested after peaceful protest in Birmingham, Alabama. In jail, King penned an open letter about how people have a moral obligation to break unjust laws rather than waiting patiently for legal change. In his essay, he expresses criticism and disappointment in white moderates and white churches, something that's not often focused on in history textbooks, Worthy said.

"King revises the perception of white racists devoted to a vehement status quo to include white moderates whose theories of inevitable racial equality and silence pertaining to racial injustice prolong discriminatory practices," Worthy said. 

"The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde, African American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist asks readers to not be silent on important issues. This short, rousing read is crucial for everyone according to Thomonique Moore, a 2016 graduate of Howard University, founder of Books&Shit book club, and an incoming Masters' candidate at Columbia University's Teacher's College. 

"In this essay, Lorde explains to readers the importance of overcoming our fears and speaking out about the injustices that are plaguing us and the people around us. She challenges us to not live our lives in silence, or we risk never changing the things around us," Moore said.  Read it here>>

"The First White President" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This essay from the award-winning journalist's book " We Were Eight Years in Power ," details how Trump, during his presidency, employed the notion of whiteness and white supremacy to pick apart the legacy of the nation's first Black president, Barack Obama.

Moore said it was crucial reading to understand the current political environment we're in. 

"Just Walk on By" by Brent Staples

In this essay, Brent Staples, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer for The New York Times, hones in on the experience of racism against Black people in public spaces, especially on the role of white women in contributing to the view that Black men are threatening figures.  

For Crystal M. Fleming, associate professor of sociology and Africana Studies at SUNY Stony Brook, his essay is especially relevant right now. 

"We see the relevance of his critique in the recent incident in New York City, wherein a white woman named Amy Cooper infamously called the police and lied, claiming that a Black man — Christian Cooper — threatened her life in Central Park. Although the experience that Staples describes took place decades ago, the social dynamics have largely remained the same," Fleming told Insider. 

"I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman" by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an author, associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a faculty affiliate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. In this essay, Cottom shares her gut-wrenching experience of racism within the healthcare system. 

Fleming called this piece an "excellent primer on intersectionality" between racism and sexism, calling Cottom one of the most influential sociologists and writers in the US today.  Read it here>>

"A Report from Occupied Territory" by James Baldwin

Baldwin's "A Report from Occupied Territory" was originally published in The Nation in 1966. It takes a hard look at violence against Black people in the US, specifically police brutality. 

"Baldwin's work remains essential to understanding the depth and breadth of anti-black racism in our society. This essay — which touches on issues of racialized violence, policing and the role of the law in reproducing inequality — is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to understand just how much has not changed with regard to police violence and anti-Black racism in our country," Fleming told Insider.  Read it here>>

"I'm From Philly. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing" by Gene Demby

On May 13, 1985, a police helicopter dropped a bomb on the MOVE compound in Philadelphia, which housed members of the MOVE, a black liberation group founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Eleven people, including five children, died in the airstrike. In this essay, Gene Demby, co-host and correspondent for NPR's Code Switch team, tries to wrap his head around the shocking instance of police violence against Black people. 

"I would argue that the fact that police were authorized to literally bomb Black citizens in their own homes, in their own country, is directly relevant to current conversations about militarized police and the growing movement to defund and abolish policing," Fleming said.  Read it here>>

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8 Essays by Black Writers to Read Right Now 

There are many ways to show your support for the Black Lives Matter movement right now, including getting educated, donating, and supporting black businesses and creators. Below is a list of eight incredibly powerful essays by black writers to read during this time and to share with people around you.     1. “Scenes from a Life in NegroLand” by Margo Jefferson  “We’re considered upper-class Negroes and upper-middle-class Americans, Mother says. But of course, most people would like to consider us Just More Negroes.”  Jefferson writes about growing up black in a middle-class white area, and the racism she faced from the people surrounding her. She has taught at New York University …

There are many ways to show your support  for the Black Lives Matter movement right now , including getting educated, donating, and supporting black businesses  and creators.  Below is a list of eight incredibly powerful essays by black writers to read during thi s time and to share with people around you.   

1. “Scenes from a Life in NegroLand” by Margo Jefferson 

“We’re considered upper-class Negroes and upper-middle-class Americans, Mother says. But of course, most people would like to consider us Just More Negroes.” 

Jefferson writes about growing up black in a  middle-class  white area, and  the racism she faced from the people surrounding her. She  has taught at New York University and The New  School and is currently a professor of writing at Columbia University. To support Jefferson further, you can purchase her full book,  Negroland , here .   

2. “A Letter from a Region in my Mind” by James Baldwin 

“One did not have to be very bright to realize how little one could do to change one’s situation; one did not have to be abnormally sensitive to be worn down to a cutting edge by the incessant and gratuitous humiliation and danger one encountered every working day, all day long.” 

Baldwin is known as one of the greatest American writers of the 20 th  century. This essay is one of many that he  wrote on his experiences living as a black man in the U.S.. In this piece, he discusses being black and a religious Christian. You can find more of his legenda ry works here .  

3. “Getting In and Out” by Zadie Smith 

“Often I look at my children and remember that quadroons—green-eyed, yellow-haired people like my children—must have been standing on those auction blocks with their café au lait mothers and dark-skinned grandmothers.” 

In this essay, Smith reviews Jordan Peele’s film, Get Out ,  and discusses the painting, O pen Casket,  which  was hung in the Whitney. The painting  sparked protests  when it  debuted  and Smith uses the two works of art to discuss  what people have the right to create, and what they don’t. Smith is currently a professor at New York University and more of her work can be found here .   

4. “The Word is ‘Nemesis’: The Fight to Integrate the National Spelling Bee” by Dr. Cynthia R. Greenlee 

“What a hard, heavyweight for black children to bear, to be the person who literally spelled trouble for white supremacy.”  

Greenlee  has  a doctorate in American history and has devoted her life’s work to writing and researching about black interaction with  U.S. law. In this article, she details the fight to desegregate the National Spelling Bee , and  all of  its local factions.  More of Greenlee’s research on a variety of topics can be found here .   

5. “The Color Fetish” by Toni Morrison 

“There is a perfectly good reason for the part colorism plays in literature. It was the law.”  

At age 86, Morrison was still as powerful as ever . In this essay, she sticks to her bookish roots and analyzes the use of colorism in literature. After this essay, there is so much more Morrison to  read (including her Nobel Prize-winning novel, Beloved ). You can find her work here .  

6. “Color Vision” by Hilton Als 

“We had seen posters advertising the piece months before we headed to midtown; Shange’s face, as painted by Paul Davis, had been plastered around the city. We hadn’t seen a black girl’s body promoting anything literary since Kali published her book of poems, in 1970.” 

Als  begins this piece by recounting the time he saw  Shange live on Broadway as a kid and then  continues on  to highlight the life  of the star.  Als  is an associate professor at Columbia University and a theater critic for The New  Yorker. You can read his other reviews here .   

7. “Who Gets to be Angry?” by Roxane Gay 

“I AM an opinionated woman, so I am often accused of being angry. This accusation is made because a woman, a black woman who is angry, is making trouble. She is daring to be dissatisfied with the status quo. She is daring to be heard.”  

Gay has tackled many topics in her best-selling novels. She’s spoken about obesity, race, sexism, and more. In this article, she discusses how angry women, and especially angry black women, are viewed in society. You can find more of her empowering work here .   

8. “A Clear Presence” by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

“When I heard that [Rodney] King had died, two details, in particular, stuck out to me. One was that he died in a swimming pool. The other was that earlier that day, somebody had heard him scream.” 

Sloan masterfully braids multiple topics into one in this piece. She talks about Rodney King,  David Hockney, O.J. Simpson, and her own life as a black woman in Los Angeles.  To find out more about her two novels, or read other  beautifully constructed essays by Sloan, click here .   

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50 Black writers whose impact went beyond the page

Throughout America's history, African American authors have represented a rich and diverse body of literature. They've contributed fiction and nonfiction, novels, short stories, essays, poetry, scholarly articles, academic writing, and everything in between. The narratives they've added to American storytelling have shifted perspectives and created new dialogues around race, culture, politics, religion, and sociology. The stories they've told—both as creative writers and documentarians—have entertained, educated, and informed. In many cases, their work has gone as far as changing policies, practices, and cultural norms—not to mention shaping how the Black experience is viewed and understood in America.

In the United States, African American literature originated in the 19th century, mainly with slave narratives, many told from the perspective of escaped slaves such as Harriet Jacobs or Frederick Douglass. In the 1920s, as Black artists and intellectuals emerged following the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance produced prolific authors. Many of these early 20th-century works addressed issues like racism and segregation following the Civil War and Reconstruction Era.

By the middle of the century, Black authors played an important role in laying the foundation for political causes such as American civil rights and the Black Power and Black nationalism movement. Many feminist authors emerged during this time as well who put forward ideas about the relationship between race, sex, and gender. Women like Mary Ann Weathers and Audre Lorde had a profound effect on how these subjects were viewed and discussed. Black feminist thinkers established the mode of analysis of intersectionality, laying an important foundation for the modern feminist movement.

Following the civil rights movement, African American literature became incorporated into the mainstream as novelists like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison wrote bestsellers and began winning prestigious awards. Today, contemporary 21st-century writers like Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Colson Whitehead are integral figures in American literature and pop culture.

To celebrate some of the accomplishments of these great authors, Stacker  put together a gallery featuring 50 Black writers who've had the biggest impact on American life and culture beyond the page. Read on to learn more about these important luminaries.

Toni Morrison

Among numerous accolades, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the first Black woman to be an editor at Random House. She is most famous for her novel "Beloved," the story of an escaped enslaved woman who makes the painful decision to kill her daughter to prevent her re-enslavement. Slate columnist Laura Miller wrote of Morrison that she  "reshaped the landscape of literature" with stories that "no other novelist, Black or white, attempted."

Anna J. Cooper

Author and Black liberation activist Anna J. Cooper was born into slavery in the 1850s yet earned a doctorate in history from the University of Paris, becoming the fourth African American woman in history to get a doctorate. The early American scholar, who is sometimes referred to as "the mother of Black feminism," was the first writer to discuss concepts of feminist "intersectionality," though it wasn't called that at the time. The phrase was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw . Cooper's 1892 collection of essays is called "A Voice from the South." Cooper was a "radical call for a version of racial uplift that centered Black women and girls," according to Naomi Extra of Vice .

James Baldwin

Best known for his essays on race, class, and sexuality (although he also wrote novels and plays), James Baldwin was a champion and leading voice of the American civil rights movement. As one of the few openly gay Black activists of this era (along with Bayard Rustin), he fought for LGBTQ+ rights alongside the rights of African Americans. The celebrated author penned his first play before the age of 11 when his teacher directed it at his elementary school. His most famous works include "Notes of a Native Son" and "I Am Not Your Negro."

Gwendolyn Brooks

The first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for her 1949 collection "Annie Allen"), Gwendolyn Brooks was a revered poet and author. The poems in her most famous and critically acclaimed book detailed the life of a young Black girl in Chicago as she grows up and becomes a woman. She's been praised widely for her work: "Because her poems and fiction are so captivating and faithful to the Black experience, consequently the human experience, Gwendolyn Brooks will continue to be read and be alive," wrote Angela Jackson for LitHub .

Elizabeth Keckley

After working as a seamstress and personal dresser to President Abraham Lincoln's wife, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, former enslaved woman Elizabeth Keckley wrote a memoir titled, "Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House." The book detailed her time in the White House and was criticized by some for revealing private information about the Lincolns. In addition to her influence around the White House, the author founded an organization called the Contraband Relief Association that provided resources like food, clothes, and housing to freed slaves.

Robert Abbott

The importance of Robert Abbott's contribution to African American political discourse can't be overstated. In addition to adding his own articles to the public conversation, the early 20th-century journalist founded The Chicago Defender in 1905, a weekly Black newspaper that covered issues relevant to African Americans at the time. In his own writing, he told captivating stories and encouraged Black people in the South to migrate to the North. "Without Abbott, there would be no 'Essence,' no 'Jet' (and its Beauty of the Week), no 'Black Enterprise,'" Martenzie Johnson wrote for "The Undefeated."

Richard Wright

Richard Wright, famous for his memoir "Black Boy" and the novel "Native Son," among others, is often ranked among the most influential Black writers of the 20th century . In addition to the enormous impact he had on Black American literature, he mentored other writers, among them James Baldwin. "I had identified myself with him long before we met," Baldwin said of Wright after his death . "In a sense by no means metaphysical, his example had helped me to survive. He was Black, he was young, he had come out of Mississippi and the Chicago slums, and he was a writer. He proved it could be done—proved it to me, and gave me an arm against all the others who assured me it could not be done."

Often credited with kicking off the Black Power movement, Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little; however, he changed his name in prison after joining the Nation of Islam, explaining that he rejected the surname handed down to him by the "white slavemaster." "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"—which he collaborated on with author Alex Haley—was "one of the most influential books in late-20th-century American culture," according to cultural historian Howard Bruce Franklin . The vocal Muslim activist, who supported the separation of Blacks and whites (not to be confused with segregation), is sometimes contrasted with Martin Luther King Jr., who advocated for full integration. Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.

Octavia Butler

Commonly considered the "foremost Black woman in sci-fi literature, " Octavia Butler, the author of "Bloodchild" and other popular science fiction books, was the first sci-fi writer to ever get a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her books contain radical visions of race and power. Her life's work had a huge impact—not only on her genre but in the way she encouraged and mentored young science-fiction writers of color. "Her legacy is larger than just herself or her individual work, more than anyone probably can imagine right now," author Ayana Jamieson told NBC News.

Toni Cade Bambara

On top of being a prolific contemporary writer (known for works such as "The Salt Eaters, "Gorilla, My Love," and "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive"), Toni Cade Bambara was celebrated for her social consciousness and commitment to making literature accessible. When her book "The Black Woman" came out, for example, she urged her publisher to keep the price affordable so that Black women from all sorts of economic backgrounds could read it. According to Shondaland writer Lyndsey Ellis, she "helped create the recipe for Black love and unity as we know it today."

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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Although he only published his first book in 2008—and really only became widely known after 2015's "Between the World and Me"—Ta-Nehisi Coates has swiftly become one of the most influential voices among modern African American writers. He gained a following during his years as a writer for The Atlantic and has now written four books as well as the "Black Panther" comic book series. His work contributes significantly to the current conversation around reparations, systemic racism, and white supremacy.

Frances Harper

Called the "mother of African American journalism," Frances Harper had a long career that began with a book of poetry and ended half a century later with the publication of her highly acclaimed novel, "Iola Leroy," in 1892. The abolitionist and suffragist, who was herself born free, took great risks to help escaped enslaved people navigate the Underground Railroad on their path to freedom. She's also known for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated trolley car—100 years before Rosa Parks became famous for a similar protest.

James Weldon Johnson

In addition to authoring "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" and numerous poetry collections, James Weldon Johnson was an early leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The human rights activist worked as a U.S. consul under President Theodore Roosevelt and taught literature at the historically Black college Fisk University, extending his impact on America far beyond the page.

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was a journalist and activist who brought attention to the lynchings in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century. Among numerous pieces of investigative journalism, "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" exposed many of the cruel and inhuman practices taking place against African Americans at the time, drawing particular attention to the political and economic motivations behind them. The formerly enslaved woman, who was freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, co-owned the "Memphis Free Speech and Headlight" newspaper and was one of the founders of the NAACP.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Born to previously enslaved parents, poet and playwright Paul Laurence Dunbar was known for his use of the "Negro dialect" in his writing. Among other accomplishments, he wrote the lyrics for 1903's "In Dahomey," the first all-Black Broadway musical. His friend, fellow writer James Weldon Johnson, praised his writing. "He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race," Johnson said . "He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form."

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Langston Hughes

A star of the Harlem Renaissance (then known as the "New Negro Movement"), Langston Hughes wrote critically acclaimed poems, novels, and plays, in addition to insightful weekly columns in The Chicago Defender. He was an early creator of jazz poetry and one of the first Black authors able to successfully earn an income from his writing. "Fifty years after his death, Hughes' extraordinary lyricism resonates with power to people," wrote David C. Ward for Smithsonian Magazine .

Ishmael Reed

A satirist, Ishmael Reed's writing has called attention to serious issues in American political culture via humor and parody. He's also written at least 10 novels and a number of poems, plays, and essays. In the 1960s, Reed co-founded the underground "East Village Other" and was a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop, which helped launch the Black Arts Movement. His most famous writing is the 1972 novel "Mumbo Jumbo."

Maya Angelou

The author of seven autobiographies, along with several books of poetry and essays, Maya Angelou's work has had a profound effect on the dialogue around race in America. She was inspired to write her most famous book, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings," amid a deep depression following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Fellow author James Baldwin, who was a friend, helped her editor persuade her to write it : "Baldwin told [Robert Loomis] that in order to get Angelou to do anything, you have to tell her she can't do it," wrote Bené Viera for Timeline. "The reverse psychology worked. She isolated herself in London and began writing." It was an instant bestseller that's now taught in high schools and colleges.

Although Rosa Parks is most famous for her role as an activist during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she also wrote an autobiography, as well as a number of notes that were later published. In the latter, she discussed how fierce the pressure was for African Americans to fall into line and not rock the boat, noting that it required a "major mental acrobatic feat" to survive during that era. "She refused to normalize the ability to function under American racism," wrote Jeanne Theoharis for The Washington Post .

Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka was an outspoken author, poet, and playwright who advocated for Black nationalism and Marxism. His impact spread beyond his writing as he launched Harlem's Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, several decades after the Harlem Renaissance. Although undoubtedly influential, he was also a controversial figure , particularly regarding his stance on homosexuality, which condemned the behavior.

James Cone has been called the most important theologian of his time . His 1969 book, "Black Theology and Black Power," aligned the philosophies of the Black Power movement with the Black church, arguing that Jesus' message was no different than the political movement with both advocating for the liberation of the oppressed. "Cone upended the theological establishment with his vigorous articulation of God's radical identification with Black people in the United States," wrote the Union Seminary . "His eloquent portrayal of Christ's Blackness shattered dominant white theological paradigms, and ignited a wave of subsequent American liberation theologies."

Lorraine Hansberry

Author of the famous play "A Raisin in the Sun"—which has been called  "one of the most important plays ever written about Chicago" —Lorraine Hansberry boasts the title of being the first Black female playwright to have her script performed on Broadway. Hansberry is the inspiration for Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black."

Famous for his 1976 novel "Roots: The Saga of an American Family," Alex Haley is often credited for kickstarting a wave of interest in genealogy and pride in African roots among Black people in America in the 1970s. This was also partly responsible for the growing preference at the time of the term African American, according to novelist Charles Johnson . In addition to "Roots," Haley also authored "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," a seminal work in African American literature and political dialogue.

Barack Obama

These days, Barack Obama is known first as the 44th president of the United States; however, he's a highly accomplished author as well. "Dreams From My Father," which he published in 1995 before his first Senate campaign, was a widely acclaimed piece of nonfiction that Time columnist Joe Klein hailed  as "the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician." In 2006, Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" became #1 on The New York Times  bestseller list. His follow-up, 2020's "A Promised Land," focuses on his first term as president; it's the first of two planned books, the next of which will cover his second term.

Mary Church Terrell

In addition to being an excellent writer, Mary Church Terrell was a leading suffragist and civil rights activist. Born in 1863 to freed enslaved people who later became part of the late 19th century's rising Black upper class, her parents " used their position to fight racial discrimination ." She was a graduate of Oberlin College—one of the first African American women to receive a college degree, in fact—and worked as a journalist under the pen name Euphemia Kirk. She wrote for The Washington Post, the Washington Evening Star, and the Chicago Defender, among others, and detailed her own experience with racism in her 1940 autobiography, "A Colored Woman in a White World."

Frank Marshall Davis

Journalist, poet, and activist Frank Marshall Davis was part of a writer's group—along with other famous authors like Richard Wright and Margaret Walker—that later came to be known as the Black Chicago Renaissance. In addition to writing about race and culture, Davis covered jazz and music history. He was famous in his own right for his many literary accomplishments, though he's often remembered today for his association with former President Barack Obama, who wrote about him in "Dreams from My Father."

Roxane Gay is a modern writer and feminist who's had an enormous impact on the literary world and feminist thought in the last decade. Her 2014 collection of essays, "Bad Feminist," was a highly praised New York Times bestseller, and was followed by two short story collections, a novel, and the memoir "Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body."  Marisa Meltzer of Elle called Gay a "go-to voice on the ever-roiling front line of gender, race, and politics, and, perhaps most of all, the embodiment of intersectionality."

W.E.B. DuBois

W.E.B. DuBois, who's been called "one of the most influential thinkers and activists of the 19th and 20th centuries," was an author and civil rights activist who led the Niagara Movement, an equal rights organization in the early 20th century, and was a founder of the NAACP. The author, who was the first African American to earn a doctoral degree from Harvard University, is best known for "Black Reconstruction in America," a groundbreaking historical narrative that reframed the Reconstruction Era and credited Black people with the "shaping of their own destiny."

Michelle Obama

The former president isn't the only Obama who's written a bestselling and highly influential memoir. Former first lady Michelle Obama also made a huge impact with "Becoming," an insightful and deeply personal look back on her earlier years as well as her time at the White House. In 2018, the book broke records in 15 days, selling more copies than any other book published in the United States that year. On top of her accolades as an author, Michelle Obama has impacted the American public by visiting homeless shelters, advocating for public health campaigns, and championing women's rights.

William Wells Brown

A writer, lecturer, abolitionist, and human right activist all rolled into one, William Wells Brown had a great impact on America in the 19th century. In addition to his pioneering work as a travel writer, the escaped slave was an esteemed playwright—the first African American to be published in several genres , in fact. He was also the author of an extensive historical account of Black people during the Revolutionary War.

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Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was an abolitionist and women's rights activist known for her advocacy work; however, she also made several notable contributions to the written word. Although she couldn't read and write herself, the escaped enslaved woman worked with her friend Olive Gilbert and fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison on a memoir that resulted in 1850's "The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: a Northern Slave." The book, combined with her powerful speech, "Ain't I A Woman," both helped shape the dialogue around abolition at the time—and in 2014, Smithsonian Magazine featured her on its  100 Most Significant Americans of All Time list .

Booker T. Washington

There's no doubt that Booker T. Washington—a former enslaved man and adviser to multiple presidents—had a huge impact on 19th- and early 20th-century politics, though some have argued as to whether his influence was positive. The African American community leader, who led Tuskegee University, wrote five books with a ghostwriter including "The Story of My Life and Work" and "Up From Slavery." Washington was heavily criticized for failing to challenge Jim Crow segregation and encouraging Black people of the time to accept the status quo.

Phillis Wheatley

Among many accomplishments, Phillis Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book of poems . The acclaimed poet was born in West Africa in 1753 and sold into slavery as a child. After her enslavers taught her to read and write, she wrote poems about the American Revolution that were later used to support abolition. "Wheatley was not alive to see her poetry make a consequential impact on the abolition of slavery," wrote Dillon Hartigan of Southern Methodist University . "However, years after the Great Awakening was over and people understood its meaning, Wheatley's poems were used to fight Southern views towards slavery."

Claude McKay

Poet Claude McKay, a Jamaican immigrant and central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, is famous for his novel "Home to Harlem," which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, and other works that influenced later poets like Langston Hughes, shaping how they would use their voice. Today, McKay is regarded for having "paved the way for Black poets to discuss the conditions and racism that they faced in their poems."

Ntozake Shange

Black feminism owes a great deal to Ntozake Shange, a poet and playwright who dealt with topics of race, sexism, and Black power. She's best known for her 1976 play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf," which won the prestigious Obie Award. On top of writing accolades, Shange is responsible for creating the "choreopoem" and coining the term, which describes a performance art that blends music and dancing with words.

Zora Neale Hurston

In addition to her powerful novels that have garnered myriad accolades, Zora Neale Hurston is remembered as a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The artistic and intellectual explosion of 1920s New York produced numerous famous voices of which Hurston is one of the best known. Her most famous novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," was written in 1937 but didn't achieve literary fame until the 1970s amid the Black Arts Movement. In 2019, Hurston's novel appeared on BBC Arts'  100 Most Influential Novels list .

An early critic of mainstream feminism, Gloria Jean Watkins, known professionally by her stage name bell hooks, has argued, among many things, that racism and sexism are inextricably connected. She's the author of more than 30 books and academic articles, among which "Ain't I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism" and the memoir "Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood" are some of the most well-known.

Martin Luther King Jr.

It's hard to overstate the enormous impact that human rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. had on the American civil rights movement. However, some people are less familiar with his writing. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who pioneered the non-violence movement of the 1960s, was the author of a number of books including "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story" and "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?"—not to mention some of the most famous speeches in history .

Harriet Jacobs

An escaped enslaved person and passionate abolitionist, Harriet Jacobs is best known for her poignant autobiography "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" which she first published in 1861 under a pseudonym. The book was remarkable for many reasons, one being that it was among the first to discuss the sexual harassment and abuse female slaves suffered. The New Bedford Historical Society called the book "the most important slave narrative written by an African American woman."

Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead is a highly acclaimed modern writer whose 2016 book, "The Underground Railroad," and 2019's "The Nickel Boys," earned him two Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awards. The Pulitzer committee called the former  "a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America." Whitehead is the author of several other novels and two nonfiction books as well, many of which have also received widespread praise.

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset, an author-poet and integral figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was the literary editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, as well as the editor of the children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. She published four novels and provided mentorship to well-respected poets such as Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. Numerous historians have called her work and impact on the race dialogue under-appreciated. "A look at Fauset's entire body of work reveals a writer who is more engaged with modern questions of race, class, and gender than she has been given credit for," Professor Claire Oberon Garcia of Colorado College said of Fauset to The New Yorker .

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey's impact on African Americans in the United States and others has been undeniable. She was the first Black multi-billionaire in North America and also the richest African American of the 20th century, and has been called one of the  most influential women in the world  more than once. She's written multiple books, most of them in the self-help genre, inspiring people of all races to live happier, healthier, and more fulfilled lives. She also wrote "Journey to Beloved," a collection of journal entries and thoughts about her role as Sethe in the 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved."

Ralph Ellison

Author of the groundbreaking novel "Invisible Man"—which dealt with issues of African American identity, Black nationalism, and Marxism—Ralph Ellison had a huge impact on American thinking and politics in the 1950s and beyond. According to many scholars, he brought a new type of Black character to the page. "Ellison's view was that the African-American culture and sensibility was far from the downtrodden, unsophisticated picture presented by writers, sociologists and politicians at the time, both black and white," wrote Anne Seidlitz for PBS . "He posited instead that Blacks had created their own traditions, rituals, and a history that formed a cohesive and complex culture that was the source of a full sense of identity."

Angela Davis

The contributions that Angela Davis has made over the years to American racial discourse have been immeasurable. The writer and human rights activist, who rose to fame in the late 1960s due to her activism and work with the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, is often remembered for her association with a domestic terror attack in Marin Country, California, that killed four people (she was prosecuted for purchasing the firearms but later acquitted  by an all-white jury). Her work has contributed mightily to activism around racism and white supremacy, and she's written more than 10 books exploring issues like feminism, women's rights, race, class, and social justice.

Margaret Walker

An integral part of the Chicago Black Renaissance, Margaret Walker was a vibrant figure in the literary community of the 1930s and '40s. Her 1942 poetry collection, "For My People," won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition and her 1966 historical novel about the American Civil War, titled "Jubilee," was also highly acclaimed. After her death, fellow writer Amiri Baraka wrote of Walker : "She was one of the greatest writers of the language. She was the grandest expression of the American poetic voice and the ultimate paradigm of the Afro-American classic literary tradition."

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was an escaped enslaved man, abolitionist, and suffragist whose writings had an enormous impact on African American discourse in the 19th century and beyond. He was taught to read by a white woman named Lucretia Auld who inherited him as an enslaved person from her father. He, in turn, taught other slaves to read before his escape in 1838. Douglass is the author of multiple autobiographies including the 1845 bestseller "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" and 1855's "My Bondage and My Freedom." In the foreword to the latter, John Stauffer called Douglass "one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the American civil rights movement."

Harriet Wilson

Harriet Wilson, who was born free in 1825 but became an indentured servant after being orphaned, was the first African American to publish a novel in the United States . She did so anonymously with a book called "Our Nig" and it wasn't until the 1980s that a scholar discovered her identity and credited her with the groundbreaking accomplishment. "It turned the literary world on its end, as up to that point it had been widely accepted that the first African American published novelist had been Frances Ellen Watkins Harper," wrote Carla Garner for BlackPast.org .

Barbara Christian

In addition to multiple full-length books, the prolific Barbara Christian, a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (and the university's first Black woman to be granted tenure ), penned more than 100 articles. She wrote broadly about race and advocated for literature and academics to be more accessible to women and people of color. In a 2000 New York Times obituary, she was called a "leading critical presence in the growing debates over the relationship among race, class and gender."

Alice Walker

Few contemporary African American authors have achieved the degree of praise and literary acclaim as Alice Walker, author of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Color Purple." In addition to her copious accolades as an author, Walker is a feminist and social activist who is responsible for coining the term "womanist." On top of her most famous novel, Walker wrote other works such as "The Third Life of Grange Copeland" and "Meridian.

August Wilson

August Wilson was an esteemed playwright who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his series of 10 plays collectively titled "The Pittsburgh Cycle" (the awards went to "Fences" and "The Piano Lesson"). Each play was set in a different decade and depict different facets of 20th-century African American life. The Courier-Journal's Betty Baye, speaking to NPR, called Wilson a "miracle of creativity," noting that he was "a man so unabashedly in love with Black people and so keenly insightful about the complexities of being an African American that he took upon himself the awesome challenge of writing 10 plays about the Black experience, one for each decade of the 20th century."

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13 Books by Black Authors That Explore Race in America

A roundup of pieces of literature that highlight the perils of racism in the U.S.

There has been a shift in America following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor . Their wrongful deaths, as well as those of many other Black lives, have sparked nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality, shining a light on racial injustice and oppression.

With more people having conversations about race, many are looking to works of literature to better help them understand the issues that Black people face in the United States. From powerful essays, personal stories, non-fiction accounts of mass incarceration and police violence, Black authors have shared their experiences through the written word. While all wide-ranging, they all have one thing in common, highlighting the perils of racism in the U.S.

Here is a collection of books by Black authors that explore race in America.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Among the most popular books in the current climate, historian Kendi looks at how racist thoughts take root in one's life through self-reflection, critical thinking and history. With the concept of antiracism, he reshapes the conversation about racial injustice in America, pointing people toward liberating new ways of thinking about oneself and others.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Coates' 2015 non-fiction book is written as a letter to his teenage son after the killing of Eric Garner and explores the feelings, symbolism and realities associated with being Black in the United States. Sharing his personal life story, Coates hopes for a better future for his son, amid the discrimination that Black people continue to face.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

This YA novel follows Starr Carter as she moves between two worlds: her poor neighborhood and the rich suburban prep school she attends. Her worlds shatter when a police officer fatally shoots her unarmed childhood friend in front of her. After his death makes national news, she is torn between people calling him a thug and drug dealer and others protesting police brutality.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

"This is NOT a history book. This is a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race," Reynolds and Kendi write about their book. Stamped shares history of racist ideas in America and inspires hope for an antiracist future.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Nickel Boys is based on the real story of the Dozier School, a reform school in Florida where boys were beaten and killed over the course of 111 years. Set in the fictional Nickel Academy, the story follows two Black students and their tragic experience at the school.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

This book offers a "user-friendly" examination of race in America, touching on aspects of white supremacy, police brutality, mass incarceration of African Americans, white privilege, having difficult conversations with other people about race, and more.

Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills

Black Fortunes is a collection of stories about six pioneering African American entrepreneurs, including Annie Turnbo Malone and Robert Reed Church, and the challenges that they endured to gain success and become millionaires.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Baldwin's 1963 non-fiction book consists of two essays. "My Dungeon Shook -- Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation" is written as a letter to Baldwin's 14-year-old nephew and touches on the role of race in American history. "Down at the Cross -- Letter from a Region of My Mind" details Baldwin's personal experiences with race and religion.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Cottom's 2019 book is an honest collection of essays about Black womanhood, body image, beauty, a Black woman's representation in the media, as well as BBQ Becky and more. Thick was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award.

How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

This coming-of-age memoir tells the story of a young Black gay man from the South as he fights to find his place in the world, within his family, as well as his hopes, dreams and fears. The book explores race, queerness, power and vulnerability as one grows.

Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves edited by Glory Edim

From the founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, Edim curates essays by powerful Black writers Jacqueline Woodson, Jesmyn Ward and Tayari Jones and others to share the importance of recognizing oneself in literature.

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

This collection of poetry is a beautiful and heartbreaking look at being Black, queer, and living with HIV. Among Smith's most moving poems is "Summer Somewhere," in which he imagines a paradise for all the Black men who have been killed by police violence.

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

Co-written by one of the Black Lives Matter movement's co-founders, the book shares the story of the creation of the organization, as well as how activism, protesting and speaking out makes a difference.

Find these and more books at your local library or Black-owned bookstore.

See below for more on how to support Black-owned businesses , artists who are using their music as a sounding board for change , and more.

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62 great books by Black authors, recommended by TED speakers

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Compiled from past TED book lists , here’s a curated selection of fiction and non-fiction titles to check out now.

Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Change by Stacey Abrams (TED talk: 3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do ) I work in government affairs, and the last thing I enjoy reading for pleasure are books by politicians. However, this book is different on so many levels and is a must-read — whether you’re a political junkie or just someone seeking inspiration to chart your own course. I instantly related to and was inspired by Abrams’s candid struggles to overcome self-doubt and embrace the full range of her abilities as a talented woman of color. Her writing is candid, eloquent, familiar, funny and highly digestible. I found myself nodding, smiling, dog-earing pages, and taking deep inhalations to digest her inspiring wisdom. (Read an excerpt here .) — Nikki Clifton (TED talk: 3 ways business can fight sex trafficking )

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi If you’re a fantasy fan, I can’t recommend this book enough! I read it in one day at the beach last summer, and I couldn’t put it down. The first in the series, Children is a West African-inspired tale filled with magic and adventure. — Liz Kleinrock (TED Talk: How to teach kids about taboo topics )

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (TED talk: The danger of a single story ) This was the first book I read as an adult that made me feel understood. Navigating the multiple cultures that you’re a part of — as an immigrant or first-generation person in the West — is quite an endeavor. Doing this while carrying your Blackness and Africanness, in addition to maintaining your humanity, is a journey. Adichie does this with sagacious humor in her novel. — Michael Rain (TED talk: What it’s like to be the child of immigrants )

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (TED Talk: The danger of a single story ) At one point, I started calling myself a humanist instead of a feminist. I convinced myself by saying I cared about all humans, so why bother with those negative associations with the word “feminist”? I read this short book while I was on a plane, and who would have thought that after all these years, a book would make me call myself a feminist again with pride, genuineness and fearlessness? Adichie says she started calling herself “a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes to wear lip gloss and high heels for herself and not for men” to defend against the stereotypes associated with the f-word. Although I may not be African, do not wear lipstick often, and quickly get tired from high heels, I felt she was speaking about me. I felt she was in my (flat) shoes! To women and men, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, I encourage you all to embrace being a feminist. — Lana Mazareh (TED Talk: 3 thoughtful ways to conserve water )

Adichie’s approach to the politics of gender is sharp and funny and really accessible. Without ever seeming idealistic or naive, she uses her superhuman compassion to imagine a future in which women and men have more possibilities for how to be at home in the world. — Mandy Len Catron (TED Talk: A better way to talk about love )

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander After finding myself embarking on a historical journey through the “in-justice” system, I read this book and questioned whether the people who commit crimes are actual criminals. Or is America creating environments where the enforcement of law is greater in certain communities? I reached the last page of the book knowing it was up to people like me to bring justice to the US legal system. — Jarrell Daniels (TED Talk: What prosecutors and incarcerated people can learn from each other )

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander Alexander, Obama’s inaugural poet, wrote an absolutely heart-wrenching memoir after the death of her husband. By reading the book you come to care about her, you come to care about him, and you come to care about their whole family — her loss becomes your loss. You mourn alongside her. — Caitlin Doughty ( TED Talk: A burial practice that nourishes the planet )

Another Country by James Baldwin At WITNESS.org, we collaborate closely with communities who are using video to tell the story of systemic racism. Baldwin’s novel is set in the fifties, but it compellingly describes what the videos we see today are showing us. — Yvette Alberdingk Thijm (TED Talk: The power of citizen video to create undeniable truths )

The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell by W. Kamau Bell Bell is a self-described sociopolitical comedian. In a series of essays that are part memoir and part sharp and humorous take on the world, he tackles everything from race relations to comedians and superheroes. I found myself both snorting with laughter and reflecting soberly on the challenges of our time. I dare say both are essential for processing the complicated and sometimes absurd events of now. — Liz Ogbu (TED Talk: What if gentrification was about healing communities instead of replacing them? )

A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley Rarely is a debut collection lauded as an instant classic and justifiably so. With heart and humanity, Man explores the emotional lives of black men and boys. Brinkley’s prose is poetic and lush, and each story is a rich world unto itself. Just as the Caribbean celebration J’ouvert heralds the breaking of a new dawn, this book signals the arrival of a unique and necessary voice in fiction. — Felice Belle (TED Talk with Jennifer Murphy: How we became sisters )

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown Brown tells her story of growing up as an African American in white middle America. This is a story about white middle-class Christianity and its power to perpetuate privilege and racial hostility. — Jonathan Williams (TED Talk with Paula Stone Williams: The story of a parent’s transition and a son’s redemption )

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown This is a lyrical, explorative, non-linear journey of the concept of emergent strategy. Brown explains at the outset that the book is meant to be perused, returned to and jumped around in. There are essays, poems, exercises, dialogues, assessments, facilitations, even a playlist. It’s a book for people interested in radical social change, who are willing to think expansively about what the future could look like, or are in need of help doing that kind of thinking. — Miriam Zoila Pérez ( TED Talk: How racism harms pregnant women — and what can help )

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown I’ve been rereading this book since its publication in March. How could I not? It’s the only one that has ever encouraged orgasming before, during and after reading it. Also, brown brings us into intimate conversation with all the pleasure activists who have supported and uplifted her while bringing their own healing- and pleasure-focused magic into the world. — Gabby Rivera (TED Talk: The story of Marvel’s first queer Latina superhero )

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler If the desert island you’re on happens to be more Lord of the Flies than Lord Howe Island , Parable is one of the best books possible to both acclimate yourself to your new struggle for survival and provide a narrative for how, even in a dystopia, one can rebuild civilization and lead a path to the stars. In the mid-2020s, when society has effectively collapsed due to climate change and ineffective social governance, a young woman from Southern California is forced to go on a dangerous journey to the Pacific Northwest to try to find safety. Through her many shocking and harrowing trials, she remains driven and inspired by a future where humanity can still find a way to leave the Earth and build a new home in the stars despite its flaws and failures. Together with its sequel, Parable of the Talents , it is arguably the greatest story ever told about the power of spaceflight that features no spaceships. — Alex MacDonald (TED Talk: How centuries of sci-fi sparked spaceflight )

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler This short novel tells an epic story that takes place over thousands of years. It explores questions of identity, gender, race and power, while at the same time asking questions about relationships in a very personal and sometimes disturbing way. Not light reading, but well worth it. — Shohini Ghose (TED Talk: Quantum computing explained in 10 minutes )

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Sometimes, I think hope is not possible unless we take an honest look at how oppression works in our daily lives. Coates seems to understand that we can’t be hopeful if we can’t see what might need to change. I love this book — written as a letter from the author to his son — because his love for his child ultimately shapes and focuses his honest depiction of what it means to be a black man in America. — Mandy Len Catron (TED Talk: A better way to talk about love )

This is a powerful read that evokes action in us all and provides a well-researched historical account of race relations in the US. Coates’s writing is excellent, and he describes how understanding starts with communication — not assumption. This book will open your eyes and increase your empathy. — Shivani Siroya (TED Talk: A smart loan for people with no credit history (yet) )

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittany Cooper (TED Talk: The racial politics of time ) There is so much beauty and strength in being unapologetically angry about navigating the world in a Black body while in a society that systematically lessens its value. I’m grateful for Cooper for being angry out loud and for empowering all of us — in whatever causes we’re fighting for — to validate the role that rage has in making change. In my work, I encourage teens not to censor themselves, and Cooper is a brilliant example of how to stand in your truth while honoring those who bear witness. — Malika Whitley (TED Talk: How arts help homeless youth heal and build )

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.” To me, this quote perfectly illustrates the effect that slavery had on those who were raised to uphold its tenets. That a system can be a detriment even to those that may benefit from it I find incredibly poignant even in today’s society. It’s so important that we recognize the implications of our beliefs both in how they affect ourselves as well as others. My Bondage and My Freedom not only taught me about the cruel reality of slavery but also showed that in the most depraved systems humanity will seek to reach its potential no matter what obstacles are placed in its path. — Zak Ebrahim (TED Talk: I am the son of a terrorist. Here’s how I chose peace )

Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu This manifesto/memoir is a reminder of how women are expected to succeed at two full-time jobs — the paid one outside the home and the unpaid one at home — and how we need to be realistic about our expectations in order to be successful at both. — Grace Kim (TED Talk: How cohousing can make us happier and live longer )

Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille T. Dungy Dungy’s micro and macro attention is captivating, as she writes hilariously in one paragraph about breast pump flanges and poignantly in another about the pathways of Africans forced into slavery. Each essay, while distinctly different in topic, either focuses on or eventually comes around to issues of race and motherhood and history, making the book thoughtfully cohesive. And because many of the essays take you places — such as Alaska, Maine, Ghana — the book reads as a travel collection as well, so I love it for summer reading. — Heather Lanier (TED Talk: “Good” and “bad” are incomplete stories we tell ourselves )

Take This Stallion by Anaïs Duplan An hour with this book will change even the pitch of your internal thoughts, as poet Duplan reshapes it with her vivid and hypnotizing words. Each poem promises a new and reviving experience, whether it’s the hypothetical secret philosophical life of Kardashian-West or a peanut salesperson knocking on a door. Duplan’s writing is bold and dangerous, rough and intelligent, angelic and humble. It has the power to look into readers’ souls and know them. — Siyanda Mohutsiwa (TED Talk: How young Africans found a voice on Twitter )

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do by Jennifer Eberhardt Stanford University professor Eberhardt draws on years of her own rigorous academic research and the work of others to effectively break down how bias insidiously operates in each of our lives — as perpetrators, victims, bystanders and helpers — every day. The deeply moving personal and professional experiences that she shares help facilitate a tangible connection to this important subject matter. A must read for scholars and laypeople alike, this book reaches beyond the merely descriptive to prescribe courses of action that have been found to be effective in combating our unconscious bias. — Dana Kanze (TED Talk: The real reason female entrepreneurs get less funding )

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr. Locking Up is a careful and convincing analysis of the historical role that black political elites have played in the rise of mass incarceration. This book challenges us to think more rigorously about the mass incarceration of America’s black men and focuses our attention on the complexities of race, class and crime in the inner cities. — Zachary Wood (TED Talk: Why it’s worth listening to the people you disagree with )

Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay This big-hearted little book of poems embraces joy even as it’s willing to weigh joy’s opposite — loss and grief. It’s a stunning book, filled with long poems that make you delight in being alive. I especially recommend steeping yourself in Gay’s revelry in anticipation for his upcoming essay collection, which will be published in winter 2019. I’m using this poetry collection to tide me over until then. — Heather Lanier (TED Talk: “Good” and “bad” are incomplete stories we tell ourselves )

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay (TED Talk: Confessions of a bad feminist ) These essays critique the culture and media we consume, including literary representations of women, from a very personal perspective. The images we are inundated with and the stories we are told shape who we become, and Gay’s witty and sophisticated analysis allows us to be more cognizant of this process. — Sofia Jawed-Wessel ( TED Talk: The lies we tell pregnant women )

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (TED Talk: Confessions of a bad feminist ) An utterly readable, intimate examination by the author about living as a fat black woman. It’s impossible to put down and impossible to read without being moved and vicariously enraged. — Cathy O’Neil (TED Talk: The era of blind faith in big data must end )

A Human Being Died That Night: Confronting Apartheid’s Chief Killer by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Following the fall of apartheid, psychologist Gobodo-Madikizela, who was working for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is given a nightmare assignment: to spend hours and hours interviewing and trying to understand the jailed Eugene de Kok, who oversaw the torture and death squads of the regime and who arguably had the most apartheid-era blood on his hands. But rather than being a monstrous archetype, de Kok turned out to be a human, for better or worse. While hugs don’t ensue by the end amid stirring violins, the author is repeatedly blindsided by finding little slivers of human connection with the man. An “if it can happen with them, it can happen anywhere” kind of story. — Robert Sapolsky ( TED Talk: The biology of our best and worst selves )

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell ( TED Talk: The unheard story of David and Goliath ) I love this book, because it confirms through specific data that outstanding people owe much more to context than individual talent. — Sebastián Bortnik ( TED Talk: The conversation we’re not having about digital child abuse )

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi This novel is a magical, three-century epic story about colonialism, the slave trade, ancestry and the traumas that are passed down from one generation to the next. The beautifully told story invites us to reconsider the root causes of our present-day social justice issues — racism, mass incarceration, poverty, gentrification and more. — Vanessa Garrison ( TED Talk: When Black women walk, things change )

This is an impressive novel to get lost in. It gives a historical perspective on slavery and the slave trade and explores how our identities are shaped by personal and political circumstances. Although this book must have required painstaking research, Gyasi seamlessly transitions from history to the present, managing to capture the natural authenticity of each character. — Sayu Bhojwani (TED Talk: How immigrant voices make democracy stronger )

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston The story in this recently discovered manuscript was new to me. In this book, author Hurston offered me a new perspective of freedom, emancipation and the belief in humanity. — Deborah Willis (TED Talk with Hank Willis Thomas: A mother and son united by love and art )

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison This is the first book in a Hugo award-winning trilogy that takes place on an earth-like planet with significant geologic activity (think earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) that occur at random and create the title’s “fifth season” — a nuclear winter. The whole society is structured around surviving these fifth seasons. In this world, there are people who can sense and control the planet’s activity, and they are feared, shunned and used by society for their powers. This book describes an incredibly detailed world that makes a commentary on how our own society uses and abuses people who are different. It’s an easy, engrossing and super profound read; I could not put it down. — Erika Hamden ( TED Talk: What it takes to launch a telescope )

Some of Us Did NOT Die by June Jordan This book of essays, poetry and original work from the late June Jordan spans a wide variety of topics, but all of them are thought-provoking and encouraging. The title, Some of Us Did NOT Die , along with many of the pieces, reminds us of the power of doing the work while we’re still on the planet. I come back to it often when I want to commune with brilliance. — Jedidah Isler (TED Talk: The untapped genius that could change science for the better )

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi Kendi’s book is an incredibly comprehensive look at the history of racism in America. While I wouldn’t categorize it as light reading, it’s a necessary and important read for everyone. — Liz Kleinrock (TED Talk: How to teach kids about taboo topics )

The Changeling by Victor LaValle I started this book on the day slotted for back-to-school clothes shopping for my kids, and we never made it to the store — thus, my kids wore too-small clothes to the first day of school in 2017. LaValle’s snappy prose, fabulous characters and penetrating observations made this one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Books of the Year. Be warned: This book leans scary — not my usual fare but it was worth it — as LaValle leads the new genre of “literary horror.” It’s the kind of smart escapist fare that will make you forget you are on a desert island. — Dolly Chugh (TED Talk: How to let go of being a “good” person and become a better person )

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon This book is so beautifully human and truthful and vulnerable and Black. It’s a perfect piece of writing — gut wrenching but necessary and also loving and bold in ways that we all need. — Tarana Burke (TED Talk: Me Too is a movement, not a moment )

Lovesong: Becoming a Jew by Julius Lester Lester so beautifully describes his experience growing up in a devout southern Christian family during the Civil Rights era before he decided to convert to Judaism. I instantly loved this book, and I was so inspired by the way he demystifies his conversion while honoring the complicated relationship among his racial, religious and cultural backgrounds as well as his journey into his chosen faith. — Malika Whitley (TED Talk: How arts help homeless youth heal and build )

Unbowed by Wangari Maathai I find women’s autobiographies to be quite empowering, especially when I’m feeling down or in doubt about my life. This memoir by a Kenyan environmental and political activist is a story of resilience and determination. Born in rural Kenya, Maathai ended up being the first woman from her country to receive a PhD, as well as head a university department. Through a foundation she established, she helped restore indigenous forests while also assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. Without a doubt, her courageous story shows how we can make the best out of our circumstances, despite the challenges. — Laura Boushnak (TED Talk: For these women, reading is a daring act )

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela After reading this book, you’ll unavoidably feel joyful because Mandela surpassed many obstacles and brought his people to freedom. — Wanda Diaz Merced (TED Talk: How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars )

Five Carat Soul by James McBride I don’t generally gravitate toward fiction, but this collection of short stories, set in a variety of compelling places and time periods, is so creative and rich, it’s been really fun to read. I was quickly drawn in by the vivid settings and characters and loved the unpredictable storylines. — Liz Hajek (TED Talk: What rivers can tell us about the Earth’s history )

Sortir de la Grande Nuit by Achille Mbembe This book, which is written in French, is a poetic essay on the myths of Africa’s decolonization. It highlights modern Africa’s mutations and the realities of neocolonialism and puts it in today’s global context. — Pierre Thiam (TED Talk: A forgotten ancient grain that could help Africa prosper )

Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley This mystery, which is part of the Easy Rawlins series, focuses on art, friendship and storytelling. I love the mysteries explored here and what the book says about life and relationships. — Deborah Willis (TED Talk with Hank Willis Thomas: A mother and son united by love and art )

If I Stay Right Here: A Novel by Chwayita Ngamlana This book is a dark and extremely personal account of one woman’s experience of intimate partner violence with her girlfriend. The author uses an experimental literary style that makes reading it a bit of a trip sometimes. Intimate partner violence is not a topic that’s often spoken about, but this semi-biographical book breaks the silence. — Tiffany Mugo (TED Talk with Siphumeze Khundayi: How to have a healthier, positive relationship to sex)

Becoming by Michelle Obama This book tells the story that we oftentimes do not hear — we see successful people but never hear how they got there. This memoir explores Obama’s highs and the lows, allowing every human being to know that hard work and perseverance do pay off and that on the road to success one should always be evolving and becoming one’s authentic self through life lessons that build character. — Olympia della Flora (TED Talk: Creative ways to get kids to thrive in school )

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor (TED Talk: Sci-fi stories that imagine a future Africa ) I love fantasy and science fiction, but people of color are sorely underrepresented across the speculative fiction universe. This young adult coming-of-age story’s main character struggles with her bi-cultural identity, which resonates with me. (She also struggles with understanding her magical powers, which I can also relate to.) I read this book to my daughter, and we both couldn’t wait to get to it every night. (Read an interview with Okorafor here .) — Mia Birdsong (TED Talk: The story we tell about poverty isn’t true )

Version Control by Dexter Palmer This novel treads a fine line between modern literature and science fiction, perfectly adapting the evocative prose and mystery of one and the excitement and uncertainty of the other. Primarily following the middle-age crisis of Rebecca — a woman who feels something is deeply wrong with her universe — the book explores whether her ennui is caused by the banality of modern life, a mysterious family tragedy or something that’s gone terribly wrong with her physicist husband’s “causality violation” experiment. While it’s set in a not-too-distant future of autonomous cars, pervasive social networking and online dating, the struggles of the characters to find meaning, purpose and love are timeless. — Natasha Hurley-Walker ( TED Talk: How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies )

Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America by Gregory Pardlo Air Traffic was written by one of my mentors, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Pardlo. It helped me deal with the complicated range of emotions that I struggled with after I lost my father last year. This memoir is about a difficult relationship between a father and son, and it shows us love in a form that we rarely see displayed openly. It’s work to try to understand and accept a complex person while still seeing them in all their humanity — including their anguish and their ugliness. — Michael Rain (TED talk: What it’s like to be the child of immigrants )

The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race by Melanye Price This book helped me to grapple with the meaning of the Obama era, in this moment where many of us miss the sanity of that era. It is critical and thoughtful but written in an engaging and accessible style. — Brittney Cooper (TED Talk: The racial politics of time )

The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae Not really a memoir but more a collection of essays, this book made me laugh out loud on one page and then question some of my assumptions and beliefs on another. I particularly connected with it, because Rae is around my age and some of the coming-of-age stories that she tells revolve around the new technologies (AOL chat rooms!) that we were all exploring — resulting in both our edification and corruption — in the mid-to-late ‘90s. — Elizabeth Cawein (TED Talk: How to build a thriving music scene in your city )

Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison by Shaka Senghor (TED Talk: Why your worst deeds don’t define you ) After a few pages, I knew this book was going to alter my perception on incarceration in America, as we need to hear first-hand stories straight from people who were systematically put there rather than through Hollywood movies or researchers or journalists. Throughout the whole book, I was like, ‘This is happening right in my backyard?’ Shaka spent 19 years transferring from one prison to another and experiencing each one’s subculture and unwritten rules. His words are honest and very necessary, and I hope they will help humanize incarceration policies. Or, better, to use education and mentorship to find a way to prevent young kids from being incarcerated. Their bodies do not belong to any system or country but themselves, and it is our responsibility to listen. — Christine Sun Kim (TED Talk: The enchanting music of sign language )

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur Assata reads so much like a novel that I can’t believe it’s actually a real story. I love her commitment to the cause, her struggle for the liberation of black folk, her painful descriptions of those working against it (and, sometimes, for it), and the path of resistance she chose. I’ve read this memoir many times and taught it to college students, and I still open it whenever I need to find some motivation and hope. I’m from New Jersey where she remains a touchy subject for many, and when my mother told me she was once stopped on the highway by police officers looking for Assata, it hit me just how close to home this story was. I feel connected to the story as a black woman, and it’s one I will never forget. — Reniqua Allen (TED Talk: The story we tell about millennials and who we leave out )

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow was Enuf: a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange This is one of my all-time favorite books, and every read in the last 30 years gives me new insights. Time on a deserted island would allow me to dig in and likely see a whole new layer I didn’t recognize before. — Tarana Burke (TED Talk: Me Too is a movement, not a moment )

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith This millennial coming-of-age memoir offers a progressive look at Black masculinity. Smith, a writer for The Nation , has written an uplifting, hopeful, and, at times, funny tale about what it means to be a young Black man in the 21st century. — Brittney Cooper (TED Talk: The racial politics of time )

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith Feel Free is a collection of intriguing essays that speak about modern-day, socio-political, newsworthy topics, including the movie Get Out and pop icon Justin Bieber. Smith is an inventive free thinker — she’s viscerally, audibly and visually refreshing. Through her writing, she offers readers the opportunity to learn to trust their own voices. — tobacco brown (TED talk: What gardening taught me about life )

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson ( TED Talk: We need to talk about an injustice ) This is one of those books that will hang onto you, long after you finish reading. It is an exceptionally well-written memoir that provides a startling depiction of the depths of institutionalized racism that pervade the US criminal justice system, particularly as it relates to death-row inmates. Before reading this book, I had an intellectual sense of how institutionalized racism manifests itself in criminal justice, but reading this book really opened my eyes not only to the pervasiveness of the problem but also to concrete and tragic examples of the real lives that have been destroyed by injustice. — Wendy Troxel ( TED Talk: Why school should start later for teens )

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas The voice of the narrator is clear as a bell and persuasive to the hilt. The events in this young-adult novel could have been stolen right from the headlines, but it’s told from a perspective that I’m unaccustomed to find in a novel: a young African-American high schooler. This book is just as good as all the reviewers have said — believe the hype. — Eve Abrams (TED Talk: The human stories behind mass incarceration )

salt. by Nayyirah Waheed This is, hands down, one of my favorite books of poetry and one that I return to regularly for inspiration, solace and wisdom. Waheed’s unique style breaks many of the traditional rules of poetry, but she leverages her creative approach for maximum effect. Whether consisting of a single sentence or multiple pages, her poems tackle topics from love to race to feminism in ways that feel like they always touch me at my core. — Liz Ogbu (TED Talk: What if gentrification was about healing communities instead of replacing them? )

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race , edited by Jesmyn Ward In this compelling collection, award-winning author Ward looks to James Baldwin’s seminal book The Fire Next Time for comfort and counsel. In response, she has compiled an anthology of work from thinkers of her generation that speaks about race in ways that are compelling, thought-provoking and extremely salient for our times. From essays to poems, these pieces will leave you thinking about them long after you’ve finished reading them. — Liz Ogbu (TED Talk: What if gentrification was about healing communities instead of replacing them? )

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (TED Talk: The Great Migration and the power of a single decision ) This is one of the most exquisite nonfiction books I’ve ever read. It is written like a novel, filled with human-centered stories about what it takes to make huge transformational change in our personal lives and our nation as a whole. — Courtney Martin (TED Talk: The new American Dream )

What I Know for Sure by Oprah Winfrey This delightful, insightful collection of Winfrey’s essays (from her magazine) cover a wide range of topics, including joy, resilience, gratitude, awe, clarity and power. By sharing intimate moments from her life, lessons learned and advice on living, Oprah challenges readers to be the best version of themselves. — Lisa Dyson (TED Talk: A forgotten space age technology could change how we grow food )

The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music by Victor Wooten Bass player Wooten is one of the greatest musicians in the world. It’s not a music lesson. It’s a life lesson. I’ve read it three times. It just keeps getting better. — Daniel Levitin ( TED Talk: how to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed )

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley I read this when I was in eighth grade, and it truly changed my outlook on the world. Malcolm’s transformation, religious journey, and views on identity and race made me who I am today. It’s beautifully written, engaging and dramatic. Each time I read this, I find some beautiful nugget about growing up and finding your purpose in life. I know there are some issues with the accuracy of the manuscript , and as a scholar that interests me greatly. However, as a reader, an American, and a black American, Malcolm X’s story of redemption, loneliness and salvation, reminds me of the highs and lows that I’ve felt many times when I was searching for answers, looking to people who were questioning society in the same way I was, and looking for my place in America. — Reniqua Allen (TED Talk: The story we tell about millennials and who we leave out )

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Suggestions

On Finding and Losing

“Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.” –William Ellery Channing Rainfall is my go-to means of escape. Perhaps God…

If I walked to the window in the kitchen, the little one right above the creaky sink, I could look out over the backyard of my mother’s grandmother’s house. I gazed out, watching the hill gently slope beyond the fruit…

A Place for Everything, Everything in Its Place

I can clean my entire apartment in under two hours. That’s two…

My Levittown 

I am embarrassed to admit that I loved Levittown even when it…

Short Stories by Black women writers

The Refrain

On Christmas night, I found peace in my mother’s rendition of a Jody Watley song. Only inches from the speakers, Mama sat cross-legged on…

A Better Life

Naomi smiled when she received Amir’s note to ask her out during History class because it confirmed her beliefs—that she was different and special,…

Musu sat on a big rock. A beige bar of caustic soap stood vertically on the pile of dirty laundry at her feet, calling…

Essays by Black women writers

I am embarrassed to admit that I loved Levittown even when it didn’t love me. It was my first home, and like my first love, embedded while my…

Unmothered   

I can’t remember ever not wanting to be a mother. The lullaby to first tuck itself into my memory was Rock-a-Bye Baby. I might’ve heard it from my…

The Magic in the Diaspora

“Wòch nan dlo pa konnen doulè wòch nan solèy.” The rock in the water cannot know the pain of the rock in the sun. – Haitian Proverb I…

Celebrate Black Speculative Fiction

“Those That Sow and Those That Reap”

On a nimbus of decay, it emerged from the dark recesses of her closet and crept spiderlike toward her threadbare rug. Humid cold wafted from…

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Blog – Posted on Tuesday, Sep 29

70 must-read books by black authors in 2024.

The re-energized efforts of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 shone a light on many corners of Black culture. For lots of readers, this moment provided fresh inspiration to seek out new Black authors and to explore the rich variety of Black literature, whose stories span both borders and generations, illuminating a huge variety of experiences.

From 20th century classics that crystallized pivotal moments in the fight for civil rights, to hilarious novels, gripping fantasy, and 2020 bestsellers that continue to navigate complex social tensions — we’ve gathered together seventy of the best books by Black authors that belong on your ‘TBR’.

Our hand-picked list includes several famous black authors you might recognize — Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin — as well as some of the most promising up-and-coming names. Within our ‘Fiction’ section, you’ll find Black voices represented in a huge range of genres; and we’ve devoted additional sections to nonfiction , poetry , and Young Adult fiction (we know how important it is for young people to be represented in the books they read). So let’s dive in!

1. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

In The Sellout , Paul Beatty introduces us to a young, Black watermelon-and-weed grower, named Me. When Me’s father is gunned down by police, and his hometown Dickens is erased from the map, he decides to face one injustice by burying it beneath another. In one of the book’s many absurdist twists, Me hires a Black slave to serve as his footstool and lobbies in America’s highest court for the reinstatement of segregation. Powered by a wicked wit, this caustic but heartfelt satirical novel turns themes of racism and slavery inside out in service of a devastatingly clever message.

2. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin’s unmissable, triple Hugo-Award-winning trilogy, The Broken Earth , takes place in the Stillness — a world in which society is structured around surviving nuclear winters. The Orogenes, who wield the power of the earth, are the reason for life’s survival; yet, they are shunned and exploited by society. In The Fifth Season , a red rift tears through the land, spewing enough ash to darken the sky for years. Without the resources necessary to get through the long, dark night, there will be war all across the Stillness — and Essun must pursue her missing daughter through this deadly, dying land.

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

The seminal work from a giant of modern literature, Beloved chronicles the experiences of Sethe, an ex-slave living with her daughter in a house haunted by secrets. Sethe is held captive by the memories of her plantation; and when a fellow slave’s arrival heralds the mysterious coming of a woman — who calls herself Beloved — Sethe’s hideous past explodes into the present. A landmark depiction of the legacy of slavery, an engrossing ghost-story, and a reflection on motherhood and family, Beloved is so much more than the sum of its parts.

4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God was out of print for nearly 30 years, due to its readers’ initial rejection of its strong, Black, female protagonist. Janie Crawford is sixteen when her grandmother catches her kissing a shiftless boy and marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. The quest for independence which ensues sees Janie through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. Rigorous, dazzling, and emotionally satisfying, when Hurston’s classic was reissued in 1978, it became one of the most highly acclaimed and widely read novels within African American literature .

5. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

On December 3rd, 1976, seven gunmen stormed Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. Though the reggae star survived, the gunmen were never caught. A Brief History of Seven Killings is James’s fictional exploration of this event’s bloody aftermath, and of Jamaica, during one of its most unstable and violently defining moments. Spanning decades, leaping continents, and crowded with unforgettable voices, this ambitious and mesmerizing novel secures James’ place among the great literary talents of his generation  — and more importantly on our list of must-reads by Black authors.

6. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

Black Leopard, Red Wolf follows Tracker, renowned for (you guessed it) his ability to track people. Hired to find a missing boy, along with a motley crew of supernatural mercenaries, Tracker uncovers a conspiracy in the process. The first in a planned trilogy, this epic has been called the “ African Game of Thrones ”, because it honors African mythology with the same sense of adventure and mystery. Not to mention, it’s immensely violent. However, the fantasy plotline is transformed by James’ hallucinatory and confounding prose. Warning: it’s already optioned for film rights, so read it before it hits the silver screen!

7. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah follows two Nigerian characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, teenagers in love who drift apart when Ifemelu moves to America. This novel wears its politics on its sleeve, acutely describing how it feels to try and navigate multiple cultures — a feeling that is endemic to being an immigrant — and openly debating the lived experiences of Black people, American or not. This discussion is at its most overt in Ifemelu’s blog posts, scattered throughout the novel. The overt nature of the politics does not come at the cost of plot of characterization, however, and Adichie writes with sagacious humor.

8. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Walker unapologetically writes Southern Black women into world literature in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple . It tells the tale of Celie, a young African-American woman growing up in poverty in segregated Georgia. Raped by the man she calls “father”, Celie is separated from her children and her beloved sister Nettie, and trapped into an ugly marriage. Then, she meets Shug, a singer and magic-maker who helps her discover the power of her own spirit. Walker’s novel doesn’t soften its blows, but is courageous enough to hold on to its faith in forgiveness and hope.

9. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

It’s 2025 and the world is descending into anarchy. In America, violence rules and only the rich are safe. But one woman has the power to change everything. Lauren’s life is altered beyond recognition when a fire destroys her home and kills her family. Along with a handful of refugees, she is forced to go on a dangerous journey North — and on the way, she comes up with a revolutionary idea that might just save mankind. There’s nothing scarier than a dystopian novel that’s already coming true, and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower ’s exploration of climate change, inequality, and racism is alarmingly prescient.

10. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward’s freighted novel is a portrait of a broken Mississippi family: a young mother, (Leonie) hooked on drugs, and a husband completing a jail sentence. Hearing he’s about to be released, Leonie takes her two children and her friend Misty on a road trip to meet him. In this amusingly banal odyssey full of gas station lethargy and dodgy drug deals, Ward transplants the road novel into twenty-first century America, imbuing it with ancestral voices, mythical tropes, and hypnotic lyricism. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a harrowing and majestic work from an extraordinary author.

11. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Salvage the Bones tells the story of a desperately poor family in the Mississippi backwoods, as hurricane Katrina approaches. 14-year-old Esch, her three wayward brothers, and their alcoholic father scrabble against the clock to prepare their rotting junkyard of land and stockpile food. But with Esch pregnant, and her brother sneaking scraps for his pit-bull’s litter, these motherless children must protect and nurture one another to survive. Hopefully, if you pick this book up, you’ll forgive us for including two Jesmyn Ward novels among our must-reads by Black authors — it’s hard not to read it in a greedy frenzy.

12. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Effia and Esi are half-sisters, born in 18th century Ghana. When one is sold into slavery and the other marries a slaver, their paths diverge. Homegoing follows their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the missionary schools of Ghana to Jazz Age Harlem. Gyasi shares Morrison’s ability to crystallize slavery’s fallout, yet she is unique in her ability to connect it to the present day, illustrating how racism has become institutionalized. Epic in its canvas, yet intimate in its portraits, Homegoing is a searing historical fiction debut from a masterly new Black author.

13. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Published in 1952, Invisible Man was immediately hailed as a seminal work of American fiction. From the Deep South, to the streets of Harlem; expulsion from college, to lightning success as the leader of a communist organization — Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh relief. Journeying across the racial divide, he realizes that he’s an “invisible man”: people see only a reflection of their preconceived ideas, deny his individuality, and ultimately do not see him at all. Ellison’s theme reveals unparalleled truths about the nature and effects of bigotry.

14. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Whitehead’s bravura novel is based on the true story of a reform school, which operated for 111 years, committed devastating atrocities against boys of color, and warped the lives of thousands of children. This is where Elwood Curtis — a Black boy growing up in Jim Crow-era Florida — finds himself in The Nickel Boys . Elwood’s only salvation at the perilous Academy is Turner, a fellow ‘delinquent’ who challenges his ideals of how the world should work. Rising tension between the two friends leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo through the ages.

15. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Cora is a slave on a plantation in Georgia. An outcast among her fellow Africans and quickly approaching womanhood, she’s desperate for freedom. So, when Caesar tells her about an underground railroad, they decide to escape North, only to be pursued by a relentless slave-master. Whitehead’s novel is a pulsating story about a woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage. But, it’s also a powerful meditation on history, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, The Underground Railroad is a tour de force.

16. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

As one of the greatest Black authors, Baldwin published a slew of novels, biographies, and essays in his lifetime. But there’s no better place to start than his first book, Go Tell It on the Mountain . Drawing on his boyhood, Baldwin tells the story of Johnny Grimes growing up in 1930s Harlem, grappling with his religion, his sexuality, and his abusive minister father. Though this novel has a lot to say about race, religion, class, and sexuality, it does so in a way that acknowledges the nuance of the human experience. This is a blazing, enduring, hymn of a novel.

17. Swing Time by Zadie Smith

A “best friend bildungsroman” in the Elena Ferrante mould, Swing Time tells the story of two brown girls from neighbouring housing estates in London, who both dream of being dancers. It's a close but complicated friendship that ends abruptly in their twenties, never to be rekindled, but never quite forgotten. Beneath the virtuosic plot lies a keen social commentary on betterment: Smith asks us to consider whether the ability to change is really a form of power. With shifting identities, our narrator seeks, above all, a place where she belongs. Could that place be a best friend?

18. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

A morbidly funny mixture of family saga and slashfest set in Lagos, Nigeria, My Sister, the Serial Killer is a satirical thriller about how blood is thicker (and harder to get out of the carpet) than water. Korede's life is constantly upended as she's forced to clean up after her sister Ayoola, who has a tendency to kill her boyfriends. But things get complicated when Ayoola starts dating Korede’s colleague, with whom she’s long been in love. This debut novel from Black author Oyinkan Braithwaite is as smart and addictive as Killing Eve .

19. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vignes sisters will always be identical. But when they run away from the southern Black community where they were raised, they choose to live in very different worlds. One returns to her hometown with her Black daughter, while the other decides to live her life passing as a white woman. Though they're separated, their lives are still very much intertwined. Weaving together multiple generations and their stories, The Vanishing Half looks well beyond issues of race, to consider the lasting influence of our pasts, and to explore why people are compelled to live as someone other than themselves.

20. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Born on a Virginia plantation named “Lockless”, Hiram is the son of a slave master and a slave. When his mother is sold “down river” and he is left orphaned, he is robbed of his memories of her, but gifted with a mystical power. When this mysterious ability saves him from drowning, Hiram and fellow slave Sophia run away to freedom in the North. Though Coates illuminates the violent degradations heaped upon generations of runaways who waged war to make lives with the people they loved, he does so while ensuring they retain their dignity.

21. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

First published in 1958, Chinua Achebe's stark, coolly ironic masterpiece has sold over ten million copies in forty-five languages. It tells the story of Okonkwo: the greatest fighter alive, his fame is spreading like wildfire throughout West-Africa. But when he accidentally kills a clansman his life begins to fall apart. Often compared to the great Greek tragedies, Things Fall Apart is an arresting parable about a proud but helpless man witnessing the collapse of his village, as old ways come into contact with new. An eye-opening and compelling read, Achebe’s first novel is a must-read. 

22. Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Drawn from Taylor’s own experiences, the queer, Black protagonist of this campus novel, Wallace, struggles to navigate the prejudgments and biases of the white cohorts in his PhD program. As a form of self-preservation, Wallace enforces a wary distance within his circle of friends, neglecting even to tell them of his father’s recent death. But over the course of a blustery end-of-summer weekend, a series of confrontations expose hidden currents of hostility and desire, forcing him to grapple with the long shadows of his childhood. This quiet, intimate and queer novel , from an electric new Black author, strives to make Black readers feel seen.

23. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Delving into relationships, identity politics, and one woman’s search for belonging, Queenie is a characterful, topical and bracingly real debut by Carty-Williams. Caught between a Jamaican-British family that doesn’t understand her, a job that isn’t all it was meant to be, and a messy break-up she can’t seem to get over, Queenie Jenkins seeks comfort in all the wrong places, including more-than-a-few problematic men. Her missteps and misadventures are snort-your-tea-out funny one moment and utterly heart-breaking the next.

24. Lot by Bryan Washington

Washington’s collection of short stories follows the son of a Black mother and a Latino father as he comes of age in an apartment block in Houston. As he explores his sexuality and tries to find a place among his family, the community swells around him, their stories woven into his: a young woman caught in an affair, a rag-tag baseball team, a drug-dealer who takes a Guatemalan teen under his wing, and a camera-shy mythical beast. Washington’s viscerally drawn Houston leaps off the page with energy, wit, and the infinite longing of people searching for home.

25. Erasure by Percival Everett

Everett’s Erasure is a watertight satire of the publishing industry and the issue of being “Black enough” in America. Monk Ellison is a novelist whose career has bottomed out. While his manuscript is rejected by publishers who say it “has nothing to do with the African-American experience”, We’s Lives in Da Ghetto — a novel by a Black author who "once visited some relatives in Harlem" — enjoys meteoric success. Enraged, and despairing at his personal life, Monk dashes off a novel he insists is “offensive, poorly written, racist and mindless”. But of course, it’s the Next Big Thing...

26. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Odd-mannered and obsessive, Aster lives a lonely life in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda , a generational starship ferrying the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. Its leaders — a white supremacy cult called the Sovereignty — run the ship on the labor and intimidation of dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. But, when the autopsy of Matilda 's sovereign reveals a link between his death and her mother's suicide, Aster discovers that there might be a way out — if she’s willing to take on her brutal overseer and sow the seeds of civil war.

27. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

From the National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming comes a striking new exploration of identity, class, race, and status. Taking sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming-of-age party as the jumping off point, Red at the Bone unfurls with verve and urgency the story of three generations, revealing their dreams, ambitions, and the tolls they’ve paid to escape the pull of history. Woodson deftly considers the ways in which young people are so often pushed into making life-changing decisions before they even know who they are.

28. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Adunni’s mother told her that the only way to get a “louding voice” is to have an education. But at fourteen, Adunni’s father sells her to a local man desperate for an heir. Then, when tragedy strikes, she is sold again, trapped in subservience, this time to a wealthy household in Lagos, where no one speaks about the disappearance of her predecessor, Rebecca. Through it all, Adunni will not be silenced. In a whisper, in song, in broken English — she finds a way to speak for herself, for Rebecca, and for all those who struggle to be heard.

29. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

A page-turning debut about the messy dynamics of privilege, Such a Fun Age introduces us to cash-strapped babysitter Emira Tucker and her employer Alix Chamberlain. When Emira is racially profiled by a security guard and accused of kidnapping Alix’s daughter, Alix, with the best of intentions (and a ‘personal brand’ to protect), resolves to make things right. The two women could not be more different — one trying to figure out her next life move, the other a successful feminist blogger — but Alix’s efforts to right the situation reveal a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

30. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Rooted in Igbo cosmology, Freshwater charts the extraordinary journey of a broken, young Nigerian woman called Ada with and towards her many different, even divergent, selves. Told from a shape-shifting perspective — the mythic and assured ‘We’, the intimate and distinctively Nigerian Ashagura, and Ada’s own tortured, tentative voice — this surreal novel is innovative and daring, disorienting yet stunning. Gripping from the very first sentence, Amazi’s debut novel will forge a path to your very core.

31. It's Not All Downhill From Here by Terry McMillan

At 68, Loretha Curry is far from thinking that her best days are behind her. She may be carrying a few more pounds than she’d like, but she has a booming business, ride-or-die friends, and a husband whose moves in the bedroom still surprise. But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha’s optimism begins to falter. With the help of her friends, she’ll have to gather all her strength to push through heartbreak and chart new paths. Bestselling author Terry McMillan brings her signature wit and wisdom to It’s Not All Downhill From Here .

32. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Weaving through time and space with crackling energy, Girl, Woman, Other tracks the lives of a dozen Black, British women, and the people they have loved and unloved, through generations and across social classes. However, with prose rhythms that feel like the wilful impulses of inner thought, Evaristo manages to make readers feel intimately connected to twelve different characters, each with a distinctive and vibrant voice. This 2019 Man Booker Prize-winner is a vibrantly contemporary kind of history — a love song to modern Britain and Black womanhood.

33. Closure: Contemporary Black British Short Stories

From a wide range of British Black authors — award-winning to previously unpublished — the stories in this stand-out anthology offer contemporary conversations around different experiences of being British. The breadth of this experience is evident in the rich variety of styles, forms and themes. Raw realism gives way to pure lyricism; tender unrequited yearnings rub shoulders with humorous moments of epiphany. The title Closure is a subversive one, for, much like life, the stories in this anthology rarely end the way we imagine they will.

34. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

This is a love story. But one that centres on an appalling miscarriage of justice. Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of the American Dream, until Roy is wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to twelve years. Jones doesn’t elaborate; the reader simply understands that a Black man, in the wrong place at the wrong time, will find retribution meted out swiftly and unquestioningly. What follows is a tender, rousing account of three people who are at once bound together and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage probes important ideas with emotional intelligence and a colossal heart.

35. Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat

Everything Inside is a short story collection set in the Caribbean, Miami, and Port-au-Prince. Danticat’s prose shines a light on the intricacies of human relationships, as she knowingly observes the balance of a family at a christening, the clash between ambition and survival, and the blossoming and withering of romantic relationships, among other things. Reading this collection, you’ll feel that you’ve laid yourself in the hands of a discerning, careful, and quiet force — and that’s exactly where you’ll want to stay.

36. Deacon King Kong by James McBride

James McBride’s novel Deacon King Kong begins with a shooting. This is 1969 Brooklyn, and a very drunk deacon ‘Sportcoat’ shoots a drug dealer. The rest of the novel examines the effects of this singular event on a number of characters: the church members, the neighbors, the mafia, the witnesses, and the police officers called to the scene. In an ambitious novel bursting with energy, McBride makes the case for the humanizing power of trust, love, and hope, all against the vibrant backdrop of 1960s New York.

37. Nudibranch by Irenosen Okojie

Irenosen Okojie’s Nudibranch is a collection of short stories that delves into the realm of the surreal. Though the stories are set in real places, includingLondon and Berlin, they chart a movement into the fantastic and peculiar. In these vividly imagined, somewhat abstract stories, bizarre, unexplained, and downright weird things begin to happen, as reality slowly metamorphoses into something new... This striking, original, and ever-unpredictable collection stands out for its poetic evocation of all things odd and beautiful. So take a dive into Okojie’s world — it’s nothing short of memorable.

38. Hold by Michael Donkor

Michael Donkor’s Hold is about three young girls: Belinda, Amma, and Mary. Belinda is a housegirl in Ghana, and is growing closer to 11-year-old Mary when she is suddenly summoned to live in London with Amma. Amma’s parents are hoping Belinda will be a positive influence on their rebellious daughter. The two teenagers are vastly different, but together, they grapple with shared questions about their identities, their sexualities, and the pressure of growing up. This refreshing coming-of-age novel is a touching tribute to the tentative reach for freedom of queer adolescence, rich with sensitive observations about the two girls.

39. Bone Readers by Jacob Ross

This breathtaking, Jhalak-prize-winning crime thriller , set in the Caribbean island of Camaho, follows Michael ‘Digger’ Digson as he enters the police force. Digger uses his skill for bone-reading (passed down by his grandmother), and for recognizing voices, to contribute to the missing person cases in Camaho. Face-to-face with the corrupt underbelly of the island, Digger and his intelligent colleague Kathleen Stanislaus pursue a cold case into the dark corners of the criminal world. This tightly-plotted and suspenseful literary novel is a masterclass in crime writing, and features powerful characters who will really get under your skin.

40. Remembered by Yvonne Battle-Felton

Long-listed for the 2019 Women’s Prize in Fiction, Remembered ventures into 1910 Philadelphia, amid flaring racial tensions. With her son on the brink of death, the narrator begins to tell a story about the past, travelling back in time to 1843. Charting the life of Ella from slavery to emancipation, narrator Spring also recalls the complicated narrative of her own life. In this parallel examination of slavery and its many ongoing and refracted legacies, freedom and motherhood lie quietly at the heart of the story.

41. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

This is New York during the 2008 financial crisis. Behold the Dreamers bears witness to the lives of two families: a Cameroonian family of immigrants and a wealthy family of Americans. Their distant worlds collide when Jende Jonga, of the former family, is employed as chauffeur by Edward Clark, of the latter. The book juggles sadness with hope, held in ambivalent balance as Mbue expertly breathes new life into the American Dream. Behold the Dreamers draws its characters with warmth and sensitivity, astutely capturing the friction between privilege and need.

42. Small Island by Andrea Levy

Andrea Levy’s classic is a polyphonic novel of compassion and tenderness. It reaches readers in the voices of four characters: Hortense Joseph, and her husband Gilbert, their white landlady, Queenie, and her husband Bernard. Hortense and Gilbert are part of the Windrush Generation, Caribbean immigrants who reached London aboard the ship HMT Empire Windrush in 1948. In their struggle to belong in London, the novel finds a rich trove of emotion, taking a sensitive and careful look at the implications of race, ethnicity, and social class. Levy’s masterpiece is an undisputed must-read.

43. Loving Day by Mat Johnson

TItled after the US Supreme Court ruling that legalized interracial marriage, Loving Day is a celebration of mixed-race identity. Warren Duffy finds himself in Philadelphia, where he meets his long-lost daughter Tal at a comic convention. Despite being mixed-race, Tal has been raised white. In this semi-autobiographical novel, which the author calls his own “coming out as a mulatto”, Tal’s struggle to reconcile herself to her identity becomes the focus of the narrative. This is a heartwarming, often funny, and always thought-provoking book to add to your list.

44. We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s dystopian novel We Cast a Shadow is a biting satire of the enduring racism in contemporary America. To help his biracial son access a new medical procedure that will save his life by turning him white, the novel’s unnamed narrator must pass a series of truly crazy tests and qualify as a partner at the law firm where he works. This darkly comic and thoroughly unsettling book will stay with you — surreal, clever, and tinged with horror throughout, We Cast a Shadow is a must-read.

45. That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu

Derek Owusu’s debut novel That Reminds Me is told in poetic fragments following a young British-Ghanaian man, elusively named K., as he journeys from birth to tentative adulthood. This lyrical, sensitive book explores the protagonist’s consciousness one memory at a time, taking readers from personal questions of belonging and family to wider social issues, like addiction and violence. Raw, honest, and original, this is a brilliant literary debut, from a voice to watch out for in the future. With its delicate descriptions of mental health, That Reminds Me is a truly remarkable feat.

46. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird is an ambitious and loose retelling of the famous Snow White fairytale that boldly introduces a racial dimension. This is the 1950s and the protagonist, Boy Novak, moves to a small Massachusetts town, where she grows attached to a local named Arturo, and is introduced to his daughter, Snow. Unlike Arturo and the rest of his light-skinned African-American family, Snow cannot ‘pass’ for white, prompting a radical reevaluation of them all. Unique and compellingly told, Oyeyemi’s book shimmers with literary magic.

47. The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta

The Black Flamingo tells the story of Michael, a mixed-race, half-Jamaican, half Greek-Cypriot boy living in the UK. Michael’s already working to come to terms with the fact that he’s gay, when he takes flight as a drag artist while attending university. He becomes the Black Flamingo, in a brilliant story about self-emancipation and self-acceptance, all told in verse. This fabulous, glamorous, and absolutely celebratory novel about finding and championing your real self at the intersection of multiple identities deserves a space on your shelf.

48. Orangeboy by Patrice Lawrence

Set on an estate in Hackney, London, Patrice Lawrence’s Orangeboy follows Marlon, a 16-year-old who’s determined to resist his brother’s bad influence and make his widowed mum proud. But when Marlon goes on a date with Sonya, his life reaches a turning point: suddenly it’s impossible to stay away from his brother’s world of street gangs and drugs. In this action-packed, fast novel, you’ll watch Marlon adapt, changing completely while, in many ways, remaining the same. Don’t miss out on this grippingly modern novel!

49. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Tomi Adeyemi’s debut fantasy novel features a set of richly drawn characters, and blends Nigerian Yoruba mythology with established tropes and elements of fantasy. The protagonist, Zélie Adebola, is fighting to restore magic to the land of Orïsha, after the king ordered all the magicians killed. Epic high fantasy worldbuilding (complete with snow leopards), meets intelligent analysis of social power, racial tensions, and prejudice, in a debut that grips readers from page one. The good news? This is the first in a fantasy series , so there’s plenty more to read...

50. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas’s wildly successful The Hate U Give (now adapted by Netflix!) begins with a shooting. Starr Carter’s best friend, Khalil, is killed by police. As Khalil’s death makes national news, and the public question who’s to blame, Starr must provide answers. In this poignant, thoughtful, and inspirational novel, Angie Thomas tells a tale of the Black Lives Matter age, but make no mistake: this is no temporary trend, but a literary masterpiece.

51. Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

This breathtaking novel is told in 60 fragments of verse, each representing the passage of one second in the single minute  teenage Will has to decide whether he’s going to shoot his brother’s killer. This sparse, quick-paced book will have you on the edge of your seat, as it cleverly exposes the complexities of teenage violence. Long Way Down is YA genius — originally told and utterly heartbreaking, this narrative will stay with you despite the speed with which you’ll read it.

52. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses imagines a world where Noughts, who are white, are enslaved by the Crosses, who are Black. In a deliberate reversal of our own society’s history and social dynamics, Blackman tells the story of Sephy, a Nought, and Callum, a Cross. The two have been friends for a long time, but their blossoming romance is absolutely forbidden. This beautiful, intelligent, and devastating book has earned its place as a Young Adult fiction classic, and it has never been more timely.

53. The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney by Okechukwu Nzelu

For Nnenna, growing up means reaching for her Igbo-Nigerian heritage, inherited from her father. The only problem is, she’s never met him. Nnenna is nearly seventeen and living in Manchester, with her white mother, who is resistant to questioning. This is a novel that’s easy to read, but that doesn’t mean that its subject matter is ‘light’. Despite its funny outlook, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney is engaged in asking serious questions about race, growing up, sexuality, and personal heritage. This intelligent and moving book is sure to warm your heart!

54. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

12-year-old Sunny was born in New York, but when her parents move back to their native Nigeria, so does she. At school, her new classmates call her “akata”, a wild animal, because of her albino features and American childhood. But her friends also show her that she has greater powers than she realizes: the magical powers of the Leopard People. Alongside her friends, Sunny must find a way to stop Black Hat Otokoto, a child kidnapper and magician, before it’s too late. With brilliantly detailed worldbuilding that’s been compared to Harry Potter and a rich mythological background of West African mythology, Akata Witch is a truly spell-binding book.

55. Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Citizen is a book you’ll sometimes encounter on lists of essays, but its subtitle, ‘An American Lyric’, firmly sets it into the world of poetry. Rankine’s brilliant 2014 book takes a deeply incisive look at modern society’s racism by directing the reader’s attention to singular moments that add up to a breathtaking totality. Powerful and devastating, Citizen shines a light on daily microaggressions and wider social phenomena alike. It leaves readers with a new and unsettling clarity — the mark of a masterpiece.

56. Kumukanda by Kayo Chingonyi

‘Kumukanda’ is the name the Zambian tribe of Luvale gives to their coming-of-age ceremony, and so Chingonyi, who is himself of Zambian heritage, sets the scene for a collection of nostalgia, loss, and transition. This Dylan Thomas Prize-winning collection touches on subjects like family, negotiating belonging between countries, racism, and music. Chingonyi’s expertly-crafted verse echoes the cadences and rhythms of grime and rap music, and assumes a youthful velocity of a distinctly modern British association. This deeply affecting collection will move and affect you.

57. A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson

‘And if I speak of Paradise, / then I’m speaking of my grandmother’: so begins Roger Robinson’s poem ‘A Portable Paradise’, the work that gives its name to his T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection. This moving and tender book looks at subjects as wide-ranging as family, the Windrush generation, slavery, racism, joy for life, heritage, and class. Robinson’s poems move carefully and powerfully, with the lyricism and emotional clarity of a talented writer. This is a book to hold close to your heart.

58. The Collected Poems by Langston Hughes

‘I’ve known rivers: / I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the / flow of human blood in human rivers’. From his most well-known poems, like ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’, to his lesser known poems for children, this comprehensive collection contains all of Langston Hughes’ brilliant published poetry, composed over fifty years. The Harlem Renaissance leader’s work has not aged one bit: it is just as fresh, modern, and arresting as it was when it was originally published. Reading Hughes’ poetry will leave you with a sense of awe and the knowledge that you’ve been blessed to know the work of a great mind.

59. Surge by Jay Bernard

Jay Bernard’s Surge asks crucial questions about personal memory and the way we choose to collectively remember historical events. For Bernard, these are issues integral to understanding their place in contemporary British society, as a queer Black person. Seeing a connection between Grenfell and the 1981 New Cross fire, Surge penetrates time to highlight the lack of progress made. Heartbreaking, poignant, and ambitiously conceived, this collection is an important addition to the British poetry scene.

60. The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus

Another brilliant poetry collection from modern Britain, Raymond Antrobus’s The Perseverance is an eye-opening book. The poet, who is deaf himself, writes elegantly and affectingly about the d/Deaf experience: “the raveled knot of tongues, / of blaring birds, consonant crumbs / of dull doorbells, sounds swamped / in my misty hearing aid tubes”. This incredible collection is a song to identity, to the poet’s own British-Jamaican heritage, to the world of noise that we all navigate in different ways. For a little while, let Antrobus guide you through it, and show you the world in a whole new way.

61. The Adoption Papers by Jackie Kay

A masterclass in writing from different perspectives, The Adoption Papers is about a Black girl adopted by a white Scottish couple. Juggling the points of view of the child, mother, and biological mother, this sensitive collection is able to capture the emotional intricacies and complexities of adoption in heartbreaking verse. This brave, witty, and honest book is an adoption literature classic, and a must-read literary achievement.

62. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Many saw the election of Barack Obama as reason to immediately proclaim America a ‘post-racial’ society. But the justice system has always had a different story to tell. In this searing account of structural racism in the justice system, legal scholar Michelle Alexander shows that preventing the mass incarceration of people of colour (especially Black men) should be an utmost priority. This is a book that calls the nation to come to terms with its own past of slavery, and to take action to recognize and battle its surviving legacies. Without a doubt, one of the most important nonfictional works of recent decades.

63. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is a historical account of a large part of the 20th century. For decades, Black Americans left the south, searching for better prospects in the western and northern states. This epic tale of the Great Migration, exhaustively researched by its Pulitzer-winning author, is told through the life stories of three African Americans: Robert Foster, Ida Mae Gladney, and George Starling, who left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida respectively, to pursue new lives. This major historical book is a beautifully-told, enlightening portrait of American history.

64. Becoming by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama’s memoir became a literary sensation when it was published in 2018, and for good reason. The former First Lady’s incredible optimism, pragmatism, and tireless energy pour right out of the book and into the reader, with one central message: you matter, and you can accomplish anything. In sharing her own life story, Michelle Obama becomes both role model and champion — a force of inspiration for every woman and young people worldwide. Without a doubt, she’s the kind of person who comes along once in a generation.

65. Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga

Renowned historian and broadcaster David Olusoga’s book delves deep into the historical connections between Britain and Africa. Black and British remembers the UK’s slave-trading past, as well as the forgotten Black Britons who fought alongside the British army in several wars. Beyond the past, Olusoga’s comprehensive work gives an insightful analysis of the enduring legacies of slavery in the present day. Above all, this book is a well-researched reminder that ‘Black’ and ‘British’ are not two contradictory terms.

66. How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

The opposite of “racist”, Ibram X Kendi explains, isn’t “not racist”, but “antiracist”. And the difference between the two is crucial. It isn’t enough to passively refrain from being racist  — anyone who wishes to be an ally to Black people (though this book is particularly focused on African Americans within American society) must actively seek to right the injustices of racism. How to Be an Antiracist argues this point with conviction and energy, and provides strategies of action for anyone wanting to progress from being ‘aware’ of racism, to being its active enemy.

67. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

This poetic classic of the autobiography genre is a testament to human strength and resilience. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Maya Angelou tells the story of her earlier years, tracing her life from the age of three to sixteen, in a manner that some critics call “autobiographical fiction”, for the way it organizes personal experience through the narrative techniques of fiction. This deeply affecting coming-of-age book discusses subjects such as race, trauma, and sexual abuse with honesty and wisdom.

68. Well-Read Black Girl by Glory Edim

Glory Edim, founder of the book club ‘Well-Read Black Girl’ in Brooklyn, has gathered essays written by leading Black female authors into a collection that functions as a space of reflection and inspiration. Writers like Jesmyn Ward, N. K. Jemisin, Jacqueline Woodson, and Tayari Jones all weigh in on the subject of seeing yourself represented in literature. The result is a book that is a joy to read, and an inspiring and exciting ode to Black sisterhood.

69. Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith

This stunning memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith begins with her Californian upbringing, but quickly moves into her family’s past and her mother’s fight with cancer. Forced to reckon with her own conflicted sense of identity and shaken faith, Smith finds a whole new approach to selfhood and belonging. Delicately and honestly written, this memoir is filled with light that is anything but ordinary.

70. Hunger by Roxane Gay

Not just a writer but a spokesperson, Roxane Gay writes with sensitivity and intimacy about food and the body. In her deeply personal memoir Hunger, she uses her own struggles — her rape, her overeating, and the reality of living as a sizable woman — to explore our shared anxieties surrounding pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. Gay discusses with candor what it means to take care of yourself when you crave delicious and satisfying food, but live in a world where the open hatred of fat people is tolerated, even encouraged, and you yourself want a smaller, safer body.

Looking to diversify your bookshelf even more? Or simply want to read authors on the forefront of literary development? Check out our list of 20 Latinx authors with books that belong on your TBR list.

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25 Books by Black Authors You Should Read This February

Celebrate Black History Month with these must-read classics.

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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois , by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

This powerful intergenerational debut novel and Oprah’s Book Club pick explores the story and history of Black and Indigenous people in the South through the eyes of Ailey Pearl Garfield, the product of a small Georgia town and family lineage that tells the expansive, far-reaching story of Black America’s striving for dignity, respect, and freedom.

Finding Me , by Viola Davis

In her powerful and empowering memoir, the EGOT-winning entertainer details her rise from poverty and other trauma to emerge as an iconic American artist. Through revisiting her childhood and all its pain, she was able to finally answer the question that had long haunted her: How did I claw my way out? About the Book Club pick, Oprah had this to say: “There are so many lessons to be learned from this breathtaking memoir about triumphing over adversity and trauma. Viola Davis leaves it all on the page—from her beginnings in South Carolina as the fifth of six children born in a sharecropper’s shack to acclaim as an actor, producer, and philanthropist. I was so moved by this book that I just had to share it with our entire OBC audience.”

Moon Witch, Spider King, by Marlon James

From Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land to Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise , world-building is a literary technique du jour, but few authors have had the commercial success of Marlon James, whose Black Leopard, Red Wolf blew up bestseller lists from coast to coast. His epic second installment in the Dark Star Trilogy, billed as an African Game of Thrones, turns on the foibles of Sogolon, a witch-cum-player in the royal court of James’s supernova imagination. His ambition and storytelling prowess are off the charts.

The Street , by Ann Petry

Published in 1946 and the first book by a Black women to sell over a million copies, Petry’s work is a classic. Set in Harlem on 116th Street, it follows Lutie Johnson’s struggles to survive as a divorced mother with a young son amid racism and sexism. With few choices in a city where the Black population lives in decrepit apartments and poverty is a constant companion, Lutie endures despite it all.

Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley

Mottley began her astonishing debut novel—an Oprah's Book Club pick —when she was just 16. It has received raves from such luminaries as Dave Eggers, Kiese Laymon, and this one from James McBride: “Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller.”

Recitatif , by Toni Morrison

First published in 1983, the Nobel laureate’s only short story is a formal experiment that both stokes and defies our expectations, a chess game she’s destined to win. As 8-year-olds, Twyla and Roberta are “dumped” for four months into a home for runaway and orphan girls; as Twyla notes, “my mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” Within St. Bonaventure, they’re hapless pawns near the bottom of the social pecking order, just above Maggie, the mute, disabled kitchen aide. But the literary queen has a gambit up her sleeve: One girl is white and the other Black, and Morrison jumbles their racial identities through a series of moves that undermine historical hierarchies and simple binaries. When the girls reunite as women, they seek out the truth about what, exactly, went down so many years earlier. Zadie Smith offers an incisive, surprising introduction, limning the burdens the author placed on herself and us all, stepping out of her comfort zone while tirelessly advocating for “the African American culture out of which and toward which Morrison writes.”

Kindred , by Octavia E. Butler

In what is considered a literary masterpiece and Butler’s most popular novel, Kindred follows a young Black woman named Dana. Though she lives in 1976 L.A., she’s suddenly transported to a Civil War–era plantation in Maryland. Soon, the more frequently Dana travels back in time, the longer she stays, as she faces dangers that threaten her life in the future.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , by Maya Angelou

Written by a legendary writer, civil rights activist, and one of Oprah’s greatest friends, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a poetic memoir that captures Angelou’s childhood struggles and the freedoms of her adulthood, which allowed her to find strength amid despair.

Sister Outsider , by Audre Lorde

The celebrated collection of 15 essays and speeches by Audre Lorde , the famed activist, reflects on themes of ageism, racism, homophobia, and class.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

Originally published in 1937 and set in Southern Florida, this story follows main character Janie Crawford on her quest to find independence throughout three different marriages.

Go Tell It on the Mountain , by James Baldwin

As one of our country’s great Black writers, Baldwin published a slew of books, short stories, and essays in his lifetime. In his first book, Go Tell It on the Mountain , he penned a semi-autobiographical story of a teen growing up in 1930s Harlem who struggles with self-identity as the stepson of a strict Pentecostal minister. Similarly, Baldwin was raised by a stepfather who served as a Baptist pastor.

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Adapted into a Steven Spielberg–directed film that earned Oprah an Oscar nomination and, of course, the 2023 musical film adaptation that Oprah executive produced, The Color Purple tells the tale of Celie, a young woman growing up in poverty in segregated Georgia. Despite suffering hardship, Celie finds her way back to the ones she loves in a time-tested story.

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

Now thought of as essential reading in American literature, this novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. The Invisible Man is narrated by a nameless main character who details growing up in a Black Southern community. He’s eventually expelled from college and then becomes a leader of a Black nationalist group.

That Bird Has My Wings , by Jarvis Jay Masters

Masters has been incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison for the past 41 years. Oprah read the book shortly after it was first published by HarperOne, in 2009, and it left a strong impression: “His story, of a young boy victimized by addiction, poverty, violence, the foster care system, and later the justice system, profoundly touched me then, and still does today,” she said. HarperOne has reissued the book, which contains a foreword by spiritual teacher Pema Chödrön , who has long championed Masters’s cause.

The Warmth of Other Suns , by Isabel Wilkerson

Wilkerson 's second book, Caste , has rightfully earned its space in the spotlight; it was selected as an Oprah's Book Club pick in 2020 and adapted into the acclaimed 2023 film Origin , directed by Ava DuVernay . But her Pulitzer Prize–winning debut is likewise required reading for anyone who wants to understand race in America. this magisterial work charts the mass exodus of African Americans in the early 20th century from the Jim Crow South into Northern and Western cities, where they built successful lives amid racism etched in softer shades. With consummate skill, Wilkerson braids the stirring stories of her three guides—a pugilistic Floridian turned Harlem activist, a Mississippi sharecropper later rooted in Chicago, and Ray Charles’s personal physician from Louisiana—into a classic of narrative nonfiction, destined to influence writers for generations to come.

The 1619 Project , by Nikole Hannah-Jones

This is an expanded and largely reimagined version of the August 18, 2019, special issue of The New York Times Magazine memorializing the year—four centuries ago—when more than 20 enslaved Africans first arrived on the shores of England’s American colonies. With new original material, contributors, and rebuttals to some of the controversy the issue engendered, this work offers a definitive account of how racism and Black resistance have shaped the U.S. to the present day.

Beloved , by Toni Morrison

Adapted into a 1998 film starring Oprah, this Pulitzer Prize–winning novel is arguably Morrison’s most well-known. It tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who escaped to Ohio in the 1870s—but, despite her freedom, finds herself haunted by the trauma of her past. In 1998, Oprah starred in the film adaptation.

We Should All Be Feminists , by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Adapted from her TEDx Talk of the same name, Adichie uses personal experiences and understanding of sexual politics to define what feminism means in the 21st century.

A Raisin in the Sun , by Lorraine Hansberry

A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the lives of a South Side Chicago family as they dream of life’s possibilities after their matriarch, Lena, gets a substantial insurance check. The dramatic play originally opened on Broadway in 1959, with a revival in 2014 starring Denzel Washington.

Becoming , by Michelle Obama

Officially the bestselling book of 2018—the same year it was selected as a Book Club pick — the former First Lady tells all in what Oprah called a ”vulnerable" memoir, in which she opens up about her marriage and life before and after the White House.

Wadzanai is a Books Editor at Oprah Daily where she edits and writes about authors and books. She has written for various publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Essence Magazine among others. She is also a short story writer centering her work on women, Africa and the Diaspora. 

A former book editor and the author of a memoir, This Boy's Faith, Hamilton Cain is Contributing Books Editor at Oprah Daily. As a freelance journalist, he has written for O, The Oprah Magazine, Men’s Health, The Good Men Project, and The List (Edinburgh, U.K.) and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle and lives with his family in Brooklyn.  

McKenzie Jean-Philippe is the editorial assistant at OprahMag.com covering pop culture, TV, movies, celebrity, and lifestyle. She loves a great Oprah viral moment and all things Netflix—but come summertime, Big Brother has her heart. On a day off you'll find her curled up with a new juicy romance novel.

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LAST APRIL, KENDRICK Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music. That’s old news, but it’ll never get old to me: Black male rappers have been so maligned as to render his award almost unimaginable to those of us who have loved the music for decades. At the ceremony, the prize’s administrator, Dana Canedy, greeted Lamar on the steps of Columbia University. “We’re both making history right now,” she said. And so they were: Canedy is the first black woman to hold her post, and Lamar — or “Pulitzer Kenny,” as he now delightfully, and delightedly, calls himself — is the first hip-hop artist to win the award. On the same day, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins was nominated for the prize for drama (he was also nominated in 2016). Last spring, “ Black Panther ,” with its nearly all-black cast, surpassed a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales. In May, Sean “Diddy” Combs outbid a rival to purchase a Kerry James Marshall painting for $21.1 million at Sotheby’s. The sale was a triumph: A black multimillionaire bought a black artist’s painting for the highest sum ever paid for the work of a living African-American artist.

The writers speak: My favorite work of literature by a black female American is...

And more favorite works from men not pictured here.

What matters here, what’s more striking than the sums exchanged or the awards received, is the intense focus on works by African-American men in America’s artistic landscape, even as the problems of race and racial violence continue to plague the nation.

The last decade has seen a burgeoning multiplicity in America’s literature, with gifted black men writing novels, poems and plays of great import. Some of them have even come to the attention of the literary establishment. Here follows a woefully incomplete roll call: Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer , 2015. Colson Whitehead, National Book Award , 2016; Pulitzer, 2017. Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer, 2017. Terrance Hayes, National Book Award, 2010. James McBride, National Book Award , 2013. Ross Gay, Danez Smith, Fred Moten and Yusef Komunyakaa, National Book Award finalists. The list goes on, and I have not touched on the writers who are not yet household names, whose arrival I await in the manner of James Baldwin’s loving anticipation of his nephew’s birth in his essay “ A Letter to My Nephew ” (1962), in which he wrote: “Here you were to be loved. To be loved … hard at once and forever to strengthen you against the loveless world.”

In that same essay, Baldwin also wrote: “This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it.” Now, in 2018, blackness is as lethal to black people as it ever was. Four days before Lamar received his Pulitzer, a white man in a Michigan suburb opened fire on a 14-year-old black boy when he knocked on his door to ask for directions after missing the school bus. Hysterical racism throughout the country has spawned an epidemic of police violence so unbearable, so ongoing, that if I listed the names of the dead today, it would likely be incomplete by next month. Even as African-American writing currently experiences unprecedented mainstream appeal and critical recognition, the focus on black expression has another, uglier face: a deadly obsession with black bodies. Thus, it is possible for the Sacramento police to murder a black man holding a cellphone in his grandmother’s backyard and for Whitehead to win the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award within a year. How are we to reconcile these truths? Is the attention to black male writing merely a fleeting moment, or is it a revolution?

To be sure, there is much to celebrate, but these recent developments are not without complication. “I can’t help but think this comes out of the eight years of Barack Obama … and the backlash against him,” says Farah Griffin, an author and scholar of black literature at Columbia University. “And also the way in which black males have been seen as targets; we know there were women, too, but the people we can name are men.” This raises a crucial question about black women and (in)visibility, but more on that later.

To the subject at hand: It is safe to say that Barack Obama may be the most famous African-American man who has ever lived. He represents an erudite, sophisticated blackness that mainstream culture has historically derided or dismissed. But that omnipresent image of a powerful, untouchable black man reinvigorated a rage and fear of blackness as old as the nation itself. Slavery-era fixations and caricatures still titillate and terrify: Black men are a threat to order and the status quo, physically imposing and possessed of exaggerated sexual ability. Therefore, they must be contained. The poet Jericho Brown says black people don’t have the luxury of being quiet: Every black behavior, no matter how banal — getting out of a car, walking down the street — draws attention or ire. Black bodies, by their very existence, are turned up to the highest volume at all times. All of this is exacerbated by the fact of maleness in our sexist society: Men, even vilified men, outrank women in the hierarchy of being; they are more seen . It is in this charged reality that the work of black male writers finds itself in the spotlight.

“THE IDEA OF a black male resurgence feels like a bit of an illusion,” says the playwright Jacobs-Jenkins. “Really, it feels like people are just suddenly noticing that there are black people in the room.” Most of the writers I spoke with shared some iteration of his sentiment: Black men have been producing rich and varied work for a long time, but folks are paying a lot more attention than they used to. John Edgar Wideman has been published to great acclaim for almost 40 years. Edward P. Jones, the author of two critically adored short story collections, won a Pulitzer for his novel “ The Known World ” in 2004. Percival Everett has written nearly 30 books since 1983, but wide recognition didn’t come until he published “ Erasure ,” in 2001, a sharp satire about a failing black writer who becomes the next hot thing when he parodies another character’s book called “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.” Such recognition typically sparks in that instant when white literary influencers tune the dial to a station that’s been playing for a long, long time. “There’s a dynamic [black literary] conversation that has no beginning and no end,” says the poet Saeed Jones.

If this moment is, at least in part, about heightened awareness of black male writers, it may well vanish when the social climate changes — which it inevitably will. A surge of mainstream attention to blackness and its literature isn’t unprecedented in periods of American crisis. The first strains of the Harlem Renaissance began at the tail end of World War I and gained momentum in the 1920s, as the racial makeup of American cities metamorphosed through the Great Migration. The Harlem of the 1930s became home to a concentration of black writers whose work piqued white interest. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Black Arts Movement erupted during the turbulent years of America’s freedom protests. Black voices received heightened attention then, too.

James M c Bride

Kevin young, jericho brown, george c. wolfe.

Playwright and director

Jeremy O. Harris

Ishmael reed.

Novelist, poet and playwright

Yusef Komunyakaa

Gregory pardlo.

Through the institutional cultural cache garnered during these many moments, our literary ancestors carved pathways to success. Harlem Renaissance writers parlayed white patronage to create inroads to the apparatus of publishing. The Black Arts Movement brought about radical changes in university curriculums. New institutions were founded, including New York City’s Medgar Evers College , providing black writers with access to the support and stability of academia. The poet Gregory Pardlo points to the rise of the New York and Chicago slam poetry scenes in the ’80s as a conduit for many writers, including the novelist Paul Beatty. Jacobs-Jenkins discusses ’90s-era evolutions in black writing that produced “an incredible sea change of influence,” when writers like August Wilson and Toni Morrison “achieved black arts excellence and major status in the same breath.”

When I was 15, in 1988, a friend’s father gave me a copy of Sonia Sanchez’s “ Under a Soprano Sky .” I didn’t know living black people wrote poetry. After, I read books by Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall and Toni Cade Bambara as if my life depended on it. Here, I must confess to an unease with any gendered division of contemporary literature: When I was asked to consider the particularities of the current landscape, I wondered if a focus on male achievement might obscure the equally unprecedented successes of African-American women . And does that question undermine this extraordinary moment for black male writers? I have not found an answer that is entirely sufficient, but I do know that the work of black women writers presents a ferocious challenge to old sexist perceptions; as Griffin says, “the difference between this moment and others is that, in the past, to be a black writer was to be a man.” Robin Coste Lewis, Tracy K. Smith , Lynn Nottage , Jacqueline Woodson , Patricia Smith and Jesmyn Ward , to name just a few, disprove those old gendered ideas.

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN-AMERICAN literature is formally sophisticated, irreducibly nuanced and highly individualized. The writers in these pages may be a cohort of sorts, yet their work is distinguished by a great variety of voices and aesthetics. And certainly our conversations about the current literature by black men ought to include as much consideration of how writers say things as what they’re saying.

The poet Claudia Rankine said of her 2016 MacArthur Fellowship that the prize was being awarded “to the subject of race.” Race may indeed be having “a moment,” and I can’t help but wonder if some gatekeepers expect black authors to focus primarily on racism and oppression. Pardlo has similar reservations about writing that might “pander to white fears and assumptions and resentments.” It’s an old, and valid, concern. Among his eight novels, Whitehead’s well-received “ The Colossus of New York ” (2003) is an ode to that city, and “ Zone One ” (2011) is a post-apocalyptic zombie novel that was nicely reviewed — yet it’s his book about slavery, “ The Underground Railroad ” (2016), that received such clamorous acclaim.

In the past, African-American writers carried two burdens: to prove our humanity to white readers while also fighting to be taken seriously as writers of so-called universal literature. Is, say, “The Brothers Karamazov” narrow or provincial because it’s about a few Russians in the 19th century? Certainly not, but black writers have been relentlessly sidelined for writing about black people. Groundbreakers like Morrison, in whose work blackness is a default, unapologetic and unexplained, radicalized the canon. Today’s black writers approach the subject of race, if they approach it at all, with greater freedom than ever before: Many writers today do handle the subject, obliquely or head-on. Some — Mat Johnson, Beatty, Everett — use satire to probe these depths. Contemporary black literature has a kind of boundlessness, topically and artistically.

But too often the discussion around writers of color is more about content, and their dazzling artistry is overlooked. To read the work by these men is to have an urgent encounter with a vital and thriving consciousness. We have Brown’s evocative tender-tough poems, Brontez Purnell’s raw, stripped-down prose, Stephen L. Carter’s deft mysteries and thrillers and Victor LaValle’s genre-bending fabulist fiction. Beatty’s “ The Sellout ” (2015) is as smart and funny a novel as I’ve come across in a long time, in which the protagonist reckons the best thing for the black folks in his neck of the woods is to segregate the local high school. (Oh, and he reinstates slavery while he’s at it.) In the poet Terrance Hayes’s “ Lighthead ” (2010), he confronts the troubling and complicated legacy of Wallace Stevens as a poet of incomparable gifts — and an unapologetic racist (in 1952, upon seeing a photo of Gwendolyn Brooks posed with her fellow National Book Award judges, Stevens famously asked, “Who’s the coon?” Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry just two years earlier). The poet Tyehimba Jess and the novelist Jeffery Renard Allen, through strikingly different lenses, riff on the life of a 19th-century piano virtuoso, the enslaved Blind Tom.

I wonder if, in the annals of history, this extraordinary period of artistry will find a name, or a unifying sentiment that codifies it as a movement. Perhaps, or perhaps not. For now, we can rejoice in the gifted writers whom we are privileged to read. And we must be vigilant. We must pay keen attention to who’s in the moment and who’s left out, and why. A host of writers wait in the wings. It’ll be their moment soon. Let it be wide open. Let it be without limits. Let it be as broad as they have the talent to make it.

First row, from left: Robert Jones Jr. wears a Gucci jacket and pants, gucci.com , Arcady shirt, arcady.com , Drake’s tie, drakes.com , and Aquatalia shoes, aquatalia.com ; Nathan Alan Davis wears a Tommy Hilfiger suit, tommy.com , and Gitman Bros. tie, gitman.com ; Rowan Ricardo Phillips wears a Sandro suit, similar styles at sandro-paris.com , Canali shirt, (212) 752-3131, Hermès tie, hermes.com , and Michael Kors shoes, michaelkors.com ; Jamel Brinkley wears a Brunello Cucinelli suit, (212) 334-1010, Louis Vuitton shirt, louisvuitton.com , Tommy Hilfiger tie and shoes; Gregory Pardlo wears a Loro Piana jacket, loropiana.com , Ermenegildo Zegna shirt, zegna.com , Louis Vuitton pants, Tommy Hilfiger tie and Mr P. shoes, mrporter.com ; Dinaw Mengestu wears a Salvatore Ferragamo jacket, (866) 337-7242, The Row shirt and pants, (212) 755-2017, The Tie Bar tie, thetiebar.com , and Church’s shoes, church-footwear.com ; Major Jackson wears a Tallia Orange suit, macys.com , and Brioni shirt, brioni.com . Second row: Michael R. Jackson wears a Paul Stuart tie, paulstuart.com ; Shane McCrae wears a Giorgio Armani suit, armani.com , and Ermenegildo Zegna tie; James Hannaham wears a Tallia Orange suit, Brioni shirt and Paul Smith tie, (646) 613-3060; Brontez Purnell wears a John Varvatos Star USA jacket, johnvarvatos.com , Versace shirt, versace.com , and Louis Vuitton tie; Ishmael Reed wears a Boss suit, hugoboss.com , and Paul Stuart tie; Brian Keith Jackson wears a The Row jacket and Brioni turtleneck; Danez Smith wears a Boss jacket, Michael Kors turtleneck and Warby Parker glasses, warbyparker.com ; Cornelius Eady wears a Ermenegildo Zegna suit. Third row: Jeffery Renard Allen wears a Polo Ralph Lauren suit and tie, ralphlauren.com , and Gitman Bros. shirt; James McBride wears a Brioni suit; Darryl Pinckney wears his own clothes; Kevin Young wears a P. Johnson tie, pjt.com ; James Ijames wears a Thom Browne suit, thombrowne.com , Boss shirt and Ermenegildo Zegna tie; Jericho Brown wears a Brioni suit, Charvet shirt, similar styles at mrporter.com , and Boss tie; Nelson George wears a Giorgio Armani suit, Tom Ford shirt, tomford.com , and Drake’s tie; George C. Wolfe wears a Prada suit, prada.com , Charvet shirt and Canali tie; De’Shawn Charles Winslow wears a Corneliani suit, corneliani.com , and Ralph Lauren shirt. Fourth row: Reginald McKnight wears a Lutwyche suit, lutwyche.co.uk , and Brioni sweater; Phillip B. Williams wears a Gucci jacket and Tom Ford shirt; Rickey Laurentiis wears a Gucci vest and Louis Vuitton shirt; Marcus Burke wears a Gitman Bros. shirt and Louis Vuitton tie; Mitchell S. Jackson wears his own clothes; Maurice Carlos Ruffin wears his own clothes. Yusef Komunyakaa (pictured on one of the covers) wears an Ermenegildo Zegna tie. Jeremy O. Harris (pictured on one of the covers) wears a Louis Vuitton jacket, shirt and pants.

Location: The library at Brooklyn Historical Society. Photographer: Shayan Asgharnia. Producer: Nikkia Moulterie. Set designer: Theresa Rivera at Mary Howard. Hair: Ruben Aronov at MOI barber. Grooming: Alana Wright. Photographer’s assistants: Robert Stout and Kaz Sakuma. Digital tech: Vincent Bezuidenhout. Hair assistants: Josh Livingston and Marshall Almeida. Grooming assistants: Tara Lauren and Fatimot Isadare. Set assistants: Zachary Angeline, Eddie Ballard, Adam Kenner and Sarice Olson. Tailoring: Mary Carney and Sarah Lathrop. Styled by Carlos Nazario. Stylist’s assistants: Vesper Wolfe, Szalay Miller, Derek Brown and Marion Kelly. Additional reporting by Antwaun Sargent.

Designed and produced by Hilary Moss, Jacky Myint and Daniel Wagner.

Jeffery Renard Allen

Hands down Toni Morrison ’s “ Beloved ” (1987). This masterful exploration of the Faulknerian notion of “not-history” is by turns disturbing, tragic, weird, funny and sad. The novel has one of my favorite lines in all of literature: “How much is a nigger supposed to take?” The line speaks volumes about what it means to be a black person in this country. Be that as it may, am I allowed to cheat and choose a second book? Gayl Jones was one of many significant writers whom Morrison published as an editor at Random House. Time and again I return to her first novel, “ Corregidora ” (1975), which is, as one of my friends puts it, “lean and mean.” I find it striking how Morrison learned from the writers she published like Jones, Toni Cade Bambara and the forgotten Leon Forrest.

Jamel Brinkley

I love the brilliant, bluesy use of vernacular of “ Corregidora ” (1975) by Gayl Jones , its unflinching treatment of sex, its haunting, ambiguous blending of characters and the way that it’s a deeply American novel that is also international in its scope.

Marcus Burke

I love how Zora Neale Hurston plays by her own rules on the page. Some people hate phonetic spelling in prose, but I’m fine with it. I was inspired and emboldened the first time I came across “ Their Eyes Were Watching God ” (1937). Her voice is so irreverent and full of hard-earned knowledge.

Nathan Alan Davis

I’m really in awe of Lynn Nottage ’s play “ Intimate Apparel ” (2004) and of the poetry embedded in it. Nottage’s hand is as subtle as her heart is passionate; she illuminates a forgotten corner of history, as if by its own light. It is crafted in such a way that the simplest of actions become revelations of love, loss, aspiration and heartbreak.

Cornelius Eady

In “ On Being Brought From Africa ” (1773), Phillis Wheatley tells her Early American reader what they can’t know: how complicated it is to be her, to be there, to be in love with and inside a language and culture and yet to hear that same language and culture define you as, well, unrefined. It is the first American poem, I feel, that reports that living contradiction from within that contradiction. In the 20th century, it would be called the shock of the new; here it’s just a new shock, one that as a nation we are still trying to reconcile.

Nelson George

Before I saw Lorraine Hansberry ’s play “ A Raisin in the Sun ” (1959) onstage, I watched the [1961] movie with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. I was knocked out by the range of characters and her ability to bring the Younger family to life.

James Hannaham

If we live in a world where Bob Dylan wins a Nobel Prize for literature and Kendrick Lamar is studied as poetry, I want to argue in favor of Nicki Minaj as my favorite female writer, specifically her writing on Kanye West’s “ Monster ” (2010). Thematically, her continued weaponization of the femme toward dominance is both radical and exhilarating. She brings to life a game of chess with a line like “You can be the king but watch the queen conquer” before going into blistering bars that essentially leave every male on a song with her in the dust. That’s Shakespeare or Keats in its verve.

James Ijames

What I love about the play “ Is God Is ” (2017) by Aleshea Harris , and her work in general, is how unapologetically black it is, how she embraces violence and ferocity as well as gentleness in a single scene. I think she is simply astonishing.

Brian Keith Jackson

The beautifully rendered, interrelated stories in “ Bailey’s Cafe ” (1992) by Gloria Naylor provide a vastness and commonality of experience. The novel broadens the conversation about the notion of being “female” and how we view female sexuality — themes that are particularly relevant today, “since the place sits right on the margin between the edge of the world and infinite possibility,” as Naylor writes.

Major Jackson

One of my favorite volumes of poetry is “ Recyclopedia ” (2006), which collects the first three books by Harryette Mullen (“Trimmings,” “S*PeRM**K*T” and “Muse and Drudge”), whose radiant playfulness with language (riffs and puns on received phrases) modeled for me a freedom to propel into sound, the primary foundation (function?) of all poetry, as a nonlinear means of signifying existence in multiple directions.

Michael R. Jackson

My favorite is “ By the Way, Meet Vera Stark ” (2011), by Lynn Nottage , because of how it pleases as much as it provokes, and because of the way Nottage creates the narrative space for a black-female-artist character to be comedic and complicated while also questioning history’s treatment of such a character.

Mitchell S. Jackson

What I love most about Toni Cade Bambara ’s “ Gorilla, My Love ” (1972) is its unabashed celebration of blackness. Her preface about writing about family is classic: “It does no good to write autobiographical fiction cause the minute the book hits the stand here comes your mama screamin how could you and sighin death where is thy sting and she snatches you up out your bed to grill you about what was going down back there in Brooklyn...” Notice, if you will, that there are no apostrophes in place of the missing g’s of her gerunds. I’d bet her decision to forgo them was a political one, for Bambara was, without doubt, a political artist — as we all are, if we’re telling the truth.

Robert Jones Jr.

Toni Morrison ’s prose in “ Beloved ” (1987) is astounding, and the subject matter intense. She managed to elevate the experiences of enslaved Africans and their descendants into a different kind of consideration; one in which these characters were given flesh, love and spirit, operating as actual human beings rather than creations of the white imagination. And what a dilemma the book poses: Should you murder your own children to spare them the degradation, dehumanization, humiliation and violence of that which is antebellum slavery? Are you ready to bear the ghostly weight of that decision? And what happens if you think you are but you aren’t really? The book is pure brilliance and a razor-sharp indictment of the country.

Rickey Laurentiis

Safiya Sinclair ’s debut book, “ Cannibal ” (2016), is a devastating and beautiful renegotiation — on her terms — of the English language. She’s interested in the many violences English and those who spoke it perpetrated either against themselves or especially against the black and brown peoples they colonized, and pushes into this history in all her work, be it poetry or prose. Yet all the while one hears — at least it’s clear to my ear — her still relishing in that English, making a new queendom of it, if only for its own lush, if sick, beauty. In this way, Sinclair stunts; she is a bougainvillea, demanding space for the “savage” and “feminine” to speak.

Shane M c Crae

My favorite book is “ Event Factory ” (2010) by Renee Gladman . It changed my thinking about what a novel could do. One of the most interesting things about it is Gladman’s world building — the novel treats the reader as foreign, just as the country in which the protagonist finds herself treats her as foreign. Not only does it do things that seem strange in the world of the novel, but they seem un-fixedly strange — scenes shift suddenly, locations themselves move from place to place.

Reginald M c Knight

There are so many novels I could choose as my favorite, but if I were forced to select one, I would have to say “ Beloved ” (1987) by Toni Morrison , for it’s the first novel that ever made me weep.

Dinaw Mengestu

My choice is Jesmyn Ward ’s “ Sing, Unburied, Sing ” (2017). It is a remarkable novel — a book that stands in conversation with all these iconic strands of American literature and yet is in no way defined by them. The book is wiser, more attuned to the ways race and class, violence and poverty have shaped and continue to shape this country than just about anything else I’ve encountered. There is also this fierce, irrepressible dignity and all these complicated, fraught gestures of love and attempts at love that make it hard to let this book go.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Jamaica Kincaid ’s “ Annie John ” (1985) was, is and will no doubt remain for me an essential text. It’s not only a great novel powered by an unshakable sense of what the sentence — like a stethoscope — can discover within the human heart, it’s also a poignant map to a world that forms an essential part of who I am. Like Kincaid, I’m American but by way of Antigua, and it’s difficult to put into words what it’s like to read the small place where you’re from — a place so small that it sometimes doesn’t even appear on a map — dipped in amber by a great writer.

Darryl Pinckney

I admire Jamaica Kincaid ’s work. It’s difficult to choose one over the other, but the novel “ Mr. Potter ” stands out in my mind because of its formal beauty and subversive intent. Kincaid creates a modernist literature from the Caribbean peasant experience and, in so doing, opens up colonial history in a way that is neither doctrinaire nor sentimental. She has nothing to do with folklore and yet is all about voice. Her ear is that of a poet’s, her sensibility that of a born anarch. She is an original.

Brontez Purnell

Maurice carlos ruffin.

“ Sula ” (1973) by Toni Morrison taught me so much about patriarchy by the way Morrison basically had Sula seek the same kind of freedom that men have. Her community was not cool with her “acting like a man.”

Danez Smith

With two books coming out next year (“ Magical Negro ” and “Who Put This Song On?”), 2019 justly belongs to Morgan Parker . Her poems shred me with their intelligence, dark humor and black-hearted vision. Parker is one of this generation’s best minds, able to hold herself and her world, which includes all of us, up to impossible lights, revealing every last bit of our hopes, failings, possibilities and raptures.

Phillip B. Williams

Carolivia Herron ’s novel “ Thereafter Johnnie ” (1991) — with lyrical grace and a concise rendering of the epic tradition — depicts the unraveling of a black middle-class family that is undone by incest and addiction yet revitalized by the journey of the youngest girl’s search for answers in the ruins. What stands out is the setting of the novel’s present time: an abandoned Washington, D.C. This post-apocalyptic representation, for me, echoes the potential for an unchecked patriarchy to not only destroy a family but also a nation.

D e ’Shawn Charles Winslow

When I first read “ The Twelve Tribes of Hattie ” (2012) and saw how deeply Ayana Mathis had submerged herself into the study of complex relationships between mothers and their children, I knew I wanted to work with her. Having grown up as an only child, the novel speaks to so many questions I’ve had, for years, about large, northern, African-American families with Southern roots.

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.” The night I finished reading “ Song of Solomon ” (1977) by Toni Morrison , I dreamed I flew over a building near where I grew up in Kentucky. I later found out there used to be a slave market where this building now stood. For me, it’s about owning your history but shedding anything that enslaves your heart and mind, so that your spirit can soar.

And more favorite works from men not pictured here...

Nana kwame adjei-brenyah.

“ The Third Life of Grange Copeland ” (1970) by Alice Walker taught me something incredible and essential: The cruelest of us are often victims, too. The book showed me that the world can make monsters out of the best of us, and in doing so helped me see that maybe there aren’t monsters at all. Only humans consumed, swept up and eaten by their own fear, their own pain. It taught me that getting a reader to love a character and hate a character are both huge, worthy tasks. Getting us to feel both things about the same character, that’s magic.

Samuel R. Delany

I would like to recommend the short story collection “ Bloodchild and Other Stories ” (the revised edition, published in 2005) by my one-time student Octavia E. Butler , and especially her story “Amnesty” (2004), contained in that volume. Several people, including the late editor David Hartwell and myself, felt this was among the most important stories written and published by anyone in the science fiction field to date. I think certainly it is among Butler’s finest works, and its image of possible interspecies cooperation and help is a great example of how differences might be overcome.

Colman Domingo

I have always loved my longtime comrade and collaborator Lisa B. Thompson ’s dissertations and plays, and their inquiries into multifaceted women — like “Monroe” (2018), which recently had its world premiere at the Austin Playhouse. It explores how the threat and aftermath of racial terror dominates the psyches of young African-Americans while offering hope for a better future.

Terrance Hayes

It’s a tremendous challenge to select a particular work by any of the many brilliant black women writers among us. But if I were tasked with assembling my own very particular list of favorite books by brilliant living black women poets I’ve learned from, and been led by, among them would be: “ Crave Radiance ” (2012) by Elizabeth Alexander , “ Captivity ” (1989) by Toi Derricotte , “ Hemming the Water ” (2013) by Yona Harvey , “ Native Guard ” (2007) by Natasha Trethewey , “ Sleeping With the Dictionary ” (2002) by Harryette Mullen , “ Madwoman ” (2017) by Shara McCallum , “ Life on Mars ” (2011) by Tracy K. Smith , and “ Shake Loose My Skin ” (2000) by Sonia Sanchez . Their work is in my work.

Tyehimba Jess

Vievee Francis ’s poems are boiled in history, riddled with fists full of flora, straddled across fairy tale and fact and married in body and blood song. Her first three books rock with a profound and profane knowledge of self while chronicling America’s layered past. In “ Blue-Tail Fly ” (2006), ragged-voiced soldiers and survivors from the Mexican-American and Civil Wars remind us how empire twists borders and citizenry into line. “ Horse in the Dark ” (2012) grafts beast and woman, exploring defamation and reclamation of spirit. In “ Forest Primeval ” (2015), her powers are harrowing and transcendent. Francis is a poet’s poet whose ear bends toward common hurt and triumph.

Randall Kenan

I think N. K. Jemisin is one of the most exciting writers publishing today — without qualification or categorization. She is a writer for the age. I consider her award-winning novel “ The Fifth Season ” (2015) an instant classic. Her prose is intelligent and delicious; her imagination tackles our most central woes. But even more important, she is fun to read.

Victor LaValle

Lucille Clifton is one of the finest poets this country has been blessed to call its own, and “ Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 ” (1987) is a masterpiece. She writes in a clear, declarative style that disguises the complexity of her subject matter: the triumphs and trials of being a black woman in the United States, the spiritual and the mythic, the ways history has a hold of us long after we think we’re free of it.

Renee Gladman is our greatest celebrant and investigator of the sentence. The anarchic drawings of her art-poetry collection “ Prose Architectures ” (2017) and the errant textures of the essay collection “ Calamities ” (2016) sound so deep and feel so hard that one can’t imagine how easily she requires and allows us to imagine. With fluent, dead-serious joy, Gladman refuses the distinction between practice and game as fearlessly as Allen Iverson, if Allen Iverson were also Gayl Jones. Her otherworldliness tells the truth about the world.

Roger Reeves

In “ Coal ” (1976), Audre Lorde writes: “I / is the total black, being spoken / from the earth’s inside.” And there, I was born afresh in that little hovel of a cottage during the early 2000s in an overly hot summer in Austin, Tex., the ladybugs sticking to the windows, the raccoons fighting the stray cats in the dry creek bed just to the west of my bedroom wall. Over and over, I read “Coal” to myself, out loud, to the mosquitoes, to the stray cats that would come up from their fighting; I read the poem to anyone who would listen because it spoke of the dark — “blackness” — as a kind of opening, as that which speaks, as that which makes love. I had never seen a poem take such possession of its ontological and epistemological self.

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A Century of Greatness: The Best African American Literary Anthologies

Kenton rambsy recommends the best black writing.

Black writers have produced an incredible number of short stories over the last century. My book, The Geographies of African American Short Stories , explains how the most frequently republished Black writers made character depictions and culturally discrete settings consequential to their compositions. For writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, short stories anticipated their longer works, like Their Eyes Were Watching God and Invisible Man , respectively. And in some instances, authors used short stories to experiment with narrative structures and to develop distinct stylistic approaches.

I’ve found anthologies especially useful as gateways to short fiction by Black authors. These collections provide glimpses into notable themes and writing styles from different historical periods. Given the widespread use of anthologies in literature courses, editors of anthologies help to shape or reinforce distinct views of literary history. Often, the selections presented in anthologies are the first and only access readers have to works by some authors.

Literary history is not static, and thus, approaches to organizing anthologies change over the course of time. Different collections might sometimes include the same authors, but the varying arrangements—temporal, thematic, alphabetical, genre—suggest multiple ways of presenting and reading a common group of Black writers.

I’ve compiled a list of ten key African American literary anthologies that span nearly 100 years and demonstrate the diverse ways that editors showcase the variety of short fiction written by Black writers.

Ed. Alain Locke, The New Negro: An Interpretation (Atheneum)

This definitive text of the Harlem Renaissance features a variety of African and African American art and literature. Edited by Alain LeRoy Locke, the philosopher and scholar who is celebrated as the dean of the Harlem Renaissance for his mentorship of young artists, the collection contains short stories by a then “new” class of writers such as Bruce Nugent, Eric Walrond, Rudolph Fisher, and Zora Neale Hurston. The anthology announced and solidified a few of what constituted an emerging cohort of prominent Black writers and a defining cultural movement.

Eds. Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee, The Negro Caravan (Dryden Press)

Edited by Sterling A. Brown, Arthur Paul Davis, and Ulysses Grant Lee, this comprehensive collection contains works by more than 40 writers. As a presentation of Black literature during the 1940s, The Negro Caravan was a rare and important gathering of writers from multiple genres. The book, which arranged works by genre, was a forerunner for the many collections that would appear decades later.

Ed. Langston Hughes, The Best Short Stories by Black Writers 1899-1967 (Little, Brown and Company)

This collection edited by Langston Hughes presents stories produced by Black writers from 1899 to 1967. While Hughes is widely known as a poet, this anthology shows him actively curating a large group of short story writers. Published the same year that Hughes died, the anthology brings together an older generation of writers such as Charles Chesnutt and Zora Neale Hurston with a then–up-and-coming group of talented artists such as Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, and William Melvin Kelley.

Eds. Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (Black Classic Press)

This anthology was viewed as the most essential assemblage of militant artists during the fiery Black Arts era. The book contains over 200 poems, essays, short stories, and plays by more than 70 writers and cultural critics of the period. Rarely had a collection been so upfront about its Black radical agenda. The anthology set the tone for a powerful cultural movement that followed.

Ed. Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman: An Anthology (New American Library)

Feminist efforts to promote gender equity in literature gained special attention during the late 1960s and 1970s. Consequently, Toni Cade Bambara edited this collection of Black women writers, which signaled a new, groundbreaking moment in the histories of African American anthologies. Today, we take the phrase “Black woman writer” as a given, and for that, we can thank Bambara and her anthology.

Eds. Arthur P Davis and Saunders Reading, Cavalcade: Negro American Writing from 1760 to the Present (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

This comprehensive collection appeared during a time of unprecedented growth of Black enrollment in colleges and universities. Accordingly, the editors arranged the book while keeping the practical function of teaching in mind. The collection, arranged in chronological order, contains several author biographies and period descriptions that contextualizes Black writing in America. This anthology traces the development of Black literature over nearly 200 years, giving a clear sense of an extended, robust history.

Eds. Richard Barksdale and Keneth Kinnamon, Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive Anthology (Macmillan)

A wide variety of compositions—autobiographies, essays, speeches, letters, political pamphlets, poems, plays, and stories—comprise this anthology. Barksdale and Kinnamon arranged the contents by historical period, theme, and genre, so that the book might serve the pedagogical interests of teachers and students. The extensive biographical and section notes made Black Writers of America an important, frequently cited collection.

Eds. John Oliver Killens and Jerry Ward, Black Southern Voices: An Anthology of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction, and Critical (Meridian Press)

Relatively few collections showcase Black writers in a common region—here, the editors gather southern writers and writings in one anthology. The book elevated the idea of a Black southern literary tradition.

Ed. Gloria Naylor, Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to Present (Little, Brown and Company)

Publishers sometimes reprint anthologies and produce subsequent editions, but a sequel?  This anthology extends The Best Short Stories by Black Writers 1899-1967, charting a generation of fiction writers from where Hughes left off. This book is one of the few collections of short stories edited by a critically acclaimed novelist, and thus provides us with a rare opportunity to consider the preferred literary selections of an acclaimed author.

Eds. Henry Louis Gates Jr., Nellie McKay, Valerie Smith, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (W. W. Norton)

This comprehensive, field-solidifying collection has been reprinted in three editions and contains works by dozens of Black writers. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie McKay served as the general co-editors for the first two editions, and after McKay’s death in 2006, Valerie Smith assumed the role of general co-editor with Gates for the third edition, which was divided into two volumes. Absorbing invaluable lessons about curating Black literature from many previous works and involving several prominent literary scholars as section editors, this anthology stands as one of the most well-known and widely assigned collections for African American literature courses.

__________________________________

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction by Kenton Rambsy is available via University Press of Mississippi.

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• Social Sciences

Advice on Writing and Creativity From Famous Black Authors

• Author: Sallie B Middlebrook PhD

What can the greats teach us about sustainable writing strategies?

What Is a Sustainable Perspective for Writing?

As a not-yet-famous author of novels and short stories, I enjoy reading and learning from the best, and the best, to me, include writers of all races and nationalities. In this article, I am presenting advice on writing from renowned and legendary African-American authors that I've found to be useful in my writing adventures and journeys.

In packaging this advice to share with you, I have chosen to wrap it all up inside something that I call a sustainable perspective for writing. What is a sustainable perspective for writing? A sustainable perspective for writing is what makes it possible to keep on writing. It is the outlook all writers and authors must cultivate in order to complete any writing project he or she begins.

Good writing skills make it fairly easy to begin most writing projects, but writing can be a completely daunting task that involves a lot more than technical skills and facility with language. In order to finish what we start, most of us need something more.

We need to have an outlook, a personalized pathway that pushes beyond the pain, an outlook on life, and/or writing that can enable and allow us to go beyond the beginning. We need to have a perspective on writing that sustains us, one that will fire us up using all the fuel, energy, and creativity that we need in order to finish what we start.

To write a novel-length story, you will have to write from 80,000 to 100,000 or more words. But before you begin your exciting journey, you should give yourself a daily, weekly, and/or monthly word count goal. You should have in mind an idea about how many words you want to get on paper by the end of a day, a week, and/or a month.

Knowing how many words you’re capable of producing within a certain amount of time will help you keep a sustainable perspective about what to expect from yourself, realistically, as you work on completing your novel-writing project. And, continuously reaching your sustainable goals will keep you inspired and equipped with a durable, sustainable perspective (we’ll look more closely at this idea later).

Having a sustainable perspective will help you maintain a positive attitude, and that positive attitude is the thing that I know is the primary key to completing your first novel.

What is a sustainable perspective? A sustainable perspective is a way of looking at your book project that will “outlast” any obstacle that life might send your way.

Paul Laurence Dunbar's Advice on Writing

The first author we’ll look at here is one of the world’s most renowned poets who had a sustainable perspective that worked well for him. With this in mind, I will begin with a brief look at the life of Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872–February 9, 1906), and then I will look at the idea, based on quotes he shared throughout his life, that I believe reveals how and why this renowned poet and writer developed and maintained a sustainable perspective for writing.

In his brief lifetime, Dunbar published a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, four novels, a play, and wrote the lyrics for a musical. The acclaimed, legendary poet contracted and suffered from tuberculosis at a time when there was no known cure for the disease, and he passed away when he was only 33 years old.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar was among the first African-American writers to receive national attention. His parents, until after the Civil War, were enslaved in Kentucky. His mother and father had a troubled marriage that ended when he was a child, and his father, Joshua Dunbar, left his mother after Dunbar's younger sister was born. Joshua died in 1885, when Paul was only thirteen years old.

Paul Laurence Dunbar started writing stories and verse when he was a child and became president of the literary society at his high school. His first poems were published in a Dayton newspaper.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dunbar worked as editor for a newspaper called Dayton Tattler , a paper owned by whites, with editorial that targeted black readers. The Tattler was published by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s two friends, high school classmates whose names you might recognize—Orville and Wilbur Wright (yes, the same ones).

It was working with his friends at this newspaper that impressed upon Dunbar, then an aspiring poet/writer, that he would have to reach beyond the economically and educationally challenged black communities of the nation to find readers in order to further his writing and publishing ambitions.

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When writing poetry, this prolific writer wrote in both standard American English and Negro dialect. In 1893, his first collection of poetry, Oak and Ivy, was printed. Most of the poems in the collection were written in traditional English verse, the rest in dialect. In 1896, Dunbar's second book, Majors and Minors, was reviewed favorably by William Dean Howells, an acclaimed editor, critic, and author.

Realizing he would have to target and reach white readers after high school, Dunbar continued to pursue his dreams. During the times in which he lived, the majority of America’s reading public was composed of whites who demanded works exploiting the language and lifestyle stereotypes of black Americans.

Therefore, to capture the attention and interest of this audience, Dunbar often wrote in dialect, and it was his use of it, ultimately, that won him recognition and notoriety as a poet. Still, he was never satisfied with his reputation as a dialect poet.

Quotes by Paul Laurence Dunbar

From some of Paul Laurence Dunbar's quotes related to life, struggles, creativity, or writing, I will explore what I see as his sustainable perspective that enabled him to succeed while writing what he felt he had to write during his lifetime to be heard.

"Hope is tenacious. It goes on living and working when science has dealt it what should be its deathblow."

I agree with Mr. Dunbar on this. This was true then, and it is true now. Hope is something you will need to have as a writer of novels. Hope and its first cousin, faith, are what keep me going on days and nights when I am tired and feel like I can’t go on. When everything around me that I can see or hear seems to be saying I should give up, faith and hope are what keep me writing.

“People are taking it for granted that [the Negro] ought not to work with his head. And it is so easy for these people among whom we are living to believe this; it flatters and satisfies their self-complacency.”

As an African-American writer, I understand and identify with Dunbar’s statement in this quote. It is very easy for people who don’t experience America the same way we experience it, as African Americans, to not understand our walk, our struggle, our challenges, our journey.

It seems easy for them to think we’re inferior, non-thinkers, and it seems to satisfy some type of “need” many seem to have that convinces them to believe mass media portrayals, stereotypes, half-truths, and lies about us; to be completely “unacquainted” with what is the truth about us. I think what Dunbar felt, how he saw what he had to do in order to be accepted, read, and known as a poet, challenged not only his creativity, but also his humanity.

Even though he might have had to use “dialect” to be accepted and read, he made sure he infused his dialect poetry with a lot of his truths, and I, for one, tip my hat to him for a job done well.

A Needed Kick

"What Joe Hamilton lacked more than anything else in the world was someone to kick him. Many a man who might have lived decently and become a fairly respectable citizen has gone to the dogs for the want of someone to administer a good resounding kick at the right time. It is corrective and clarifying." - Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods

So true, Paul Laurence Dunbar. So true, and I agree. We all need someone to administer a hearty kicking, every now and then. As you begin or as you continue on your writing journey, a journey that you will not give up on, there will be some days when you’re going to need someone to kick you into gear, in some way.

I am usually the one who has to administer the kick I need to keep going. Sometimes, the kick I give myself is a break from writing. Sometimes I binge watch old TV shows or movies, or I read a stack of novels (I’m a fast reader) or magazines.

The trick, for me, is to do something different to get my head out of one space and into another space. Once I get my kick, I am fueled with fresh ideas and renewed hope, and I feel more and better able to get back to my writing in an inspired way.

"I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention."

I think most of us want there to be something more, something worthy, and something of lasting value in what we write. So, once again, I share this same hope with Paul Laurence Dunbar. I think most of want to bring lasting value to our writing, something that goes beyond the novelty of who we are, because we all bring some type of unique perspective to our work; to our masterpieces, as writers and authors.

But I think most of us also hope that what we write will contain enough of the distinctive, uncommon fabric of the struggle and of the volumes of lessons learned that make us who we are. We hope what we have to say will open an eye, provoke a thought, challenge a viewpoint, or simply provide a different or new way for our readers to look at things that are important to us.

With a sustainable perspective, you will understand that improving your writing means often saying goodbye to a lot of words you might still believe were pretty good. But, after cutting them out of your story, you will see you have improved your story, probably a great deal.

Maya Angelou

Brian Stansberry, CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Sage Advice on Writing from Maya Angelou

The next contemporary author we'll look at had a sustainable perspective while she lived that worked well for her. Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928–May 28, 2014) was born Marguerite Annie Johnson, in St. Louis, MO, but spent her childhood with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.

Angelou didn’t spend time with her parents until she was six years old. As a writer, she is best known for her poetry and for penning seven autobiographies, the most well-known of which is the first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969. The title of the memoir was a line from a poem titled “Sympathy,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Maya Angelou faced a lot of hardships and challenges as a young child. Like many children when their parents split up, she and her brother, Bailey, were sent to live in with their paternal grandmother, Anne Henderson.

In addition to experiencing vicious racism and discrimination in her life, at age seven, Angelou also became the victim of child sexual abuse. While visiting her mother, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. When she told what happened to her, her uncles found and murdered the rapist, and she believed she caused the man's death by telling what he did to her.

This series of events left her so traumatized, she vowed never to speak again and spent several years of her young life as a virtual mute.

Quotes by Maya Angelou

Following are some of Maya Angelou’s quotes on writing and on life.

“What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat.’ And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”

Having a sustainable perspective means continuing to write, even when the right words don’t want to be seen. It means staying true to what you love to do, until what you want to say has no choice but to obey.

“My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”

Having a sustainable perspective means learning not to take yourself so seriously—at least not all the time.

“In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.”

Having a sustainable perspective means continuing to write because what you are writing matters—a lot, for you, and for other humans.

“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated, and more intelligent than college professors.”

Having a sustainable perspective means having a solid respect and admiration for knowledge and intelligence, knowing that it does and should transcend education.

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your god. Instead, pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”

Having and maintaining a sustainable perspective means you write because you love writing—not because you love money. A sustainable perspective will:

• Allow you to bounce back, no matter what life brings
• Fortify you for outlasting writer’s block
• Allow you to treat your first draft as a first draft
• Underscore that perfection comes from editing and revision
• Drive you to make time every day for reading and for writing
• Free you to write the story you want to write
• Persuade you to think of yourself, right now, as the successful writer you want to become
• Inspire you to find joy in writing, not just in the dream of writing “a best seller”

Toni Morrison

Angela Radulescu, CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Toni Morrison's Guidance and Advice on Writing

Next, we will look at some of the writing advice and creative wisdom that was shared through interviews engaged in through the years by the late, great author, Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931–August 5, 2019).

Among Morrison's most well-known works of fiction are (among other books): The Bluest Eye (1970); Sula (1973); Song of Solomon (1977); Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987). A fact of her life many people might not know is that, for many years, Toni Morrison taught writing classes at Princeton University.

Based on some of the responses she gave during an interview in 2014, with NEA Arts Magazine, Morrison believed writers should always write the book they want to read. Considering topics they're interested in, ideas they feel are not being written about at all, or are not being explored in a particular way, writers can write the books they themselves would like to read.

She said she wrote her first book, The Bluest Eye , (first published in 1970), because she wanted to read it. She had never before seen or read a work of literature about the "most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls."

She felt that even though little black girls had been included in works of literature, they had mostly been used as props and had not been taken seriously. So, she decided to write the book that she wanted to read.

Having a sustainable perspective , one that will keep you writing while keeping your ideas flowing and going strong, means finding or coming up with topics that you, yourself, would like to read about. For this reason, I always begin any of my writing projects with this advice in mind, and, after writing seven novels, I have never written one without first setting out to write a book that I want to read.

It was in that same 2014 interview, with NEA Arts Magazine , that Morrison advised writers to ignore the old adage that says you should write what you know. After warning us all, saying, "you don't know anything," she revealed that she often told students in her Princeton creative writing class to ignore the advice about writing only what you know about.

Instead, Morrison challenged her students to learn and to write about things and people and events they didn't know anything about. She challenged them to research and to learn what they needed to know to create events they hadn't already lived through.

She encouraged and inspired them to create people, events, circumstances, and things that interested them but were strange to them. She challenged them to imagine things that were completely outside the world of their own existence.

Morrison was named a 2012 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, by President Barack Obama.

This type of thinking, for any writer, forces the imagination to work on all four cylinders. First, you must get outside of the box represented by what is already in your own mind.

Next, you have to do the work/research that is required in order to create, from what you don't know, a world, people, and events, and you must put them together in a way that makes you want to know more about them; a way that makes you want to read a story about them.

You have to dedicate yourself, wholeheartedly, to learning—and continuing to learn will always nourish your mind and your creativity.

Having a sustainable perspective , to me, means you must be able to find a way to write about what you know and about what you don't know, as Toni Morrison recommended. If you, as a writer of novels, can only write about stuff you know, you will, most likely, run the risk of running out of ideas quickly.

If you don't run out of ideas quickly, you could risk writing about the same topics so much, even you might lose interest in what you are writing. Now. When you are writing about stuff you don't know about, the learning process alone should keep you energized.

Why? Because, in order to write convincingly about something you don't know about, you have to learn so much that even before you begin writing, it is likely you will become a sort of expert on that topic. As you prepare to write about previously unknown ideas that you had to learn about, by the time you complete your writing project, no one should be able to tell you've written about something you did not know about before you started writing.

Richard Wright

Richard Wright's Advice on Writing

Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908–November 28, 1960), besides being the author of Native Son— one of the first novels I read as a child, was an inspired writer of novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction.

Born in my home state of Mississippi, although the family moved around a lot, Wright and his brother were raised by his mother, Ella (Wilson) Wright, primarily in Natchez and Jackson, Mississippi.

Wright is best known for his work, Native Son , a bestseller first published in 1940, and Black Boy , his autobiography, published in 1945. Later in his life, he won critical acclaim for a collection of four stories in a published work called Uncle Tom's Children .

Although Wright became an exceptionally talented writer at a young age, like many other authors, his writing was heavily influenced by tumultuous and traumatizing events that occurred during his childhood that included, among other things:

• His parents were born as free American citizens, but both of his paternal and maternal grandparents were born into slavery.
• Wright's father left his family when he was only six years old, and did not reappear in his life for twenty-five years.
• After he accidentally set fire to his grandmother's Natchez home, Wright's mother beat him until he was unconscious.
• His upbringing became even more abusive and miserable because when living with his grandparents, they also beat him, often, for causing the fire that burned their home.
• Wright's mother, who was a school teacher, moved the family around a lot during his childhood. Even though the family usually lived with extended family, he did not grow up in a stable home environment.
• In 1916, his mother moved them to live with her sister and her sister's husband, Maggie (Wilson) and Silas Hoskins, in Elaine Arkansas, but the family was forced to flee after Silas Hoskins "disappeared." It was reported that Silas Hoskins was killed by a white man who coveted his successful saloon business.

Never able to attend school regularly until he was 13 years old, Wright's intelligence still led him to being promoted to the sixth grade after just two weeks when became enrolled, in 1921, at Jim Hill public school in Jackson, Mississippi.

While the tragic events of his childhood left marks on his mind, Wright used it to weave into his writing much of the horror, angst, and emotions he experienced in the early years of his life.

The events of his life helped provide Wright with a sustainable perspective for writing creativity while he lived. His perspectives on life and on writing worked well for him and led to him becoming a published storyteller at the young age of fifteen.

That was when a local black-owned newspaper, the Southern Register, published his first story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre." Although no copies of the story are known to survive, Wright wrote about the story in chapter seven of his autobiographical novel, Black Boy .

Quotes by Richard Wright

The following are some of Richard Wright’s quotes on writing and on life, which I believe reveal how he was able to maintain a sustainable perspective that fueled his writing creativity, throughout his life.

"Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books."

While his writing success shows that he maintained a sustainable perspective for writing, the quote above shows that Wright understood that reading is fundamental to life and to writing. He understood that reading could provide support and perspective at times when his "environment" failed to provide these things.

"The artist must bow to the monster of his own imagination."

Learning to grasp what you can from the struggles and challenges of your life is crucial to maintaining a sustainable perspective for your writing life. Wright's upbringing left monsters inside his mind, and the quote above shows that he learned how to use those monsters to fuel his creativity.

"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread."

Taking time to do "self-inventory," getting to know the heights and the depths of your own soul is needed in order to develop a sustainable perspective for writing. Wright's quote, above, recognizes that feeding our hunger for self-realization is just as important for writers as feeding our hunger for food.

"It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different."

Wright's quote, above, reveals his respect for and understanding of the importance of learning as a way to bring new life and new understanding to his struggle through life. It reveals how he used reading as a way to see into worlds he was not able to see from the vantage point of his own life.

“All literature is protest. You can’t name a single literary work that isn’t protest.”

Richard Wright recognized the universal truth that works of literature are a form of protest. He realized that literature is always a reflection, it is how an author presents some fundamental aspect of life and/or society, an aspect that the author would love to see either changed or removed entirely from his or her life, and from the world, for good.

The sentiment of this quote, I'm proud to say, is part of my own sustainable perspective for writing.

"I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive."

Wright refused to allow the reality of living in America while black to limit his thinking or his writing. Instead, he used the anger he felt inside, anger birthed from the truth of what it means to be black in America, to fuel his writing and his creativity.

He allowed constant, unending struggles and race-related challenges to his existence to become part of his writing raison d'être, or part of his reason for being a writer.

How can you sustain your writing practice?

Your Sustainable Perspective for Writing

It doesn’t matter whether you are self-publishing or going the traditional route to publishing (that is, finding an agent and/or a traditional publishing company to publish your book). Either way, you will need a perspective on writing that will sustain you so that you can finish the projects you begin.

Your ultimate goal, as a writer, should always be to creating and publishing a high quality book, and working to achieve quality in your writing will help ensure you’ll produce a book you can be proud of.

Knowing that you have produced quality work will make the joy of seeing your first novel published simply indescribable. That first look at your well-planned, well-written first or fifth novel will be a special, “one-of-a-kind,” once-in-a-lifetime experience. Yes. Every book is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because you will never research and write that particular book again.

So. As this article comes to a close, I hope that you (and your muses) will always find and lovingly embrace your custom-tailored sustainable perspective that will see you through writing project after writing project, for years to come.

No matter what life brings, no matter how hard life pounces on you with a multitude of demands and surprises, no matter what life comes up with as a challenge for you, your sustainable perspective will gift you with a way to bounce back, so that you can stay on track and continue.

It will enable you to endure, from “once upon a time," all the way to “the end.”

eNotes Editorial. Paul Laurence Dunbar; https://www.enotes.com/topics/paul-laurence-dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar's Life Story; https://www.nps.gov/daav/learn/historyculture/ paullaurencedunbarslifestory.htm

Paul Laurence Dunbar. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. From AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/author/4192-Paul_Laurence_Dunbar

Maya Angelou: Teacher; https://mayaangelou.wfu.edu/story/

Maya Angelou. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. From AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/author/440-Maya_Angelou

Aimee Lamoureux. "The Tragic Real-Life Story of Maya Angelou." URL: https://www.grunge.com/219533/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-maya-angelou/

Hermione Hoby. "Toni Morrison: ‘I’m writing for black people … I don’t have to apologize.'" Website: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/25/toni-morrison-books-interview-god-help-the-child

Joshua Barajas. "Lessons we can learn from Toni Morrison." URL: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/lessons-we-can-learn-from-toni-morrison

Toni Morrison. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. From AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/author/10441-Toni_Morrison

Maria Quintana. Richard Wright (1908-1960); https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wright-richard-1908-1960/

Wright, Richard 1908–1960. URL: https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-literature-biographies/richard-wright

Richard Wright. (n.d.). AZQuotes.com. From AZQuotes.com Web site: https://www.azquotes.com/author/15974-Richard_Wright

© 2020 Sallie B Middlebrook PhD

Sallie B Middlebrook PhD (author) from Texas, USA on December 28, 2020:

Thank you so much, FlourishAnyway. So good to see and to hear from you again! I'm glad you found this article enlightening, as that was and is always my goal. Thanks again, for visiting and reading, and for sharing your comments.

Elaina Baker from USA on December 28, 2020:

The insights provided by these successful writers were enlightening. Thank you for sharing your learnings about sustainable writing.

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Housekeeping Is Part of the Wild World Too

The idea that Black people can write out of a personal relationship to nature and have done so since before this nation’s founding comes to many as a shock.

Almost every day since the beginning of 2020’s COVID-19 lockdown, I have texted with my friends Suzanne and Kate. We’re not all that similar. I am Black, and they are white. We live in different parts of the country. They are in long-term, child-free relationships. I am married and have a child. But we are all writers who share a deep connection with the natural world. And our writing reflects our frustration at the way many people’s stories are erased from books held up as masterpieces of environmental literature.

Some years ago I edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry . One of the anthology’s most remarkable statements was that Black people write with an empathetic eye toward the natural world. Because of erasures from so many narratives about the great outdoors, the idea that Black people can write out of a personal relationship to nature and have done so since before this nation’s founding comes as a shock to many people. Conducting a review of more than 2,000 poems included in key nature-poetry anthologies and journals published from 1930 to 2006—80 years of the environmental literary canon—I found only six poems by Black poets.

But that doesn’t mean Black people weren’t writing these poems. Like so many writers who wander out into nature to find themselves, Black writers also find peace in connections to nature. Just as strong as the pull of legacies of trauma that this nation inflicted—and inflicts—on Black people is the self-recognition some of us find in stories of hope and renewal that grow out of the wild world.

“Thank you,” one Black poet told me when I requested poems for Black Nature . “I have been writing this way my entire life, but no one has ever seen me in this light.”

People are part of the natural world. And yet, loads of canonical nature writing excludes people. Such writing spends so much time in solitary meditative observation that the writers ignore nearly every human experience outside their own. During the early days of the shut-in, in March, I texted Kate and Suzanne about some books I’d recently reread, including Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , about the passage of a year in Roanoke Valley. “Why,” I asked my friends, “had Dillard felt the need to erase the messiness of both mundane domestic undertakings and complex national politics from her book about the world?” Dillard expressed doubt that people would want to read a memoir by “a Virginia housewife,” so she left that part of her own story out. Her book also deletes the daily experiences of many other people in her direct vicinity. Around the time she was writing, some of the most significant integration struggles of the civil-rights era roiled just beyond her door, but Dillard’s book maintains a segregation of focus and care. Such books don’t only erase Black neighbors. They erase nearly everyone.

Read: The Thoreau of the suburbs

“Dillard adopts the whole ‘man-alone-in-the-wilderness (or in her case the pastoral)’ trope,” Suzanne added to our text thread. “I mean, Edward Abbey was generally with one of his four wives out there in the desert, but they never show up. It’s pure fantasy.”

“That’s part of why I like Amy Irvine’s Trespass so much,” wrote Kate, referring to the wilderness activist’s 2009 memoir. “She’s so fucking honest.”

Published in 2018, Irvine’s next book after Trespass is the contrarian meditation Desert Cabal . That book deals with the implications of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Abbey’s Desert Solitaire —the same Abbey who stayed in the desert as frequently by himself as with one of his wives and their children, though you wouldn’t know about his family from what he wrote in that seminal book. In this case, there could be no more appropriate descriptor than seminal , a word often used to laud the unmatchable genius of an individual man .

Why disappear the people who people your world?

“Irvine doesn’t get that level of love for Trespass ,” I wrote to my friends. “Partially because she was so busy raising her kid that she couldn’t do the promotional work. But partly because nature dudes like a certain kind of story.”

The nice thing about texting is that I can carry on a conversation while vacuuming or stirring risotto. Sometimes seconds pass between messages. Sometimes long days. The flow of thoughts can meander as well. “It’s noteworthy that Dillard wanted to write in a ‘genderless’ way (read: presumably male),” I continued, “but they wouldn’t let her publish the book as A. Dillard.”

Suzanne, who had been offline, came back to tell us some of the phrases an editor used to replace the simple dialogue tag I said in her manuscript. Many of the substitutions magnified a kind of servile femininity: I pleaded , I confessed , I admitted , I bustled , I apologized . “As in,” Suzanne wrote, “‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized.”

“Every time the word bustle comes up,” wrote Kate, “we’re doing a shot of tequila.”

“I need to read Trespass ,” wrote Suzanne.

In Desert Cabal , Irvine writes about the precautions she takes as a woman, including giving careful thought to what she drinks and with whom. She writes about the ways her life—the life of a white, culturally and economically privileged woman—is often in jeopardy in the wild. Especially when she’s in the company of men.

I returned to an earlier moment in our conversation—“There’s so little quotidian honesty in nature writing during that generation”—and started my own contrarian environmental-lit list. Several books by contemporary writers do pay significantly more attention to the realities of domestic life than I’ve seen in previous generations. For The Book of Delights , Ross Gay wrote small daily essays about things that delighted him in the everyday world. At some point, he even describes someone doing the dishes. And I know of at least two places in Deep Creek where Pam Houston shares her shopping lists, including what she planned to prepare for her housemates at dinner. Gay and Houston write of lives surrounded by both nature and people. Though they are sometimes prone to ecstatic reveries, they also deliver instruction on how to live in the occasionally brutal landscape of our world. In Gay’s case: in a Black man’s body. In Houston’s: as a white woman and survivor of childhood abuse.

Read: Environmentalism was once a social-justice movement

“Maybe what I’m missing particularly is the parenting aspect,” I told Kate and Suzanne. “Child-free writers versus mothers.” The routine tasks that consume a parent. I wasn’t reading about what keeps me from writing one small essay a day.

I’m not judging the reasons a person might not be a parent, or why they might not write about motherhood even if they do have a child. I’m being honest in my own writing about that for which I hunger.

Even though they aren’t mothers themselves, Suzanne and Kate admitted an interest in such stories. “I think Ellen Meloy and Eva Saulitis both write with quotidian honesty,” wrote Suzanne. “But as you say, both were childless. You have me running to my bookshelves!”

We have to deliberately search out these books, because the environmental imagination we were trained in did not admit children, or the women who raise them, into the canon of work about the wild. Just as something in that same imagination had not admitted Black writers.

But it’s not hard to find writers who defy such limiting narratives. In more than one of her nonfiction books, Barbara Kingsolver writes about the family garden and her children. Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden (Book) , which she published in 1999, begins with a gift of gardening tools she received on Mother’s Day. In 2013’s Braiding Sweetgrass , Robin Wall Kimmerer reimagines the ways we might interact with the greater-than-human world. She also writes about lessons she learns as a mother. And in World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments , published in 2020, Aimee Nezhukumatathil writes about the family she creates with her husband almost as much as she writes about her own childhood and family of origin. Still, what’s the old saying? The exceptions prove the rule.

I didn’t write anything else to Kate and Suzanne about books that followed or resisted the limitations of this genre, because I got caught up preparing and serving my family’s dinner. Then the nighttime rituals: combing and braiding my daughter’s hair; asking, “Did you brush your teeth and wash your face?”; removing still-unfolded laundry from the bed so she could sleep . The thicket of human happenings—a different kind of woods. Suzanne wrote, “Nothing more natural in humans than the messiness of giving birth. She bustled.”

“Drink up, sister!” wrote Kate.

I may or may not have had a drink that night. I didn’t write it down. What I know is that in the rush before picking my daughter up the next day, I threw a handful of fruit into a smoothie, without turning off the blender’s blades.

Next in the text chain: a photo of my cabinets coated in vegetal goo. Instead of following up on ideas I shared with my friends or cutting back the winter scrabble that wilded our March garden, I focused on cleaning the kitchen walls and cabinets and floors.

I couldn’t draft a text in the same way as so many old, white, mostly male nature writers. Not on a morning like that. I couldn’t look away from the messiness. I wouldn’t want to erase the goo, or my girl, or my Black hands scrubbing our kitchen from my account of the wild world I so deeply love.

This essay has been adapted from Camille T. Dungy’s forthcoming book , Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden .

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