I want to be clear – reading diversely should be a practice embraced throughout the year, not simply for designated time periods. But every year, I like to post a stack or flat lay for Black History Month. This year, I am sharing recent nonfiction recommendations that are either by Black authors or about Black history. (When I say recent, I mean the last year or so.)
Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD
A reclamation of essential history and a hopeful gesture toward a better political future, this is what listening to Black women looks like—from a professor of political science and columnist for Teen Vogue.
Publication Date: January 23, 2024
Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street
Victor Luckerson
A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa’s Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street,” that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification.
Publication Date: May 23, 2023
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
Robert Samuels & Toluse Olorunnipa
A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing—telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.
Publication Date: May 17, 2022
Ordinary Notes
Christina Sharpe
A singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores profound questions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a series of 248 notes that gather meaning as we read them, Christina Sharpe skillfully weaves artifacts from the past―public ones alongside others that are poignantly personal―with present realities and possible futures, intricately constructing an immersive portrait of everyday Black existence.
Publication Date: April 25, 2023
Seen & Unseen: Technology, Social Media, and the Fight for Racial Justice
Marc Lamont Hill & Todd Brewster
With his signature “clear and courageous” (Cornel West) voice Marc Lamont Hill and New York Times bestselling author Todd Brewster weave four recent pivotal moments in America’s racial divide into their disturbing historical context—starting with the killing of George Floyd—Seen and Unseen reveals the connections between our current news headlines and social media feeds and the country’s long struggle against racism.
Publication Date: May 3, 2022
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, & Child Removal
Roxanna Asgarian
On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and multiple children at the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway. Immersive journalism of the highest order, Roxanna Asgarian’s We Were Once a Family is a revelation of precarious lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian sought out the children’s birth families and put them at the center of the story.
Publication Date: March 14, 2023
Review | Amazon | Bookshop.org
When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era
Donovan X. Ramsey
A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic. The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the least examined crisis in American history. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan’s war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey’s exacting analysis traces the path from the last triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastating realities we live with today: a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality.
Publication Date: July 11, 2023
You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live: Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America
Paul Kix
The riveting story, never before fully told – Paul Kix takes the reader behind the scenes as he tells the story of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s pivotal 10 week campaign in 1963 to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Memoirs
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir
Safiya Sinclair
With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
I Can’t Save You: A Memoir
Anthony Chin-Quee
At first glance, Anthony Chin-Quee looks like a traditional success story: a smart, ambitious kid who grew up to become a board-certified otolaryngologist—an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. Yet the truth is more complicated. By turns harrowing and hilarious, honest and human, I Can’t Save You is the fascinating true story of how looking within can change you and your life for the better.
Publication Date: April 4, 2023
A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining
Rachel E. Cargle
From a highly lauded modern voice in feminism and racial justice comes a deeply personal and insightful testament to the power of reimagining to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do.
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
Amazon | Bookshop.org
Undiplomatic: How My Attitude Created the Best Kind of Trouble
Deesha Dyer
Without credentials or connections, community college student and advocate Deesha Dyer navigated her imposter syndrome, landing one of the most exclusive positions in the White House. In this vivid portrayal from a true “around the way girl” on the personal impact of the Obama presidency, Deesha shares her road map from imposter to impact.
Publication Date: April 23, 2024
