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Best Books by Black Women

130+ Books by Black Women That Should Be Essential Reading For Everyone

Jul 7 2020

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Diverse literature is more essential than ever in today's current climate. Books are some of the best tools for developing tolerance and empathy, and few books are as rich and nuanced as those penned by Black women. From memoirs to epics to essential sociological investigations, we've rounded up over 100 of the most important works written by Black female authors over the past century, extending from Africa to the Caribbean to America and from the pre-Civil War era to the distant future. If you're looking to diversify your reading list this year, here are books by Black women that we consider to be essential reading.

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— Additional reporting by Lauren Harano, Haley Lyndes, and Tembe Denton-Hurst

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1. Reach For the Skai: How to Inspire, Empower, and Clapback by Skai Jackson

Reach For the Skai: How to Inspire, Empower, and Clapback by Skai Jackson details the origins of Skai's acting career, addresses bullying, and tells the young star's story from her own eyes. While she might look like she has it all in the spotlight, she wants people to know that's not the case, and she's stronger because of it.

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2. We Want Our Bodies Back by jessica Care moore

Written by the American poet and activist, jessica Care moore, We Want Our Bodies Back by jessica Care moore includes a full-length collection of poems that serve as an ode to the power and pain Black women have undergone over the years by men and society overall. Complete with a handful of powerful pieces, this book is sure to change the way you see things.

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3. Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick by Zora Neale Hurston

With a collection of powerful stories, Hitting a Straight Lick With a Crooked Stick: Stories From the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston tells her story of what it was like growing up in New York as the only Black person at Barnard college. This book touches on gender and class, racism and sexism, and so much more.

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4. F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me by Chloé Hilliard

Comedian Chloé Hilliard will have you laughing, crying, and rooting for her the whole way when you read F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me by Chloé Hilliard. It's candid, raw, and has everything you need to get to know the star on a whole new level.

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5. How to Get Over a Boy by Chidera Eggerue

If you're looking for a powerful self-care guide, How To Get Over A Boy by Chidera Eggerue is for you. From navigating the dating world to truly understanding yourself, this book will lead you on a journey of self-exploration, even if you weren't planning on it.

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6. So We Can Glow: Stories by Leesa Cross Smith

Focussed on the experiences that women face, So We Can Glow: Stories by Leesa Cross Smith will open up your eyes to how amazing females really are. With a peek into some of the most beautiful, haunting, and even some of the darkest corners of women's lives, this book will move you like never before.

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7. Remembrance by Rita Woods

Moving, griping, and honest, Remembrance by Rita Woods tells the story of four women over 200 years united by the colour of their skin. Complete with magic, power, and the resilience of women, Remembrance is a must read.

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8. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall takes a deep dive into who feminism is for, what it means, and how it is interpreted by society. Author Mikki Kendall confronts the issues of mainstream feminism through this collection of essays and targets the different problems that still run deep throughout the movement.

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9. The Girl With the Louding Voice: A Novel by Abi Daré

Both heartbreaking and inspiring, The Girl with the Louding Voice: A Novel by Abi Daré narrates the trials and tribulations a 14-year-old Nigerian girl faces as she struggles to get an education. When she is sold to be the wife of an old man in town, she faces hurdle after hurdle, but is never fully silenced.

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10. Parable of the Brown Girl: The Sacred Lives of Girls of Colour by Khristi Lauren Adams

With beautiful and moving stories about young women of colour, Parable of the Brown Girl: The Sacred Lives of Girls of Colour by Khristi Lauren Adams doesn't shy away from anything. These stories highlight the young girls and their struggles, as well as their hope and strength.

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11. Obviously: Stories from My Timeline by Akilah Hughes

This coming-of-age memoir is funny, honest, and extremely down to earth. Obviously: Stories from My Timeline by Akilah Hughes details Hughes's early life and her journey toward becoming a force in the media landscape. From delving into her complex family dynamic to detailing the very long, very arduous road to hitting her stride in New York, the Cincinnati native divulges a lot in a collection of chapters that peel back the layers of her identity.

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12. Biased by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Jennifer L. Eberhardt's Biased is a book on race and discrimination full of compelling research and illuminating studies. But its most exacting arguments are found in the anecdotes and stories of her own, revealing the ways racism wields its forces in institutions like schools and law enforcement and in our personal lives. It should be required reading for anyone who works or lives alongside other human beings, but especially for anyone with a modicum of power.

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13. When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele

Patrisse Khan-Cullors's journey to activism and her personal pain and determination are both laid bare in this lyrical autobiography. When They Call You a Terrorist is a visceral meditation on the personal and institutional forces that gave rise to Khan-Cullors's activism around race and mental-health advocacy — and a clear-eyed manifesto about a social-justice movement we sorely need.

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14. A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

Hear the many voices of black women, from the enslaved, to religious leaders, artists and activists, in A Black Women's History of the United States. Be enchanted by their determination and grit, and humbled by their bravery in the face of oppression. This not-to-be missed non-fiction book reveals women who were instrumental in developing our country, and celebrates their spirit and courage.

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15. Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine's Citizen is simply one of the most remarkable achievements in modern American poetry. Her reflection on the ways racism drives wedges between people and incites violence and pain will often startle tears to your eyes, like this passage from this book-length poem:

Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue, and clog the lungs. Like thunder they drown you in sound, no, like lightning they strike you across the larynx. Cough. After it happened I was at a loss for words. Haven't you said this yourself? Haven't you said this to a close friend who early in your friendship, when distracted, would call you by the name of her Black housekeeper? You assumed you two were the only Black people in her life. Eventually she stopped doing this, though she never acknowledged her slippage. And you never called her on it (why not?) and yet, you don't forget. If this were a domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your fatal flaw — your memory, vessel of your feelings. Do you feel hurt because it's the "all Black people look the same" moment, or because you are being confused with another after being so close to this other?

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16. With the Fire on High

From the author of National Book Award longlist title The Poet X comes With the Fire on High, a novel about Emoni Santiago, a teen mother who makes magic in the kitchen. Even though becoming a full-time chef seems like the impossible, Emoni has a gift she can't ignore, forcing her to make a choice about what comes next.

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17. The Women of Brewster Place

Gloria Naylor's National Book Award-winning novel, The Women of Brewster Place, weaves together the stories of seven different women, all living in the same rundown urban tenement called Brewster Place and facing similar achievements and struggles as Black women in America.

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18. The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The Girl Who Smiled Beads is the true story of Clemantine Wamariya, who fled the Rwandan massacre at 6 years old, only to find herself taken in by a family in Chicago, raised as their own, and given opportunities she couldn't have dreamed of in Rwanda.

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19. It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America

For many of us, the American Dream was packaged like sweet-smelling baked goods and then placed behind thick glass for us to admire but never attain. Reniqua Allen investigates this in It Was All a Dream: A New Generation Confronts the Broken Promise to Black America, in which she illuminates the stories of Black millennials searching for success amid a racist system designed for them to fail. The book takes a hopeful position, however, and shares the innovative ways young Black people are surviving and thriving despite the challenges they face.

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20. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn follows two sisters in Jamaica, the older one of the two hustling at an opulent resort in Montego Bay while hiding her secret preference for women and the younger one sent to school and surviving on her older sister's profits.

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21. Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter

In a post-Beychella world, it's only right that there's a book devoted to the genius that is Beyoncé, whose name now auto-corrects on iPhones everywhere. She's sold over 100 million records and won 24 Grammys, and she's the most nominated woman of the award. Queen Bey: A Celebration of the Power and Creativity of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter celebrates this, with pieces written by everyone from director and producer Lena Waithe to British Vogue Editor in Chief Edward Enninful.

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22. What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

In Zinzi Clemmons's experimental debut, What We Lose, a young woman loses her African-born mother to cancer, stranding her without an identity and — when she discovers that she is pregnant — without the guidance that she desperately needs.

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23. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

Senator Kamala Harris has blessed us with an insightful look into her life in The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, a book that explores her journey from young daughter of two immigrant civil rights activists to California attorney general and beyond.

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24. Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?

The late Kathleen Collins's story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? offers hilarious, intimate, and poignant vignettes about family and sexuality that complicate the ideas of both blackness and whiteness and boldly eschew political correctness.

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25. American Street by Ibi Zoboi

In her debut novel, American Street, Ibi Zoboi uses her own experience as a Haitian immigrant to tell the story of Fabiola, a young woman who leaves Port-au-Prince with her mother for the promise of America, but when her mother is detained by immigration, Fabiola must face all of the challenges and surprises of this new country on her own.

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26. Ordinary People

Diana Evans's Ordinary People follows the story of two married couples who are lifelong friends, and though one couple lives in South London and the other in the suburbs, both marriages struggle with resentment, disappointment, and unexpected challenges that they attempt to contain within the privacy of their homes.

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27. Becoming

In former First Lady Michelle Obama's dazzling memoir, Becoming, she chronicles her life from a childhood on the South Side of Chicago to becoming one of the most compelling and visible women of her time, noting all of the triumphs and disappointments she faced along the way.

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28. The Turner House

Angela Flournoy's debut novel, The Turner House, is centred around a family home on Detroit's East Side, the 13 children who have grown up and moved on from it, and the house's fate when the Turner matriarch's health starts to fail.

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29. Ghana Must Go

Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go brings a mother and her four adult children — estranged and scattered throughout Boston, New Haven, New York, and London — back together in Ghana for the funeral of the father who abandoned them years before.

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30. We Love You, Charlie Freeman

In Kaitlyn Greenidge's We Love You, Charlie Freeman, a family is recruited by a research institute to nurture and train a young abandoned chimp, a task that becomes complicated when the older daughter discovers the questionable nature of the institute's past studies.

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31. The Sun Is Also a Star

A tale of star-crossed lovers, The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon tells the story of two New York City teens — an undocumented immigrant soon to be deported to Jamaica and a first-generation South Korean high school senior on his way to a Yale interview — and a fateful day that brings them together.

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32. The Parking Lot Attendant

Nafkote Tamirat's The Parking Lot Attendant is about a girl and her father, who become members of a tightly knit Ethiopian community in Boston, only to find that the commune is not nearly as harmonious as they believed and that its founders intended.

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33. Whiskey & Ribbons

In Leesa Cross-Smith's Whiskey & Ribbons, a woman who is nine months pregnant becomes widowed when her police officer husband is killed in the line of duty and her husband's adopted brother must move in to help her care for her new child.

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34. How to Love a Jamaican

In her debut collection, How to Love a Jamaican, Alexia Arthurs navigates the tension between Jamaican immigrants in America and their families back home, painting a vivid portrait of a nation and a way of life through her 11 stories.

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35. Children of Blood and Bone

Tomi Adeyemi's West African-inspired fantasy debut, Children of Blood and Bone, tells the story of Zélie Adebola, a maji (a person meant to wield the magic of the gods for the good of the people of Orïsha) who — after the ruthless King of Orïsha wipes out most of the maji, including Zélie's mother — must set forth on a journey to restore magic to her home and take down the monarchy.

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36. The Mothers

Brit Bennett's debut novel, The Mothers, follows a 17-year-old beauty from a Black community in Southern California who — while mourning her mother's recent suicide — finds herself an expectant mother when a former high school football star accidentally gets her pregnant.

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37. Kindred

Octavia E. Butler's visionary, genre-bending novel Kindred tells the story of a young Black woman who finds herself transported to the antebellum South, where she is a slave, and her white husband, who is later transported with her, must pretend that he is her owner to keep them alive.

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38. White Teeth

In the legendary Zadie Smith's debut novel, White Teeth, two unlikely friends — both veterans of World War II — navigate one's second marriage to a Jamaican woman half his age and the other's late-in-life arranged marriage, all set against the tapestry of a rapidly diversifying London.

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39. Beloved

In Toni Morrison's unforgettable novel Beloved, a former slave finds herself unable to escape — even though she fled to Ohio 18 years before — as she is haunted by the memories of her experiences on the farm, as well as by the ghost of her child who died as an infant without a name.

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40. Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America is a collection of stories by some of the most celebrated authors writing about teens today. The collection covers a wide range of topics, from classism to sexuality and everything in between.

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41. Americanah

In Half of a Yellow Sun author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, two lovers leave military-ruled Nigeria for the West, pursuing separate lives in America and London until they are reunited 15 years later with each other and with their homeland in a newly democratic Nigeria.

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42. Homegoing

Beginning in 18th century Ghana, Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing follows two half-sisters born in different villages through eight generations, with one woman marrying an Englishman and settling on the Gold Coast of West Africa and the other being imprisoned in the very same castle that her half-sister lives in before she is sold into slavery.

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43. Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine

The memoir begins with the author being stabbed (along with six others) by a white man with a knife in a New England coffee shop. And while she wasn't stabbed because of her skin colour, the metaphor of violence against the Black body remains. The action turned metaphor, among other things Bernard experiences (like marrying a white man), is explored in Black Is the Body: Stories From My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine, a collection of essays that use her life as the stage to investigate where blackness and whiteness intersect.

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44. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston's classic 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is narrated by a fair-skinned Black woman who reflects on her life in 20th century Florida, marked by her three marriages to three very different men.

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45. An American Marriage

An American Marriage by Silver Sparrow author Tayari Jones follows two newlyweds, Roy and Celestial, in the New South, whose picture-perfect lives are disrupted when Roy is arrested and sentenced to prison for a crime that Celestial knows he did not commit, compelling her to turn to a childhood friend — who was also her husband's best man — for comfort.

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46. Gathering of Waters

Set in the real-life town of Money, MS, Bernice L. McFadden's Gathering of Waters tells the story of a young woman named Tass who loses her lover, Emmett, when he is brutally murdered, never expecting that 40 years later — after Tass has relocated, remarried, and become widowed — she will find herself reunited with Emmett's spirit.

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47. On the Come Up

The highly anticipated sophomore novel from The Hate U Give author Angie Thomas promises to be a treat. This time we'll be following the story of Bri, a 16-year-old who dreams of becoming one of the greatest rappers of all time. She has big shoes to fill as the daughter of an underground hip-hop legend, and her reputation at school isn't making it any easier. If Thomas's previous work is any indication of what's to come, On the Come Up will be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

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48. The Taste of Salt

Martha Southgate's The Taste of Salt follows a senior-level marine biologist who, though she has tried to leave her childhood and her alcoholic father in Cleveland behind, finds herself pulled back into the past when her beloved brother succumbs to an addiction of his own.

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49. Thick: And Other Essays

Tressie McMillan Cottom marries criticism with wit in Thick: And Other Essays and adds a pinch of Black Twitter for good measure. In eight essays, she makes meaning of our everyday circumstances to illuminate a deeper understanding of the world around us.

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50. The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers

An homage to her mother's numbers industriousness, The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers recounts Fannie Davis's life as "part bookie, part banker" and her role as a mother and wife. The memoir paints the picture of a woman making a way out of no way and doing what she has to in order to make a life for her and her children. It's a testament to the resilience of Black women and so suspenseful, it feels like fiction.

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51. Welcome to Lagos

Chibundu Onuzo's American debut, Welcome to Lagos, is about a Nigerian army officer who — when he's commanded to take innocent lives — decides to escape to Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, where he finds himself in command of a group of like-minded misfits and runaways.

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52. Freshwater

In Akwaeke Emezi's debut novel, Freshwater, a Nigerian woman, Ada, is born with a fractured sense of self, and the narrative fluctuates between these various and distinct identities, weaving Ada's own struggles with mental illness and identity with traditional Igbo myths.

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53. Golden Child: A Novel

The first novel from Sarah Jessica Parker's imprint, SJP For Hogarth, Golden Child is a story of siblings — one of which is the "golden child," while the other one causes endless trouble. Set in modern-day Trinidad, the novel centres around twins Peter and Paul, who travel to Port of Spain every day for school. When one doesn't come home, their father, Clyde, goes looking for him and is forced to make an impossible choice once he realises his fate.

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54. Sing, Unburied, Sing

Two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward's third novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, revolves around the trip taken by a Black woman and her two children to retrieve her white husband from jail, as well as the ghosts — that of the woman's brother, murdered at the age of 18, and the spirit of a boy who died while he was imprisoned with her father years before — who haunt them along the way.

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55. The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Ayana Mathis's The Twelve Tribes of Hattie follows a woman from Georgia during the Great Migration in 1923 to Philadelphia, where — after the beginning of a disappointing marriage and the death of her firstborn twins — Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit and harshness in order to protect them against the hard world they face ahead.

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56. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditation

No, this is not a drill: Toni Morrison is blessing us with a book. And not just any book, but a nonfiction collection of her essays, speeches, and meditations spanning the past four decades called The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditation. She offers commentary on her own work and that of others while also taking on social issues like female empowerment, "Black matter(s)," and human rights.

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57. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

When Althea, the eldest sister of the Butler family, is arrested alongside her husband, Proctor, it's shocking, to say the least. It plunges the family into uncertainty, and they go from being one of the most respected families in town to being a disgrace. The issue is no one's totally sure what happened, making The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls the kind of page-turning family drama you won't want to put down.

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58. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Born in St. Louis and raised by her grandmother in Stamps, AR, after the dissolution of her parents' marriage, Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells the story of her tumultuous childhood, as well as the attack she suffers in St. Louis at 8 years old that she must always carry with her.

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59. Ugly Ways

In Tina McElroy Ansa's bestselling novel, Ugly Ways, three sisters are reunited in Mulberry, GA, when their domineering mother — known to them as Mudear — passes away, but as they prepare for her funeral, the Lovejoy sisters find themselves just as haunted by Mudear's taunts about their "ugly ways" as they were when she was living.

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60. The Prisoner's Wife

In Asha Bandele's bestselling memoir, The Prisoner's Wife, she recounts her experience of visiting a group of prisoners to read poetry during a Black History Month program, never expecting that she would meet Rashid, a man serving 20 years to life for his part in a murder, who would eventually become her husband.

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61. Magical Negro

A catalogue of Black everydayness through verse, Magical Negro explores a wide range of topics, from ancestral trauma to grief and stereotypes about Black Americans. Parker turns her attention to Black womanhood specifically, creating a space to bear witness, point out patterns, and help Black women find one another within its pages.

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62. Krik? Krak!

Edwidge Danticat's story collection, Krik? Krak!, offers 10 stories of Haitian individuals, ranging from those struggling under the Duvalier regime to those attempting to adjust to life in a new world, yet all tied together by Catholicism, spirituality, and the shared experience of having a Haitian identity.

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63. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

In Heidi W. Durrow's debut, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, a 10-year-old girl born from a Danish mother and a Black father is sent to live with her grandmother in a predominantly Black community, where she struggles to find a place for herself as a biracial girl and contend with the family tragedy that brought her to live with her grandmother in the first place.

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64. The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas's bestselling YA novel, The Hate U Give (which recently became a movie starring Amandla Stenberg, K.J. Apa, and Anthony Mackie), tells the story of 16-year-old Starr, who struggles to balance the worlds of her fancy private school and poor Black neighbourhood after she witnesses the police shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil.

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65. Lucy

Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy follows a teenage girl who moves from her home in the West Indies to become an au pair for a wealthy white family in New England, where she gradually develops a new understanding of her sexuality, as well as an understanding that the family she works for is not as perfect as it appears.

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66. American Spy: A Novel

A Black spy operating during the heart of the Cold War? Sign us up. The novel centres around Marie Mitchell, a US intelligence officer sent to Burkina Faso to undermine Thomas Sankara, a revolutionary president with communist ideologies. She spends a year getting close to the president, but what she finds out in the process surprises her. American Spy promises to be a riveting thriller — one you won't be able to put down.

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67. Stay with Me

Set in Ilesa, Nigeria, Ayobami Adebayo's Stay with Me follows a woman who, four years into her marriage and attempting to conceive, is still not pregnant. This only becomes a matter of concern when she learns that her husband has taken a younger second wife and that the only way to save her marriage is to have a baby.

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68. Who Fears Death

Based in a postapocalyptic Africa, Nnedi Okarafor's Who Fears Death revolves around a woman who — after learning that she was conceived through a violent rape — tries to escape the life of violence that is expected for her, instead working to develop the unique magical abilities that first manifested themselves in her childhood.

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69. Gingerbread

Fans of Helen Oyeyemi know that whatever the author has up her sleeve, it's sure to be a little magical and surreal. Such is the case with Gingerbread, a novel inspired by the symbolism of gingerbread in classic children's stories. The book centres around Perdita and Harriet Lee, who seem normal on the surface but live in a gold-painted seventh-floor walk-up and have talkative plants. Oh, and then there's the gingerbread, which earns mixed reviews in London but is very popular in the (possibly fictional) land of Druhástrana. It's a surprising and satisfying tale and a must-read for old and new fans alike.

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70. Queenie

Queenie follows a 20-something Jamaican-British woman living in London and facing the very real pressure of being Black in the workplace while still navigating newly single life. You'll likely feel seen while reading this (yes, it's that relatable), an example of what happens when you go looking for love and find something else instead.

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71. Push

Sapphire's Push — which later became the inspiration for the movie Precious, starring Gabourey Sidibe — tells the story of 16-year-old Precious Jones, a woman pregnant with her second child by her now-absent father and fighting to escape her fate with the help of education and her radical teacher.

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72. Halsey Street

Naima Coster's debut novel, Halsey Street, tells the story of a daughter, who gives up on her dream of becoming an artist in Pittsburgh to return home to Brooklyn only to find it gentrified and unrecognisable, and her mother, who abandons Brooklyn to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic.

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73. A Kind of Freedom

Following three generations of a Black New Orleans family, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's A Kind of Freedom explores New Orleans from World War II through the post-Katrina present, all through the lens of a grandmother, a mother, and a son for whom Jim Crow and racism are ever-present threats.

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74. Nervous Conditions

Based in postcolonial Rhodesia during the 1960s, Tsitsi Dangarembga's semiautobiographical novel, Nervous Conditions, follows a young woman who decides to leave her rural community behind in order to study at a missionary school, but while there, she slowly learns painful lessons about her role as a woman and the evils of colonisation.

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75. What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky

Lesley Nneka Arimah's debut story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, offers 12 tales that take place in both Nigeria and America — as well as both in the present and the imagined future — but they are all connected by a thread of magical realism and a shared sense of impending doom.

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76. The Everlasting Rose

The second instalment in the Belles series, The Everlasting Rose picks up with Camellia Beauregard trying to help Princess Charlotte and restore her rightful place as queen of Orléans. Together with the Iron Ladies, a society that rejects beauty treatments entirely, she uses her powers and connections to restore peace to the kingdom . . . and has to make sacrifices along the way.

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77. The White Card

The first published play from Citizen author Claudia Rankine, The White Card poses the question of whether American society can progress if whiteness remains invisible. Explored over the course of a one-act play, the drama finds meaning in the white spaces (both literally and figuratively), leaving the reader to navigate where they stand.

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78. Negroland

Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, tells the story of a world that isn't often explored: upper-crust Black Chicago, where her father was head of paediatrics at a hospital, her mother was a socialite, and most everyone's wealth originated from antebellum free blacks who made their fortunes in plantations.

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79. Another Brooklyn

In Brown Girl Dreaming author Jacqueline Woodson's novel, Another Brooklyn, a woman runs into an old friend while she is in New York for her father's funeral, and the chance meeting leads to a recollection of her blissful childhood in Brooklyn, as well as her teenage years, during which Brooklyn revealed itself to be more sinister than she ever imagined.

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80. The Color Purple

Alice Walker's classic 1982 epistolary novel, The Color Purple, follows the story of an uneducated young girl in rural 1930s Georgia through a series of letters written to God, which she writes in a desperate attempt to escape from her abusive father and the pain of her younger sister's departure.

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81. The Old Drift

If you're a fan of epic stories that are set off by one seemingly small action, then The Old Drift is a must for your TBR stack. Beginning in 1904, an old drifter ties the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy, and the rest is history (and Afronauts, microdrones, and viral vaccines).

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82. The Terrible

In her lyrical memoir The Terrible, model and poet Yrsa Daley-Ward revisits her childhood in a northern English market town, where she was raised by her Jamaican mother, heard stories about her absent Nigerian father, and was sent to live with her Seventh Day Adventist grandparents along with her beloved brother, Little Roo.

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83. Assata

In her revolutionary autobiography Assata, JoAnne Chesimard — better known as Black Panther Assata Shakur — shares how she came to live a life of fierce activism, as well as how the takedown of Black nationalist organisations led to Shakur's incarceration as an accomplice to murder.

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84. New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing

Twenty-five years after Margaret Busby published Daughters of Africa, a collection considered "the ultimate reference guide" by The Washington Post at the time of publication, comes New Daughters of Africa, an anthology comprised of some of the most influential voices of our time. Spanning the globe, Busby includes authors from Antigua to Zimbabwe, Angola, and the United States too. You'll likely find a few familiar faces within its pages, like Yrsa Daley-Ward and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and discover much, much more.

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85. The Joys of Motherhood

Buchi Emecheta's 1979 novel The Joys of Motherhood tells the story of a Nigerian woman who is banished to Lagos when she fails to provide her husband with a baby. When she does finally conceive and become a mother, she is abandoned and left to defend for herself and her children.

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86. Behold the Dreamers

In Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers, a Cameroonian immigrant moves his family to Harlem in order to provide them with a better life, and the American dream feels possible when he lands a job as a chauffeur for a senior executive at Lehman Brothers — that is, until Lehman Brothers collapses and his job and livelihood (as well as the entire financial world) are in peril.

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87. Ruby

Set in East Texas in the '60s and '70s, Cynthia Bond's Ruby revolves around a woman who, after escaping for New York City, returns home to her poor Black community, where she is ostracised for her reputation by everyone but Ephram Jennings, the man who has loved her all of his life.

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88. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

In ZZ Packer's story collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, readers are introduced to a cast of characters — mostly black, economically disenfranchised teenage girls — who struggle to understand their sense of self in their Southern Black communities and in the world beyond.

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89. Bad Feminist

In popular cultural critic Roxane Gay's essay collection, Bad Feminist, she explores her journey as a woman of colour from adolescence to adulthood, noting the ways in which the culture we consume has changed, as well as the many ways in which it still needs to improve.

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90. Patsy

When Patsy gets her visa to America, she's thrilled to join her friend and secret love, Cicely. America turns out to be different from what she anticipates, and she's forced to do what she has to in order to survive as an undocumented immigrant, including working as a nanny and bathroom attendant. Meanwhile, back in Jamaica, her daughter, Tru, struggles with her own sexuality, as well as feeling abandoned by a mother who has no intention of coming back. Patsy is the second book from powerhouse Nicole Dennis-Benn, and it promises to be a searing and memorable read.

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91. Children of Virtue and Vengeance

The second book in the Children of Blood and Bone series, Children of Virtue and Vengeance promises to be as page-turning as the first. (Warning: spoilers ahead!) At the outset of the book, magic is back in Orisha, and not just for the maji. Whether they find a way to come together or plunge deeper into unrest remains to be seen, but if the first book is any indication of what's to come, your heart will be racing until the very last page.

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92. Skin Folk

Nalo Hopkinson's story collection Skin Folk combines the worlds of science fiction and Caribbean folklore to create 15 tales of the deadly sins, the failings of the body, the human condition, and the realities of life in the Caribbean.

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93. Heads of the Colored People

In Nafissa Thompson-Spires's darkly funny story collection, Heads of the Colored People, she explores the precariousness of Black citizenship, the vulnerability of the black body, and daily domestic life in contemporary middle-class America through her 11 stories.

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94. Things I Should Have Told My Daughter

In her memoir Things I Should Have Told My Daughter, bestselling author and playwright Pearl Cleage recalls the years before she achieved success as a writer back in the '70s and '80s, when she was a just a woman attempting to establish a career among the challenges of marriage and motherhood.

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95. 1919

Award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing turns her attention to the Chicago Race Riots of 1919 in 1919, exploring the violence of the event through poems and stories of everyday people trying to survive. Her work illuminates the thin line between past and present while also casting a daring look toward the future.

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96. My Soul Looks Back

In her memoir My Soul Looks Back, Jessica B. Harris offers an inside look into the inner circle of the illustrious New York City Black intelligentsia in the early '70s, when she spent her days among Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison attending parties, sharing work, and learning from one another.

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97. Training School For Negro Girls

In her debut story collection, Training School For Negro Girls, Camille Acker explores what it means to be young, female, and Black in America, telling stories of women who must resist being pigeonholed while simultaneously facing pressure not to challenge the mainstream.

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98. The Star Side of Bird Hill

Naomi Jackson's lyric debut novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill, tells the story of two sisters sent from Brooklyn to live with their grandmother in Barbados after their mother decides she can no longer care for them. While the older sister only wishes to return to Brooklyn, the younger one forms a bond with her midwife grandmother, learning about the spiritual practice of obeah and her roots.

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99. On Black Sisters' Street

Winner of the 2012 Nigeria Prize for Literature, Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street follows four very different women who leave their homes in Africa behind to work as prostitutes in Antwerp's red-light district, where they hope to earn enough money to start a new life . . . and where one of them ends up murdered.

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100. The Warmth of Other Suns

In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, she illustrates the migration of six million African Americans from the rural South to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West through the stories of three individuals: one who left Mississippi for blue-collar success in Chicago, one who fled Florida to fight for civil rights in Harlem, and one abandoned Louisiana to pursue a medical career.

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101. Cane River

Lalita Tademy's Cane River begins with a slave owned by a Creole family and moves through four generations of strong women as they grapple with emancipation, Jim Crow laws, and racial and cultural roadblocks in rural Louisiana.

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102. Jam on the Vine

LaShonda Katrice Barnett's Jam on the Vine is about the life of the revolutionary Jim Crow-era Black journalist Ivoe Williams, tracing her life, her career, and her many challenges from the Deep South to the Midwest during the early 20th century.

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103. The Street

Published in 1946, Ann Petry's classic tale of racial injustice, The Street, tells the haunting story of a young Black mother named Lutie Johnson who must face the violence and poverty of the late 1940s Harlem streets, all while single-handedly raising her young son.

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104. Brown Girl, Brownstones

Taking place between the Great Depression and World War II in a close-knit community of Barbados immigrants, Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall is narrated through the eyes of a young woman caught between her parents as they debate whether to remain in Brooklyn and fight their way out of poverty or return to the island of Barbados.

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105. Wench

In her debut novel, Wench, Dolen Perkins-Valdez introduces Tawawa House, an Ohio retreat for the Southern white men who holiday there every Summer with their enslaved Black mistresses in the years preceding the Civil War, where everything runs smoothly until a new woman arrives and begins talk of rebelling against their masters.

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106. Sister Outsider

Author and poet Audre Lorde's collection Sister Outsider offers 15 essays and speeches that take on everything from sexism and racism to ageism and classism, calling for action and change in a way that is still relevant, even two decades after its publication.

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107. Jubilee

Using her own family's oral history as inspiration, Margaret Walker's classic historical novel, Jubilee, tells the semifictional story of Vyry, a child born to a white plantation owner and his Black mistress in Georgia, who is based on Margaret Walker's great-grandmother Margaret Duggans Ware Brown.

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108. All About Love

In cultural critic and feminist theorist Bell Hooks's All About Love, she spends 13 chapters examining the question of love, noting the way in which society has failed to teach us to love, instead conflating modern love with ideas of sex and desire, rather than emotional connection.

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109. Sister Citizen

In Sister Citizen, Melissa V. Harris-Perry provides a sociological investigation into the relentless stereotypes forced upon Black women, noting the many ways that the media works to ignore and marginalise Black females in contemporary American life.

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110. Killing the Black Body

In Dorothy Roberts's Killing the Black Body, she notes the ways in which society has continually degraded and claimed ownership over Black women's bodies — from slave masters to sterilisation to harmful stereotypes of welfare mothers with more kids than they can handle — and the effect these abuses have had on the institution of Black motherhood.

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111. The Darkest Child

The late Delores Phillips's only novel, The Darkest Child, tells the story of 13-year-old Tangy Mae, who was born the darkest (and therefore deemed the ugliest) of her 10 siblings, but — as she is also the most intelligent — she is given the opportunity to join the first integrated class at a nearby white high school.

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112. My Sister, the Serial Killer

In her hilarious dark debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite introduces two Nigerian sisters: the beautiful Ayoola, who is possibly a sociopathic murderer, and her older sister, Korede, who must figure out a way to stop her sister from killing any more of her boyfriends.

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113. Dear Martin

Told through a mix of narrative and letters written to Martin Luther King Jr., Nic Stone's Dear Martin tells the story of a Black scholarship student at a predominantly white prep school as he attempts to leave behind his tough neighbourhood, secure himself a position in an Ivy League school, and somehow escape the assumptions the world seems determined to make about him.

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114. This Will Be My Undoing

In Morgan Jerkins's debut essay collection, This Will Be My Undoing, she examines the experience of being doubly disenfranchised in modern America, drawing attention to the many ways in which Black women face marginalisation and objectification in a white, male-dominated world.

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115. Washington Black

In Esi Edugyan's imaginative and unexpected novel Washington Black, an 11-year-old field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation is assigned to become his master's brother's manservant, and though George Washington Black, or "Wash," fears for the worst, the two become close companions, eventually fleeing up the eastern coast of America together in order to save Wash from a bounty hunter.

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116. Under the Udala Trees

Inspired by Nigerian folk tales, Chinelo Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees tells the story of a young woman who comes of age during the Nigerian Civil War, understanding at once that she is attracted to women and that she will more than likely have to hide this fact of her identity as Nigeria recovers from the effects of war.

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117. Dread Nation

Justina Ireland's subversive Dread Nation takes place in a world where the Civil War creates an army of the undead, rather than dividing the states, and where certain children are required to attend combat school to fight these zombies, according to the laws of the Native and Negro Education Act.

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118. The Poet X

Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X tells the story of a young Afro-Latina woman who — embarrassed by her new curves and feeling defenceless in her Harlem neighbourhood — discovers the world of slam poetry, through which she can express her frustration with her words instead of her fists.

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119. Piecing Me Together

Renée Watson's Piecing Me Together revolves around 16-year-old Jade, a teen from a tough neighbourhood who reluctantly takes part in a mentorship program, only to end up with a well-intentioned mentor who — though she is black, like Jade — is wealthy and privileged, leaving Jade feeling like someone who needs to be saved, rather than someone who simply needs the right opportunities.

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120. How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

In acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy author N. K. Jemisin's first story collection, How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, she tells tales of alternate histories, near-future imaginings, and far-future fantasies, with all of the stories connected by the threat of destruction and the promise of rebirth.

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121. We Are Taking Only What We Need

In Stephanie Powell Watts's story collection We Are Taking Only What We Need, she uses her 10 stories to sketch the collective Black working-class experience over the past 50 years, discussing everything from confining institutions to painful generational differences.

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122. The Woman Next Door

Set in Cape Town, Yewande Omotoso's The Woman Next Door is about a rivalry between next-door neighbours — both widowed, both successful, and both harboring resentment against each other that grows with age — until an unexpected episode allows the two women (one of whom is white, and the other black) to finally find some common ground.

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123. Kintu

First published in Kenya in 2014, Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi tells an epic tale of Uganda's history in six sections, beginning in 1750, when a man named Kintu Kidda unwittingly unleashes a curse on his bloodline, and continuing through the subsequent generations as Kintu's descendants experience the burden of their shared past.

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124. She Would Be King

Wayétu Moore's debut, She Would Be King, works to reimagine the history of Liberia's formation with a tale of three individuals — a woman exiled from her West African village, a man raised on a plantation in Virginia, and the child of a white British coloniser and Jamaican slave — who meet in the settlement of Monrovia, where they discover their shared superhuman abilities.

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125. We Need New Names

In NoViolet Bulawayo's debut novel, We Need New Names, a 10-year-old finds her life in Zimbabwe turned upside down when paramilitary policemen destroy her home and close her school, but she still has a way to escape for a better life: she has an aunt who lives in America who might help her find a second chance.

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126. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

In her collection Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis reflects on everything from the South African anti-apartheid movement to the Black Freedom Movement, noting the many ways in which a movement for human liberation is more essential than ever.

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127. When They Call You a Terrorist

In Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele's memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, Khan-Cullors reflects on the ways in which Black and brown people are targeted by the criminal justice system, as well as ways in which humanity may bring change to a country motivated by white privilege and eager to turn a blind eye on the injustices inflicted upon people of colour.

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128. Rabbit

In Patricia Williams's hilarious memoir, Rabbit, she revisits her past, where she was born one of five children at the height of the crack epidemic in Atlanta, pregnant at 13, a mother of two by 15, and — alone at 16 — determined to give herself and her children a better life, though she had an eighth-grade education and no marketable skills beyond hustling.

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129. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Based on award-winning British journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge's viral blog piece of the same name, Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race opens a dialogue about how to better see, acknowledge, and counter racism in the realms of feminism, politics, history, class, and — of course — daily life.

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130. Pushout

Monique W. Morris, cofounder of the National Black Women's Justice Institute, wrote Pushout to investigate the ways in which the rapidly growing population of young Black women in the juvenile justice system begins in school, where Black girls are often misunderstood, judged, and degraded by both teachers and the administration.

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131. Ordinary Light

In US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's memoir, Ordinary Light, she tells her own remarkable story of coming of age as a young artist in Black America after having suffered an insurmountable loss: the life of her mother.

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132. The New Jim Crow

In civil rights advocate and litigator Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, she dismisses the idea of colour-blindness, suggesting that the US criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control and that racial caste in America is still very much alive.

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133. Daddy Was a Number Runner

Originally published in 1970, Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner follows the life of a family living in Depression-era Harlem, where a 12-year-old girl must step up to help her family survive through incredibly trying times.

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134. So You Want to Talk About Race

In writer and speaker Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want to Talk About Race, she works to bridge the gap between people of colour and white individuals by addressing essential topics that are usually deemed too sensitive to touch, including everything from privilege to micro-aggressions to police brutality.

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135. Allegedly

In Tiffany D. Jackson's haunting debut, Alledegly, a 9-year-old Black girl is convicted for (allegedly) murdering a white baby who was in the care of her and her churchgoing mother. Her reputation haunts her even years later when she is a mother herself and the state is threatening to take away her own baby.

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136. Dust

Taking place during Kenya's turbulent '50s and '60s, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's Dust tells the story of a young man shot and killed in the streets of Nairobi and the grief that his father and sister are left to contend with, as well as the secrets and buried memories that unfold in the process.

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137. Little & Lion

In Brandy Colbert's Little & Lion, a young woman named Suzette returns from her New England boarding school to her home in Los Angeles, where her stepbrother is struggling with bipolar disorder and in love with a girl — who also happens to be the same girl Suzette finds herself falling for.

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138. Beneath the Lion's Gaze

Taking place in an Ethiopia on the edge of revolution, Maaza Mengiste's debut, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, tells the story of a family torn apart by violence and the price each member of the family must pay to be part of a national revolution in the pursuit of freedom.

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139. Crossing the Mangrove

Maryse Conde's Crossing the Mangrove takes place in a small village in Guadeloupe, where a handsome and elusive outsider is found alone and dead and the community must piece together the clues left behind to figure out what led to the man's inexplicable death.

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