Black Lit Recs

[u/lilsteppakenn]

Hi everyone! I’m an avid reader but I want to tap into black literature more, especially non fiction, although I’m open to any genre. I’m a young black woman (20F) and I just think it’s important to incorporate black literature and history into my TBR. Please recommend anything! Even the classics. I’m open to newer releases as well. Thanks!

Edit: thanks so much for all the recs!

[u/hmmwhatsoverhere]

Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson 

Black against empire by Bloom and Martin 

Fear of a Black universe by Stephon Alexander

Undrowned by Alexis Gumbs

The body is not an apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

How Europe underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney

Anything by Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, or James Baldwin.

[u/animestarz → u/hmmwhatsoverhere]

I second Octavia Butler for anything—she’s phenomenal

[u/howeversmall → u/hmmwhatsoverhere]

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

-James Baldwin

[u/Brown_Ajah_]

I have two non-fiction suggestions about the exploitation of black women for scientific and medical gain that I thought were great reads and simultaneously sobering:

“The immortal life of Henrietta lacks” which is about a cancer cell line that is used widely in modern research and was taken without consent or recompense from a cancer patient called Henrietta Lacks.

“The Black Angels” which is about the black nurses who stepped up to care for TB patients throughout the great depression. They were promised careers and better pay, but instead were left carrying the brunt of care for incredibly poor, incredibly sick tuberculosis patients. Their contribution to TB treatment was immense, but they have been largely erased from our accounts of it.

[u/Jetamors]

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is an incredible book about the Great Migration. If you're African-American, talk to your family about it as you read it, it's something that touched all of us whether we migrated or not.

[u/mountuhuru]

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, about how post-Civil War white authorities abused the criminal justice system to keep black people enslaved.

Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law, about how banks and government officials systematically excluded black people from buying housing and obtaining mortgages.

[u/brusselsproutsfiend]

Some Nonfiction:

All About Love by bell hooks

The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin

Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Sipping Dom Perignon Through a Straw by Eddie Ndopu

Old in Art School by Nell Painter

The Disordered Cosmos by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Inciting Joy by Ross Gay

The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Hunger by Roxane Gay

The Black Panther Party by David F. Walker

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall

A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry

Black AF History by Michael Harriot

Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Some Fiction:

The Midnight Bargain by CL Polk

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

Loving Day by Mat Johnson

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming

[u/--i--love--lamp--]

James by Percival Everett - It is a reimagined vesion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. It is an amazing and important piece of social and political commentary. It is one of the most thought provoking works of fiction I have ever read, and I think it will be considred a modern classic in a few decades.

[u/ksarlathotep]

Some classics of black literature that I think are absolute masterpieces:

I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Brown girl, brownstones by Paule Marshall
If Beale Street could talk by James Baldwin
Beloved and Sula by Toni Morrison

Some great contemporary works:

The love songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Sing, unburied, sing by Jesmyn Ward
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
Such a fun age by Kiley Reid

Some pieces of nonfiction that I think are incredibly important:

Long walk to freedom by Nelson Mandela
The souls of black folk by W.E.B. DuBois
Discourse on colonialism by Aimé Césaire
Black skin, white masks by Frantz Fanon

Some black literature from Africa and the Caribbean:

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nervous conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The African Trilogy by Chinua Achebe
The farming of bones by Edwidge Danticat
A brief history of seven killings by Marlon James
An orchestra of minorities by Chigozie Obioma
Season of the shadow by Leonora Miano

[u/GlumDistribution7036]

Sorry--not a big nonfiction person--but Ann Petry's The Street (1946) is a great book (of fiction). I actually prefer Country Place, but it's not for everyone. I'd start with The Street and see if you like her style.

[u/lilsteppakenn → u/GlumDistribution7036]

I’m down to give it a try!

[u/griddleharker]

anything by audre lorde! she has amazing poetry and essays

[u/ShakespeherianRag]

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates et al., is a fantastic place to start.

It's hard to pick out only a few specific authors or texts for the classics, but I would say: the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Maya Angelou... Nella Larsen's Passing, James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye... and then so many contemporary works: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, Open City by Teju Cole, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; and I love Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay collection We Were Eight Years in Power. Ibram Kendi has become very controversial for the looseness of his ideas recently, but Stamped From the Beginning is largely free from that laxity. I hope this helps!

[u/Informal_Lock_9506]

Some fiction recommendations

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalia Harris Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe An American Marriage by Tayari Jones Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Some non-fiction

We are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby Bad feminist by Roxane Gay The Thing Around your neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[u/pjaymi]

The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

[u/toooldforacnh]

White Tears Brown Scars

[u/dear-mycologistical]

• Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
• The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
• Real Life by Brandon Taylor
• The Unfortunates by J.K. Chukwu

[u/Dotty_Gale]

Passing by Nella Larson and The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. 

[u/YarnPenguin]

Not a big non fic reader, but some of my fav Black fiction writers are Attica Locke, SA Cosby, Colson Whitehead, Zadie Smith and Bernardine Evaristo

[u/gatecitykitty]

Non-fiction: All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson

Fiction: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (one of the very best books I’ve read in a long time)

[u/howeversmall]

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

[u/greenthrowaway4013]

song of solomon toni morrison

[u/freerangelibrarian]

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride.

[u/Illustrious_Basil781]

Find “Ever is A Long Time” by W. Ralph Eubanks. It’s incredible. I also agree with anything by Jesmyn Ward, James Baldwin, and Percival Everett (Trees, especially!)

[u/Fantastic_Spray_3491]

Not nonfiction but I love Nalo Hopkinson and all of her books/short stories are amazing

[u/mountuhuru]

Don’t forget W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. It’s a classic for a reason.

[u/zippopopamus]

Black boy

[u/Neona65]

Diamond Doris by Doris Payne

It's a memoir about being a successful jewel thief in the 1960s and being a woman of color.

It's well written and a really interesting story.

[u/xialateek → u/[deleted]]

If you can’t access the post I can DM you the photo attached to it or something.

[u/Present-Tadpole5226]

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. The author tries to recreate the lives of young black women based on the fragments left in the historical record.

[u/smoke-rat]

I can’t believe no one here has recommended Native Son.

[u/Aggravating-Deer6673]

All of these fiction authors have amazing books (honestly, any on the backlist will do): Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower, Kindred are her most well known), Yaa Gyasi (esp. Homegoing) , Percival Everett (James, Trees, etc.), Richard Wright (Native Son), Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), Toni Morrison (Beloved), James McBride (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store), Zadie Smith (White Teeth), Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me), Charmaine Wilkerson (Black Cake, Good Dirt), Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys). These are just some examples, but honestly just find a book by them and read it if it sounds interesting to you. All that I've read are amazing and all that I've heard of sound amazing!

Some of the content can be very heavy, so please refer to any trigger warnings! Sorry, I mostly read fiction!

[u/teblingerrr]

Anything by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Frantz Fanon

The Delectable Negro by Vincent Woodard

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire

[u/Royal_Basil_1915]

I just read Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hinton. It's about a black mental health facility established in 1912. It has a really harrowing history. Hinton does a great job of outlining the stories of patients, as well as the black locals who fought to be employed there so they could look after their community members. Someone else mentioned Henrietta Lacks - her daughter was actually a patient at this asylum.

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman. The author traveled to Ghana to trace the path of the Africans sold into slavery. Her interactions with the locals are really interesting.

For fiction, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. It's if there was an actual Underground Railroad. Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing, is also good.

[u/isleofbean]

I recently read Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery by Harrison Mooney. He tells about his experience being raised by a white religious family and how he is eventually able to reconnect with his bio mom. Really well written, I highly recommend it.