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Recent Books by Black Authors to Celebrate Black History Month 2026 |
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Loved One
by Aisha Muharrar
When her first-love-turned-close-friend, Gabe, dies unexpectedly at twenty-nine, thirty-year-old Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover his lost possessions. Her journey takes her from Los Angeles to London and into the murky realm of the past. It also sets Julia on a collision course with the last woman he loved, a guarded, self-possessed florist and restaurateur named Elizabeth, who insists on withholding Gabe's beloved guitar-one of the departed indie rock musician's dearest belongings-for reasons Julia can't understand. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon and themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation--
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The Wilderness
by Angela Flournoy
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZENamed one of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the YearNamed a Best of the Year by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, Vogue, Elle, Time, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, Town & Country, NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Book Riot, AudibleFlournoy has delivered a future classic--the kind of novel that generations to come will read to understand the nuances and peculiarities of this time. -- Harper's BazaarAn era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife--in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.Desiree, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood--overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences--swoops in and stays.Desiree is estranged from her sister Danielle, and the two nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January's got a relationship with a good man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.As these friends move from the late 2000's into the late 2020's, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another--amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy's masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
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How to Dodge a Cannonball
by Dennard Dayle
A New York Times Notable Book of 2025An NPR Books We Love pickA New York Times Editor's Choice pick How to Dodge a Cannonball is a razor-sharp satire that dives into the heart of the Civil War, hilariously questioning the essence of the fight, not just for territory, but for the soul of America. How to Dodge a Cannonball is funnier than the Civil War should ever be. It follows Anders, a teenage idealist who enlists and reenlists to shape the American Future--as soon as he figures out what that is, who it includes, and why everyone wants him to die for it. Escaping his violently insane mother is a bonus. Anders finds honor as a proud Union flag twirler--until he's captured. Then he tries life as a diehard Confederate--until fate asks him to die hard for the Confederacy at Gettysburg. Barely alive, Anders limps into a Black Union regiment in a stolen uniform. While visibly white, he claims to be an octoroon, and they claim to believe him. Only then does his life get truly strange. His new brothers are even stranger, including a science-fiction playwright, a Haitian double agent, and a former slave feuding with God. Despite his best efforts, Anders starts seeing the war through their eyes, sparking ill-timed questions about who gets to be American or exploit the theater of war. Dennard Dayle's satire spares no one as doomed charges, draft riots, gleeful arms dealers, and native suppression campaigns test everyone's definition of loyalty. Uproariously funny and revelatory, How to Dodge a Cannonball asks if America is worth fighting for. And then answers loudly. Read it while it's still legal.
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King of Ashes
by S. A. Cosby
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Propulsive and powerful. . . A gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger. --New York Times Book ReviewPick up the novel everyone will be talking about. --The AtlanticDark, riveting, and accomplished. --Washington PostAward-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama. When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father's car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family--and the family business--together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante's recklessness has placed them all in real danger. Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he's forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills. Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything. Because everything burns. [A] sizzling summer read that concludes with a few unexpected twists.--Atlanta Journal Constitution
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Amity
by Nathan Harris
New Orleans, 1866. The Civil War might be over, but formerly enslaved Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they've been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr. Harper, took June away to Mexico, where he hoped to escape the new reality of the postbellum South. Coleman stayed behind in Louisiana to serve the Harper family, clinging to the hope that one day June would return. When an unexpected letter from Mr. Harper arrives, summoning Coleman to Mexico, Coleman thinks that finally his prayers have been answered. What Coleman cannot know is the tangled truth of June's tribulations under Mr. Harper out on the frontier. And when disaster strikes Coleman's journey, he is forced on the run with Mr. Harper's daughter Florence--
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Sweet Heat
by Bolu Babalola
Twenty-eight-year-old Kiki Banjo hosts the popular podcast The HeartBeat, solving romantic conundrums and dishing out life advice. Behind the scenes, though, career setbacks and a devastating breakup have left her hanging on by a thread. As she's preparing to be the maid of honor in her best friend's wedding, everything starts to unravel, and Kiki is left wondering if she ever had the answers. Then Kiki finds herself face-to-face with the best man, her ex-boyfriend, Malakai--the smooth-talking, absurdly handsome, annoyingly perceptive man who stole her heart and then shattered it. While Kiki's approaching rock bottom, Malakai's been on the rise as a filmmaker, and now they have no choice but to play nice until the wedding is over--
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Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic
by Harmonia Rosales
[R]ichly evocative...a brilliant and beautiful volume. --Booklist, starred review A lavish, eye-catching rethinking of ages-old stories. --Kirkus Reviews, starred review From the acclaimed fine artist Harmonia Rosales, a sweeping retelling of African myth illustrated throughout with Rosales's spectacular paintings.
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Harriet Tubman: Live In Concert
by Bob the Drag Queen
Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way—by following in the footsteps of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Harriet wants to put on a show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her. She calls upon Darnell Williams, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed by a rival at the BET Awards. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have one week to write a Broadway caliber musical she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only mount a show that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future.
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These Heathens
by Mia McKenzie
From the razor-sharp and outrageously funny (Taylor Jenkins Reid) mind of Mia McKenzie comes a vibrant novel exploring how one weekend can change your whole life. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE - A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Dear Lord, please forgive me for the sins I've committed. And for the one I'm still planning to commit tomorrow. Amen. Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town's midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia's orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages ofJetandEbony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home. From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn't want a baby, but whatdoesshe want? Will this trip help her find out? These Heathensis a funny, poignant story about Black women's obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend.
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People Like Us
by Jason Mott
Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionFinalist for the Willie Morris Awards for Southern FictionOne of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2025One of USA Today's 15 Books You Should Read This SummerOne of Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Hot New Summer ReadsOne of People's Most Anticipated Summer BooksOne of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025A Late Show Book Club pick The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book People Like Us is Jason Mott's electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason's life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don't let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt. In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds. People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel. Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.
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History Lessons
by Zoe B. Wallbrook
As a newly minted junior professor, Daphne Ouverture spends her days giving lectures on French colonialism, writing her first academic book, and going on atrocious dates. Her small world suits her just fine. Until Sam Taylor dies. The rising star of Harrison University's anthropology department was never one of Daphne's favorites, despite his popularity. But that doesn't prevent Sam's killer from believing Daphne has something that belonged to Sam--something the killer will stop at nothing to get. Between grading papers and navigating her disastrous love life, Daphne embarks on an investigation to find out what connects her to Sam's murder. With the help of an alluring former-detective-turned-bookseller, she unravels a deadly cover-up on campus.--Provided by publisher.
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People of Means
by Nancy Johnson
One of NPR's Books We Love This Year A powerful, thought-provoking saga. --Woman's WorldAn evocative story of love and sacrifice.--PeopleFrom the acclaimed author of The Kindest Lie, a heartrending novel about a mother and daughter each seeking justice and following their dreams in 1960s Nashville and 1990s Chicago.Two women. Two pivotal moments. One dream for justice and equality.In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she's part of a family legacy of Black excellence. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and Freda, reluctant to get involved, is torn between a soon-to-be doctor and an audacious young activist. Freda must decide how much she's willing to risk in the name of justice.In 1992 Chicago, Freda's daughter, Tulip, is an ambitious PR professional on track for an exciting career, if workplace politics and racial microaggressions don't get in her way. But with the ruling in the Rodney King trial weighing heavily on her, Tulip feels called to action and must choose, just like her mother had three decades prior, what her role will be in the story of America's quest for equality.Insightful, evocative, and richly imagined with historical details, People of Means is an emotional tour de force about the lasting legacy of family bonds and the far-reaching ways the past shapes our present.People of Means left me breathless A beautifully crafted story...profound and sharp.--Sadeqa Johnson New York Times bestselling author of The House of Eve
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It's Me They Follow
by Jeannine A. Cook
A bewitching novel within a novel--a blend of romance and magical realism, part The Lost Bookshop, part A Love Song for Ricki Wilde--a magical world in which a bookseller becomes a reluctant matchmaker, bringing soulmates together through books-- Provided by publisher.
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The Great Mann
by Kyra Davis Lurie
In this ... retelling of The Great Gatsby, set amongst L.A.'s Black elite, a young veteran finds his way post-war, pulled into a new world of tantalizing possibilities--and explosive tensions--
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Listen to Your Sister
by Neena Viel
Twenty-five-year-old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie--but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he's off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop. When Jamie's actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run--
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The Catch
by Yrsa Daley-Ward
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) BY THE NEW YORK TIMES A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BOOK CLUB SELECTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2025 by TIME, Kirkus Reviews, and the Chicago Public Library: Surreal and propulsive... The Catch takes readers on an experimental and wildly emotional journey. (Mahita Gajanan, Time) Best Books of Summer: Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, Forbes Most Anticipated Books of 2025: TIME, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, We Are Bookish, The Millions and Book Riot A Belletrist (Emma Roberts) Featured Book A Prose Hose (Eli Rallo) Book Club Selection The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, The Catch is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity.
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The Life of Herod the Great
by Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston's unpublished novel offers a reimagined portrayal of Herod the Great, not as the notorious villain of the New Testament, but as a philosophical and visionary king who brought prosperity to Judea during a tumultuous period of war and imperial expansion in the first century BCE.
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The Partner Plot
by Kristina Forest
To Violet Greene, fashion is everything. As a successful celebrity stylist, she travels all over the world, living out her dreams. Professionally, she's thriving, but her personal life is in shambles. After surviving a very public breakup with her ex-fiancâe six months ago, Violet is now determined to focus on her career. But life hands her something--or rather, someone--that might derail everything. Xavier Wright did not expect to run into his high school girlfriend Violet--the girl he once thought he'd marry--on a birthday trip to Vegas. As a high school teacher and basketball coach, he rarely leaves his New Jersey hometown, so what were the chances? But when the initial shock wears off, they decide to celebrate together. They feel young and reckless as they party the night away--and reckless they clearly were when the following morning, they wake up beside each other with rings on their fingers--
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The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories
by Book Author
A cutting-edge collection of the best short stories in contempora ry Afrofuturist fiction--from Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker award-winning Black authors.--Provided by publisher.
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The Dark Maestro
by Brendan Slocumb
Curtis Wilson is a classical music prodigy. Playing since the age of five, he is that rare performer who, through sheer force of will and phenomenal talent, has clawed his way out of inner-city DC and risen to the heights of the classical music world-soloing with the New York Philharmonic. Zippy, his father, is a midlevel drug dealer, and Larissa, his father's girlfriend, is a loving mother figure to Curtis and the heart of the family. Then, Zippy runs afoul of the kingpin who has provided his livelihood and nurtured his son's talents, and the family finds their lives in danger. With no choice but to run, they enter the witness protection program and abandon their former lives, including Curtis's extraordinary career. When law enforcement seems unable to bring the cartel down, Curtis, Zippy, and Larissa realize that their only chance of returning to the way things were is to take on the cartel themselves--their own way. A propulsive and moving story about sacrifice, loyalty, and the indomitable human spirit, Dark Maestro is Slocumb at the height of his powers--
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The Game Is Afoot
by Elise Bryant
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S 10 BEST MYSTERY NOVELS OF 2025 A clever and hilarious new mystery about a mother who thinks she has to do it all--even solve a murder--from the author of It's Elementary After rage quitting her job, Mavis finally has time to get all the rest she's been putting off. Or she should have the time. Hypothetically. Except she's taken on a new role: Supermom. Her hours are filled with chauffeuring her daughter, Pearl, around to her extracurricular activities, somehow ending up class mom, and...investigating another mystery? When Coach Cole, the director of the kids' soccer program, drops dead on a sunny Saturday morning, no one suspects foul play. However, the police soon discover something suspicious left on the field, making it clear that someone had it in for the coach. But who? Sure, parents got mad when he made their precious star athletes sit on the bench, but not that mad. Mavis is determined to find out, even if it takes her into the dark, dangerous underbelly of gentle parents and MLM girlbosses. Plus, it's an easy distraction from everything else going on. Like the panic attacks she keeps brushing off. Or the fact that she's unemployed and totally lost as to what her purpose and path in life should be. And then there's her ex-husband who's back in town and doing everything she's ever wanted, just as she's beginning a new relationship. Mavis knows a murder investigation probably isn't the self-care she needs right now. But how exactly are you supposed to take care of yourself when you don't even know who you are anymore?
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Isaac's Song
by Daniel Black
Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy. At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.
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Little Movements
by Lauren Morrow
Thirty-something Layla Smart was raised by her mother to dream medium. But all Layla's ever wanted was a career in dance, which requires dreaming big. So when she receives an offer to be the choreographer-in-residence at Briar House in rural Vermont, she temporarily leaves behind Brooklyn, her job, her friends, and her husband to pursue it. Layla has nine months to navigate a complex institution and teach a career-defining dance to a group of Black dancers in a very small, very white town. She has help from a handsome composer, a neurotic costume designer, a witty communications director, and the austere program director who can only compare Layla to Black choreographers. It's an enormous feat, and that's before Layla's marriage buckles under the strain of distance, before Briar House's problematic past comes to light, and before Layla finds out she's pregnant. 'Little movements' is a poignant and insightful story that explores issues of race, class, art, and ambition. It is a novel about self-discovery, the pressures placed on certain bodies, and never giving up on your dream--
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O Sinners!
by Nicole Cuffy
In this engrossing (Los Angeles Times) novel that sweeps from present-day California to the Vietnam War and back, a grieving young man is drawn into the orbit of a charismatic cult leader who forces him to reconsider why people give up control--and what it takes, ultimately, to find one's place in the world. FINALIST FOR THE WESTPOINT PRIZE FOR LITERATURE - A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - ONE OF THE SEASON'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS: Time, Rolling Stone, Vulture, Men's Health, WNYC, Electric Lit, Feminist Book Club, Lit Hub A gorgeously written literary excavation of belonging and belief.--Emma Donoghue, The Boston Globe After the death of his father, a young journalist named Faruq Zaidi takes the opportunity to embed himself in a mysterious cult based in the California redwoods and known as the nameless, whose strikingly attractive members adhere to the 18 Utterances, including teachings such as all suffering is distortion and see only beauty. Shepherding them is Odo, an enigmatic Vietnam War veteran who received the sight--the movement's foundational principles--during his time as an infantryman. Through flashbacks that recount the cult's wartime origins, we see four soldiers contend with the existential struggles of combat and with their responsibilities to each other, and by the end of the novel we learn which one becomes Odo. Faruq, skeptical but committed to unraveling the mystery of both the nameless and Odo, extends his stay by months, and as he gets deeper into the cult's inner workings and alluring teachings, he begins to lose his grip on reality. Faruq is forced to come to terms with the memories he has been running from while trying to resist Odo's spell. Ultimately this immersive and unsettling novel asks: What does it take to find one's place in the world? And what exactly do we seek from one another?
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Harlem Rhapsody
by Victoria Christopher Murray
In 1919 Harlem, literary editor Jessie Redmon Fauset is at the forefront of a Black cultural renaissance, discovering talents like Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen, but her ambition and a secret affair with W.E.B. Du Bois threaten her legacy.
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Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They're Too Much
by Cynthia Erivo
Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing those ... lyrics would change her life. Now she has performed those songs on the world stage, showing us there is always time to keep discovering ourselves--and to illustrate that it's often the parts of ourselves we are told to bury that make us shine. In a series of ... personal vignettes, Cynthia reflects on the ways she has grown as an actor and human and the practices she's learned over years of performing and reminds us all we are capable of so much more than we think--
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All-Negro Comics: America's First Black Comic Book
by Chris Robinson
Three quarters of a century ago, Orrin C. Evans lead a team of cartoonists to create the first comic book anthology of original Black characters created by Black talent, with the expressed purpose of entertaining while rejecting harmful stereotypes and pushing boundaries in the industry. This was only 8 years after Action Comics #1, 6 years after Captain America #1 and a whole 19 years before Black Panther hit the pages of Fantastic Four. All-Negro Comics 75th Anniversary Edition (an Eisner Award-winning collection) preserves that history for generations to come, containing All-Negro Comics #1, in full and digitally remastered for clarity, several essays for historical context and contemporary reflection, as well as new stories by Black writers and artists of today, featuring the original characters.--Provided by publisher.
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Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance
by A'Lelia Bundles
Raucously immersive...An intimate portrait of Black opulence in the early 20th century. --Oprah Daily A scintillating, vibrant (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and deeply researched biography of A'Lelia Walker--daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance--written by her great-granddaughter. Dubbed the joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s by poet Langston Hughes, A'Lelia Walker was a dazzling cultural icon whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem cultural scene. After inheriting her mother's pioneering hair care business, A'Lelia became America's first high-profile Black heiress and a patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her New York homes, where she hosted luminaries including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, and W.E.B. Du Bois--figures who shaped African American history and culture during the Roaring Twenties. Drawing on extensive research and personal correspondence, A'Lelia Bundles presents a nuanced biography of a woman navigating life as a wife, mother, businesswoman, and patron outside the shadow of her famous mother's legacy. With vivid detail, Joy Goddess brings to life A'Lelia's radiant personality, fashion-forward influence, and role as one of the most important cultural icons of Harlem, offering a fresh and unforgettable portrait of the woman who embodied the spirit of a new Black cultural era.
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Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores
by Katie Mitchell
A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores, featuring a selection of shops around the country alongside essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, with an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni. Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today--as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions--it's more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores. Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores a these spaces, chronicling these Black bookstore's past and present lives. Combining narrative prose, eye-catching photography, one-on-one interviews, original essays, and specially curated poetry, Prose to the People is a reader's road trip companion to the world of Black books. Thoughtfully curated by writer and Black bookstore owner Katie Mitchell, Prose to the People is a must-have addition to the shelves of anyone who loves book culture and Black history. Though not a definitive guide, this dynamic book centers profiles of over fifty Black bookstores from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Coast, complete with stunning original and archival photography. Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores' role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community.
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The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
by Cheryl McKissack Daniel
A Scientific American Favorite Book of 2025 The riveting story of the McKissack family--the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today--in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation. Captured in his native West Africa and enslaved on American shores by a North Carolina plantation owner, Moses McKissack I began to build his way to emancipation right from the start. Becoming an enslaved craftsman, he picked up the trade his family would become famous for in the earliest years of the 19th century, passing his learnings down to his children and seeing them off to freedom after the Civil War. The family would settle in Tennessee, getting its bearings in the building trades despite rampant discrimination, establishing a foothold that now sees its latest generations working at the absolute peak of its industry. The family's fingerprints have been left all across the United States, spanning from Reconstruction to contemporary times, through projects like the Morris Memorial Building, Capers C.M.E. Church, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field. Here, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, CEO and president of McKissack & McKissack, reveals the full fascinating story of her family. So much more than an exploration of architectural achievements, The Black Family Who Built America is also a compelling illustration of how history rhymes and reverberates, and a celebration of the human spirit's ability to overcome adversity and drive change. From Moses's humble beginnings to Cheryl's current role as a trailblazer and champion of diversity, the family's journey underscores the importance of perseverance, innovation, and strategic vision in shaping a legacy that continues to inspire and impact the construction industry.
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Baldwin: A Love Story
by Nicholas Boggs
A TIME TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025AN ATLANTIC TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Drawing on new archival material, original research, and interviews, this spellbinding book is the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how profoundly his personal relationships shaped his life and work. Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer's personal relationships shaped his life and work. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and original research and interviews, this spellbinding book tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac, whose long-overlooked significance as Baldwin's last great love is explored in these pages for the first time. Nicholas Boggs shows how Baldwin drew on all the complex forces within these relationships--geographical, cultural, political, artistic, and erotic--and alchemized them into novels, essays, and plays that speak truth to power and had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement and on Black and queer literary history. Richly immersive, Baldwin: A Love Story follows the writer's creative journey between Harlem, Paris, Switzerland, the southern United States, Istanbul, Africa, the South of France, and beyond. In so doing, it magnifies our understanding of the public and private lives of one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, whose contributions only continue to grow in influence.
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Recipes from the American South
by Michael W. Twitty
A home cook's guide to one of America's most diverse - and delicious - cuisines, from James Beard Award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty 'An essential addition to the shelf of Southern cookbooks.' - Wall Street Journal A New York Times Best Cookbook of the Year'Our cuisine, with its grits and black-eyed peas, crab cakes, red rice, and endless variations on the staple foods of the region, casts a spell that, if you're lucky, gets passed down with snapping string beans at the table and chewing cane on the back porch.' - Michael W. TwittyIn the introduction to this groundbreaking recipe collection, acclaimed historian Michael W. Twitty declares, 'No one state or area can give you the breadth of the Southern story or fully set the Southern table.' To answer this, Recipes from the American South journeys from the Louisiana Bayou to the Chesapeake Bay, showcasing more than 260 of the region's most beloved dishes.Across more than 400 pages, Twitty explores the broad culinary sweep that Southern history and its many cultures represent. Recipes for breads and biscuits, mains and sides, stews, sauces, and sweets feature insightful headnotes and clear, step-by-step instructions. Home cooks will discover both iconic dishes and lesser-known specialties: Chicken and Dumplings, She-crab Soup, Red Eye Gravy, Benne Seed Wafers, Hummingbird Cake, and Mint Juleps appear alongside Shrimp Pilau, Chorizo Dirty Rice, Sumac Lemonade, and Cajun Pig's Ears Pastry.A masterful storyteller, Twitty enriches his extensive recipe collection with lyrical, deeply researched essays that celebrate the region's multicultural gumbo of influences from immigrants from across the globe. Vibrant food photography adds further color to the fascinating narrative.Expansive, authoritative, and beautifully designed, Recipes from the American South is a classic cookbook in the making.
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The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems
by Patricia Smith
WINNER OF THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Patricia Smith is the greatest living poet. Every book is better than the last. --Danez Smith, The Guardian A collection of the finest new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry, a masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard (Poetry Foundation). The Intentions of Thunder gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across Patricia Smith's decorated career. Here, Smith's poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful yet vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history, and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future. The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry--all the careful witness, embodied experience, and bristling pleasure that it bestows--and of Smith's necessary voice. Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, The Intentions of Thunder stunningly explores the fullness of living. The inimitable poetry of Patricia Smith radiates in The Intentions of Thunder--reaffirming Smith's place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.
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Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler
by Susana M. Morris
A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity--our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project--the nation's transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut--made possible by chattel slavery--to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler's story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life: the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women's liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler's personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler's stories. Morris explains what drove Butler: She wrote because she felt she must. Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God's sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn't stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you're afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It's about not being able to stop at all.
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Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore
by Char Adams
**A November LibraryReads Pick** Longtime NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling and rigorously reported history of Black political movements told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores, which have been centers for organizing from abolition to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. In Black-Owned, Char Adams celebrates the living history of Black bookstores. Packed with stories of activism, espionage, violence, community, and perseverance, Black-Owned starts with the first Black-owned bookstore, which an abolitionist opened in New York in 1834, and after the bookshop's violent demise, Black book-lovers carried on its cause. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists started a Black bookstore boom nationwide. Malcolm X gave speeches in front of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem--a place dubbed Speakers' Corner--and later, Black bookstores became targets of FBI agents, police, and racist vigilantes. Still, stores continued to fuel Black political movements. Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstores. Maya Angelou became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. And today a new generation of Black activists is joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles and several stores making national headlines when they were overwhelmed with demand in the Black Lives Matter era. As Adams makes clear, in an time of increasing repression, Black bookstores are needed now more than ever. Full of vibrant characters and written with cinematic flair, Black-Owned is an enlightening story of community, resistance, and joy.
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The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
by Lindsey Stewart
Emerging first on plantations in the American South, enslaved conjure women used their magic to treat illnesses. These women combined their ancestral spiritual beliefs from West Africa with local herbal rituals and therapeutic remedies to create conjure, forging a secret well of health and power hidden to their oppressors and many of the modern-day staples we still enjoy. ... Black feminist philosopher Lindsey Stewart exposes this vital contour of American history. In the face of slavery, Negro mammies fashioned a legacy of magic that begat herbal experts, fearsome water bearers, and powerful mojos--roles and traditions that for centuries have been passed down to respond to Black struggles in real time. And when Jim Crow was born, Granny Midwives and textile weavers leveled their techniques to protect our civil and reproductive rights, while Candy Ladies fed a generation of freedom crusaders. ... Above all, The Conjuring of America is a love letter to the magic Black women used to sow messages of rebellion, freedom, and hope--
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The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters
by Sasha Bonét
- One of NPR's Nonfiction Books We Love from 2025 - One of Kirkus's Best Nonfiction Books of 2025 - A powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers. This searing, poetic memoir covers generations of powerful Black women who raise their children singly and transmit strength by showing up. . . . Bon t writes her own mothering story with brute honesty. --NPR A] profound story about all Black women, and about the effects of racism in all Black lives. . . . O]bservant, thoughtful and poetic, in the best sense. Bon t's] account of both her family history and the lives of her tributaries show off her gifts to the fullest. --The New York Times Sasha Bon t grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha's mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission. When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bon t was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey--not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature--Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them--to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it. The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves--as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.
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Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship
by Dana A. Williams
NPR SPRING PICKAn insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation's most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms.Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison's contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.
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Languages of Home: Essays on Writing, Hoop, and American Lives 1975-2025
by John Edgar Wideman
The first ever collection of John Edgar Wideman's most influential essays and articles, five decades of cultural and literary criticism that paint a vivid portrait of America's changing landscape and chronicle the emergence and evolution of a major presence in fiction. A towering figure in American literature. --The Nation John Edgar Wideman, acclaimed since the early 1970s for his award-winning fiction and memoirs, has long been engaged in a project to redefine, from the perspective of an American of color, the wondrous and appalling power of his country's literary culture and history. Now, curated by him, in this first-time collection from his extensive body of long-form journalism and biographical essays, readers are offered a chance to see and judge for themselves how Wideman has proven himself to be a luminous witness of America's history. This volume goes beyond mere compilation; its challenging, insightful critical essays tell the story of a nation in transition--from the shame of legalized human slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the rise of the Obama era, and beyond. Originally featured in publications such as Esquire, Vogue, and The New Yorker, these narratives explore the elusive cores of an American culture, politics, and identity. With his unique depictions of iconic figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Emmett Till, and Michael Jordan, and intimate questioning of his own life, Wideman shares his original views of the changing tides of an American experience.
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Night Watch: Poems
by Kevin Young
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - From the award-winning poet at the height of his career, a book of personal and American experiences, both beautiful and troubling, touching on the generative cycle of loss and renewal Kevin Young is a poet of exceptional depth and sensitivity. . . . Let yourself focus on every phrase. --Ron Charles, The Washington Post Night Watch continues one of the most vital currents in contemporary poetry, transforming history and its silences into lyric through the poet's eloquent invitation: 'O wounded soul, / speak.' --The New York Times Following on his exquisite Stones, Kevin Young's new collection, written over the span of sixteen years, shapes stories of loss and legacy, inspired in part by other lives. After starting in the bayous of his family's Louisiana, Young journeys to further states of mind in All Souls, evoking The whale / who finds the shore / & our poor prayers. Another central sequence, The Two-Headed Nightingale, is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American Carolina Twins. Born into enslavement, stolen, and then displayed by P. T. Barnum and others, the twins later toured the world as free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonizing their own way. Young's poem explores their evolving philosophical selfhood and pluralities: As one we sang, /we spake-- / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole. In Darkling, a cycle of poems inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, Young expands and embroiders the circles of Hell, drawing a cosmology of both loneliness and accompaniment, where the dead don't know / what to do / with themselves. Young writes of grief and hope as familiar yet surprising states: It's like a language, / loss--, he writes, learnt only / by living--there--. Evoking the history of poetry, from the darkling thrush to the darkling plain, Young is defiant and playful on the way through purgatory to a kind of paradise. When he goes, he warns, don't dare sing Amazing Grace--that National / Anthem of Suffering. Instead, he suggests, When I Fly Away, / Don't dare hold no vigil . . . Just burn the whole / Town on down. This collection will stand as one of Young's best--his voice shaping sorrow with music, wisdom, heartache, and wit.
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Black History Is for Everyone
by Brian Jones
A longtime educator explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are. Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and the popular imagination. Yet its opponents fail to understand a simple truth: the best education challenges our assumptions, helps us see larger forces at work, and gives us glimpses of alternate futures. In Black History Is for Everyone, Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything--from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of race and nation. With warmth and immersive storytelling, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history, explores how curiosity about our world is essential--and reminds us that with stakes so high, the effort is worth it.
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Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
by Imani Perry
A vast, multifaceted and enchanting (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture, from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, the most important interpreter of Black life in our time (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.)Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong's question, What did I do to be so Black and blue? In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world's favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey--an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as Blue Black. The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.
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Black Moses : A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
by Caleb Gayle
In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.
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