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Black History Month: Essential Novels
Critically acclaimed new and classic stories about race, class, and justice.
Published on May 24, 2023
An American Marriage: A Novel
Tayari JonesCelebrated both by traditional critics and by some high-profile ad-hoc reviewers (cough cough, Barack Obama and Oprah), this stirring story is at once an examination of race and the state of the criminal justice system, and a deeply intimate portrait of two people struggling to keep their love alive as external circumstances drive them apart.
Native Son
Richard WrightThis classic was one of the first stories to fully capture how systemic racism leads to horrific consequences. An enduring, thought-provoking story still pushing forward the discussion about race relations today. The HBO adaptation from 2019 starring Ashton Sanders brought renewed attention to Richard Wright’s novel.
Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel
Zora Neale HurstonIf you didn’t read this one in high school, you really should now. (And if you did, re-read it!) This book has the opposite trajectory of the pivotal “Native Son” — Zora Neale Hurston’s work was underappreciated in its time, but now is a staple of must-read African American literature.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
Zora Neale HurstonAlmost a century later, Hurston continues to dazzle readers and influence culture. “Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick” is a collection of stories from Hurston’s years as the only Black student at Barnard College in 1925, each of which captures that moment in time; love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism are all covered in this volume. It’s a rare glimpse at Hurston’s skills at satire, while shoring up her reputation as one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most iconic figures.
Kindred
Octavia E. ButlerA treasure from the godmother of science fiction. A young Black woman travels back and forth in time between 1970s California and a pre-Civil War plantation in a story that’s foundational for feminist, sci-fi/fantasy, and Afrofuturism works.
Friday Black
Nana Kwame Adjei-BrenyahA searing debut short story collection that delivers on both style and substance. It skillfully weaves together elements of satire and magical realism with today’s most pressing, politically charged issues to create otherworldly tales that are haunting and achingly relevant. Lauded as the breakout of 2018 by beloved literary giants like Roxane Gay, George Saunders, and Tommy Orange.
The Color Purple
Alice Walker“The Color Purple” follows the story of Celie, a poor Black woman in rural Georgia, and her attempt to rise above the unlucky hand she’s been dealt. A Pulitzer Prize winner, a film, and a Broadway show, it’s no wonder it made it onto the list of America’s favorite books with PBS’s “The Great American Read.”
Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner)
Bernardine EvaristoAuthor Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black woman to win the prestigious Booker Prize in 2019 for her brilliant novel, “Girl, Woman, Other.” (She tied with Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments,” the follow-up to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”) Evaristo describes her book as “a readable experimental novel.” Each chapter follows a different character as their stories intertwine in an absorbing exploration of the lives of Black British women today.
Salvage the Bones: A Novel
Jesmyn WardJesmyn Ward won her first National Book Award for “Salvage the Bones” in 2011. The novel begins as Hurricane Katrina barrels toward the rural Mississippi home of a tight-knit but troubled family. While 14-year-old Esch and her three siblings scramble to prepare their home for nature’s oncoming sledgehammer, she struggles to keep her pregnancy hidden from her widowed father. A hauntingly beautiful story that’s as powerful as the storm it depicts.
Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel
Jesmyn WardWard won her second National Book Award for “Sing, Unburied, Sing” in 2017. She draws on Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and Greek myths to play with the classic American road novel, weaving magical realism into the modern, rural South. Her sentences rise together to form a penetrating story that lingers like fog on the Mississippi bayou where the novel is set.
Lovecraft Country: A Novel
Matt RuffThe supernatural forces, secret sorcerers’ cult, and monsters reaching out of these pages won’t scare you half as much as the very real racism an African American family faces as they search for their missing father during Jim Crow. It was adapted into an HBO series created by Jordan Peele (“Get Out”) and J.J. Abrams.
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Marlon James“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” author Marlon James won the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2015 for this inventive and poetic novel. It explores the chaotic streets of Kingston, Jamaica, using an assassination attempt on Bob Marley as a jumping-off point. The CIA, crack wars, gang violence, and reggae fill the pages in a book that, in the judges’ words, “just keeps coming.”
Heads of the Colored People: Stories
Nafissa Thompson-SpiresThis short story collection racked up accolades left and right. As a winner at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes awards ceremony in 2019, author Nafissa Thompson-Spires said, “I wrote this book because I felt like as a kid, and even as a grad student, I didn’t see books that reflected the kind of black person I was. … I wanted to write about weird black people.”
Queenie
Candice Carty-WilliamsIn “Queenie,” the eponymous main character is a young woman facing the uncertainty of her mid-twenties, a breakup from her white boyfriend, and the stress of comparing herself to her white middle class peers at the newspaper where she works. Straddling two her cultures — Jamaican and British — and exploring what it means to be a modern woman in today’s world is no easy task; “Queenie” tackles it with clever, charming prose and humor.
The World Doesn't Require You: Stories
Rion Amilcar ScottThis inventive and exhilarating story collection is humming with adventure, fantasy, magical realism, fresh prose, and horror. The stories take place in an alternate history in the fictional town of Cross River, made up of descendants of the only successful slave revolt in the United States.
Welcome to Braggsville: A Novel
T. Geronimo JohnsonA satirical gem that sets its eye on campus activism. T. Geronimo Johnson challenges literary norms in this cutting work about white racial anxiety, bringing to mind some of the greatest American writers, from Mark Twain to Colson Whitehead.
Black Buck: A Read with Jenna Pick
Mateo AskaripourThe debut novel from author Mateo Askaripour is a darkly funny satire that tells the tale of Darren, a young man content to live with his mom and work as a barista in a New York office building, despite his high marks as the valedictorian of his high school. That all changes when he joins an elite sales team at a tech company, where his position as the only Black employee gives him a new purpose: hatching a plan to help young people of color infiltrate the predominately white world of corporate America.
Ring Shout
P. Djèlí ClarkIn this propulsive alternative history (with a supernatural twist), a group of resistance fighters hunt down Ku Klux Klan members. Simultaneously haunting and rousing, P. Djèlí Clark’s novella has been hailed by author Annalee Newitz as “a fantastical cross between Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’” It’s a wild ride in a fantasyland of revenge against those who would oppress and silence with fear.
Luster: A Novel
Raven LeilaniRaven Leilani’s debut novel is a sharply funny and sexy tale of mid-20s, Bushwick-dwelling Edie, who isn’t exactly living up to her potential as an artist by working a job that’s just a paycheck and making inadvisable sexual choices. Inside her, though, her artistic dreams are bubbling up — a relationship with Eric, a married man in an open marriage, adds fuel to the fire. When she’s drawn into Eric’s family life by his wife and becomes an unlikely role model to his adopted Black child, Edie finds herself navigating sex and racial politics alongside her own desires and insecurities.