Happy Black History Month! This is a fantastic time to celebrate Black authors and their works and even discover a new favorite. We recommend these books to get you started on your reading for this month. Ranging from staples in the literary canon to brand-new and upcoming releases, these nuanced stories of joy and resilience span genre, time, and country and will be sure to leave you transformed.  

 

The End of the Alphabet by Claudia Rankine

This collection of poems—intrepid, obsessive, and erotic—tell the story of a woman’s attempt to reconcile despair. Beginning near the end and then traveling back to a time before her disquiet, The End of the Alphabet is about living despite one’s alienation from the self. Drawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady MacBeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque, courting paradox into the center of her voice. 

 

“Nothing is so impressive in The End of the Alphabet as this poet’s ability to sustain over one hundred pages an examination of pain so sensitive, so painstaking, that it nearly outdoes the exquisiteness of the pain itself, its superinventive, invasive, and pervasive ‘life.’ Here, wits at once keen and tenacious match themselves against grief’s genius.”—Boston Review 

 

Eden by Olympia Vernon  

When fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield draws a naked woman on the pages of Genesis in fire-engine-red lipstick during Sunday school, the rural black community of Pyke County, Mississippi, is scandalized. Her mother, mortified by the small-town gossip and determined to teach Maddy the perils of her youthful intelligence, forces her from then on to spend weekends caring for her estranged Aunt Pip, an outcast who lives on the wrong side of town and is dying of cancer. The lessons Maddy learns are ones that could not be taught in any church. Eden is a haunting, memorable novel propelled by the poetry and power of a voice that is complex, lyrical, and utterly true. 

 

“Daring [and] explosively supernatural . . . [Eden is] a startling reminder of how forceful Southern magic can be.” —Ann Powers, The New York Times Book Review 

 

Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas  

In this beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel, a young black father of three in a biracial marriage tries to claim a piece of the American Dream he has bargained on since youth. In the aftermath of his estrangement from his white Boston Brahmin wife and three children, he has four days to come up with the money to keep his family afloat. Alternating between his past—as a child in inner-city Boston, he was bussed to the suburbs as part of the doomed attempts at integration in the 1970s—and the present in New York City where he is trying mightily to keep his children in private schools, we learn of his mother’s abuses, his father’s abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story about what it’s like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life—and the urge to escape that sentence. 

 

“Thomas’s knack for bonding the reader with a number of New York characters is admirable, and the narrator’s thoughts about his marriage, work and racial tension are as graceful as they are blunt . . . Thomas’s subtle prose casts a new light on urban life in Brooklyn—even if you already live there.”—Cherie Dennis, Time Out New York

 

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon  

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements internationally, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. 

 

“A strange, haunting mélange of analysis, revolutionary manifesto, metaphysics, prose poetry and literary criticism—and yet the nakedest of human cries.”—Newsweek 

 

The Last Holiday by Gil Scott-Heron

In this stunning memoir, the musician, songwriter, poet, and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Gil Scott-Heron charts his remarkable life, from his humble beginnings to becoming one of the most uncompromising and influential artists of his generation. These pages provide a deeply moving portrait of Scott-Heron’s close relationship with his mother, a heartfelt and highly personal recollection of Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Clive Davis, and other musical peers, and a compelling narrative vehicle for Scott-Heron’s keen insights into the music industry, the civil rights movement, modern America, governmental hypocrisy, and our wider place in the world.  

 

“Leave it to Scott-Heron to save some of his best for last. This posthumously published memoir, The Last Holiday, is an elegiac culmination to his musical and literary career. He’s a real writer, a word man, and it is as wriggling and vital in its way as Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times 

 

An Untamed State by Roxanne Gay

In iconic literary voice Roxanne Gay’s debut novel, she delivers a powerful, unflinching story of a Haitian American woman kidnapped for ransom, the privilege that made her a target, and the strength she must draw on to survive. An Untamed State is a novel of wealth in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places.  

 

“[A] commanding début . . . Mireille’s struggle to maintain a sense of self while being denied her freedom produces the novel’s most powerful chapters.”—New Yorker 

 

S O S: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka  

Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. This volume comprises the fullest spectrum of his rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years. 

 

“What’s best about Baraka’s verse is that his historical sensibility and sense of historical dread bump elbows with anarchic comedy . . . S O S is the best overall selection we have thus far of Baraka’s work.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times 

 

The Devil That Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna’s intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood that became the stuff of nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of postcolonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness of exile in Britain, and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny. Determined to break the silence surrounding her father’s fate, Aminatta embarked on a search for the truth and ultimately uncovered a conspiracy that penetrated the highest reaches of government and forced the nation’s politicians and judiciary to confront their guilt. The Devil That Danced on the Water is a book of pain and anger and sorrow, written with tremendous dignity and beautiful precision: a remarkable and important story of Africa. 

 

“A masterpiece that makes sense of senselessness . . . [The Devil That Danced on the Water is] an original work made out of necessity.”—Lorraine Adams, The Washington Post Book World 

 

Freshwater by Awaeke Emezi 

The astonishing debut novel from the acclaimed bestselling author Awaeke Emezi tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who is a source of deep concern to her southern Nigerian family. Born “with one foot on the other side,” young Ada begins to develop separate selves within her as she grows into adulthood. And when she travels to America for college, a traumatic event on campus crystallizes the selves into something powerful and potentially dangerous, making Ada fade into the background of her own mind as these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control. Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author’s realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace. 

 

“An extraordinarily powerful and very different kind of physical and psychological migration story.”
—Edwidge Danticat, New Yorker 

 

 

Solitary by Albert Woodfox 

Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the U.S. and around the world. 

 

“A candid, heartbreaking, and infuriating chronicle . . . as well as a personal narrative that shows how institutionalized racism festered at the core of our judicial system and in the country’s prisons . . . A timely memoir of that experience that should be required reading in the age of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s also a story of conviction and humanity that shows some spirits are unbreakable.”—NPR 

 

Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu 

In the brilliant screenplay for a Broadway play later turned into a film by Spike Lee, Moses and Kitch stand around on the corner—talking shit, passing the time, and hoping that maybe today will be different. As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails their plans. Emotional and lyrical, Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle that they are desperately trying to escape. 

 

“Searing . . . Blazingly theatrical . . . Moses and Kitch are a dispossessed team like [Beckett’s] Vladimir and Estragon, stuck in an existential cycle of hopelessness they try to master with gallows humor and jags of deluded optimism . . . Creates a vivid world of injustice while riffing on earlier ones.”—New York Times 

 

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah’s father Simon Broom; their combined family would eventually number twelve children. But after Simon died, six months after Sarah’s birth, the Yellow House would become Ivory Mae’s thirteenth and most unruly child. Located in the gap between the “Big Easy” of tourist guides and the New Orleans in which Broom was raised, The Yellow House is a brilliant memoir of place, class, race, the seeping rot of inequality, and the internalized shame that often follows.

 

“Sarah M. Broom’s gorgeous debut, The Yellow House, reads as elegy and prayer. The titular house is the fulcrum for Broom’s memoir about her large and complex family. Perhaps more important, it stands in for the countless ways America has failed and continues to fail African Americans… Sarah M. Broom is a writer of great intellect and breadth.”—NPR  

 

When the Stars Begin to Fall by Theodore Roosevelt Johnson 

When the Stars Begin to Fall makes a compelling, ambitious case for a pathway to the national solidarity necessary to mitigate racism. Weaving memories of his own and his family’s multi-generational experiences with racism, alongside strands of history, into his elegant narrative, Johnson posits that a blueprint for national solidarity can be found in the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America. Understanding that racism is a structural crime of the state, he argues that overcoming it requires us to recognize that a color-conscious society—not a color-blind one—is the true fulfillment of the American Promise.

 

“An earnestly conceived road map for how America can achieve racial justice following centuries of white supremacy . . . A virtue of the book is his use of personal narrative to illustrate analytical points . . . Johnson writes with lyrical clarity, delivering tales that are by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking.”—Chris LeBron, Washington Post 

Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson 

Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanaian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain path—a university degree, a move out of home—but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fractures in ways he didn’t foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free. Moving from London, England to Accra, Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exquisite and intimate new novel about the people and places we hold close, from one of the most “elegant, poetic” (CNN) and important voices of a generation. 

 

“There’s something wide-eyed and lovely about the way Caleb Azumah Nelson writes about what it is to be young and alive to the world… This novel is about the dynamic between a father and son over three summers in London and Ghana, but it is also about music, and dancing, and those pleasures in life that are simple and yet also everything.”—Esquire, Most Anticipated Books of 2023 

 

Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon 

In this unabashedly charged love story, Glory Hopkins, a restless and struggling artist, feels that inheriting her Aunt Lucille’s Harlem brownstone is more like a curse than a blessing. But when she stumbles into Parkie de Groot, a savvy, ambitious auction house appraiser, her unexpected inheritance begins to look more promising as they form an unlikely alliance and work to unearth the origins of a rare manuscript hidden in the brownstone’s attic. However, undeniable as their connection may be, complications arise in their romantic and professional lives that threaten to tear apart their newly forged relationship. Lush Lives is an unforgettable novel of queer love, ambition, and the forgotten histories that define us. 

 

“Lyon’s hot, perceptive novel grapples with navigating interracial relationships and issues of authenticity and selling out . . . an unerringly satisfying read.”—Booklist, starred review 

 

Touched by Walter Mosley 

Martin, his wife, and his two children are the only Black family on their neighborhood block in the Hollywood hills of Los Angeles. One morning, Martin wakes up after what feels like (and might actually be) a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: first, that humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence; and second, that he is the Cure. When the family is stalked by a pale, white-haired man that seems to be the embodiment of death, Martin must convince his family of the danger and get them to engage with him in a battle beyond all imagining. With his boundless talent and skilled range, Walter Mosley brings an ethereal, incisive look at a primal struggle driven by the spirit of the universe.

 

“It’s like nothing else you’ve ever read, and it’s so, so good.”—Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times 

 

And Then He Sang a Lullaby by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu 

August is a God-fearing track star who leaves Enugu City to attend university and escape his overbearing sisters. In his first semester, he’s making friends and doing well enough, but there’s only one problem: he can’t stop thinking about Segun, an openly gay student who works at a local cybercafé and who carries his own burdens. Despite their differences, August and Segun forge a tender intimacy that defies the violence around them. And when a new, sweeping anti-gay law is passed, August and Segun must find a way for their love to survive in a Nigeria that was always determined to eradicate them.

 

“A remarkably beautiful and intimate story . . . from a new voice we are sure to treasure for years to come.”—Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books 

 

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver 

A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. There’s the nightmarish “The Closet on the Top Floor” in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; “Mint Juleps not Served Here” where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; or “Spiders Cry without Tears,” in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love. As much a social and historical document, these are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments.

 

“Put this collection of short stories . . . on your shelf alongside Toni and Zora—yes, it’s that good.” —Marion Winik, Oprah Daily   

 

 

The New Internationals by David Wright Faladé  

In the first years after WWII, Paris is brimming with international students balancing on the precipice of a new world. Here, Cecile Rosenbaum, a young Jewish girl quickly developing her own intellectual and political ideals, meets and falls in love with Seb, who arrived from West Africa with his sister at just seven years old. As Seb digs into his roots in Dahomey, the West African kingdom where he came from, and Cecile clashes with her white, Jewish family while also reckoning with her memories of childhood under Nazi occupation, the two of them lose and find each other again over the course of the novel—in the corners of jazz clubs, at a Louis Armstrong concert and, finally, at a protest that turns shockingly violent. Nuanced, powerful, and sharply realized, The New Internationals is a brilliant work of historical fiction that celebrates the awakening of the post-colonial movements of the 20th century and international youth population in Paris who rose up—and came together—in the beginnings of a vibrant political moment. 

 

“‘The New Internationals’ is driven by a son’s curiosity about his mother’s wartime experiences—and their impact on her later life. . . themes of racial mixing and crossing the color line run through much of Mr. Faladé’s work—a ‘hybridity’ that, he has said, not only reflects his life experience but also America’s melting-pot culture and a similar phenomenon in cosmopolitan zones throughout the world.”—Heller McAlpin, Wall Street Journal 

 

Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma  

Out 2/11/2025. 

Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, D.C.; and the former glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son, Roland. But when she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis’s colleagues, the last thing she expects is for this peer to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past. While studying as a law student in South Africa in 1996, Prudence attended the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that uncovered the human rights abuses of the Apartheid state—and experienced personal horrors as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light with the appearance of this unwelcome guest. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs. 

 

“Riveting . . . A gripping story which is difficult to put down and brings forgotten histories vividly to life.”—Syma Mohammed, San Francisco Chronicle 

 

Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo

Out 4/15/2025. 

One of Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s most highly celebrated novels, Mr. Loverman follows seventy-four years old Barrington Jedidiah Walker, a Caribbean man who is a husband, father, grandfather—and also secretly gay, lovers with his childhood friend, Morris. When Barry’s wife Carmel suspects he sleeps with other women and their marriage goes into meltdown, Barry wants to divorce his religious and disappointed wife and live with Morris. Yet after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?

 

“This rip-roaring, full-bodied riff on sex, secrecy and family is Bernardine Evaristo’s seventh book. If you don’t yet know her work, you should—she says things about modern Britain that no one else does.”—The Guardian 

 

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

Out 6/17/2025. 

Widely considered to be his masterpiece, Amos Tutuola’s phantasmagorical debut novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard was first published in 1952. In it, a wealthy alcoholic’s personal tapster dies and leaves him without any remaining supply of alcohol, provoking the man to desperately follow the tapster into the nightmarish Dead’s Town. Drawing on Yoruba folklore and narrated with a unique voice that mixes West African oral traditions with the Colonial British English that Tutuola learned at school, The Palm-Wine Drinkard is a seminal work of African literature from one of Nigeria’s most influential writers and an important part of the global literary canon.  

 

“Bracingly original in its voice and ideas.”—Elijah Wolfson, TIME, “The 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time”