This is not an anti-racist reading list. This is a list of excellent books written by Black authors. Because like many things in American society, the cultural contributions of Black people often get overlooked—or worse, appropriated—in favor of the works of white people.
Maybe you’ve never even taken into account an author’s race when choosing a book. Maybe your mode is more nonchalantly perusing a book store on a Saturday afternoon or scrolling through Amazon’s bestseller’s list until you find a title that piques your interest. But perhaps you glanced over at your bookshelf and realized that you haven’t read a single thing from the Black perspective recently. It’s not hard to change that, so let’s get started.
Whether you gravitate towards a murder-y thriller (consider Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer) or you’re more in a self-help kind of mood (check out Alexandra Elle’s How We Heal), we’ve gathered some of the best reads by Black writers to add to your bookshelf. From Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age to Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, some of the books on this list will teach you about Black history, while others will just make you laugh out loud. As Nic Stone, author of the best-selling young adult novel Dear Martin, wrote in an opinion piece for Cosmo, “We must also read books about Black people—especially Black children—just…living.” So if you’re looking to add a few titles to your reading list, keep scrolling to discover some of the best books by Black authors.
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