US/EN
Black Authors Across the Genres
By ELIZABETH'S BOOKSHOP & WRITING CENTRE
By ELIZABETH'S BOOKSHOP & WRITING CENTRE
Black authors can be found writing and educating on all walks of life. Too often Black & Brown professionals are expected to be experts solely about race and systematic oppression. The reality is that Black professionals, Black authors, are knowledgable, are experts across ALL fields and genres. Here is a list of notable Black authors and their work - providing you with a look through their lenses.
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Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy
Rachel Ricketts
$27.00 $24.84
All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
George M. Johnson
$18.99 $17.47People Magazine Best Book of the Summer! Instant Indie Bestseller! An exuberant, unapologetic memoir infused with a deep but cleareyed love for its subjects. --The New York Times This title opens new doors, as the author insists that we don't have to anchor stories such as his to tragic ends: 'Many of us are still here. Still living and waiting for our stories to be told--to tell them ourselves.' A critical, captivating, merciful mirror for growing up black and queer today. --Kirkus Reviews, starred review An absolute necessity . . . the personal stories and the healing and reconciliation of self in this title are all undeniably honest and relatable--a reminder of our shared imperfection and humanity. --Booklist The conversational tone will leave readers feeling like they are sitting with an insightful friend . . . This young adult memoir is a contemporary hallmark of the blossoming genre. Johnson anchors the text with encouragement and realistic guidance for queer Black youth. --School Library Journal
The Mothers
Brit Bennett
$17.00 $15.64"Bittersweet, sexy, morally fraught." -The New York Times Book Review "Luminous... engrossing and poignant, this is one not to miss." -People, Pick of the Week "Fantastic... a book that feels alive on the page." -The Washington Post The beloved New York Times-bestselling novel about young love and a big secret in a small community, from the author of The Vanishing Half. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd taken a moment to swish this one around our mouths, we might have noticed the sourness of an unripe secret, plucked too soon, stolen and passed around before its season."
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
Zora Neale Hurston
$25.99 $23.91"Fans and scholars of Hurston's work and the uninitiated alike will find many delights in these complex, thoughtful and wickedly funny portraits of black lives and communities... [Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick] is a significant testament to the enduring resonance of black women's writing."--Washington Post "With biting wit, Hurston gets to the heart of the human condition. . . her rediscovered stories will electrify."--Booklist, starred review "An illuminating and delightful study of a canonical writer finding her rhythm."--Publishers Weekly "These narratives comprise a rich tapestry of Hurston's matchless vision and talent."--BookPage "A reminder of why literature is so important. . .These short stories capture the essence of the African American life at the time, and offer a glimpse into how she became one of the more influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance."--Cultured Vultures "Read, and you'll almost wish you were slumped on a wooden chair on Jim's porch on a hot summer day. Read, because authenticity oozes from every page here and you can't help but like the men and women in the tales. Read, as author Zora Neale Hurston's wit shines between biting narrations and comments. . ."--Miami Times "Decades on, this new collection is a powerful reminder of her lasting resonance."--Time magazine "Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick helps illuminate Hurston's path to iconic status...Add [Hurston's] matchless powers of observation, exemplary fidelity to idiomatic speech and irresistible engagement with folklore, and the outcome is a collection of value to more than Hurston completists. Any addition to her awe-inspiring oeuvre should be met with open arms."--New York Times Book Review
The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates
$28.00 $25.76#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK - From the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom. "This potent book about America's most disgraceful sin establishes [Ta-Nehisi Coates] as a first-rate novelist."--San Francisco Chronicle NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD - NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE - NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time - NPR - The Washington Post - Chicago Tribune - Vanity Fair - Esquire - Good Housekeeping - Paste - Town & Country - The New York Public Library - Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal "Nearly every paragraph is laced through with dense, gorgeously evocative descriptions of a vanished world and steeped in its own vivid vocabulary."--Entertainment Weekly Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her--but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he's ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia's proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he's enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram's resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.
Queenie
Candice Carty-Williams
$16.00 $14.72Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?"--all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. With "fresh and honest" (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today's world.
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Pema Chodron
$16.95 $15.59Pema Chödrön's perennially best-selling classic on overcoming life's difficulties cuts to the heart of spirituality and personal growth--now in a newly designed 20th-anniversary edition with a new afterword by Pema--makes for a perfect gift and addition to one's spiritual library. How can we live our lives when everything seems to fall apart--when we are continually overcome by fear, anxiety, and pain? The answer, Pema Chödrön suggests, might be just the opposite of what you expect. Here, in her most beloved and acclaimed work, Pema shows that moving toward painful situations and becoming intimate with them can open up our hearts in ways we never before imagined. Drawing from traditional Buddhist wisdom, she offers life-changing tools for transforming suffering and negative patterns into habitual ease and boundless joy.
Augustown
Kei Miller
$16.00 $14.72ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Slate - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews - Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. A teacher has cut off Kaia's dreadlocks--a violation of the family's Rastafari beliefs--and this single impulsive action will have ramifications that stretch throughout the entire community. Kaia's story brings back memories from Ma Taffy's youth, including the legend of the flying preacherman and his ties to the history of Jamaican oppression and resistance--all of which will reverberate forward to the present and change Augustown forever. Vividly bringing to life Jamaica in the 1980s, Augustown follows one family's struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.
Clap When You Land
Elizabeth Acevedo
$18.99 $17.47In a novel-in-verse that brims with grief and love, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Acevedo writes about the devastation of loss, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the bittersweet bonds that shape our lives. Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people... In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.
Under the Udala Trees
Chinelo Okparanta
$16.99 $15.63"If you've ever wondered if love can conquer all, read this] stunning coming-of-age debut." -- Marie Claire A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR * BuzzFeed * Bustle * Shelf Awareness * Publishers Lunch " This] love story has hypnotic power."--The New Yorker Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does. Born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. But when their love is discovered, Ijeoma learns that she will have to hide this part of herself--and there is a cost to living inside a lie. Inspired by Nigeria's folktales and its war, Chinelo Okparanta shows us, in "graceful and precise" prose (New York Times Book Review), how the struggles and divisions of a nation are inscribed on the souls of its citizens. "Powerful and heartbreaking, Under the Udala Trees is a deeply moving commentary on identity, prejudice, and forbidden love" (BuzzFeed). "An important and timely read, imbued with both political ferocity and mythic beauty." -- Bustle "A real talent. Under the Udala Trees is] the kind of book that should have come with a cold compress kit. It's sad and sensual and full of heat." -- John Freeman, Electric Literature "Demands not just to be read, but felt." -- Edwidge Danticat
Red at the Bone
Jacqueline Woodson
$26.00 $23.92Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.
Silver Sparrow
Tayari Jones
$16.95 $15.59From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage "A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers." --O: The Oprah Magazine "Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once." --Judy Blume With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution).
What a Time to Be Alone: The Slumflower's Guide to Why You Are Already Enough
Chidera Eggerue
$16.99 $15.63In What A Time To Be Alone, The Slumflower will be your life guru, confidante and best friend. She'll show you that being alone is not just okay: it's just about the best freaking thing that's ever happened to you. As she says, 'You're bad as hell and you were made with intention.' It's about time you realized. Peppered with insightful Igbo proverbs from Chidera's Nigerian mother and full of her own original artwork, What A Time To Be Alone will help you navigate the modern world. We can all decide our own fates and Chidera shows us how, using a three-part approach filled with sass, wisdom, and charm. 1. Learn how to celebrate YOU - decide your self-worth, take time to heal and empower yourself in this messy world. 2. Don't worry about THEM - avoid other people's demons and realize that everyone is protecting themselves from something - no matter how aggressive their method. 3. Feel the togetherness in US - sustain and grow healthy relationships and avoid toxicity in your friendships. Own your story. Create your own narrative. Read this book. #WATTBA
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward
$17.00 $15.64WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD and A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, a
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
$18.00 $16.56A haunting story of love and war from the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists. With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor's beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover's charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna's willful twin sister Kainene. Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
$16.95 $15.59The bestselling novel from the award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele. The story of two Nigerians making their way in the U.S. and the UK, raising universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for identity and a home. Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion--for each other and for their homeland.
The Icarus Girl
Helen Oyeyemi
$16.95 $15.59The audacious first novel from the award-winning and highly acclaimed Helen Oyeyemi. Jessamy "Jess" Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that she makes a friend who understands her: a ragged little girl named TillyTilly. But soon TillyTilly's visits become more disturbing, until Jess realizes she doesn't actually know who her friend is at all. Drawing on Nigerian mythology, Helen Oyeyemi presents a striking variation on the classic literary theme of doubles -- both real and spiritual -- in this lyrical and bold debut.
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
Maryse Condé
$32.70"In less sure hands, this short, powerful novel, which won France's Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme in 1986, might well have become merely an extended denunciation of a perverted and evil society. What makes it larger and richer are Ms. Condé's gift for storytelling and her unswerving focus on her characters, combined with her mordant sense of humor." --New York Times Book Review "At once playful and searing, Condé's work critiques ostensibly white, male versions of history and literature by appropriating them." --Publishers Weekly "Condé is one of the most prolific writers of the Caribbean and perhaps the most powerful woman's voice in contemporary literature of the Americas. Her interpretation of the Salem witch trials, recast from her own dreams, is a remarkable work of historical fiction that is a haunting and powerful reminder of the dangers of intolerance of differences."
Ghana Must Go
Taiye Selasi
$17.00 $15.64A "buoyant" and "rapturous" debut novel (The Wall Street Journal) about the transformative power of unconditional love Electric, exhilarating, and beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go introduces the world to Taiye Selasi, a novelist of extraordinary talent. In a sweeping narrative that takes readers from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, it is at once a portrait of a modern family and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, Kweku Sai dies suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of his death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. Moving with great elegance through time and place, Ghana Must Go charts their circuitous journey to one another and, along the way, teaches us that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.
