From contemporary literature to women’s fiction to mystery/suspense and every genre in between, Black female authors are putting their unique talents, creativity, and wisdom to use in penning stories that keep us turning pages.
As we wrap Black Women’s History Month (April), readers share books by Black women that everyone should read!
“Take My Hand” by Dolen Perkins Valdez
Winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction
Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
But when her first week on the job takes her along a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, Civil is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children — just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten.
Because history repeats what we don’t remember.
Inspired by true events and brimming with hope, Take My Hand is a stirring exploration of accountability and redemption.
“I highly recommend this book to all women, because it addresses the issue of female reproduction in poor, rural areas, 50+ years ago and how it is still relevant today.”
In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl’s skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother’s 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected. The Quinns – all different skin shades, all with unknown fathers – live with their charismatic, beautiful, and tyrannical mother, Rozelle, in poverty on the fringes of a Georgia town where Jim Crow rules.
Rozelle’s children live in fear of her mood swings and her violence, but they are devoted to her. Rozelle pulls her children out of school when they are 12 years old so that they can help support her by going to work – as domestics, as field laborers, or down at “the farmhouse”, where Rozelle takes her oldest daughters to turn tricks for her.
Tangy Mae has been offered the opportunity to apply to an integrated high school and might even have the chance to graduate if she can somehow avoid her sisters’ fate. Can she break from Rozelle’s grasp without violent – even fatal – consequences?
“This is still one of my all time favorites.”
Jason Frost
“Ellington Was Not a Street” by Ntozake Shange
In a reflective tribute to the African-American community of old, noted poet Ntozake Shange recalls her childhood home and the close-knit group of innovators that often gathered there. These men of vision, brought to life in the majestic paintings of artist Kadir Nelson, lived at a time when the color of their skin dictated where they could live, what schools they could attend, and even where they could sit on a bus or in a movie theater.
Yet in the face of this tremendous adversity, these dedicated souls and others like them not only demonstrated the importance of Black culture in America, but also helped issue in a movement that “changed the world.” Their lives and their works inspire us to this day, and serve as a guide to how we approach the challenges of tomorrow.
“We are all familiar with “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.” However, the late Ntozake Shange wrote and Kadir Nelson illustrated an outstanding book for our children titled “Ellington Was Not a Street.” This book is full of famous African/Americans, and the illustrations are breathtaking. I consider it a true gem.”
Cara Lee Henson knows no soldier can be trusted to stay in one place—and that includes handsome Sergeant Chase Jefferson of the Tenth Cavalry. Dallying with the dashing man in blue could cost the pretty, independent Kansas schoolteacher her job and her reputation. So Cara is determined to repel Chase’s advances — even though her aloof facade barely masks her smoldering desire.
A blazing passion …
Never before has Chase longed for a woman the way he ached for lovely Cara Lee. The strong-willed ebony beauty, however, will not surrender easily. But with tender words and soulful caresses, Chase intends to conquer the reluctant schoolmarm’s misgivings — and teach her how to love fully, sensuously … and forever.
“Our story in a historical setting and the best love story.”
1950s Philadelphia: 15-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.
Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of D.C.’s elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby — and fitting in — is easier said than done.
With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
“I really like this book for the way she projects what, particularly, single women and mothers face without support. It applies to any decade.”
“Love Songs of WEB Dubois” by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans — the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers — Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
Ailey is reared in the north in the city but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women — her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries — that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.
To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors — Indigenous, Black, and white — in the Deep South. In doing so, Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story — and the song — of America itself.
“This book traces the genealogy of the women in one family for generations. “
I’m a Houstonian (by way of Smackover, Arkansas). My most important job is being a wife to my amazing husband, mother to my three children, and daughter to my loving mother. I am the National Bestselling...
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