24 Life-Changing Books by Black Authors That Everyone Should Read
For Black History Month and beyond
What’s on your bookshelf? In celebration of Black History Month 2022, I put together this list of must-read books by Black authors. Some of these are my personal favorites while others are on my reading list. I also included a mixture of genres, so there’s something for everyone! Take a look for yourself, and remember, we can (and should) elevate Black literature all year long!
1. Beloved by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s second novel blends the supernatural with real history to capture the haunting effects of American slavery. The central plot follows Sethe, a fugitive slave fighting to preserve her family’s tenuous freedom. Morrison’s unforgiving prose fills each page with provocative, raw emotion. The characters’ pain becomes your pain, and that’s the undeniable potency of her storytelling. Even now, Beloved is one of the few fiction novels to honor the mass trauma of enslaved Black Americans.
2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Originally published in 1982, this epistolary novel is the roadmap for Black women’s and lesbian fiction. Through her evocative prose, Walker transports us back to the sharecropping age of rural Georgia…
