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sexyandfamous
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Topic: 100 Books by Black Women Everyone Must Read Posted: Jul 05 2015 at 11:34pm |
let me bump this thread....
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CammiCutie
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Posted: Nov 17 2014 at 2:24am |
great thread!
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yaya24
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Posted: Jan 11 2014 at 11:35pm |
5 Star. Thanks Tatee.
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:32pm |
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration- Isabel Wilkerson
Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk- Delores Williams
This landmark work in emerging African American "womanist" thought uses
the image of Hagar--mother of Ishmael, cast into the wilderness by
Abraham and Sarah but protected by God--as a prototype for African
American women. Williams sees in the story of Hagar--an African woman,
surrogate mother, homeless, exiled--an image of survival and defiance
that is appropriate to African American women today. ( Source)
Color Blind: A Memoir- Precious Williams
Born in London to a Nigerian princess, Precious Williams saw her life
change radically in its first months. Her mother, deciding she couldn't
raise a child, placed an ad for foster care in Nursery World. A response
soon came from a woman in rural Sussex, and Precious, three months old,
was handed off in a basket. ( Source)
Our Nig, Or, Sketches From the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-Story White House- Harriet Wilson
Addicted: A Novel- Zane
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:31pm |
White Teeth: A Novel- Zadie Smith
The Taste of Salt- Martha Southgate
Cane River- Lalita Tademy
Narrative of Sojourner Truth - Sojourner Truth
This inspiring memoir, first published in 1850, recounts the struggles
of a distinguished African-American abolitionist and champion of women's
rights. Sojourner Truth tells of her life in slavery, her
self-liberation, and her travels across America in pursuit of racial and
sexual equality. Essential reading for students of American history. ( Source)
On Black Sisters Street: A Novel- Chika Unigwe
Four very different women have made their way from Africa to Brussels.
They have come to claim for themselves the riches they believe Europe
promises but when Sisi, the most enigmatic of the women, is murdered,
their already fragile world is shattered. Drawn together by tragedy, the
remaining three women - Joyce, a great beauty whose life has been
destroyed by war; Ama, whose dark moods manifest a past injustice; Efe,
whose efforts to earn her keep are motivated by a particular zeal -
slowly begin to share their stories. They are stories of terror, of
displacement, of love, and of a sinister man called Dele. ( Source)
The Color Purple- Alice Walker
Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of
her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her
father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and
continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who
terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has
been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels,
combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close
friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and
loving self. ( Source)
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose- Alice Walker
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a
black woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces ranging
from the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays about
other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and
the antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring
childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words. ( Source)
Jubilee- Margaret Walker
Here is the classic--and true--story of Vyry, the child of a white
plantation owner and his black mistress, a Southern Civil War heroine to
rival Scarlett O'Hara. Vyry bears witness to the South's prewar
opulence and its brutality, to its wartime ruin and the subsequent
promise of Reconstruction. It is a story that Margaret Walker heard as a
child from her grandmother, the real Vyry's daughter. The author spent
thirty years researching the novel so that the world might know the
intelligent, strong, and brave black woman called Vyry. The phenomenal
acclaim this best-selling book has achieved from readers black and
white, young and old, attests to her success. ( Source)
Black, White & Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self- Rebecca Walker
The Civil Rights movement brought author Alice Walker and lawyer Mel
Leventhal together, and in 1969 their daughter, Rebecca, was born. Some
saw this unusual copper-colored girl as an outrage or an oddity; others
viewed her as a symbol of harmony, a triumph of love over hate. But
after her parents divorced, leaving her a lonely only child ferrying
between two worlds that only seemed to grow further apart, Rebecca was
no longer sure what she represented. In this book, Rebecca Leventhal
Walker attempts to define herself as a soul instead of a symbol—and
offers a new look at the challenge of personal identity, in a story at
once strikingly unique and truly universal. ( Source)
Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman- Michele Wallace
Originally published in 1978, this book caused a storm of controversy as
Michele Wallace blasted the masculinist bias of the black politics that
emerged from the sixties. She described how women remained marginalized
by the patriarchal culture of Black Power and the ways in which a
genuine female subjectivity was blocked by the traditional myths of
black womanhood. In 1990 the author added a new introduction examining
the debate the book had sparked between intellectuals and political
leaders; an extensive bibliography of contemporary black feminist
studies was also added. Black Macho raised issues and arguments that
framed the terms of current feminist and black theory and continues to
be relevant today. ( Source)
Salvage the Bones: A Novel- Jesmyn Ward
Southern Horrors and Other Writings; The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900- Ida B. Wells
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:31pm |
The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke- Angela Nissel
Who Fears Death- Nnedi Okorafor
Who Fears Death, is a magical realist novel that evenly combines
the African literature and fantasy/science fiction. It won the 2011
World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and was a Nebula and Locus Award
nominee. The Washington Post said that Who Fears Death is , "Both
wondrously magical and terribly realistic." ( Source)
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer
Topdog/Underdog- Suzan-Lori Parks
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori
Parks latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells
the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to
them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and
resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the
shattering reality of their future. ( Source)
Wench: A Novel- Dolen Perkins-Valdez
The Street: A Novel- Ann Petry
THE STREET tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie
Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son
amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late
1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a
masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved bestseller
with more than a million copies in print. Its haunting tale still
resonates today. ( Source)
Darkest Child: A Novel- Delores Phillips
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision - Barbara Ransby
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty-Dorothy Roberts
Homegirls and Handgrenades- Sonia Sanchez
Push: A Novel- Sapphire
Assata: An Autobiography- Assata Shakur
For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf- Ntozake Shange
Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel - Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza
Award-winning writer Ntozake Shange and real-life sister, award-winning
playwright Ifa Bayeza achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this
epic story of the Mayfield family. Opening dramatically at Sweet
Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's
coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her
goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter,
Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for
themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the
Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on an journey through
the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history--from
Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to
Vietnam and the modern day. Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story
of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of
home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and
blazing ahead. ( Source)
Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth - Warsan Shire
I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone- Nina Simone
The Coldest Winter Ever- Sister Souljah
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology- Barbara Smith
On Beauty- Zadie Smith
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:30pm |
Unbowed: A Memoir- Wangari Maathai
In Unbowed, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai recounts her
extraordinary journey from her childhood in rural Kenya to the world
stage. When Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, she began a
vital poor people’s environmental movement, focused on the empowerment
of women, that soon spread across Africa. Persevering through run-ins
with the Kenyan government and personal losses, and jailed and beaten on
numerous occasions, Maathai continued to fight tirelessly to save
Kenya’s forests and to restore democracy to her beloved country. Infused
with her unique luminosity of spirit, Wangari Maathai’s remarkable
story of courage, faith, and the power of persistence is destined to
inspire generations to come. ( Source)
Brown Girl, Brownstones- Paule Marshall
Hailed by the Saturday Review as "passionate" and "compelling" and by
The New Yorker as "remarkable for its courage," this 1959 coming-of-age
story centers on the daughter of Barbadian immigrants living in Brooklyn
during the Depression and World War II. A precursor to feminist
literature, this novel was written by and about an African-American
woman. ( Source)
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie- Ayana Mathis
Gathering of Waters- Bernice McFadden
How Stella Got Her Groove Back- Terry McMillan
Daddy Was a Number Runner- Louise Meriwether
Coming of Age in Mississippi- Anne Moody
When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down- Joan Morgan
In this fresh, funky, and ferociously honest book, award-winning
journalist Joan Morgan bravely probes the complex issues facing
African-American women in today's world: a world where feminists often
have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women
who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab;
and where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds black women
who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality
for less than 40 percent of the African-American population. ( Source)
The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison
Beloved- Toni Morrison
Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel
transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate
as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to
Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many
memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things
happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who
died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word:
Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope,
Beloved is a towering achievement. ( Source)
Song of Solomon- Toni Morrison
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled
himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his
life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined
novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously
as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from
his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison
introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and
assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. ( Source)
The Women of Brewster Place - Gloria Naylor
Once the home of poor Irish and Italian immigrants, Brewster Place, a
rotting tenement on a dead-end street, now shelters black families. This
novel portrays the courage, the fear, and the anguish of some of the
women there who hold their families together, trying to make a home.
Among them are: Mattie Michael, the matriarch who loses her son to
prison; Etta Mae Johnson who tries to trade the 'high life' for marriage
with a local preacher; Kiswana Browne who leaves her middle-class
family to organize a tenant's union. ( Source)
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:29pm |
Their Eyes Were Watching God- Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story
sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the
captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness,
fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fair-skinned,
fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through
three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose. A
true literary wonder, Hurston's masterwork remains as relevant and
affecting today as when it was first published—perhaps the most widely
read and highly regarded novel in the entire canon of African American
literature. ( Source)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
This autobiographical account by a former slave is one of the few extant
narratives written by a woman. Written and published in 1861, it
delivers a powerful portrayal of the brutality of slave life. Jacobs
speaks frankly of her master's abuse and her eventual escape, in a tale
of dauntless spirit and faith. ( Source)
Silver Sparrow- Tayari Jones
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 when secrets are revealed and illusions
shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed
characters—the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the
uncle—she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought
to one another’s lives. ( Source)
A Small Place- Jamaica Kinkaid
Quicksand- Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen's first novel tells the story of Helga Crane, a fictional
character loosely based on Larsen's own early life. Crane is the lovely
and refined daughter of a Danish mother and a West Indian black father
who abandons Helga and her mother soon after Helga is born. Unable to
feel comfortable with any of her white-skinned relatives, Helga lives in
various places in America and visits Denmark in search of people among
whom she feels at home. The work is a superb psychological study of a
complicated and appealing woman, Helga Crane, who, like Larsen herself,
is the product of a liaison between a black man and a white woman. In
one sense, Quicksand might be called an odyssey; however, instead of
overcoming a series of obstacles and finally arriving at her native
land, Larsen's protagonist has a series of adventures, each of which
ends in disappointment. ( Source)
Small Island: A Novel- Andrea Levy
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches- Audre Lorde
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist
writer Audre Lorde, SISTER OUTSIDER celebrates an influential voice in
twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen
essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia,
and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and
change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting
struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. ( Source)
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography- Audre Lorde
ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood
memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of
Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of
women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush
description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page. ( Source)
A Belle in Brooklyn: The Go-to Girl for Advice on Living Your Best Single Life- Demetria Lucas
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:28pm |
A Raisin in the Sun- Lorraine Hansberry
Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted - Frances E. W. Harper
A striking portrait of black life during the Civil War and
Reconstruction, this 1892 work was among the first novels published by
an African-American woman. It explores issues of race, politics, and
class in the tale of a mixed-race woman who rejects a life of "passing"
and devotes herself to the improvement of black society. ( Source)
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America- Melissa Harris-Perry
Nappy Hair- Carolivia Herron
A lively, empowering story about Brenda's knotted-up, twisted, nappy
hair and how it got to be that way! Told in the African-American "call
and response" tradition, this story leaps off the page, along with
vibrant illustrations by Joe Cepeda. ( Source)
All About Love: New Visions- bell hooks
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind and razor-sharp pen to explode th
question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart.
In thirteen concise chapters, hooks examines her own search for
emotional connection and society's failure to provide a model for
learning to love. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is
infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is
sacred, redemptive, and healing for the individuals and for a nation.
The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can
Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful affirmation of just how
profoundly she can. ( Source)
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center- bell hooks
Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self- Pauline Hopkins
Of One Blood is the last of four novels written by Pauline Hopkins. She
is considered by some to be "the most prolific African-American woman
writer and the most influential literary editor of the first decade of
the twentieth century, though she is one of the lesser known literary
figures of the much lauded Harlem Renaissance. Hopkins tells the story
of Reuel Briggs, a medical student who couldn't care less about being
black and appreciating African history, but finds himself in Ethiopia on
an archeological trip. His motive is to raid the country of lost
treasures -- which he does find in the ancient land. However, he
discovers much more than he bargained for: the painful truth about
blood, race, and the half of his history that was never told. Hopkins
wrote the novel intending, in her own words, to "raise the stigma of
degradation from [the Black] race." The title, Of One Blood, refers to
the biological kinship of all human beings. ( Source)
Brown Girl in the Ring- Nalo Hopkinson
This is Nalo Hopkinson's debut novel, which came to attention when it
won the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. It tells the story of
Ti-Jeanne, a young woman in a near-future Toronto that's been all but
abandoned by the Canadian government. Anyone who can has retreated from
the chaos of the city to the relative safety of the suburbs, and those
left in "the burn" must fend for themselves. Ti-Jeanne is a new mother
who's trying to come to grips with her as- yet-unnamed baby and also
trying to end her relationship with her drug-addict boyfriend Tony. But a
passion still burns between the young lovers, and when Tony runs afoul
of Rudy, the local ganglord, Ti-Jeanne convinces her grandmother
Gros-Jeanne to help out. Gros-Jeanne is a Voudoun priestess, and it's
clear that Ti-Jeanne has inherited some of her gifts. Although Ti-Jeanne
wants nothing to do with the spirit world, she soon finds herself
caught up in a battle to the death with Rudy and the mother she thought
she lost long ago. ( Source)
But Some Of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies- Gloria T. Hull
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography - Zora Neale Hurston
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tatee
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Posted: Dec 10 2013 at 12:27pm |
Head Off & Split: Poems-Nikky Finney
Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we
fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully
evoking both the lawless and the sublime.
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America- Paula Giddings
If It Wasn't for the Women...: Black Women's Experience and Womanist Culture in Church and Community- Cheryl Townsend Gilkes
These collected essays examine the roles of women in their churches and
communities, the implication of those roles for African American
culture, and the tensions and stereotypes that shape societal responses
to these roles. Gilkes examines the ways black women and their
experience shape the culture and consciousness of the black religious
experience, and reflects on some of the crises and conflicts that attend
this experience. ( Source)
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998- Nikki Giovanni
The Friends- Rosa Guy
Phyllisia eventually recognizes that her own selfish pride rather than
her mother's death and her father's tyrannical behavior created the gulf
between her and her best friend. ( Source)
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought- Beverly Guy-Sheftall
In this groundbreaking collection of articles, Dr. Guy-Sheftall has
taken us from the early 1830s to contemporary times. Only since the
seventies have black women used the term 'feminism.' And, yet, it is
that concept that she uses to bring into the same frame the ideas and
analyses of Maria Stewart, Sojourner Truth, and Frances Harper of the
early nineteenth century, and the work of women such as Audre Lourde,
Barbara Smith, and bell hooks, who stand on the threshold of the
twenty-first century. --from the epilogue by Johnnetta B. Cole,
President, Spelman College ( Source)
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