9 Non-fiction Books by Black Authors You Need to Read
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Pulitzer-prize winning writer Isabel Wilkerson examines the unspoken American caste system that has shaped America and shows how our every day lives are still hugely shaped by these unspoken divisions amongst humanity. In this deeply researched and immersive flow of history and narration, Wilkerson shows how race and class are not the only factors of our caste system, and that this system influences individual behavior and the fate of our nation. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Demonstrating how there must be a bottom rung for the middle class to compare themselves to, the ways in which this caste system literally costs us, as well how Nazi Germany studied US racial relations to see how to outcast Jews, she eventually points a way forward with hope for humanity. A foundational, must-read text.
How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith
Renowned poet Clint Smith (Counting Descent, Above Ground) ventures into nonfiction prose with this stunningly written accounting of America’s racist past. To better understand the U.S.’s lack of reckoning with slavery, Smith visits eight sites of significance, including Monticello, a confederate cemetery (and talks with the mourners celebrating their “rebel” past), Senegal, and a former plantation-turned-maximum-security-prison. This deeply-researched and transportive journey of the legacy of slavery demonstrates how some of the most essential and most difficult stories are hidden in plain view. Wrangling with places that are both honest about the past and those that would rather live in lies, Smith’s journey is a must-read. And while much of history is contested, Smith goes to each place with boundless humility, talking to all kinds of different people, encountering moments of anger, denial, purposeful ignorance, but also the sparks of hope, humanity, grace, and passion for change.
The World Record Book of Racist Stories by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar
With the same upsettingly hilarious vibe as their first book, Amber and Lacey return with intergenerational stories from their parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, which show that, no matter how different their family is, they all have racism in common. Eye-opening and enraging, these stories are equal parts heart and hilarity. From odd instances of random strangers on the bus and work colleagues talking about how much they love the new Hootie and the Blowfish album to an incidence of severe stalking and physical threats, these stories run the gamut. Their storytelling style is consistently funny, but the underlying social commentary remains cutting. You will laugh, gasp, and seethe with rage while reading this as Amber and Lacey help find the absurdity in the pervasive frustrations of racism. Illuminating and packed with love and laughter, this is a great book to learn about or commiserate with the lived experiences of Black Americans.
Black on Both Sides by C. Riley Snorton
In Black on Both Sides, Snorton identifies multiple intersections between Blackness and transness from the mid-19th century to our contemporary world, exposing continuing problems of anti-blackness and anti-transness. Pulling from a wide variety of archives and materials—fugitive slave narratives, early sexology texts, journalism, movies—Snorton shows how slavery and the societal creation of racialized gender laid a foundation of mutable gender. Following multiple historical through lines—like the medical experimentation forced on enslaved Black women or the negation of Blackness—as well as the forgotton histories of trans Black people, Snorton is able to reconstruct theoretical and historical trajectories that allow us to imagine Black and trans worlds and lives more complexly. By unearthing these stories and showing the long history of these intersectional identities, Snorton shows how transness is far from a new invention.
Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought by Briona Simone Jones
Mouths of Rain, the companion anthology to Beverly Guy-Sheftall's classic Words of Fire, compiles essays from many different brilliant Black lesbian thinkers. These women have made huge contributions to feminist theory and activism, and this anthology helps trace the long history of thought produced by them, spanning the 19th to 21st century. Using “Black Lesbian” as a capacious signifier, Mouths of Rain includes writing by Black women who have shared intimate and loving relationships with other women, as well as Black women who see bonding as mutual, Black women who have self-identified as lesbian, Black women who have written about Black Lesbians, and Black women who theorize about and see the word lesbian as a political descriptor that disrupts and critiques capitalism, heterosexism, and heteropatriarchy. These essays cover all sorts of topics, from anti-blackness and misogynoir, while also addressing love, romance, and “coming out”.
Koshersoul by Michael Twitty
In Koshersoul, Twitty starts a conversation to help people explore and celebrate their differences while also finding common ground in shared joy and humanity. Inspired not just by the people who make the food but also how food makes people, Twitty describes how Jews of Color are not an anomaly and how the foods and traditions of both the Jewish and Black diaspora offers a conversation of shared histories through migration. Intimate, thought-provoking, and profound, Twitty makes the argument that Blackness and Judaism not only can operate in harmony, but already do, and this can most easily be seen through the deep emotional role food plays in these two distinct cultures. Including plenty of recipes, this is one of the most clever and innovative books around, dancing neatly between cookbook and memoir, cultural exploration and celebration. A delightful read for anyone interested in religion, culture, or delicious food.
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
In this potent and deeply felt collection of essays, Mikki Kendall questions the legitimacy of the contemporary feminist movement and its failures to address the issues of all but a small number of people. White feminists, Kendall argues, let their own myopia get in the way of seeing how intersectionality is at the heart of true activism. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism explores how feminism fails us all by forgetting to address basic needs as feminist issues. From the very beginning of the modern feminist movement, white women have centered themselves and their needs, and with poise, clarity, and brutal honesty, Kendall shows how the movement needs recentering before real change can happen.
Weightless by Evette Dionne
In Weightless journalist and award-winning author Evette Dionne explores the minefields that fat Black women have to navigate simply to exist in every day life. Beginning with her experiences with harassment in childhood to her self-discoveries in chatrooms during her teen years to diagnosis with heart failure at age 29, Dionne tracks her relationships with friendship, sex, motherhood, agoraphobia, health, pop culture, and self-image. Her fat body, Dionne argues, has never once let her down—it has only ever kept rebounding. It is other people who map meaning onto her body. Through her masterful writing, she exposes the subtle, insidious forms of surveillance and control fat women face—doctors citing fatness as the cause for any ailment, the rejection or fetishization of fat bodies when dating, the dehumanization of fat characters on TV. By holding a mirror to our society, Dionne asks us to interrogate ourselves and the futures we deserve.
They Can’t Kill Us Till They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib
In this collection of essays, Abdurraqib writes on our culture through the lens of music, from Fall Out Boy concerts to witnessing PDA at a Carly Rae Jepsen performance, to visiting Mike Brown’s grave after a Bruce Springsteen show. With a totally unique but undeniable magnetism, you won’t be able to help but pause to re-read, highlight, and engage with this book. Using music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, Abudrraqib allows us to better understand ourselves. Recounting startling moments like finding out about Trayvon Martin’s death at a concert when nobody had cell service or being the only Black kid at a punk show, Abdurraqib uses his own personal experiences and the cultural context of music more broadly to explore our deepest thoughts and feelings. More than just simply music criticism or theory, this is a collection that will keep you thinking long after you’ve finished. Abdurraqib’s background as a poet is evident in his precise writing and word choice, which help make this a must-read.
