Lists
by Powell's Staff, February 13, 2023 9:23 AM
We’re celebrating Black History Month in our favorite way: with books! Below, we're highlighting recent releases by Black authors that are all about Black voices, Black history, and Black lives. You'll find books that reckon with trauma, colonialism, systemic racism, Black womanhood, marginalization, late capitalism, and the legacy of slavery, but you'll also find books about love and joy, forgiveness and adventure, punk rock and catharsis.
There’s never enough room to highlight everything we want to highlight: this list barely scratches the surface of all the amazing books out there for you to read. You can find more recommended reading lists, bookseller displays, and original author content on our Black History Month resource page, well beyond February.
Fiction
Hell of a Book
by Jason Mott
“Lastly, a message to the Black boy that was: You are beautiful. Be kind to yourself, even when this country is not.”
The story of a Black author on book tour who makes friends with the maybe-imaginary “The Kid” is braided together with the story of Soot, and young kid who only finds safety in his stories. Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, was right when he said: “Hell of a Book more than lives up to its title. Playful, searching, raw, and necessary." Heartbreaking, incredible. Hell of a Book is a hell of a book.” — Kelsey F.
The Furrows
by Namwali Serpell
“Grief doesn’t choose its timing well; you’ll never know when it will grip your neck.”
This book gets at the quick of grief: how consuming and barbed it can be; the strange, invisible edges you don’t know to watch out for; and the way it clings to you for years, like a small parasite welded to your skin, until everything you brush up becomes stained, too. Serpell’s book is incredible and exacting and feeling. When Cassandra Williams is 12, she loses her brother in a tragic accident; for years afterward, she’s haunted by his image, both certain and not certain that she sees him everywhere. The Furrows stabs at the liminality of grief and mourning and how impossible and improbable the entire endeavor can seem. Read this book. — Kelsey F.
The Birdcatcher
by Gayl Jones
“It's like they need someone else to witness the shit, the spectacle they make of themselves.”
Like a smashed mirror, Gayl Jones’ The Birdcatcher is reflecting so many things, all at once, usually in pieces. When I finished, I felt like I had just read three books, all in conversation with each other, and I was just glad I got to overhear their brilliant back and forth. — Keith M.
We were lucky enough to have Gayl Jones's long-time editor, Helene Atwan, write an original essay for us to celebrate the release of The Birdcatcher: My Decades with Gayl Jones: Reflections from an Editor.
Perish
by LaToya Watkins
“Bear it or perish yourself.”
A brutal, beautiful debut from LaToya Watkins, about a family reckoning with trauma, violence, regrets, and forgiveness. Perish is told in alternating, first-person chapters, so we get to know multiple members of the Turner family, and the different ways they look at the events and family members they share. Truly an intricate, intimate book. — Kelsey F.
The Survivalists
by Kashana Cauley
“What was survivalism if its deepest fears were the kind of thing people without money would just buck up and live with?”
There's already a ton of well-earned buzz about The Survivalists — a literary dark comedy about a Black lawyer finding love with a coffee entrepreneur, and moving into a Brooklyn brownstone full of preppers and coffee beans (and with a bunker out back). It's getting a lot of comparisons to The Other Black Girl and The Sellout, which is already high praise — but my left-field vibes comparison is one of my favorite books from 2022, Disorientation. Kashana Cauly's debut is also about unraveling a certain kind of respectable life that was always precarious, the adventures that come from pulling on those threads, and benefits from the author deeply developing every not-quite-what-they-seem-but-not-how-you-expect character. — Michelle C.
What Napoleon Could Not Do
by DK Nnuro
“Wilder could not comprehend her love for a place that had, for nearly twenty years, refused her.”
An incredibly visual and engaging debut, What Napoleon Could Not Do follows two siblings, Jacob and Belinda, and Belinda’s husband, Wilder, and their relationship to America's symbolic promise, as well as the dangers, racism, and marginalization that that “promise” comes with. As Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone, was right when he called What Napoleon Could Not Do a “subtle, surprising, and captivating novel.” — Kelsey F.
Dr. No
by Percival Everett
“Infinity means nothing to me. How could it? Nothing is neither finite nor infinite.”
Everett is at the top of his game; his signature wit and dark, absurd humor are on full display. An expert in nothing on the hunt for nothing with a mysterious billionaire villain who wants nothing but nothing (and revenge)! This book is as philosophical as it is funny, a satisfying and skewering take on what it means to have everything in a society willing to turn a blind eye to the crimes of the rich and powerful. There’s also a one-legged dog! — Eric L.
An Autobiography of Skin
by Lakiesha Carr
Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man, described this book better than I could: “...perhaps what defines [Autobiography of Skin] most is its insistent drive toward honesty, toward the compelling truths that could only have been uncovered by the angled vision of this particular author.” This book is an awe-inspiring look at black womanhood, told though multiple perspectives, all intent on casting an unflinching eye on the way bodies carry grief and trauma, and the hope that can come with hard-fought-for healing. — Kelsey F.
Assembly
by Natasha Brown
“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don’t make anyone uncomfortable. Don’t inconvenience.”
If you read only one debut novelist this year, let it be Natasha Brown with her brilliant Assembly. Here, a posh garden party serves as a delicious microcosm through which Brown dissects a host of historical (and not so historical) depredations — from systemic racism and the British empire to late capitalism and white-washed neoliberal feminism — all in prose that is lyrical, searing, interrogative, and devastatingly accurate. — Alexa W.
This short book packs an outsized punch, as a Black British woman with a high-flying career must confront the dehumanizing treatment she experiences in every aspect of her carefully assembled life. This powerful novel is revelatory and unflinching. — Keith M.
When We Were Birds
by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
“Fair don’t always mean good. Exchange don’t always mean peace. Power don’t always mean free.”
What a great, fun, and complex book — part love story, part ghost story, all beautiful — and all the more impressive for being Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut! The story centers around two characters: Yejide, a young woman with necromantic powers she’s slowly learning to harness, and Darwin, a country boy looking for work in the big city but only able to find a job at a cemetery. Of course, Yejide and Darwin meet. And of course! Sparks fly. In a lot of directions. I was so moved by this book and am sure you will be too. — Lucinda G.
Nonfiction
This Here Flesh
by Cole Arthur Riley
The writing in This Here Flesh is so breathtakingly beautiful. It invites quiet, thoughtful reading and contemplation and is one of those books that leaves your soul just a little bit bigger for having read it. Told as a series of stories in simple, powerful prose, it feels like sitting down with an old friend, someone who knows your deepest truths and seeks to help you rediscover them. — Deana R.
Constructing a Nervous System
by Margo Jefferson
“For most of my adult life I’d felt that to become a person of complex and stirring character, a person (as I put it) of “inner consequence,” I must break myself into pieces.”
From the author of Negroland, Constructing A Nervous System is a wildly personal and inventive memoir that examines so much through Jefferson’s canny eye: Gone with the Wind and Little Women, dance and music, the incuriosity of white authors and a culture corrupted by whiteness, abuse and apathy, Ella Fitzgerald and Janet Malcolm. All of this together creates a truly enrapturing “nervous system.” As the esteemed Vivian Gornick put it: “This is one of the most imaginative — and therefore moving — memoirs I have ever read.” — Kelsey F.
Black Women Writers at Work
Edited by Claudia Tate
“It seems to me that there’s an enormous difference in the writing of black and white women.”
I have been searching for a copy of this phenomenal, long-out-of-print collection for years. Get ready to be completely absorbed in these candid interviews with literary superstars of the 20th century — including Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, and Alice Walker — about their work and their lives. It's an unbelievable gift to all of us that Haymarket is bringing this beloved collection back into print. — Michelle C.
My Pinup
by Hilton Als
“And one thinks, Looking into Prince’s eyes must be like looking at the world.”
Hilton Als! The wonderful Hilton Als! Here in a memoir about the late musician Prince, love, loss, Black queerness, the AIDs crisis, Dorothy Parker, and so much more. A slim, impressive book that packs a punch. Thank god for Hilton Als. — Kelsey F.
The Rage of Innocence
by Kristin Henning
“To thrive, Black youth must learn to resist and transcend harmful and racial ideas and stereotypes that seek to limit them.”
The Rage of Innocence has, appropriately, drawn comparison to The New Jim Crow and Locking Up Our Own. This book draws on the author’s decades of experience representing Black youth in an undeniably racist justice system. She highlights the harm and trauma inflicted on the young Black community, from every direction, and argues for what she thinks the community needs in order to thrive. Everything she says is backed up by statistics and her own experience. A heavy but incredibly necessary and powerful read. — Kelsey F.
Inciting Joy
by Ross Gay
“What if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things?”
In his latest collection, award-winning poet and bestselling author Ross Gay explores — in full-length, heavily footnoted essays that eddy conversationally around their topics — the complex, cathartic, and unifying thing that is joy. Whether you’re seeking it or seeking to better understand it, Inciting Joy delivers. — Tove H.
Black and Female: Essays
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
“The first wound for all of us who are classified as “black” is empire.”
This astounding essay collection may be short (only 128 pages!), but it incredibly powerful and full of insight into Dangarembga’s life and the ways that racism, misogyny, and colonialism pervade our world. I found it hard not to quote this entire book (“bolstered by a vivid imagination that reminds us that other realities are possible beyond the one that obtains”!) — I’m recommending this essay collection with my whole chest. — Kelsey F.
Token Black Girl
by Danielle Prescod
“Apparently, it is too difficult for people—white people—to imagine themselves as embodied by a Black character, but Black children are forced to do the reverse constantly.”
Danielle Prescod turns her sharp eye on the whitewashing of media and white-dominated world of beauty and fashion, and how that affected her attitude toward her own race, those around her, and the career she pursued. Prescod is candid and open about her experiences, making this an important and impressive book. As Gabrielle Union put it: “This is an essential read to understand how beauty standards and media industry affect Black women in America.” — Lucinda G.
The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere.
by James Spooner
I have a soft spot for graphic novel memoirs. The High Desert is a really great coming-of-age memoir, dealing with love, racism, lonely desert towns, punk rock, awkwardness, and finding your place. Spooner is open and honest, and an excellent illustrator. You'll laugh, you'll seethe, you'll cringe, and most likely, you'll see something of your own time in high school reflected on the pages. A really great read! — Lesley A.
Black Ghost of Empire
by Kris Manjapra
“If anything, the very way we think of “the human,” and who counts as human, has emerged as a centuries-long struggle because of the way abolitions were carried out.”
Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy called Black Ghost of Empire “a historical, literary masterpiece, which feels like the wrong word to describe a book so tangibly useful and appropriately terrifying.” This timely, necessary book casts a sharp light on the ongoing legacy of slavery, the ways in which it continues to exist, and the people who continue to benefit. Incredibly well researched and thorough. An important read. — Moses M.
When They Tell You to Be Good
by Prince Shakur
" We must search and question to find meaning. What we are handed is not always what we must take."
Prince Shakur’s riveting memoir about coming of age, coming out, and standing up to systematic oppression is a moving examination of the many ways we fail each other, and the strength required to recognize it and move forward. — Keith M.
Of Blood and Sweat
by Clyde W. Ford
“This book focuses on the clash and convergence of two fundamental human conditions — freedom and bondage — and how that clash and convergence has played out in America.”
An important, engaging book, Of Blood and Sweat looks at the history of racism and the way it’s helped to build the wealth and power behind our institutions. I don’t think I could put it better than Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, author of A Slave in the White House, when she said: “Of Blood and Sweat is a myth-busting work of genius that will stand as the last word on this vital subject for a long time to come." Understanding how things got they way they are is an important step toward dismantling the incredibly pervasive power of racial inequity. — Kelsey F.
Find more recommended reading lists, bookseller displays, and original author content on our Black History Month resource page.
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