Our Community’s Favorite Works by Black Authors

Trauma is a common thread for so many, from personal experience to the collective trauma of racism, climate change, and a global pandemic. Roxane Gay’s personal trauma has shaped her life and work, including her 2017 memoir about her own sexual assault, “Hunger.” In her new Scribd Original, “Writing into the Wound,” Gay unpacks the aftermath of “Hunger,” exploring the public reaction that reopened her wounds once more. The result is a skillful guide to sharing, processing, and healing from trauma through writing. “To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.”

Activist Angela Davis has been speaking out against police violence and the mass incarceration of people of color for decades. “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” is a short but powerful examination of the prison-industrial complex and the need for intersectional solutions to systemic problems.

A practical guide to confronting white supremacy head-on for any white person who considers themself a BIPOC ally. Author Layla Saad told NPR in an interview, “The one place where you have complete control is within yourself. So when you think — ‘Where do I start? What do I do?’ — it’s you. You need to start with you first. If you start doing things outside of yourself, if you think that you’re here to save Black and Brown people, remember you’re not here to save us. You’re here to see the ways in which you are already causing us harm and stop doing that.”

Billed as “‘Ready Player One’ meets ‘The Hate U Give,’” this novel follows Kiera, who’s an honors student by day and a game developer by night. She creates the massively multiplayer online role-playing game SLAY with Black players in mind. Kiera and her game have flown under the radar of the mainstream media, until an in-game dispute spills into the real-world streets. Now Kiera has to fight to defend the community she built and continue to be the change she wants to see in the world. Obviously, this novel slays.

This will be the most intense elevator ride of your life. Every second counts in this experimental story about a boy contemplating revenge for his brother’s murder. Jason Reynolds’ book has received many accolades, including a Newbery Honor and LA Times Book Prize.

A celebrated dystopian classic by a sci-fi legend. Set in the year 2024 (yikes), climate change has devastated Earth. As the world falls apart around her, a teenager born with hyperempathy must use her power to protect the people she loves. It’s a gritty, big-hearted novel that’s not afraid to tackle tough environmental and social issues.

This 2016 National Book Award finalist by beloved author Jacqueline Woodson has been compared to contemporary classics like “The Bluest Eye,” “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” and “The House on Mango Street.” Vanity Fair raved: “In Woodson’s soaring choral poem of a novel … four young friends … navigate the perils of adolescence, mean streets, and haunted memory in 1970s Brooklyn, all while dreaming of escape.”

Poet Saeed Jones lays bare the struggle of growing up both gay and Black in Texas. His prose evokes these painful memories with just the right amount of distance to show the hope beyond the otherwise bleak circumstances.

This middle grade novel in verse is a loving look at sibling bonds, familial connection, first crushes, and basketball. Poet Kwame Alexander’s “The Crossover” won many of children’s literature’s most significant awards, including the Newbery Medal.

Rivers Solomon’s “The Deep” is based on a Hugo Award-nominated song from Clipping, the rap group headed by Daveed Diggs. It’s about a group of mermaid-like people who are descended from pregnant slaves who perished when they were tossed overboard crossing the Atlantic. This award-winning work about the necessity and pain of remembering defines the word haunting.

In this Coretta Scott King Award winner, Marley has a happy life in Heaven, Ohio, with her parents and her Uncle Jack. But when it’s revealed that Uncle Jack is her biological father and the people she thought were her mom and dad are actually her aunt and uncle, Marley has to realign her view of her loving family — and herself.

“You mad? This ain’t no kid flick. There is no magic here. / The fairies get killed too. The kingdom has no king.” Danez Smith’s “Black Movie” is a series of poems in the guise of film proposals detailing all the ways Black people’s joys and dreams are dashed by violence. Each poem hits hard and cuts to the quick.

This classic was one of the first stories to fully capture how systemic racism leads to horrific consequences. James Baldwin said every Black American has a “private Bigger Thomas,” the iconic character of Richard Wright’s landmark book, “living in his skull.” Decades later, Wright’s novel about race and poverty in America is as powerful and timely as ever.

“The Color Purple” is one of America’s greatest classics: It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner, consistently assigned as must-read material in school, and has a film and Broadway show adaptation. The book tells the story of Celie, a poor Black woman in rural Georgia, and her attempt to rise above the unlucky hand she’s been dealt.

This bestselling novel is our ideal romance: well-written and incredibly sultry, with a heroine who’s smart, independent, and totally floored by the insane chemistry she shares with her hero.