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bell hooks, taken on Novem( Wikimedia Commons) Opening her essay with a personal memory of the love she received as the first girl in her family and its quick dissipation as she grew into her own person, hooks quickly establishes love as the central theme to her essay. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill relationship troubles self-help book this is a book for soul searching. hooks’s 2000 essay All About Love is a difficult text, both in its style and in its subject matter. Known for her powerful role in feminist writing and the frank, yet graceful, way she writes about death, bell hooks (1952-2021) uses these same attributes to ponder another scary thought: love. Butler prompts us to remember this trauma and contemplate how it affects the Black woman’s mind and body today.

The trauma of slavery, especially the trauma inflicted on the enslaved woman’s body, is generational and unforgettable. Butler signing a copy of her work Fledgling, Octo(Nikolas Coukouma via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license, Wikimedia Commons)īutler creates this thrilling mixture to remind her reader of the ever-present threat on the Black woman’s sexuality, on the Black woman’s body.

But will her protection of Rufus end in her own demise? Octavia E. Dana believes that it is her mission to save Rufus from his untimely demise, ensuring the existence of her bloodline, and therefore ensuring her own existence. And she can only return to the present when her life is in peril, but it is always in peril for she is a Black woman in the antebellum South. This is when Dana realizes the reality of her predicament: she has indeed been traveling through time, called by Rufus in his peril. After extinguishing the threat, she discovers the boy’s name is Rufus Weylin – a name that rings a bell, one of her distant ancestors. Here, she finds him in his room, lighting his drapes on fire. After saving the child’s life with CPR, Dana finds her own life in danger, when a shotgun is pointed in her face – the trigger that wakes her up.Ĭonfused by and disbelieving of this experience, Dana does not expect to again be pulled back in time, where she meets the same white child, only slightly older.

Upon waking up from her fainting spell, Dana finds herself in antebellum Maryland in 1815, where a young white boy is drowning in a river. Opening in 1976 California, the novel quickly transforms when a mind-bending migraine disables Dana, Butler’s narrator. Butler (1947-2006) strikes the perfect balance of sci-fi and African American historical fiction in her 1979 novel Kindred. Below is a list of ten books to read written by Black women. This article was originally published on Janubut has been updated for timeliness.Toni Morrison would have been 91 years old today, and there’s no better way to celebrate than highlighting her work and the work of her peers. Who are some of your favorite Black authors or books by Black women? Share in the comments! So please, read Black women today, read Black women this month, and read Black women all year. Need more suggestions? Don’t forget about Zadie Smith, Roxane Gay, Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, Brittney Cooper, Ann Petry, Kathleen Collins, Phillis Wheatley, Akwaeke Emezi, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Isabel Wilkerson-I mean really, I could type names until the editors cut me off and there would still be fabulous writers I neglected to include. Classic must-read members of the literary canon include Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, and Zora Neale Hurston. Harris-Perry, Morgan Jerkins, or Michelle Obama’s record-breaking memoir. For important nonfiction, try Ijeoma Oluo, Melissa V. Beverly Jenkins and Jasmine Guillory are popular choices for romance, Attica Locke writes mesmerizing and smart mysteries, and Nic Joseph writes page-turning thrillers. Consider reading Wayetu Moore, Esi Edugyan, or Helen Oyeyemi for a touch of magical realism.įor a great YA read, pick up anything by Angie Thomas, Elizabeth Acevedo, Nicola Yoon, or Tomi Adeyemi. Don’t miss Nalo Hopkinson and Nnedi Okorafor for science fiction and fantasy with a dash of Afrofuturism and Tananarive Due for horror. Some of my favorite contemporary authors include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Yaa Gyasi, Tayari Jones, Ayobami Adebayo, Brit Bennett, Jesmyn Ward, and Jacqueline Woodson. I also want to recognize the wonderful writers who aren’t on this list.