2025 Adult Black History Month (DEI) Booklist

February display

Showing 1 - 20 of 108  There are a total of 109 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "All the sinners bleed"
Star rating for All the sinners bleed
Author:
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
"After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county. Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever...
Book cover for "The awkward black man"
Star rating for The awkward black man
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories--heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved, and, on the whole, odd. He overturns the stereotypes that corral black male characters and paints a subtle, powerful portrait of each of these unique individuals. In "The Good News Is," a man's insecurity about his weight gives way to a serious illness and the intense loneliness that...
Book cover for "Becoming"
Star rating for Becoming
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
In her memoir Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. She describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms....
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Description:
Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The novel traces the journey of Sethe from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War. Woven into this narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe's past: the cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom
Book cover for "Black artists shaping the world"
Star rating for Black artists shaping the world
Description:
Dedicated to the work of contemporary Black artists from around the world, this book is an exuberant introduction to artists from Africa and of African descent for young readers. Written by award-winning Black children’s author Sharna Jackson, this engaging book introduces young readers to twenty-six contemporary artists from Africa and of the African diaspora, working in everything from painting, sculpture, and drawing to ceramics, installation...
Book cover for "Black Buck"
Star rating for Black Buck
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A young black man accidentally impresses a CEO while serving his Starbucks order, catapulting him into the opportunity of a lifetime--a shot at stardom as the lone black salesman at an eccentric, mysterious, and wildly successful startup where, he will soon learn, nothing is as it seems"--
Book cover for "Black futures"
Star rating for Black futures
Description:
A collection of work--art, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more--that tells the story of the radical, imaginative, bold, and beautiful world that black artists, high and low, are producing today. The book presents a succession of brilliant and provocative pieces--from both emerging and renowned creators of all kinds--that generates an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with hackers and street artists...
Book cover for "Black ghost of empire"
Star rating for Black ghost of empire
Description:
The 1619 Project illuminated the ways in which every aspect of life in the United States was and is shaped by the existence of slavery. The author focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial caste system--instead of obliterating it. To understand why the shadow of slavery still haunts society today, we must not only look at what slavery was, but also the unfinished way it ended. One may think of "emancipation"...
Book cover for "Black girl, call home"
Star rating for Black girl, call home
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
A literary coming-of-age poetry collection, an ode to the places we call home, and a piercingly intimate deconstruction of daughterhood, Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.
Book cover for "Black leopard, red wolf"
Star rating for Black leopard, red wolf
Average Rating:
2.4 stars
Description:
"Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows...
Book cover for "Blues in stereo"
Star rating for Blues in stereo
Description:
"Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes was most well-known for his poems, novels, and plays that highlight Black American life in post-slavery America. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri and began writing poetry when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, a launderer,...
Book cover for "The care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls"
Star rating for The care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls
Author:
Average Rating:
3.2 stars
Description:
The Butler family has had their share of trials, as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest, but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband Proctor are arrested, and in...
Book cover for "Caul baby"
Star rating for Caul baby
Description:
An ambitious college student gives birth to a baby girl destined to be raised by an important Harlem family, who believe the infant will restore their prosperity.
Book cover for "The city we became"
Star rating for The city we became
Series:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
"Five New Yorkers must come together in order to save their city from destruction. Every great city has a soul. Some are ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York? She's got six. When a young man crosses the bridge into New York City, something changes. He doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can feel the pulse of the city, can see its history, can access its magic. And he's...
Book cover for "The Compton cowboys"
Star rating for The Compton cowboys
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang...
Book cover for "Conjure women"
Star rating for Conjure women
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Description:
A midwife and conjurer of curses reflects on her life before and after the Civil War, her relationships with the families she serves and the secrets she has learned about a plantation owner's daughter.
Book cover for "The conjure-man dies"
Star rating for The conjure-man dies
Description:
An African king with a degree from Harvard who set himself up as a "conjure-man", a fortune teller, is murdered in 1930s Harlem. This is the first known mystery novel written by an African American. Also includes the short story "John Archer's Nose."
Book cover for "The cooking gene"
Star rating for The cooking gene
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"First Amistad hardcover published 2017" "A memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces the paths of the author's ancestors (black and white) through the crucible of slavery to show its effects on our food today"--
Book cover for "Crook manifesto"
Star rating for Crook manifesto
Description:
It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence, Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight-and-narrow for him until he needs...
Book cover for "Deacon King Kong"
Star rating for Deacon King Kong
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .45 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The people affected by the shooting: the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members...