2024 Adult Black History Month (DEI) Booklist

February display

Showing 1 - 20 of 42  There are a total of 94 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 "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 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 "The city we became"
Star rating for The city we became
Series:
Average Rating:
3.8 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 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...
Book cover for "Dreams from my father"
Star rating for Dreams from my father
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).

 
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison 
 
In...
Book cover for "Friday black"
Star rating for Friday black
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"An unbelievable debut, one that announces a new and necessary American voice."—New York Times Book Review

The acclaimed debut collection from the author of Chain Gang All Stars; a piercingly raw and, at times, heartbreakingly satirical look at what it's like to be young and Black in America.

From the start of this extraordinary debut, Nana Kwame

...
Book cover for "Girl, woman, other"
Star rating for Girl, woman, other
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about...
Book cover for "God help the child"
Star rating for God help the child
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.

At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused...
Book cover for "The hate u give"
Star rating for The hate u give
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...
Book cover for "The heart of a woman"
Star rating for The heart of a woman
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
In the fourth volume of her autobiography, the author describes her experiences as a singer-dancer in New York and her impressions of the Civil Rights movement
Book cover for "Hidden figures"
Star rating for Hidden figures
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
"Before John Glenn orbited the earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in...
Book cover for "The house of Eve"
Star rating for The house of Eve
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University,...
Book cover for "How to be an antiracist"
Star rating for How to be an antiracist
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it -- and then dismantle it." Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active...
Book cover for "I know why the caged bird sings"
Star rating for I know why the caged bird sings
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey,...
Book cover for "Ida B. the queen"
Star rating for Ida B. the queen
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Journalist. Suffragist. Antilynching crusader. In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize. Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a 'dangerous negro agitator.' In the annals of history, it makes her an icon. Ida B. the Queen tells the awe-inspiring story of an pioneering woman who was often overlooked and underestimated—a...
Book cover for "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks"
Star rating for The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...