2024 Adult Black History Month (DEI) Booklist

February display

Showing 1 - 16 of 16  There are a total of 94 valid entries on the list.
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 "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 "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...

4. Horse

Book cover for "Horse"
Star rating for Horse
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Kentucky, 1850. Jarrett, an enslaved groom, and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. As the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name painting the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery...
Book cover for "Let us descend"
Star rating for Let us descend
Author:
Average Rating:
2.7 stars
Description:
"Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take."--...
Book cover for "A mercy"
Star rating for A mercy
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith.
Book cover for "The Nickel boys"
Star rating for The Nickel boys
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood...
Book cover for "Passing"
Star rating for Passing
Description:
Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past. Clare's childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, but refuses to acknowledge the racism that continues to constrict her family's happiness. A chance encounter forces both women to confront the lies they...
Book cover for "The personal librarian"
Star rating for The personal librarian
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
"The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian-who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray. In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books,...
Book cover for "The sweetness of water"
Star rating for The sweetness of water
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...
Book cover for "Take my hand"
Star rating for Take my hand
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
"Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she's shocked to learn that her new patients, India and Erica, are children--just...
Book cover for "Their eyes were watching God"
Star rating for Their eyes were watching God
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years. This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in Black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates boldly and brilliantly African-American culture and heritage....
Book cover for "Things fall apart"
Star rating for Things fall apart
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
"Things Fall Apart tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a 'strong man' of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the...
Book cover for "Twelve years a slave"
Star rating for Twelve years a slave
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Describes the life of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from Saratoga, N.Y., who was kidnapped in 1841 and forced into slavery in Louisiana for twelve years.
Book cover for "The vanishing half"
Star rating for The vanishing half
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...
Book cover for "The water dancer"
Star rating for The water dancer
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...