2024 Adult Black History Month (DEI) Booklist

February display

Showing 21 - 40 of 93  There are a total of 94 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Everywhere you don't belong"
Star rating for Everywhere you don't belong
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Raised by a civil-rights activist grandmother on the South Side of Chicago, Claude McKay Love searches for a sense of belonging before a riot compels his departure for college, where he discovers he cannot escape his past.
Book cover for "Extraordinary, ordinary people"
Star rating for Extraordinary, ordinary people
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl—and a young woman—trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference.

Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping

...
Book cover for "Four hundred souls"
Star rating for Four hundred souls
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas--and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain,...
Book cover for "Frederick Douglass"
Star rating for Frederick Douglass
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...
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

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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 "Go tell it on the mountain"
Star rating for Go tell it on the mountain
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
Originally published in 1953, this is "a hardcover edition of James Baldwin's classic coming-of-age novel set in Harlem in the 1930s, with a new introduction by Edwidge Danticat"--
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 "Grand union"
Star rating for Grand union
Author:
Description:
"A dazzling collection of short fiction, more than half of which have never been published before. In her first short story collection, Smith combines her power of observation and inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world."--
Book cover for "Half American"
Star rating for Half American
Description:
"The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without...
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 hill we climb"
Star rating for The hill we climb
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe." --Book jacket.
Book cover for "His name is George Floyd"
Star rating for His name is George Floyd
Description:
A landmark biography that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy -- from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing -- telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the...
Book cover for "Hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick"
Star rating for Hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick
Average Rating:
1 stars
Description:
"Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include...

37. 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 "The house of deep water"
Star rating for The house of deep water
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"River Bend, Michigan, is the kind of small town most can't imagine leaving, but three women couldn't wait to escape. When each must return--Linda Williams, never sure what she wants; her mother, Paula, always too sure; and Beth DeWitt, one of River Bend's only black daughters, now a mother of two who'd planned to raise her own children anywhere else--their paths collide under Beth's father's roof. As one town struggles to contain all of their love...
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...