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2025 Adult Black History Month (DEI) Booklist

February display

Showing 61 - 80 of 105  There are a total of 108 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "My time will come"
Star rating for My time will come
Author:
Description:
The wrenching, and inspiring, story of a fourteen-year-old sentenced to life in prison, of the extraordinary relationship that developed between him and the woman he shot, and of his release after twenty-six years of imprisonment through the efforts of America's greatest contemporary legal activist, Bryan Stevenson. Here is the story of a poor black kid from the toughest neighborhood of Tampa, Florida, who at age eleven began "jacking" (stealing)...
Book cover for "Never caught"
Star rating for Never caught
Average Rating:
3.5 stars
Description:
A revelatory account of the actions taken by the first president to retain his slaves in spite of Northern laws profiles one of the slaves, Ona Judge, describing the intense manhunt that ensued when she ran away.
Book cover for "The new Jim Crow"
Star rating for The new Jim Crow
Average Rating:
3.3 stars
Description:
Since it was first published in 2010, this book has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund, and it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations...
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 "Nobody's magic"
Star rating for Nobody's magic
Description:
Three black women with albinism find themselves at a crossroads in their lives, in this novel, told in three parts, that is a meditation on grief, female strength and self-discovery set against the backdrop of social and racial histories.
Book cover for "The office of historical corrections"
Star rating for The office of historical corrections
Average Rating:
4.7 stars
Description:
"The award-winning author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self brings her signature voice and insight to the subjects of race, grief, apology, and American history"--Provided by publisher.
Book cover for "Open water"
Star rating for Open water
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists-he a photographer, she a dancer-and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of...
Book cover for "Overground railroad"
Star rating for Overground railroad
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"Overground Railroad chronicles the history of the Green Book, which was published from 1936 to 1966 and was the "Black travel guide to America." For years, it was dangerous for African Americans to travel in the United States. Because of segregation, Black travelers couldn't eat, sleep, or even get gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, department stores, gas stations, recreational destinations, and other businesses...

69. Passing

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 "Please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes"
Star rating for Please don't sit on my bed in your outside clothes
Description:
New York Times bestselling author, comedian, actress, and producer Phoebe Robinson is back with a new essay collection that is equal parts thoughtful, hilarious, and sharp about human connection, race, hair, travel, dating, Black excellence, and more. Written in Phoebe's unforgettable voice and with her unparalleled wit, Robinson's latest collection, laced with spot-on pop culture references, takes on a wide range of topics. From the values she learned...
Book cover for "Poemhood, our Black revival"
Star rating for Poemhood, our Black revival
Description:
"This anthology depicts the diversity of the Black experience by fostering a conversation about race, faith, heritage, and resilience between fresh poets and the literary ancestors that came before them." --Publisher.
Book cover for "A promised land"
Star rating for A promised land
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
In the first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to...
Book cover for "Punch me up to the gods"
Star rating for Punch me up to the gods
Description:
Brian Broome's early years were spent growing up in Ohio, a dark-skinned Black boy harboring crushes on other boys. He recounts his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—revealing a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in. Indiscriminate sex and escalating drug use help to soothe his hurt, young psyche, usually to uproarious and devastating effect. A no-nonsense mother and broken father play...
Book cover for "Red at the bone"
Star rating for Red at the bone
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Description:
It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's birthday celebration in her grandparent's Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, escorted by her father to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special, custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own sixteenth birthday party and a celebration which...
Book cover for "Red Island House"
Star rating for Red Island House
Average Rating:
3 stars
Description:
Shay is surprised when her husband Senna declares his intention to build her a spectacular dream house on an idyllic beach in the tropical island nation of Madagascar. But the Red Island House casts a spell from the moment she sees it, and before she knows it Shay has become the somewhat reluctant mistress of a sprawling household, caught between her privileged American upbringing and education, and her connection to the continent of her ancestors....
Book cover for "Riot baby"
Star rating for Riot baby
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella--through visits both mundane and supernatural--tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down"--
Book cover for "The rise"
Star rating for The rise
Description:
Black cooks and creators have led American culture forward with indelible contributions of artistry and ingenuity from the start, but Black authorship has been consistently erased from the story of American food. Now, chef, author, and television star Marcus Samuelsson gathers together an unforgettable feast of food, culture, and history to highlight the diverse deliciousness of Black cooking today. Driven by a desire to fight against bias, reclaim...
Book cover for "Salvage the bones"
Star rating for Salvage the bones
Author:
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Description:
Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.
Book cover for "Seven days in June"
Star rating for Seven days in June
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and...