Hello, librarians!
February is Black History Month and what better way to celebrate than with some great reads? We've compiled a selection of titles, some on sale, some upcoming, that will enlighten, inform, and celebrate the stories, experiences, and histories of Black Americans.
-The LLF Team (Virginia, Chris, and Lainey)
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Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick
by Zora Neal Hurston
From "one of the greatest writers of our time" (Toni Morrison)—the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God—a collection of remarkable stories, including eight lost Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time.
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Now a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin
A ferociously talented writer makes his stunning debut with this richly woven tapestry, set in a small Nova Scotia town settled by former slaves, that depicts several generations of one family bound together and torn apart by blood, faith, time, and fate.
Africaville was a LibraryReads selection for December 2019!
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
Black Boy by Richard Wright
A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson.
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
No One Is Coming to Save Us
by Stephanie Powell Watts
No One Is Coming to Save Us is a revelatory debut from an insightful voice: with echoes of The Great Gatsby, it is an arresting and powerful novel about an extended African American family and their colliding visions of the American Dream.
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
Notes from a Black Woman's Diary
by Kathleen Collins
Relatively unknown during her life, the artist, filmmaker, and writer Kathleen Collins emerged on the literary scene in 2016 with the posthumous publication of the short story collection Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? That rediscovery continues in Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary, which spans genres to reveal the breadth and depth of the late author’s talent.
Find out more on HarperCollins.com
Also from the author:
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
This is What America Looks Like by Ilhan Omar
An intimate and rousing memoir by progressive trailblazer Ilhan Omar—the first African refugee, the first Somali-American, and one of the first Muslim women, elected to Congress.
Lakewood by Megan Giddings
A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
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by Natasha Tretheway
A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy.
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From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing—a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as "a force to be reckoned with"—comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her northern and southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
Download the egalley from Edelweiss+
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The Compton Cowboys
by Walter Thompson-Hernández
A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of the Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America’s most notorious cities.
Download the egalley from Edelweiss+
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Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
An enthralling literary tour-de-force that pays tribute to Detroit's legendary neighborhood, a mecca for jazz, sports, and politics, Black Bottom Saints is a powerful blend of fact and imagination reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow's classic novel Ragtime and Marlon James' Man Booker Award-winning masterpiece, A Brief History of Seven Killings.
For more great reading suggestions for Black History Month, check out our Black History Month Edelweiss catalog!
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-Chris