9 Books to Read for Black History Month

If you spend any time at all on social media, you are likely to come across posts encouraging readers to read more diversely. In turn, you will also find responses asking for recommendations (as well as chastising comments telling the commenter to do the work themselves). I’m still working on incorporating more diversity into my stacks, but I’m no gatekeeper, so I thought I’d give a list of some of my favorite reads by Black authors. Maybe this will help get a few readers started.

Please be aware that all of these titles contain difficult topics and sometimes-graphic imagery. Some of the things you can expect to find in them are slavery, violence against women, sexual assault, forced breeding, racism, murder, and violence against Black people.

1) Touched by Walter Mosley

I read this book in 2024, and I have to confess, I didn't love it. So why is it on my list? Because it's subtle and high concept, and it was still popping up in my head months after I read it. Mosley knows how to write compelling characters, and he knows how to make you uncomfortable in a way you didn't realize you could be uncomfortable. I can't explain it any better than that.

Synopsis: Martin Just wakes up one morning after what feels like, and might actually be, a centuries-long sleep with two new innate pieces of knowledge: Humanity is a virus destined to destroy all existence. And he is the Cure.

Martin begins slipping into an alternate consciousness, with new physical strengths, to violently defend his family—the only Black family in their neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles— against pure evil.

2) The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley

This book is responsible for getting me out of an almost six-month-long reading slump. These characters are frustrating and compelling and heartbreaking and amazing. It's a story about found family and the sacrifices we make for the people we love, particularly our children. Mottley writes about being a teenage mother with such honesty and care. She's not trying to make these girls seem like victims. In fact, if you try to think of Simone as a victim, she'll show you real fast how she's not one. She's gonna be just fine, thank you very much. If you're looking for a story about sisterhood, love, and coming of age (with a baby in tow), this is definitely the read for you.

Synopsis: Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

3) Ella by Diane Richards

If you've ever been even a little curious about the early life of Ella Fitzgerald, I can't recommend this story enough. In my opinion, this book is criminally underrated. This isn't an easy read. Ella suffers brutalities and indignities no one should suffer, but through all her hard times, she never loses sight of her dreams. If you're looking for a story with grit and determination, this is the one for you.

Back Cover Synopsis: When fifteen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald’s mother dies at the height of the Depression in 1932, the teenager goes to work for the mob to support herself and her family. When the law finally catches up, the “ungovernable” adolescent is incarcerated in the New York Training School for Girls in upstate New York—a wicked prison infamous for its harsh treatment of inmates, especially Black ones. Determined to be free, Ella escapes and makes her way back to Harlem, where she is forced to dance for pennies on the street.

Looking for a break into show business, Ella draws straws to appear at the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night on November 21, 1934. Rather than perform a dance routine directly after “The World Famous Edwards Sisters” number, the homeless Ella, wearing men’s galoshes a size too big, risks everything when she decides to sing Judy instead. Four years later, at barely twenty-one, Ella Fitzgerald has become the bestselling female vocalist in America.

Diane Richards’ Ella Fitzgerald is inspiring and intriguing—an emotionally rich, psychologically complex character, a flawed mother and wife who struggles with deep emotional scars and trauma and battles racism, sexism, and colorism as she learns to find her voice on the stage. Ella takes us from the brothels, speakeasys, and streets of Depression-era New York City to the grand hotel suites where Ella, now older and wiser, looks back on her life and finally confronts the demons from childhood that torment her.

4) Night Wherever We Go by Tracey Rose Peyton

Like Mosley's TOUCHED, I didn't love this book when I read it, but it stayed with me long after I finished. I'm not a fan of omniscient perspective, and there are chapters, or interludes, from a collective perspective. At the time of reading, this led to a feeling of detachment on my part, but when I was still thinking about this story after a year, I knew it was something special. Read this one with intention, and be prepared to be uncomfortable.

Back Cover Synopsis: On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys—as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself—have decided to turn around the farm’s bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a “stockman” to impregnate them. But the women are determined to protect themselves.

Now each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily. If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe.

5) The Attic Child by Lola Jaye

I read this book in 24 hours. It stressed me out, made me angry, and made me sob. If your ego is easily bruised or you get defensive when someone speaks openly about colonization, do not read this book, but if you like to push yourself to learn about historical topics that make you uncomfortable, this is the one for you.

1905, Africa: Eleven-year-old Dikembe has been plucked from his homeland, carried away from the arms of his loving mother in The Congo to live with his new benefactor Sir Richard Babbington in England. Renamed Celestine Babbington, Dikembe tries to be a good boy for the half year his mother has promised he will have to remain with Sir Richard, but this task becomes more difficult when Dikembe learns he will not be returning to his homeland, that he will remain in England with Sir Richard indefinitely. Things only get worse for young Dikembe when Sir Richard is no longer around and he finds himself a party to cruelty he never expected.

1993, England: Lowra Cavendish is a thirty-year-old orphan, having lost her mother at age six and her father on his honeymoon five years later. In early 1974, Lowra is left with no one other than her ailing grandmother and abusive stepmother. Like young Dikembe before her, Lowra is subjected to unexpected cruelty in the big house once occupied by Sir Richard Babbington and his young protege.

Unbeknownst to Dikembe, though separated by half a century, the remnants he left behind will help Lowra through her darkest moments in the attic at number 109 in Ranklin.

6) The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

I will never NOT recommend this book. Though I read it in 2019, it has stayed with me. The rage running just below the surface of Collins's words, Frannie's predicament, and the injustice she suffers. And the love. This isn't a romance, but there is intimacy and connection and, yes, love. There is also heartbreak and betrayal and devastation. I still get chills when I think about this book.

Back Cover Synopsis: A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London--a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests.

All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being held in the Old Bailey.

The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore.

But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship.

Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself.

7) Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

This is another book I will never NOT recommend. It's raw and brutal, with moments of quiet beauty. This one made me recoil, enraged me, made me cry, and made me hope. This isn't the book to start with if you're not ready to confront some really hard and ugly truths about life for Black people in 19th century America, but keep it in mind for when you're ready because it is absolutely worth the discomfort.

Back Cover Synopsis: Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart in this powerful, thrilling story of one slave’s fight for freedom.

8) James by Percival Everett

I'm not usually one to read retellings, especially when I didn't like the original, but this book was very well done. James tells the story of a man with two sides. Jim, the slave who knows exactly how to keep the whites around him friendly and at ease, and James, the man who teaches the other slaves how to speak eloquently and how to keep the white folks friendly. Though he's been with the same family for years and has a family of his own, James overhears plans to sell him to another plantation in New Orleans and decides he needs to get away until he can formulate a plan to keep from being separated from his wife and daughter. What James doesn't know is that Huckleberry Finn is also running away, having faked his own death to escape his abusive father. James knows he's in trouble when Huck shows up. With them going missing around the same time, James knows he will be the one and only suspect in Huck's death. Following a big flood, James knows the two can no longer stay on their little island, and their adventure begins.

I never cared for Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer. Any Mark Twain, if I'm honest. But Everett tells James and Huck's story in a way that made me feel deeply for James, Huck, and several of the characters they meet along the way.

I highly recommend this read. Dominic Hoffman is phenomenal as the narrator for the audiobook.

9) My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

If you like stories about complicated sister relationships, this one is for you. Korede is the older sister. She's responsible and logical, and she is always cleaning up her sister Ayoola's...messes. It seems Ayoola is unlucky in love. Her boyfriends always end up dead, with Ayoola claiming it was in self-defense, and because Korede loves her sister, she always swoops in and cleans up the mess for her. That is, until Ayoola sets her sights on a doctor at the clinic where Korede works as a nurse, a doctor Korede happens to be in love with. Will she stand by silently and watch the man she silently loves meet the same fate as all her sister's lovers, or will she turn her sister in to the police and finally bring an end to her killing?

This one was fun in a dark way, but it also had me yelling at Korede and Ayoola. Surprisingly, it's lighter fare than several of the titles on this list.

Back Cover Synopsis: When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...

I'll have another list of books by Black authors to read for Black History Month and beyond, but these are some of my favorite titles that aren't always recommended on the lists I see being shared.

Have you read any of these titles? I'd love to know what your thoughts!