
Growing up, I struggled with connecting to feminism. We didn’t discuss it in my neighborhood, an urban area, only 7 square miles long. Or with the women I knew, who were working-class and struggling to make ends meet. Too busy to focus on trivial terms. Then came the feminist movements.
I never wore a Pink Pussyhat to a rally to support women’s rights; it didn’t feel right. I purchased the “Lean In” book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, once lauded as the feminist manifesto to getting ahead in the workplace, but I never finished it. The late author and acclaimed intersectional feminist, bell hooks, called Sandberg’s position “faux feminist” and described her stance on gender equality in the workplace as agreeable to those who wield power in society — wealthy white men. Our beloved former first lady Michelle Obama once declared in front of an audience, “And it’s not always enough to lean in because that shit doesn’t work all the time.” I knew then why that book wasn’t quite the page-turner I had hoped it would be.
Ahh, who could forget the “girlboss” movement? I can’t lie. This one got me. The hustle culture became synonymous with success, something I craved. But, it became more of a hashtag than something that invoked positive change in my life.
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By definition, feminism is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. So, yes, by definition, I am a feminist. However, the feminist movement of yesteryear’s mostly focused on high-achieving white women, which excluded many lower-income women, women of color, and single mothers. At one point, I checked each of those boxes. As a Black working mom to a young daughter, I needed to find something better aligned with my ideals.
Womanism is a form of feminism focused on the conditions and concerns of Black women. Clenora Hudson-Weems, author and Professor of English at the University of Missouri, identified further differences between womanism and feminism being womanism is “family-oriented” and focuses on race, class, and gender, while feminism is “female-oriented” and strictly focuses on biological sex-related issues women and girls face, globally.
I choose the latter.
As I continue to learn more about myself and exist in this world, I’m choosing to fill my cup with books that expand my knowledge as a Black woman having a human experience.
Here are 30 books written by Black womanists and feminists to help you do the same.
Non-Fiction
- “Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde
Credit: Amazon.com Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, “Sister Outsider” celebrates an influential voice in 20th-Century literature.
- “Black Feminist Thought” by Patricia Hill Collins
- “Thick” by Tressie McMillan Cottom
- “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color”
Credit: Amazon.com Originally released in 1981, “This Bridge Called My Back” is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as co-editor Cherríe Moraga writes, “the complex confluence of identities — race, class, gender, and sexuality — systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.”
- “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” by Alice Walker
- “All About Love” by Bell Hooks
- “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost” by Joan Morgan
Credit: Amazon.com Award-winning journalist Joan Morgan bravely probes the complex issues facing African-American women in today’s world: a world where feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men; where women who treasure their independence often prefer men who pick up the tab; and where the deluge of baby mothers and baby fathers reminds black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40% of the African-American population.
- “Assata” by Assata Shakur
- “Women, Race & Class” by Angela Davis
- “Redefining Realness” by Janet Mock
Credit: Amazon.com In her profound and courageous New York Times bestseller, Janet Mock establishes herself as a resounding and inspirational voice for the transgender community — and anyone fighting to define themselves on their own terms.
- “Killing the Black Body” by Dorothy Roberts
- “Emergent Strategies” by Adrienne Marie Brown
- “Black on Both Sides” by C. Riley Snorton
Credit: Amazon.com In “Black on Both Sides,” C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between Blackness and trans-ness from the mid-19th Century to present-day anti-Black and anti-trans legislation and violence.
- “Left of Karl Marx” by Carole Boyce Davies
- “Sister Citizen” by Melissa Harris-Perry
Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers.
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom ― award-winning professor ― is unapologetically “thick.”
Alice Walker’s first collection of non-fiction, where she speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist. Among the 36 pieces are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.
“All About Love” reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials.
Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions.
In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, “Killing the Black Body” exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies.
Inspired by Octavia Butler’s explorations of our human relationship to change, “Emergent Strategy” is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live.
In “Left of Karl Marx,” Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist.
From a highly respected thinker on race, gender, and American politics, a new consideration of black women and how distorted stereotypes affect their political beliefs
Fiction
- “Zami: : A New Spelling of My Name – A Biomythography” by Audre Lorde
Credit: Amazon.com “Zami” started a new genre that the author calls “biomythography,” which combines history, biography, and myth. This book is known for its explicit and evocative imagery and treatment of the mother-daughter relationship.
- “Here Comes the Sun“ by Nicole Dennis-Benn
- “A Raisin in the Sun“ by Lorraine Hansberry
- “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
Credit: Amazon.com This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror tackles global climate change and economic crises, which led to social chaos in the early 2020s.
- “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
- “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
- “The Salt Eaters” by Toni Cade Bambara
Credit: Amazon.com A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this “hard-nosed, wise, funny” novel (Los Angeles Times).
- “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
- “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi
- Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
Credit: Amazon.com Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. These visionary tales span genres — sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism — but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be.
- “The Fifth Season” by N.K Jemison
- “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
- “Queenie by Candice” Carty-Williams
Credit: Amazon.com “Bridget Jones’s Diary” meets “Americanah” in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.
- “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe
- “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie” by Ayana Mathis
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Winner of the LAMBDA Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction showcases a cast of unforgettable women battling for independence while a maelstrom of change threatens their Jamaican village.
Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America — and changed American theater forever. The play’s title comes from a line in Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which warns that a dream deferred might “dry up/like a raisin in the sun.”
Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to “Mister,” a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove — an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.
Tomi Adeyemi’s West African-inspired fantasy debut conjures a world of magic and danger.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter.
Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed—and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe’s critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa’s cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent.
In 1923, 15-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope, she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment. This book tells the story of a mother’s monumental courage — and a nation’s tumultuous journey.
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