The 45 Best Books by Black Authors to Add to Your Reading List
From page-turning romances to must-read memoirs.
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With so many genres to explore, from inspiring feminist books to TikTok's most talked-about novels, I'm sure your to-be-read list is longer than a CVS receipt. But because you can never have too many new reads to discover, I'd like to put you on to some phenomenal books written from the Black perspective because, yes, it's important to diversify your bookshelf and the stories you're consuming. Celebrating Black voices starts with understanding the Black experience well beyond Black History Month in February. After all, reading a wide range of diverse voices, whether fiction or nonfiction, is the first step in better understanding each other and different perspectives or obstacles that we may not have previously considered.
Whether you gravitate toward a steamy romance (consider Seven Days in June by Tia Williams) or you’re more in a self-help kind of mood (check out Alexandra Elle’s How We Heal), we’ve gathered some of the best reads by Black writers to add to your reading list. From Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age to Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and classics like Alice Walker's The Color Purple, some of the books on this list will teach you about Black history, while others will make you feel every emotion possible. Keep scrolling to discover some of the best books by Black authors you 100% need to know about if you haven't read them yet.
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