Black Women, Books, and the Quest for Liberation: A Reading List
By Ashely Tisdale
Check out this reading list from our Instagram Live event, “Black Women, Books, and the Quest for Liberation.”
On April 2, 2020, Black Women Radicals, in collaboration with Haymarket Books, hosted the Instagram Live event, “Black Women, Books, and the Quest for Liberation.” The Instagram Live event focused on the following: During these uncertain times, how can we turn to Black feminist texts and literature to continue to fuel our quest for liberation? What are books by Black women you turn to for comfort? That inspire you? That radicalized you?
Panelists for the event include: Bilphena Yahwon, creator of The Womanist Reader: Maya Marshall, a poet, writer, and manuscript editor at Haymarket Books; Zalika U. Ibaorimi, scholar, artist, and writer; and Gizelle Fletcher, founder of For Colored Girls Book Club. You can watch Part 2 of Black Women, Books, and the Quest for Liberation” titled, “Black Women, Books, and Our Productions.”
Below is the reading list from the event. We are thankful to Ashely Tisdale for compiling these books and essays by and about Black women authors that were mentioned during the event!
Fiction and Poetry
“Cordelia the Crude” by Wallace Thurman
Supplement - Labor/Sexuality
Supplement - About the author
Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall
Our Sister Killjoy by Ama Ata Aidoo
Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
You can find an interview with Okparanta here.
Read any and everything by June Jordan, Mari Evans, Pat Parker, and Toi Derricotte.
Read works by contemporary poets such as Erica Dawson and Destiny Birdsong.
Scholarship
Black Women, Writing, and Identity by Carole Boyce Davies
Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
No Humans Involved by Sylvia Wynter
The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora by Gloria Wekker
Theory by Dionne Brand
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe
Read Dora Santana’s work on Black Brazilian transgender feminist communities and movement building.
Pedagogies of Crossing Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred by M. Jacqui Alexander
Demonic Grounds Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle by Katherine McKittrick
Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora by Nadia Ellis
Policing Black Lives State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
She Called Me Woman : Nigeria's Queer Women Speak by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan, and Rafeeat Aliyu
General Recommendations + Research
Bilphena’s Free Online Library by Bilphena Yahwon
Read more about Black feminist Socialists and Marxists like Audre Lorde and Claudia Jones.
“An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Women” by Claudia Jones.
Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies by Carole Boyce Davies
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
Works by Jamaica Kincaid
Works by Sylvia Tamale
Works by Vanessa E. Thompson
Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Working Bibliography of Hortense Spillers