FIVE BOOKS EVERY BLACK WOMAN SHOULD HAVE IN HER LIBRARY!
We all want books that empower us, educate us, make us feel the things we sometimes don’t want to feel but have to. Books that teach are both understanding and empathetic but also full of important things to say. Here are five books for Black women that do just that:
1. salvation: Black People and Love - Bell Hooks
This book serves as an informal manual to healing Black culture. Bell Hooks gives voice to the many things we may know or feel but need help processing. It is a treatise on the meaning of love and why it is so essential for a healthy society. Through Salvation, we are given a historical and cultural perspective on the transformative power of love in the lives of Black people.
2. Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine - Emily Bernard
This memoir is compiled of twelve delicately personal essays that speak to Bernard’s life as a Black woman navigating through the traumas of her life alongside a career in academics. Her stories are honest and fearless and explore different feats commonly faced by Black women in America. Each essay takes you on a journey to discovering new ways of talking about race and experiencing and learning from the truth of the author.
3. The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations - Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s collection of works transcends time. While written over the decades, it still speaks so clearly to today's social and political moment. Morrison looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom and lays out her stance on women, racism, arts advocacy, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and more.
4. good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980 - Lucille Clifton
good woman focuses on Clifton’s roles as a black woman and a poet. Through her poems and memoir she lays out a guide to being alive, female, and Black in the United States. This collection emphasizes endurance and strength through adversity by Black women in America.
5. Women Race & Class - Angela Y. Davis
Using a historical lens, this book traces the efforts of feminist movements for suffrage in the United States. A guided collection of 13 essays dedicated to women’s liberation, Davis focuses on introducing the ways that race, class, and gender have worked together to shape inequality.