Nearly 100 years ago, historian Carter G. Woodson conceived of Negro History Week to teach Black history in schools. Today, in the final week of what is now known as Black History Month, the same books that have been deployed for decades to share the storied and contested history of Black people in America are being pulled from shelves.
According to the American Library Association, book bans have been on a rapid incline, with 2023 being a record year. Most of these challenges were attempts to censor multiple titles at the same time. This “batch ban” method poses questions about what challengers are really trying to sweep off library shelves, as most were written by or are about LGBTQ+ people, Black people, indigenous people and people of color.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken legislative action to protect students’ access to books that reflect diverse communities. On Sept. 25, he signed a law prohibiting California school boards from banning textbooks and library materials.
As we close out Black History Month and eagerly await spring break, here are five must-reads about Black America to take with you wherever you go.
1. “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
In Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s first book, 11-year-old Black girl Pecola Breedlove aches to be as beloved as blue-eyed children in America. So much so that she prays for her eyes to be blue. This is a story about love, beauty and what acrid soil can do to flowers that yearn to grow.
According to PEN America, this book was the second most banned book of the 2022-2023 school year with 29 bans.
2. “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A writer who learned his craft by reading the monuments of writers such as Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a daring and honest reproach of a nation reeling from police brutality against Black men and women. Daring in his intimate confession of what it’s like to father a 15-year-old Black boy in the United States, and honest in his thoughtful evaluation of landmark historical events that have shaped whiteness — and therefore Blackness — in this country. To understand where we are going, we must grapple with the past; this is required reading.
3. “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
Published in 1987, “Beloved” is one of the most popular, and most perplexing, of Morrison’s books. Another one of Morrison’s works sits on this list precisely because of that: her spiraling, alluring sentences reel you in one place and spit you back out another, making you wonder what exactly you just read. So anchor yourself with this one, maybe with a thick blanket and your feet firmly rooted on the ground, because working through this book is entirely worth the effort.
A bonafide ghost story, this book is an evocative portrait of a mother named Sethe and a house named Sweet Home, both haunted by the perils of love as a Black woman in America.
4. “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin
James Baldwin’s final works were published two years before his death in 1987, but his words remain as relevant as ever. In an essay entitled “The Doom and Glory of Knowing Who You Are” for Life Magazine in 1963, he wrote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
Baldwin’s deep appreciation for the written word blooms through his sentences. Known for his lucid honesty and knack for the remarkably long sentence, “The Fire Next Time” feels like a sermon on what it feels like to be Black and angry in the United States and a testament to the power of love to bridge all divides.
5. “Heavy: An American Memoir” by Kiese Laymon
Where Baldwin writes to his nephew and Coates to his son, essayist Kiese Laymon pointedly writes to his mother. This book makes you feel like you are peering into the inner lives of a family with tightly bound secrets, but read closer and you will realize “Heavy” is one capsule of the Black Southern experience at large.
Be sure to take your time with his chapter “Contraction,” where Laymon reflects on the many book reports his mother assigned him that forged him into the writer he is today. It’s also my personal favorite.