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To celebrate Black History Month, we’re highlighting a selection of recent titles that run the gamut of genre and content, but all are by Black authors and recommended by Black writers and critics.

This is just a small sampling; happily, there are far too many exciting books to include them all on one list. Many of these books are debuts, but we’re delighted that each list starts with a new publication of underappreciated work by a legendary Black woman writer. We can’t think of a better way to honor this important observance.

Fiction and Poetry

“A puzzle of a story, then — a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ’experiment’ she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader.” Zadie Smith, award-winning, best-selling author of White Teeth

“The Violin Conspiracy reminds all of us that dreams are worth pursuing, no matter the obstacles in front of us. The struggle to follow your heart is always the same — and this novel inspires us to take the chance, make the leap, and dare to be better. This was a wonderful read.” Misty Copeland New York Times bestselling author of Life in Motion and principal dancer, American Ballet Theatre

“Don't Cry For Me is a beautiful, thoughtful novel about living and dying. It’s the coming of age story reimagined. As he did with The Coming, Daniel Black has exploded boundaries and rendered binaries obsolete. His language is deceptively simple. What looks like a letter from a father to his son turns out to be a novel about transformation and identity and family and love and land and history and ancestry and reading and thinking and learning and being. The seams of this narrative never show. That is the skill and care of craftsmanship.” Dana Williams, Professor of African American Literature and Chair Department of English, Howard University

“From the very first page of Nobody's Magic, when I could hear the voice of the protagonist as if she was sitting next to me, I knew I was in the hands of a confident, one-of-a-kind storyteller. Here is a world full of complex, memorable characters who feel real, with stories unlike any I’ve read before. Destiny O. Birdsong has a gift; how lucky we are as readers to benefit from it.” Angela Flournoy, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Turner House

“At a certain point, dark social satire bleeds into horror. That can be powerful, but it can also very easily miss its target. Percival Everett’s new novel The Trees hits just the right mark. It’s a racial allegory grounded in history, shrouded in mystery, and dripping with blood. An incendiary device you don’t want to put down.” Carole V. Bell, cultural critic and communication scholar focusing on media, politics and identity

“Gayl Jones conjures with deep intimacy and immediacy a brutal world that is centuries past but fully alive with spirit and mystery. Page after breathtaking page, her prose is intricate, mesmerizing, and endlessly inventive and subversive. Palmares is absolutely stunning!” Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“There is a special pleasure in discovering a voice that is vital and unlike anything else you’ve known before. Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is such a voice. One that is necessary and brimming with both heart and imagination, Johnson’s My Monticello is a beautiful debut work of art.” Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black

“Exquisite and expansive, Black Cake took ahold of me from the first page and didn’t let go. This is a novel about the formation and reformation of a family, and the many people, places, and events that can shape our inheritances without our knowing. A gripping, poignant debut from an important, new voice.” Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours

“Brilliant! A fresh telling of a story we think we already know, Yonder is wholly engrossing and expertly executed. With beautiful language laced with raw honesty, Jabari Asim has written a novel that I know will forever impact the way I think of the merciless nature of slavery and the enduring power of love.” Sadeqa Johnson, internationally bestselling author of Yellow Wife

“I’m so thankful Kianna Alexander has magnificently resurrected the life and work of Josephine Leary, an entrepreneurial warrior whose guiding light is needed now more than ever. Leary’s brilliant legacy in the business world, as richly depicted by Alexander in Carolina Built, made me cry, clap, and cheer, leaving me fully empowered to follow the pioneering path Leary forged for all to follow.” Piper Huguley, author of Sweet Tea

“David Wright Faladé’s thrilling, revelatory Black Cloud Rising turns Civil War history upside down and makes America give up one of its darkest secrets — that our racial tension is literally a family feud.” James Hannaham, Pen/Faulkner Award-winning author of Delicious Foods and Pilot Imposter

“In a book that is balancing history, trauma, rage, and joy as brilliantly as Reparations Now! is, there must be something beyond language that grips and holds a reader in place. For this, I am thankful for the generosity of this book, how the poems are shaped, how they challenge the eye as well as the ear, with rich payoffs at the end. I am thankful for the population of this book — how it bursts with ancestors and homages, places rendered so stunningly that they are present and touchable. What a massive undertaking, and what an achievement.” Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America

“Gorman veers away from the aspirational and hopeful tone of her famous inaugural poem...to mine pandemic-induced grief and reflection. There is anger, confusion, and sadness in these poems, but there is also a great deal of history and documentation.” Joshunda Sanders, author of The Beautiful Darkness: A Handbook for Orphans

Nonfiction

“This expansive volume, in five parts, revises existing perceptions of Hurston, like her well-known opposition to school integration and Richard Wright’s objection to her use of African American vernacular. Essays...help to clarify Hurston’s previously misunderstood positions, rooting them in her deep appreciation for African American language and culture, her unquestionable commitment to people of color and their welfare on American soil.” Trudier Harris, The New York Times Book Review

“Black Joy is a necessary testimony on the magic and beauty of our capacity to live and love fully and out loud.” Kerry Washington

“Rembert’s art expresses the legacy of slavery, the trauma of lynching, and the anguish of racial hierarchy and white supremacy while illuminating a resolve to fight oppression and injustice. He has the ability to reveal truths about the human struggle that are transcendent, to evoke an understanding of human dignity that is broad and universal.” Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy and founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative

“Black Food is simply gorgeous. Mouthwatering, visually stunning, and intoxicating, Black Food tells a global story of creativity, endurance, and imagination that was sustained in the face of dispersal, displacement, and oppression.” Imani Perry, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University

“In the tradition of native daughters and sons returning home and cataloging the journey, Imani Perry undertakes an exploration of and meditation on the many Souths that make up the American southland. Part pilgrimage, part elegy and clarion call, South to America is wide-ranging, associative and seamlessly woven — an ambitious sweep of history, culture, language. Perry’s intellect is capacious. Moving deftly between registers, she proves to be an insightful and compelling guide.” Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive

“...expands on the groundbreaking work with added nuance and new contributions by poets like Tracy K. Smith, writers including Kiese Laymon, and historians such as Anthea Butler.” Stephanie Sendaula, Associate Editor at Library Journal

“We need Sheryll Cashin’s scholarship to make sense of the racial inequalities that mar every urban community, and we need her vision to guide us to a more equal society. Illuminating, compassionate, and engrossing... an instant classic.” Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

“Blay is a talent, mixing an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, past and present, with incisive commentary on race and gender and the unsurpassed wit of Zora Neale Hurston. A passionate, beautiful writer, Blay leaves me cackling during her much-needed, under-heard sermons.” Janet Mock, New York Times-bestselling author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty

“In a voice that is equal parts clear, unflinching and hopeful, Kimberly Jones fills in the missing pieces to the puzzle of Black American economic disparity. So much of the truth has been (purposely) hidden in the dark, but Kimberly brings the light. A must-read for everyone ready to fight for true equity.” Layla F. Saad, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of Me and White Supremacy

“Celeste Headlee is perhaps the greatest evangelist for the power of conversation and Speaking of Race is an accessible, carefully researched, and refreshingly personal exploration into how to have better, more honest discussions about race and racism. An exercise in courage and honesty, this book offers readers an understanding companion as they do the work of facing their biases.” Lindsay Foster Thomas, journalist and host of The ARC of Justice podcast

“William Evans and Omar Holmon reveal the many things at work in the mind of the brown nerd: skepticism, humor, delight, but most of all, love. Man, I wish this book existed when I was a kid.” Marc Bernardin, co-creator of Comixology’s Adora and the Distance and supervising producer of Star Trek: Picard

“Lewis Gordon’s expansive philosophical engagement with the current moment — its histories and globalities, its politics and protests, its visual and sonic cultures — reminds us that the ultimate aim of Black freedom quests is, indeed, universal liberation.” Angela Y. Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Cruz

“An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend.” Ibram X. Kendi

“Born in Blackness is a brilliant reworking of the conventional wisdom about the rise of the modern world. This deeply researched and elegantly written book rewinds the tape past Christopher Columbus, and shows how the tragic relationship between Africa and Europe, which began in the 15th century, created modernity as we know it.” Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family