Picture book
A is for Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
An illustrated alphabet introduces places, people, and traditions in Black Appalachia.
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33 books
Poetry
Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
Walker’s poems insist on the visibility of Black lives in the language and geography of Appalachia.
Essays
All About Love
bell hooks
hooks examines love as a practice that can shape personal relationships and public life.
Picture book
Amazing Grace
Mary Hoffman
A child determined to play Peter Pan challenges the limits others place on her imagination.
Essays
Belonging: A Culture of Place
bell hooks
Essays on place, race, land, and return connect hooks’s Kentucky roots with a wider ethic of belonging.
Biography
Black Ballerinas
Misty Copeland
Illustrated profiles introduce dancers whose careers expanded possibilities for Black ballet artists.
Picture book
Firebird
Misty Copeland
A young dancer imagines what practice and encouragement might make possible.
Picture book
Hair Love
Matthew A. Cherry
A father and daughter work through the everyday adventure of styling her hair.
Poetry
Head Off & Split
Nikky Finney
Finney’s poems move between family, public history, and the language that mediates what people see.
History
How the Word Is Passed
Clint Smith
Visits to historic sites and memorials ask how public institutions tell the story of American slavery.
Memoir
Life in Motion
Misty Copeland
Copeland recounts discovering ballet and finding her way through its demanding institutions.
Picture book
Mae Among the Stars
Roda Ahmed
A young Mae Jemison imagines herself in space with encouragement from her family.
Memoir
Men We Reaped
Jesmyn Ward
Ward links the deaths of five men she knew to the pressures shaping life in her Mississippi community.
Memoir
Mo' Meta Blues
Questlove, Ben Greenman
A musician and bandleader remembers a life shaped by records, influences, and collaborations.
Essays
Music Is History
Questlove
Questlove uses records and listening memories to consider how music registers public change.
Graphic novel
New Kid
Jerry Craft
A young cartoonist navigates a new private school and the assumptions classmates and adults make about him.
Memoir
Nina Simone's Gum
Warren Ellis
A small object saved after a Nina Simone performance becomes a meditation on musical memory.
Poetry
Perfect Black
Crystal Wilkinson
Poems consider color, family, girlhood, and the landscapes that shaped Wilkinson’s sense of home.
Memoir
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts
Crystal Wilkinson
Recipes and recollections connect Appalachian foodways with the stories of Black women across generations.
Poetry
Rice
Nikky Finney
Rice ties family stories and foodways to Black Southern histories of labor and survival.
Fiction
Salvage the Bones
Jesmyn Ward
A family in coastal Mississippi prepares for Katrina as a teenage narrator pieces together what it means to care for others.
Fiction
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward
A Mississippi family road trip brings the living into contact with histories that refuse to stay buried.
Essays
South to America
Imani Perry
Perry travels across the South to consider how the region’s places and contradictions shape the nation.
Picture book
Sulwe
Lupita Nyong'o
A girl’s encounter with a story about night helps her see her own skin differently.