Memoirs to Celebrate Black History
Black History Month began in the United States in 1970 as a way to remember and honor the prominent figures and events in the history of the African Diaspora. Here in 2019, we have the opportunity to read about the legacy of slavery in America straight from these writers who have lived with it and bravely, candidly, and beautifully shared their experience in these memoirs.
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell L. More
When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death.
Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive
Call Me American: A Memoir by Abdi Nor Iftin
Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it suddenly became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Desperate to make a living, Abdi used his language skills to post secret dispatches to NPR and the Internet, which found an audience of worldwide listeners. But as life in Somalia grew more dangerous, Abdi was left with no choice but to flee to Kenya as a refugee. In an amazing stroke of luck, Abdi won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America did not come easily.
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay
Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.
In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life.
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, "I had to learn what it means to love blackness," a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.
In a time when nearly all institutions claim to value "diversity" in their mission statements, I'm Still Here is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words.
No Disrespect by Sister Souljah
In No Disrespect, Sister Souljah, America's most notorious hip-hop rebel, offers a stunningly candid book about how young black girls can grow up with their integrity intact in a very tough world. Here is a gripping and searing account of the ferocious struggle for sexul identity and autonomy that confronts every African American—especially women. Sister Souljah reveals herself to be a writer whose gifts of language are prodigious. In No Disrespect, she has written a work of vast power, fury, wisdom, and love.
Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward
Ward, the first in her family to escape the rural poverty and racism of small-town DeLisle, Mississippi, reflects on the loss of five young Black men of DeLisle, including her beloved brother. Over the course of four years, their lives are cut short by drugs, violence, and suicide. She travels back in time to their early years to find the roots of destructive patterns, and reflects on the many factors that conspire against black men in the South.
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele, with a foreword by Angela Davis
From one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement comes a poetic memoir and reflection on humanity. Necessary and timely, Patrisse Cullors' story asks us to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love.
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful. In this meaningful, empowering account of survival, strength, and resilience, Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele seek to change the culture that declares innocent black life expendable.
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Book descriptions taken from the NYPL catalog.
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