Books
During Black History Month, Get to Know These Women Writers
February is Black History Month, a time to honor African-American heritage and achievement. Though critics of the observance voice concern over separating African-American history from American history, it's a great reminder for everyone to explore black writers’ work, which is often left out of literary dialogue. And that's just no good, because the well is so rich. Here, we're turning the lens to the ladies. While some female authors have become syllabi mainstays and book club favorites — Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou — there are many lesser-known but just as talented authors (like Sonia Sanchez, pictured). Put these women on your radar circa now.
image: Base Camp Creative
Edwidge Danticat
A 2009 recipient of the famous McArthur Genius Grant and winner of several prestigious literary awards, Danticat is on her way to reaching Toni Morrison levels of prominence. Breath, Eyes, Memory is her semi-autobiographical novel that follows Sophie, a Haitian girl who moves to America when she’s 12. The book deals with themes of family identity and belonging, but it is Danticat’s work on sexuality and abuse that will move you most.
Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness casts a critical eye on the supposed post-racial Obama era, and argues that the mass incarceration of black men is a modern tool of racial control. Alexander’s background as a law professor is evident; her work is thoroughly researched and excellently argued.
Carlene Hatcher Polite
Polite only published two novels before her death, but she crammed a lifetime of talent into them. The Flagellants examines the oppression and abuse in one couples relationship and uses it as a representation of racism in America. Polite writes in a dizzying stream of consciousness that forces you to confront your own views on race, relationships, and the very structure of narrative.
Jewelle Gomez
Gomez is well known for her activism — she helped found GLAAD — but her writing is equally as impressive. Her Gilda Stories follows a black lesbian vampire over the course of 200 years. Her prose is poetic and the story is a moving combination of fantasy and commentary on the black woman’s American experience.
Andrea Lee
Lee’s work often centers on African-American women who have gone abroad, providing a unique perspective on American notions of race. Her most recent novel, Lost Hearts in Italy, is tantalizing in a Flaubertian way, but it’s Sarah Philips — a poignant collection of vignettes on one woman’s search for identity — that should be required reading for all women.
Ann Petry
Following Lutie Johnson’s life as a single mother in 1940s Harlem, The Street’s illustration of the cycle of poverty and racial injustice is heartbreaking. Petry’s writing is deft and illuminating; as Lutie attempts to escape poverty and physical abuse while providing for her son, you’ll start to wonder what’s really changed in the years since the book was published.
Diane McKinney-Whetstone
McKinney-Whetstone’s Blues Dancing is the engrossing tale of a young woman caught up in a passionate love affair. McKinney-Whetstone’s protagonist, Verdi, is an all too relatable college freshman who falls in love with a bad boy and the exciting, drug fueled lifestyle he leads. Other choice titles include Tumbling and Leaving Cecil Street.
Nella Larsen
Though one of the Harlem Renaissances most noted writers, Larsen only published two books before her death. Her second novel, Passing, focuses on the practice of racial passing and, in the case of her protagonists, the fatal consequences that can come from it.
Sonia Sanchez
A playwright, poet and activist, Sanchez developed the first African-American Studies department at a U.S. college. Her poetry is powerful and haunting; Does Your House Have Lions? is especially so, as it peers into her family’s struggle with her brother’s death from AIDS.
Veronica Chambers
Chambers’s memoir, Mama’s Girl, was praised by just about every major publication upon its release, and with good reason: it’s an honest and affecting read. Her shorter works are thought provoking, too — track down a copy of the Listen Up! anthology, and flip immediately to her essay “Betrayal Feminism,” where Chamers writes about the exclusion of black women from American feminism.
