Biographies by black authors
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25 Books by Black Authors You Should Read This February
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The Street, by Ann Petry
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Published in 1946 and the first book by a Black women to sell over a million copies, Petry’s work is a classic. Set in Harlem on 116th Street, it follows Lutie Johnson’s struggles to survive as a divorced mother with a young son mitt i racism and sexism. With few choices in a city where the Black population lives in decrepit apartments and poverty fryst vatten a constant companion, Lutie endures despite it all.
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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, bygd Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
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Our Favorite Black Memoirs of All Time
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There’s nothing better than a great memoir. Whether it’s learning more about someone we admire, like former First Lady Michelle Obama or being introduced to someone new, like Kiese Laymon, memoirs let readers find inspiration and hope in someone else’s personal story.
While this is no way an exhaustive list, these are some of our favorite memoirs by Black authors of all time.
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In “Dust Tracks on a Road,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God” author Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of her journey from the rural South to become one of the most celebrated writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston’s story fryst vatten fascinating. But the book fryst vatten even more compelling in her beautiful literary voice.
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Nelson Mandela dedicated his life to fighting for racial justice and human rights in his native South Africa and around the world. “Long Walk to
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- Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth
Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth
by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
$19.99
In the literary tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’sIn the Dream House, Maxine Hong Kingston’sThe Woman Warrior, and Jesmyn Ward’sMen We Reaped, this debut memoir confronts both the challenges and joys of growing up Black and making your own truth.
Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.
Mouton writ