In recognition of Black History Month, we encourage you to explore the works of influential Black writers and activists. These powerful narratives offer insight into the struggles and resilience of Black communities throughout history, as well as the ongoing pursuit of equity and social justice. By engaging with these voices, both during Black History Month and throughout the year, we can deepen our understanding of Black history and culture, while honoring those who have shaped it.

If you have any questions, or would like to provide feedback related to equity, diversity, and inclusion, please contact Rae-Anne Robinson, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Coordinator at rae-anne.robinson@tbh.net, or the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Steering Committee at tbrhsc.edisteeringcommittee@tbh.net.

Non-Fiction

How to be Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi

In his memoir, Kendi weaves together an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science–including the story of his own awakening to antiracism–bringing it all together in a cogent, accessible form.  https://www.cdnsba.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Reading-on-Anti-Racism-for-Trustees.pdf

So You Want To Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo

In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life.  https://www.amazon.ca/You-Want-Talk-About-Race/dp/1580056776#:~:text=In%20So%20You%20Want%20to,infects%20every%20aspect%20of%20American

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.  https://thenewpress.com/books/new-jim-crow

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more.  https://www.nationalbook.org/books/caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents/

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor – Layla Saad

Updated and expanded from the original workbook (downloaded by nearly 100,000 people), this critical text helps you take the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources, giving you the language to understand racism, and to dismantle your own biases, whether you are using the book on your own, with a book club, or looking to start family activism in your own home.  https://apps.asha.org/eweb/OLSDynamicPage.aspx?Webcode=olsdetails&title=Me+and+White+Supremacy+

The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin

The book includes two essays that were written in the 1960s during a time of segregation between White and Black Americans. In his essays, Baldwin’s purpose was to reach a mass white audience and help them to better understand Black Americans’ struggle for equal rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fire_Next_Time 

Read This to Get Smarter About Race, Class, Gender, Disability, & More – Blair Imani

An approachable guide to being an informed, compassionate, and socially conscious person today—from issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation to disability, class, and beyond—from critically acclaimed historian, educator, and author.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57663076-read-this-to-get-smarter

The 1619 Project – Nikole Hannah-Jones

The 1619 Project, published by the New York Times, retells the history of the U.S. by foregrounding the arrival 401 years ago of enslaved Africans to Virginia. Through a series of essays, photos, and podcasts, The 1619 Project charts the impact of slavery on the country’s founding principles, economy, health care system, racial segregation of neighborhoods and schools, popular music and visual representations. Conversations around The 1619 project have served as a flashpoint for intensive ideological debates about its content and impact. It has been both widely lauded and subjected to critiques from academics, journalists, pundits and policymakers who challenge its accuracy and its interpretation of history.  https://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitiescenter/1619-project

Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates 

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.  https://ta-nehisicoates.com/books/between-the-world-and-me/

A Love Letter to Africville – Amanda Carvery-Taylor 

A Love Letter to Africville is a dazzling compilation of personal stories and photos from former residents of Africville. Much has been written about the struggles of the Africville community, who have been hurt, discriminated against and dispossessed for so long – but Africville is so much more than just the pain. This book recasts the historical narrative to help former residents heal by emphasizing the beautiful and positive aspects of Africville. Amanda Carvery-Taylor organizes captivating stories and stunning photography that express the love and importance of Africville. This book is a warm hug from one of Canada’s most important storied communities. https://www.cbc.ca/books/a-love-letter-to-africville-1.5896839

Fiction

The Sweetness of Water – Nathan Harris 

In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, a profound debut about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever.  In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54404602-the-sweetness-of-water

The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill  

Abducted as a child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea, Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War, registering her name in the historic “Book of Negroes” and eventually travelling back to Africa.  A sweeping story that transports the reader from a tribal African village to a plantation in the southern United States, from the teeming Halifax docks to the manor houses of London, The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female characters in Canadian fiction, one who cuts a swath through a world hostile to her colour and her sex. https://www.lawrencehill.com/the-book-of-negroes

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison 

Song of Solomon, the first African American novel since Native Son to be a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection, blends African American folklore, history, and literary tradition to celebrate the moral and spiritual revival of Macon Dead, the first male protagonist in a Morrison novel, via the guidance and example of his aunt Pilate, another of Morrison’s unconventional, soul-liberating heroines.  https://www.britannica.com/art/African-American-literature/Renaissance-in-the-1970s#ref793894

Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo 

Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood.  Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.  Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41081373-girl-woman-other

Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi 

Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, one of the most anticipated novels of 2020, delivers an intimate portrayal of a Ghanaian family making its way in the contemporary American South, a story as multifaceted as the human brain itself. For Gyasi to write a novel strong enough to follow her highly acclaimed debut Homegoing, she had to create the diamond that is Transcendent Kingdom.  https://therumpus.net/2021/02/03/transcendent-kingdom-by-yaa-gyasi/

Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

There are some novels that tell a great story and others that make you change the way you look at the world. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah is a book that manages to do both. It is ostensibly a love story – the tale of childhood sweethearts at school in Nigeria whose lives take different paths when they seek their fortunes in America and England – but it is also a brilliant dissection of modern attitudes to race, spanning three continents and touching on issues of identity, loss and loneliness.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/15/americanah-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-review