With new writers emerging every day, there are so many voices we have yet to encounter. This page will serve as a space to share the stories of Black voices– those we know and consider canon as well as up-and-coming authors. I update this page frequently, so if you encounter a Black writer, please pass along their texts. I’d love to feature them for your classmates.
Click through each author’s website, view their social accounts, and join the conversation about their books. Have fun!
Goodreads Synopsis: We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.
Goodreads Synopsis: From award-winning and USA Today bestselling author Kosoko Jackson comes his adult fantasy debut, a stand-alone novel blending of art history, time- and globe-hopping adventure, and dark horror and fantasy about ten cursed paintings and the lengths people will go to collect them, destroy them…or be destroyed.
Goodreads Synopsis: A thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Renée Watson.
In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writes
about her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender.
Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections of her childhood in Portland, tender odes to the Black women in her life, and urgent calls for Black girls to step into their power.
Black Girl You Are Atlas encourages young readers to embrace their future with a strong sense of sisterhood and celebration. With full-color art by celebrated fine artist Ekua Holmes throughout, this collection offers guidance and is a gift for anyone who reads it.
Goodreads Synopsis: Celeste English and Ronnie Frazier are sisters, but they couldn’t be more different. Celeste is a doctor’s wife, living a perfect and elegant life. But secretly, she is terrified: her marriage is falling apart and her need to control the people around her threatens to alienate her entire family. And Celeste allows no one to see how vulnerable she really is. Ronnie is an actress, living in New York. Her life, however, is a lie: she has no money, has no home, and her life is held together by “chewing gum, paper clips, and spit,” though she wants everyone to think that her life is one of high glamour and budding fame. When their father dies, the sisters inherit a house in Prosper, North Carolina. Their mother, Della, is adamant that they forget about going there and dredging up the past. Because Della has secrets she’d rather not see come to light-secrets and heartbreak she’s kept from everyone for years. Neither Ronnie, Celeste, nor Della realize just what their trip to Prosper will uncover and they must discover for themselves who they really are, who they really love, and what the future holds for them. Far From The Tree is a novel that asks the questions: can the past ever truly remain hidden? Can mothers and daughters put aside their usual roles long enough to get to really know each other? Long enough to see they each have felt the love, loss, heartache and joy that they share as women. And can two strangers realize that they are, and always will be, sisters?
Ms. Conti's Literature Lab 
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