Black History Month 2023: New Nonfiction

"From the National-Book-Award-winning poet who changed the way we see the Black female figure, a continuation of that journey in a genre-bending coming together of poem and photography, toward a new definition of human migration. Twenty-five years ago, after her grandmother's death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a stunning collection of photographs under her bed. The poetry that she marries to these vivid daily images of 20th-century Black joy and...

"The definitive biography of Chuck Berry, legendary performer and inventor of rock and roll and author of classics like 'Johnny B. Goode,' 'Maybellene,' 'You Never Can Tell,' and 'Roll Over Beethoven.' Chuck Berry long ago earned a reputation as a person who gave nothing away. He could be a difficult man to be around off-stage, and was extremely closed off in interviews. There was the work, and then there was the man, who was not easily given to describing...

Longlisted for the Reading the West Book Awards
NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction
With journalistic skill, heart, and hope, Requiem for the Massacre reckons with the tension in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one hundred years after the most infamous act of racial violence in American history
More than one hundred years ago, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, perpetrated a massacre against its Black residents....

"A collection of letters exchanged between African Americans during the Civil War era"--

From the inception of the nation to the present day, Black women have transformed their pain into progress and have been at the front lines of America's political, social, and economic struggles. Combining profiles and in-depth interviews with influential movers and shakers, Ryan explores the challenges Black women endure and shares the lessons they've learned. She also chronicles the hurdles she faced in her own journey to becoming a White House...

"Award-winning photographer Devin Allen juxtaposes his remarkable photos of today's Black Lives Matter protests alongside his inspiration, Black activist Gordon Parks' photos of the Civil Rights Movement and writing from influential authors and poets to create a vision of the past and future of Black activism and leadership in America. Devin Allen has devoted much of the past five years to documenting the generationally-defining protests of the Black...

"A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more, with biographical reflections, all created and curated by an award-winning graphic designer"--

"Hafizah Augustus Geter disrupts the myths of America's origins and contemporary America through her experiences as the queer Nigerian-born daughter of a Muslim Nigerian woman and a Black American man from a Southern Baptist family in Jim Crow Alabama. A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, The Black Period follows Hafizah on a journey that tells her at every turn she's not worthy. At the same time, she manages to sidestep...

Angela Y. Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black liberation, freminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements. Fifty years after its original publication, the author revisits her life's story in print.

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post
“A must-read for anyone who dares...