Black women writers and historical fiction
Explore powerful historical fiction by Black women writers. Discover captivating stories that highlight resilience, culture, and untold histories in this curated list of must-read books.
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Red River
by Lalita Tademy
The lives of three generations of two African-American families intertwine in the aftermath of the Civil War as newly freed slaves struggle to build new lives in The Bottom, a poor settlement just down Red River from Colfax, Louisiana.
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Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Re-creates the 1960s struggle of Biafra to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, following the intertwined lives of the characters through a military coup, the Biafran secession, and the resulting civil war.
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Unburnable
by Marie-Elena John
Set partly in contemporary Washington, D.C., and post-World War II Dominica, this debut novel deftly intertwines the cultures of blacks in the United States and the West Indies as an extraordinary multigenerational family saga unfolds.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. “A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times
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I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
by Maryse Condé
Blending the fictional with the factual, this highly praised novel ranges from the warm shores of seventeenth-century Barbados to the harsh realities of the slave trade, and the cold customs of Puritanical New England. It tells the story of Tituba, the only Black victim of the Salem witch trials and in doing so recalls a life of extraordinary experiences and mystical powers. Foreword by Angela Davis. Winner of France's prestigious Grand Prix Literaire de la Femme.
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The Salt Roads
by Nalo Hopkinson
- The Salt Roads was published in Warner hardcover (0-446-53302-5) in 11/03 and received rave reviews. - Nalo Hopkinson made her debut with Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), winning the Aspect First Novel Contest and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. - The author's previous book, Skin Folk (Aspect, 2001), won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, was named Recommended Fiction for 2002 by Black Issues Book Review, and was named a New York Times Best book of the Year. Hopkinson's Midnight Robber (Aspect, 2000), a New York Times Recommended Book of Summer 2000, received an Honorable Mention for the Casa de las Americas Prize. It was a finalist for the Nubula Award for Best Novel, the Hugo Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award.
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The Good House
by Tananarive Due
Award-winning author Due's spine tingling tale of supernatural suspense "weaves a stronger net than ever" (Kirkus Reviews") as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from the forces of evil.
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The Dew Breaker
by Edwidge Danticat
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "brilliant book, undoubtedly the best one yet by an enormously talented writer” (The Washington Post Book World), about love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. In this award-winning, bestselling work of fiction that moves between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, we meet an unusual man who is harboring a vital, dangerous secret. He is a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him, and his secret is slowly revealed. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”—or torturer—is an unforgettable story from one of America’s most essential writers.
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Abeng
by Michelle Cliff
A lyrical coming-of-age story and a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica Originally published in 1984, this critically acclaimed novel is the story of Clare Savage, a light-skinned, twelve-year-old, middle-class girl growing up in Jamaica in the 1950s. As she tries to find her own identity and place in her culture, Clare carries the burden of her mixed heritage. There are the Maroons, who used the conch shellathe "abeng"ato pass messages as they fought against their English enslavers. And there is her white great-great-grandfather, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. In Clareas struggle to reconcile the conflicting legacies of her own personal lineage, esteemed Caribbean author Michelle Cliff dramatically confronts the cultural and psychological violence inflicted upon the island and its people by colonialism.