#BlackoutBestsellerList Recommendations

June 16, 2020

56 Brattle Morning

Amistad Books created #BlackoutBestsellerList and #Blackpublishingpower "to demonstrate our power and clout in the publishing industry, Sunday, June 14 to Saturday, June 20, we encourage you to purchase two books written by Black writers. Our goal is to Blackout bestseller lists with Black voices."

In support of this initiative, our staff compiled a list of recommended books by Black authors across genres that we have read and enjoyed.

Fiction

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (New!)
God's Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane
At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid
Rosewater by Tade Thompson
White Teeth and On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Nonfiction

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X
Interventions: A Life in War and Peace by Kofi Annan

Poetry Collections

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde
Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
Quilting by Lucille Clifton (or any of her other collections)
The Bean Eaters by Gwendolyn Brooks
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir by Lucille Clifton

Black poets who've read at the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in recent years

John Murillo, from Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
January Gill O'Neill, from Rewilding
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, from Personal Science
Rage Hezekiah, from Stray Harbor

When purchasing books we recommend reaching out to local bookstores that have online ordering, curbside pickups, or deliveries. We can recommend a few here: