Black History Month is something every elementary school kid becomes familiar with -- along with figures like George Washington Carver (peanuts!). Most adults spend little/no time thinking about African American history, either in the month of February or any other time of year, but we should all view it as a good time to inject our reading with some much-needed diversity. Thus, my picks for great reads to celebrate Black History Month:
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat -- A collection of lovely and stirring short stories from Haitian-American author Danticat. She is woefully underrated and someday will be one very required reading list, so get an early start.
Zami by Audre Lorde -- Lorde was a feminist, Civil Rights leader, and most significantly to me, a librarian. She wrote non-fiction and poetry and all of it is essential.
White Girls by Hilton Als -- Als is a theater critic for the New Yorker but his published books have a much wider breadth than that, and this book of essays is really terrific. He's a really great contemporary cultural critic and I only wish that he wrote more.
Kindred by Octavia Butler -- Full disclosure, I haven't read this yet but it's definitely on my list. Butler is one of the most significant science fiction/fantasy writers and advocates of the genre, and Kindred is about a twentieth-century Black woman who is transported to the early nineteenth century where she meets her ancestors, a white slave-owner and the woman he owned. Butler herself described it as "grim fantasy," but it's bigger and more complex than any genre term.
Open City by Teju Cole -- You will be hearing this name over and over in the coming years, as Cole is one of the most significant African American writers working today, and his stuff has been published in every magazine/literary journal of any importance. Along with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, he is shaping the way the world views Nigeria during a time of significant turbulence and cultural change.
