Hello, I’m searching for Black history books by Black authors, but Google keeps showing me white authors about Black history. I would really like to learn more about the history and their experiences, but written BY BLACK AUTHORS. I would love books like a diary sort of books but a normal history book would be great too.
by Fearless-Maize-3259
9 Comments
[I have an older list here for nonfiction about black people written by black women.](https://www.reddit.com/r/blackladies/comments/1kagmyp/what_are_your_favorite_books_by_black_women/mpp8vw4/) (Since then, I’ve read *Njinga of Angola* by Linda M. Heywood, and I would really recommend it as well, great book!) I’m not sure exactly what you mean by a “diary” sort of book, but Mary Seacole and Nancy Prince’s books are both memoirs, so that might be the kind of thing you’re looking for?
I can give some recommendations for history books by black men as well if you’re interested; one I read recently and enjoyed was *A Black Queer History of the United States* by C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost.
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley by David Waldstreicher, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Anything by S.A Crosby Start with his best book, Blacktop Wasteland
Black AF History by Michael Harriot is amazing. Super in-depth and also incredibly funny.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Born in Blackness, by Howard French.
He’s not a historian, but a journalist, and it shows, but it’s still an awfully plausible tale. What we’ve been calling the “Age of Discovery” should really have been called the “Scramble for Africans.” Because it was really about the slaves. ….well, and the gold.
I posted about it [here,](https://www.reddit.com/r/real_anti_racism/comments/1pu16j5/born_in_blackness_by_howard_w_french_2021/) and I also did four followup posts on the book, footnote summaries: his basic points, that should have and maybe were footnoted, and there was a bit more review of the book in the first one, [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/real_anti_racism/comments/1q0i367/scramble_for_africans_1/)
I think the 1619 project book is genuinely great
The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson) 🙂
Three suggestions, not diary-like, but great books all:
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is a well-written and very engaging book about the Great Migration.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Michelle Alexander. More sociology than history, but includes some history.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington.