hey guys!! looking for some insightful and inspiring books about black people in performing arts, specifically acting or music. it can be fiction, nonfiction, anything! just wanna expand my horizons. self help books are welcome too!!!
im currently reading “What Makes the Great Great: Strategies for Extraordinary Achievement” by Dennis Kimbro. very insightful and interesting read! i plan to read james baldwin’s “the fire next time” right after, but i really want to dig deeper!
let me know your thoughts and recommendations! 💕
by pinkpineapple030
3 Comments
I feel like Hanif Abdurraqib’s *A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance* is exactly what you’re looking for!
I recently finished *Black Bottom Saints*, by Alice Randall, and loved it.
The protagonist of the book – Ziggy Johnson, a lightly fictionalised version of a real guy who ran a real school – runs a dance and performing arts school for the black children of early to mid 20th century Detroit, and many of the people he highlights in his “saints book” that he’s writing are black creatives. Writers, comedians, dancers, musicians…he has a keen eye for what he would call “sepia excellence”
The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby