I have read:
* Kindred by Octavia E Butler → I strongly disliked her prose but enjoyed her pacing / she kept my attention
* Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by L. Child → it was in the bibliography of Kindred. I liked this much more than I did Kindred.
I plan to read:
* Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler → Butler’s themes are all on point for me, and she’s got so many cool looking ones… I’m hoping she grows on me
* Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany Jackson → the “X disappeared, and nobody but me seems to notice” trope works for me
* Girl, Woman, Other → I prefer short stories to novels, and this seems to have been very well received
* The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett → the “one sister goes here and becomes X, the other goes there and becomes Y — why and how?” Contrast is interesting to me
by CantSpeakKorean
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NK Jemisin’s “The Broken Earth” trilogy is set in a fantasy-world where geology mages are slaves of the state and apocalypses happen every few generations. Races obviously don’t like up 1:1 in fantasy worlds, but yeah, the protagonist is black.
Rivers Solomon is a black nonbinary dyke, and might not fit your criteria. Most of their protagonists are black. I liked “The Deep” but wasn’t too keen on the pacing with “Sorrowland”.
“Who Lost, I Found” by Eden Royce is a collection of horror stories from Broken Eye books with a Gullah Geechee angle, that I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t got my hands on yet. Might be worth a look if you like horror.
I really enjoy Tiffany Jackson in general and loved The Vanishing Half.
I have a few short story anthologies that definitely include Black women authors: Out There Screaming ed. Jordan Peele and All These Sunken Souls ed. Circe Moskowitz (both horror, the former adult and the latter YA).
For novels: One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite (YA realistic), Me: Moth and Gone Wolf by Amber McBride (YA and middle grade speculative), Jackal by Erin E. Adams (contemporary horror) and The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (historical horror).
*The Mothers* by Brit Bennett
*Transcendent Kingdom* by Yaa Gyasi
*The Hate U Give* by Angie Thomas
The Final Revival of Opal and Nev
Black Cake
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is amazing, and a good entryway into her novels.
Jesmyn Ward is one of my fav contemporary Black authors, and her Salvage the Bones has a female protagonist as does her newest novel Let Us Descend (but I’d start with Salvage the Bones)
And idk if this is what you’re looking for as it’s geared towards younger readers, but One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia is a contemporary coming of age novel surrounding three sisters in Oakland. It was one of my favorites when I was younger and definitely holds up as an adult.
Happy reading!