Hi all!
I’m planning to start a book club that centers women of color, specifically Black and brown women, at my local library. The goal is to read books by and/or about Black or brown female main characters. Fiction or non-fiction is fine, but they must be stand-alone novels.
I’d appreciate recommendations that will generate great discussion, especially for the first meeting. The main (and only) contender right now is “Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-Joo, which is a great recommendation since it’s relevant to the current 4B movement, but as my main goal is to center brown and Black voices, I’d like further recommendations!
by Nizky
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{{The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw}} Amazing short stories
Louise Erdrich, The Sentence
Zadie Smith, White Teeth
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, The House of Rust
Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections
I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Of Women and Salt
I am Malala
Furia
The House on Mango Street
Next Year in Havana
Mexican Gothic
Clap When You Land
Black Leopard Red Wolf
The Marriage Game
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
I loved *A Woman is No Man* by Etaf Rum. But warning, it’s pretty sad 🙁
Other books I’ve enjoyed that may fit the bill:
*Memphis* by Tara Stringfellow
*Home of the Floating Lily* by Silmy Abdullah
*The Boat People by Sharon Bala*
*Tell It to the Trees* by Anita Rau Badami
*The Help* by Kathryn Stockett
*A Thousand Splendid Suns* by Khaled Hosseini
Memoirs and non-fiction:
*The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks* by Rebecca Skloot
*The Girl in the Middle: Growing Up Between Black and White, Rich and Poor* by Anais Granofsky
*A Piece of Cake* by Cupcake Brown
*Wild Girls* by Tiya Miles
*Girl* by Jamaica Kincaid
– Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler). Dystopian cli-fi.
– Girl, Woman, Other (Bernardine Evaristo). Literary fiction. Fair warning, this book is long.
– The Hacienda (Isabel Cañas). Horror.
EDIT: Parable of the Sower is technically book one of two in a series, but you can definitely read it as a standalone!
You can’t really go wrong with any of Toni Morrison’s novels.
The Book Of Negros by Lawrence Hill an epic read! Historical fiction
– Wahala by Nikki May
– Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
– Dances by Nicole Cuffy
– The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
– Kaikeyi by Vishnavi Patel
– My Sister, the Serial Killer by Onyikan Braitwaite
– The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory