Black History Month Content Library: Books
This Black History Month, we’re committed to continuing our education internally by refreshing our current content library. Last year, we started our Black History Month library with educational books including How to Be Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi and The Skin We're In by Desmond Cole.
In 2022, we’re focusing our theme on amplifying Black stories. We’ve compiled a short list of books in every category to capture the range of voices and perspectives written by Black authors. Check them out 👇
COMING-OF-AGE: Gutter Child by Jael Richardson
[From HarperCollins] “Set in an imagined world in which the most vulnerable are forced to buy their freedom by working off their debt to society, Gutter Child uncovers a nation divided into the privileged Mainland and the policed Gutter. In this world, Elimina Dubois is one of only 100 babies taken from the Gutter and raised in the land of opportunity as part of a social experiment led by the Mainland government.”
ROMANCE: This One Sky Day by Leone Ross
[From Allen & Unwin] “A sensual meditation on the nature of love and addiction, this dazzling and incisive novel satirises postcolonial society and celebrates oddness.”
FANTASY: The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
[From CBC] “Beatrice is a sorceress who practices her magic in secret, terrified of the day she will marry and be locked into a collar that will cut off her magic to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus, permitted to pursue magic as her calling just as men do. But her family has traveled to the city for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means socialize and negotiate to secure the best marriages.”
MEMOIR: Saga Boy by Antonio Michael Downing
[From Penguin Random House] “Raised by his indomitable grandmother in the lush rainforest of southern Trinidad, Downing, at age 11, is uprooted to Canada when she dies. But to a very unusual part of Canada: he and his older brother are sent to live with his stern, evangelical Aunt Joan, in Wabigoon, a tiny northern Ontario community where they are the only Black children in the town.”
POETRY: The Dyzgraphxst by Canisia Lubrin
[From Penguin Random House] “The Dyzgraphxst presents seven inquiries into selfhood through the perennial figure Jejune.
SLICE OF LIFE: What We All Long For - Dionne Brand
[From Penguin Random House] “What We All Long For follows the overlapping stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto.”
DRAMA: Half-Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan
[From HarperCollins] “From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, the narrator of Half-Blood Blues, musician Sid Griffiths, leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world and into the heart of his own guilty conscience. The bestselling, award-winning Half-Blood Blues is an entrancing, electric story about jazz, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves—and demand of others—in the name of art.”
FAMILY: Reproduction - Ian Williams
[From Penguin Random House] “Felicia and Edgar meet as their mothers are dying. Felicia, a teen from an island nation, and Edgar, the lazy heir of a wealthy German family, come together only because their mothers share a hospital room. When Felicia's mother dies and Edgar's "Mutter" does not, Felicia drops out of high school and takes a job as Mutter's caregiver.”
HISTORICAL: Washington Black - Esi Edugyan
[From Penguin Random House] “Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist.”
