“In diversity there is beauty and strength” – Maya Angelou.
October marks Black History Month in the U.K., but we should make it a duty to recognise and support great Black women writers in our everyday lives beyond this. Recently praise for Black writers has increased, as modern methods of dissemination such as the Internet and social media have provided previously marginalised social groups with a platform.
Last week saw the first Black female Man Booker prize winner, Bernadine Evaristo, whose recent piece for the Guardian explores the history of Black writers in literature, memoir and poetry, as well as writers that inspired her. She warns against complacency in thinking that this increase in Black writers getting more exposure in the industry marks permanent progress, stating that “the future won’t look after itself […] today’s boom is not the result of a steady, incremental transition. It has exploded out of a void”.
Her Campus presents to you our list of Black women writers you absolutely must read in your lifetime, with a book recommendation for each to introduce you to their work.
1. Toni Morrison
The late Nobel Prize-winning novelist and emeritus professor of literature at Princeton University revolutionised literature in terms of Black identity in America. Across her career, she sought to question what race has done to the American mind. In the closing essay of the collection Playing in the Dark, she writes: “My project is an effort to avert the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject; from the described and imagined to the describers and the imaginers; from the serving to the served”.
Black lives are the central subject of her writing, highlighting the disjunct between how Blackness is depicted in the canon of American literature – that is, from white impressions and fantasies of what constitutes the Black experience – versus the reality.
Book recommendation for this author: Beloved (1987)
2. Chiamamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose work ranges from fiction to short stories and nonfiction. She gained great public acclaim after her 2012 Ted Talk ‘We Should All Be Feminists’, that was later adapted into a book-length essay of the same name (if you haven’t already watched this Ted talk – do it here).
In her work she offers a fresh perspective on what feminism needs to be in the twenty-first century: “one rooted in inclusion and awareness”. She clearly and concisely explains in little over 60 pages how certain attitudes towards feminists have led to negative connotations around the word feminism in everyday parlance. She goes on to highlight these misconceptions and reminds us that feminism is simply advocating equality, and ultimately concludes that we should all be feminist, whatever our gender.
Book recommendation for this author: We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
3. Maya Angelou
It is widely acknowledged that Maya Angelou was an icon of Black literature and thought. Throughout her lifetime she made an impact as an author, poet, civil rights activist, actress, dancer and screenwriter. Her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. Her incantatory prose conveys the oppression she experienced and continues to be a valuable insight into the Black experience today.
Book recommendation for this author: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
4. Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston is perhaps best-known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which recounts the story of a young Black woman who is trying to find herself in the 1930s. She has also written a collection of short stories called Mules and Men, which is a collection that explores her experience on gathering research on African American folklore. During her time at several universities, beyond graduating with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, she also took classes in Greek, Spanish, English and public speaking.
After her death in 1960, she was buried in an unmarked grave and her literary works were ordered to be burned. Despite a friend of her’s who stopped the fire in time to salvage some important work of hers (which can now be found in the University of Florida libraries), she serves as yet another example of how Black lives and contributions to society have been erased from history. Unfortunately, it was only after her death that her oeuvre received the well-deserved recognition she worked so hard to achieve in her lifetime.
Book recommendation for this author: Their Eyes Were Watching God (2006)
5. Candice Carty-Williams
Williams is a journalist, screenwriter and author of the Sunday Times bestselling Queenie. Her debut novel has been described as a modern day Bridget Jones, (although this is not to reduce it to a ‘chick flick’!). It tells the story of Queenie Jenkins, a 25 year-old Jamaican British women living in London, trying to straddle both Jamaican and British heritage and feeling she doesn’t fit into either. Whilst deeply profound and moving at times, conveying the reality of a Black millennial woman’s experience today, elsewhere her humour had me laughing out loud as she navigated love, work, and identity.
Book recommendation for this author: Queenie (2019)
Listen to this interview with Williams about Queenie shortly after its release on the podcast The High Low.
6. Reni Eddo-Lodge
Reni Eddo-Lodge is an award-winning journalist and author who writes about feminism and exposing structural racism. She sparked a national conversation with her 2017 text Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, and the book is nothing short of a seminal masterpiece for teaching about institutionalised racism’s ongoing presence in society and how we need to counter this.
Book recommendation for this author: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (2017)
7. Bernadine Evaristo
Bernadine Evaristo is a longstanding advocate for the inclusion of writers and artists of colour. As mentioned above, Evaristo’s Man Booker Prize win with Margaret Atwood this year, whilst controversial, is great news for Black writers’ work finding its way into the mainstream and paves the way in erasing the impression that African and Caribbean literature is its own subgenre. Since the joint win, Evaristo has more than doubled her lifetime sales in five days with Girl, Woman, Other. The novel follows the lives of 12 individuals between the ages of 19 and 93 living in Britain, predominantly female and black.
Book recommendation for this author: Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
8. Diana Evans
Diana Evans is a former dancer, and as a journalist and critic has contributed to Time Magazine, Marie Claire, The Independent, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Her third novel, Ordinary People, a gripping and evocative depiction of family life, has been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019. In an interview with The Guardian, she laments how “racial history lays so heavily on black people – slavery, racism – I don’t want my characters to be hidden by that”.
Book recommendation for this author: Ordinary People (2018)
9. Funmi Fetto
For many years Black women have been excluded from the media’s mainstream beauty coverage. Funmi Fetto is a beauty editor for U.K. Vogue and writes weekly columns for The Observer. Her book, Palette: The Beauty Bible for Women of Colour, gives tips and advice on hair, skin care, make-up and body products for darker skin. Her other work for Vogue is comprehensive, wide-ranging and insightful, and has changed the conversation around Black women’s place in the beauty and cosmetics industries.
Book recommendation for this author: Palette: The Beauty Bible for Women of Colour (2019)
10. Oyinkan Braithwaite
Oyinkan Braithwaite lives in Lagos, Nigeria, having graduated from Kingston University in Creative Writing and Law. Currently a freelance writer and editor, her globally acclaimed debut novel My Sister, The Serial Killer, considers sibling relationships, Lagos, love triangles, and so much more. The idiosyncrasies of her style offer a fresh take on crime novels, interposing comedy between the typical menacing thriller tone – this one will be hard to put down! This book is Waterstone’s October Thriller of the Month, so why not pop in, buy the book and enjoy it with a free hot drink.
Book recommendation for this author: My Sister, The Serial Killer (2019).