African Diaspora Resources: Non-Fiction

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys.

Up until 1968, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. That all changed with the Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America's first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their legacy erased--until now.

Author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse.

Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison, this is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist.

Executive chef Kwame Onwuachi shares details about his life and career, from his childhood in New York, Nigeria, and Lousiana to his recognition as a top chef, and reflects on African-American and American cooking.

This graphic memoir offers a deeply personal meditation on the 'the talk' parents must have with Black children about racism and the brutality that often accompanies it, a ritual attempt to keep kids safe and prepare them for a world that--to paraphrase Toni Morrison--does not love them.

For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of?

A self-help memoir based on the author's life and NBA career written in the form of letters.

From Afro Sheen to Theaster Gates and from Soul Train to Chance the Rapper, Black Chicago draws sustenance from a culture rooted in self-determination, aspiration, and hustle. In Energy Never Dies, Ayana Contreras embarks on a journey to share the implausible success stories and breathtaking achievements of Black Chicago's artists and entrepreneurs.

The animating idea of The 1619 Project is that our national narrative is more accurately told if we begin not on July 4, 1776, but in late August of 1619, when a ship arrived in Jamestown bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric and unprecedented system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's very origin. The 1619 Project tells this new origin story, placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country

A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view--whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and 'reverse racism.

A collection of essays taking aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women.

An Empowering and Celebratory Portrait of Black Women-from Josephine Baker to Aunt Viv to Cardi B. In 2013, film and culture critic Zeba Blay was one of the first people to coin the viral term #carefreeblackgirls on Twitter. As she says, it was "a way to carve out a space of celebration and freedom for Black women online." In this collection of essays, Blay expands on this initial idea by delving into the work and lasting achievements of influential Black women in American culture--writers, artists, actresses, dancers, hip-hop stars--whose contributions often come in the face of bigotry, misogyny, and stereotypes.

Exposes a world of confined potential and supports the growing movement to address the policies, practices, and cultural illiteracy that push countless students out of school and into unhealthy, unstable, and often unsafe futures.

Black Futures is a collection of work--art, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more--that tells the story of the world that black artists, high and low, are producing today.

Erica Martin's debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement-from the well-documented events that shaped the nation's treatment of Black people, beginning with the 'Separate but Equal' ruling-and introduces lesser-known figures and moments that were just as crucial to the Movement and our nation's centuries-long fight for justice and equality

Presents a poem that looks at a journey of an African-American girl from girlhood to womanhood.

"Harold Green III . . . [pays tribute to a diverse assortment of] Black men . . . including Tyler Perry, Barry Jenkins, Billy Porter, Chance the Rapper, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and John Legend--and celebrates their achievements"

The author reflects on her childhood in the 1950s and her development as an artist and young woman through fifty poems that consider such influences as the Civil Rights Movement, the "Red Scare" era, and the feminist movement.

Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewings narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality.

The presidential inaugural poet--and new voice in American poetry--presents a collection of poems that includes the poem read at the inauguration of the forty-sixth President of the United States.

Presents a poem in which the author inspires kids to dream, even though dreams may take time and involve countless struggles.

Gathers together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories to examine black people's connection to the American land from Emancipation to today.