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Too often for Black History Month, we fall into the same pitfalls we do for women’s history and retell the same stories time after time (“did you know Hedy Lamarr was an inventor?” “Mary Shelley created sci-fi!”). What about the people alive now, who are living through the effects of that history, and creating brilliant and beautiful things? With that in mind, this week we’re looking at some contemporary Black writers to pick up whose nonfiction is truly excellent.
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Billed as a “black woman’s cultural bible,” this National Book Award finalist for nonfiction came out just last year. Tressie McMillan Cottom, author of Lower Ed, covers academia, misogyny, privilege, healthcare, and more in writing that Roxane Gay has called transgressive, provocative, and brilliant. This is an unmissable collection of essays that speaks to the times in which we live in a poignant, funny, and thoughtful way.
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman. This work of social history dives into the lives of Black women in Harlem and Philadelphia in the 1890s. Already fascinated? You should be. Hartman, a professor at Columbia University, explores the intersection of Black life and womanhood for these women who were seen as living outside the bounds of respectability for their time. As a bonus, there are 67 black and white stunning illustrations to complement Hartman’s academic but accessible look into this slice of 1890s America.
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon. Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction, Kiese Laymon writes ” about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi.” Discussed as a personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is a powerful memoir about what can happen when you bring secrets and lies into the open and begin to be free.
I hope you pick up at least one of these this month or even this year, as they’re all amazing reads. Let me know if you do! As always, you can find me talking history and books on Twitter @itsalicetime and cohosting the For Real podcast with former True Story runner @kimthedork.