Black authors

Professor Kimberly Fain of Texas Southern University has compiled a list of 10 memoirs everyone should read for Black History Month. Fain, who writes about race, gender, and class, is the author of the books African American Literature Anthology: Slavery, Liberation, and Resistance, Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies and Colson Whitehead: The Postracial Voice of Contemporary Literature.

Twelve Years a Slave (1853), Solomon Northrup

Originally published in 1853, this memoir and slave narrative is the story of a free Black man living in upstate New York, earning his living as a violinist and carpenter, who was tricked by two white men, kidnapped, and made a slave in the South. Northrup’s account demonstrates the resilience of a man determined to reunite with his family, bring his kidnappers to justice, and live the rest of his life, once again, as a free Black man.

Colored People: A Memoir (1994), Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Dr. Gates is a legendary Harvard professor, author, and filmmaker who has devoted his career to educating the world about the African Diaspora. In this memoir, he reflects on his own childhood in West Virginia during the 1950s and 1960s. This beautiful account of Gates’s life reflects the richness and strength of Black culture, despite the confines imposed by segregation.

Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), Barack Obama

As the son of a black African father and white American mother, Obama speaks of a divided inheritance. Dreams From My Father begins when he learns that he has lost his father in an automobile accident. In Obama’s journey of reconciling both his identity and estrangement from his father, the reader witnesses the struggles and strength of a man on his way to becoming America’s first Black president.

Men We Reaped (2013), Jesmyn Ward

Growing up in poor, rural Mississippi, Ward was painfully aware of the hardship of Black life. Through suicide, drugs, and accidents, during a period of five years, she lost five young men close to her. With her powerful words, Ward makes her readers aware that the problematic relationship between racism and poverty accounts for the precarious nature of Black life in America.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014), Bryan Stevenson

In this true coming of age story, Stevenson is an idealistic young attorney fighting to free people who have been wrongly convicted. As a recent graduate of Harvard Law School, he founded the Equal Justice Initiative for the purpose of ending mass incarceration under an unequal legal system. In observing him defending his clients, the reader sees how racism and the criminal justice system affect both the Black family and the quality of life in America.