1. A Superlative Palette: Contemporary Black Women Artists by Dexter Wimberly, Bonita Buford, and Kalia Brooks

In celebration of the Harvey B. Gantt Center's 50th anniversary, A Superlative Palette highlights the work of incredible, global Black women artists. Their work explores the complexity of navigating race and gender dynamics in the art world, and speaks to the resilience and joy they’ve found through their creative practices. Some of the artists featured include Nina Chanel Abney, Calida Rawles, and Amy Sherald.

2. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Published in 2017 and chosen as one of Oprah’s best books of that year, Homegoing traces the journey of two sisters and their descendants over the course of eight generations. Effi and Esi part ways in Ghana. One stays in Africa, married off to a British enslaver, while the other is imprisoned and later sold into slavery in America. Gyasi’s characters journey through history and from Africa’s Gold Coast to Mississippi and Harlem over the course of this heartbreaking and uplifting multigenerational epic.

3. A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

Set in the dynamism of Harlem’s brownstone neighborhoods, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde follows free spirit and aspiring florist Ricki Wilde as she strikes out on her own to follow her dreams. In February, a chance encounter with a handsome stranger upends her life in the best way, and we follow Wilde through a romance that will leave her forever changed.

4. The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers by Cheryl McKissack Daniel with Nick Chiles

This book charts the incredible story of the McKissack family, whose story began with enslaved craftsman Moses McKissack I. Over the following generations, the McKissack name grew into one of the first Black-founded and led architectural firms in the United States, McKissack & McKissack. Told by the firm’s current president and CEO Cheryl McKissack Daniel, this is a must-read for architectural history buffs. One of their buildings, the Universal Life Insurance Building in Memphis, Tennessee was a 2020 recipient of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards and a 2024 grantee of the Action Fund's Conserving Black Modernism initiative.

5. Sula by Toni Morrison

Originally published in 1973, Sula continues to resonate with readers today. The novel follows young girls Sula and Nel as they come of age in a Black community in Ohio called The Bottom. Sula’s wild nature is the opposite of Nel’s more conventional, rule-following upbringing, yet the two remain inseparable until tragedy and a deep betrayal tests their decades-long bond.

6. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

Released in 2020, Barracoon is the previously unpublished work of legendary African American author and cultural anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. In 1927, Hurston traveled to Plateau, Alabama, to interview the 86-year-old Cudjo Lewis, a formerly enslaved man who was the sole remaining survivor of the last known slave ship known to have arrived in the United States, The Clotilda. His memories are an incredible first-hand account of slavery and its reverberations throughout American history.

7. A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

From the acclaimed author of Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark takes readers to a magical, steam-punk version of Cairo in his novel A Master of Djinn. Readers follow Agent Fatma el-Sha'arawi, a detective with the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, as she investigates a case that appears to be a murder, but quickly exposes a much deeper existential threat. In a world where fantastical creatures and humans live side-by-side, the resurrection of a dark and ancient force brings Fatma and her allies to the brink of an inter-dimensional war.

8. Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni

Celebrate love this month with this collection of poems from acclaimed Black poet Nikki Giovanni. Love Poems beautifully explores the emotion in all its forms, with the beauty, lyricism, and thought-provoking artistry that keeps readers coming back to Giovanni again and again.

9. The Filling Station by Vanessa Miller

A USA Today Bestselling Historical Fiction Novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre and Action Fund grantee, the Threatt Filling Station—The Filling Station follows two sisters navigating the wake of a tragedy that upends their lives and home. A story of family, love, and resilience, this book is an uplifting and insightful view into the hope that can guide us through our darkest moments.

10. Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy

In her critically-acclaimed book Trace, Savoy, a professor of environmental studies and geology at Mount Holyoke College, takes readers on a personal and historical journey through time and across the U.S. landscape to explore the ways that human history is embedded in our natural world.

11. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler’s haunting time-travel novel Kindred follows Dana, who is torn from her current life in 1976 Los Angeles and thrown back to a Maryland plantation in 1815. There, she is not only forced to survive enslavement herself, but she is faced to make harrowing decisions as she meets her own ancestors and attempts to navigate her way back to her own time.

12. When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy by Beronda L. Montgomery

Award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery takes readers on a journey through Black history and culture through its intersections with different species of trees. This book shows how the natural world, and Black people’s ecological knowledge, shaped the course of the African diaspora.

13. Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Now a Hulu series, Black Cake follows estranged siblings Byron and Benny as they look back into their mother’s past after her death. In leaving behind a voice recording and the recipe for her black cake, she sends her two children into a multigeneration saga that will test what Byron and Benny thought they knew about their family, and their ability to repair their relationship.

14. Superfine: Tailoring Black Style by Monica L. Miller

Take a journey through fashion history, and the inspiration for the 2025 Met Gala theme, with this guide to Black dandyism. Superfine traces the origins of Black menswear from the Enlightenment era, through the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, and the emergence of Hip Hop, where all along the way fashion was used as a tool of resistance and creative expression.

15. All About Love: New Visions

One of bell hooks’ most acclaimed books, All About Love is a meditation on the emotion in all of it forms, not just romantic. Hooks challenges readers to rethink the definition of love, and what it means to love in the context of community, or oneself, or in a society that doesn’t always value it.

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