2020 Reading List
January 2020
I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi
In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life–as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist–through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy.
Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health by giving us intimate access to her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medication, and family in the process, Bassey looks at how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives–how we appear to others, and more importantly to ourselves–and challenges our preconception about what it means to be “normal.” Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are–and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.
Discussion Date: February 7, 2020
February 2020
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Lick by Zora Neale Hurston
From “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison)–the author of Barracoon and Their Eyes Were Watching God–a collection of remarkable stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance tales now available to a wide audience for the first time.
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.
Discussion Date: March 6, 2020
March 2020
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
This novel creates a magical world out of four generations of black life in America, a world readers enter on the day of the birth of Macon Dead, Jr.; the day on which lonely Robert Smith attempts to fly from a steeple of the hospital, a black Icarus looking homeward.
Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.
Discussion Date: April 3, 2020
April 2020
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
An extraordinary new novel about the influence of history on a contemporary family, from the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming.
Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson’s extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.
Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.
Discussion Date: May 1, 2020
May 2020
Breathe: A Letter to my Sons by Imani Perry
“Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love–finding beauty and possibility in life–and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.
Perry draws upon the ideas of figures such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her own life and from encounters in places as varied as the West Side of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools. Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience”
Discussion Date: June 5, 2020
June 2020
Black Enough by Ibi Zoboi
Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi, and featuring some of the most acclaimed bestselling Black authors writing for teens today–Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and Black in America.
Black is…sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon, as written by Renée Watson.
Black is…three friends walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything, in a story by Jason Reynolds.
Black is…Nic Stone’s high-class beauty dating a boy her momma would never approve of.
Black is…two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland.
Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more–because there are countless ways to be Black enough.
Discussion Date: July 3, 2020
July 2020
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in Black feminism
Today’s feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord, and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?
Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.
Discussion Date: August 7, 2020
Cool list!
im looking for two books/ black enough by ibi Zoboi&my body is a monument by caroline Randall williams
So excited about your bookstore! Just heard about it this morning on the “Today” show. Can’t wait to read some of your selections!!! Stephanie
OMG!! Super Awesome. I just heard of this bookstore on the “Today” show. I am excited about reading some of the selections and maybe participating in the book club. Do you have a selection list for elementary children or a book club for them to participate as my 10yr old daughter loves to read too.
Wow, what a cool bookstore. May God bless you all daily. Can’t wait to read some of your recommendations.
I saw the segment on The Today Show today. I want to see more Books on Jackie Robinson: I am admire of Jackie Robinson what he did off the baseball diamond and started he civil rights moment. As an African American male man I am a sports fan and a baseball fan. Jackie Robinson was the first thing I was taught bye my grandfather when I was as young
Today’s Show featured ya all! So excited! Looking forward to sharing the spot with my son. Thank you for being the place where we can represent and be represented! 🙂