BLACK WRITERS TO READ ALL YEAR LONG
Photo from Unsplash.
Black History Month may be over but that doesn’t mean it’s time to put away works by Black authors until next February. If you’re not sure where to begin (or continue) your engagement with Black writers, though, look no further. Over the past few weeks, we’ve crowdsourced a list of Black writers whose work has been meaningful for our readers and members of the Earth & Altar team.
While most works on this list are theological or from related fields, the list does include works from a variety of genres. If you were the read everything on this list, you’d probably also find works that are, at times, at odds with the project of inclusive orthodoxy. While it may seem strange for us to promote works that may conflict with our ultimate project, we believe that platforming often-marginalized voices is of the utmost importance and these are those voices that you, our readers, have told us are important.
Finally, please know that this list is not definitive but is merely a starting point. If there is someone you think deserves to be on our list, please let us know.
Emmanuel Acho: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Katie Geneva Cannon: Katie’s Cannon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community
Christena Cleveland: Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me
James Cone: The Cross and the Lynching Tree; God of the Oppressed; My Soul Looks Back
M. Shawn Copeland: Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being
Michael Curry: Songs My Grandma Sang
Keri Day: Unfinished Business: Black Women, the Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America
Verna J. Dozier: Confronted by God: The Essential Verna J. Dozier, edited by Cynthia L. Shattuck and Frederica Harris Thompsett
Kelly Brown Douglas: Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God
Lenny Duncan: Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US
Wil Gafney: Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne
Fannie Lou Hamer: The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is
NK Jemisin: The Broken Earth Trilogy
Willie James Jennings: After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging; The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race
Mikki Kendall: Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Ibram X. Kendi: How to be Antiracist
Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Catherine Meeks: Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America; Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells As Prophet for Our Times
Resmaa Menakem: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies
Osheta Moore: Shalom Sistas: Living Wholeheartedly in a Brokenhearted World
Anthony Reddie: Is God Colour Blind: Insights from Black Theology for Christian Faith and Ministry
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Deidra Riggs: One: Unity in a Divided World
Stephanie Spellers: The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community (forthcoming)
Howard Thurman: Jesus and the Disinherited
Jemar Tisby: The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism
Emilie M. Townes: In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness
Eboni Marshall Turman: Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation: Black Bodies, the Black Church, and the Council of Chalcedon
Alice Walker: Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
Renita Weems: Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible
Cornel West: Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity; Black Prophetic Fire
Isabel Wilkerson: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
angel Kyodo Williams: Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace
Dolores S. Williams: Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk
