For Black History Month, I’m sharing 28 of my favorite books by black authors.

Here’s my list of amazing, heart wrenching, fantastically original, and truly haunting books by black writers.

28 Books I love by Black Authors:

1 – The Color Purple by Alice Walker

2 – Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

3 – Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

4 – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jaqueline Woodson

5 – Sula by Toni Morrison

6 – White Teeth by Zadie Smith

7 – Black Boy by Richard Wright

8 – The Mothers by Brit Bennett

9 – Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

10 – Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

11 – You Can’t Keep A Good Woman Down by Alice Walker

12 – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

13 – Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler : Octavia Butler is a rare voice. This book was made into an opera. WHAT? If it comes to Nashville, you better believe I’m there.

14 – for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange

15 – The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

16 – Beloved by Toni Morrison

17 – The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks poems by Gwendolyn Brooks

18 – Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis

19 – Kindred by Octavia Butler : This is a graphic novel now! How cool.

20 – Equilibrium by Tiana Clark

21 – The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

22 – A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

23 – Fledgling by Octavia Butler

24 – Phenomenal Woman, a poem by Maya Angelou

25 – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

26 – Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

27 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot : Okay, this isn’t by a black woman. She’s white. But the story she tells of Henrietta Lacks and her family is so important and thought provoking that I’m sharing it in honor of the incredible woman Henrietta Lacks.

28 – Bloodchild & Other Stories by Octavia Butler

Happy Black History Month. May we celebrate Black Excellence every day, all year long.