#SomeOfUsAreBrave 2025
Toni Morrison – “Beloved”
A haunting novel inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who escaped but was forced to make an unimaginable choice. Morrison’s masterpiece confronts the brutal realities of slavery, motherly love, and intergenerational trauma.
Maya Angelou – “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
This memoir chronicles Angelou’s childhood, capturing the challenges of growing up Black in the segregated South. Through lyrical prose, she shares her journey of overcoming trauma and finding her voice.
Zora Neale Hurston – “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
The story of Janie Crawford’s journey to independence and self-discovery in the early 20th century South. The novel is celebrated for its rich use of Black vernacular and vibrant storytelling.
Audre Lorde – “Sister Outsider”
A collection of essays and speeches that explore intersectionality, identity, and activism. Lorde’s reflections on oppression, power, and resistance remain essential reading.
Alice Walker – “The Color Purple”
The story of Celie, a Black woman in the South who overcomes abuse and oppression to find her voice. A powerful testament to sisterhood, resilience, and self-discovery.
Octavia Butler – “Kindred”
A genre-defying novel blending historical fiction and speculative elements. Dana, a modern Black woman, is repeatedly transported back to the antebellum South, where she must navigate the horrors of slavery.
Isabel Wilkerson – “The Warmth Of Other Suns”
A historical account of the Great Migration, following the lives of three Black individuals who left the Jim Crow South in search of better opportunities in the North and West.
Nikki Giovanni – “A Good Cry”
A deeply personal poetry collection reflecting on love, loss, aging, and the importance of allowing ourselves to grieve and heal. In these pages, Giovanni masterfully intertwines raw emotion with poignant reflections, offering readers both solace and a call to embrace vulnerability as a strength.
Michelle Obama – “The Light We Carry”
A deeply personal book that offers wisdom and practical advice on how to stay hopeful, resilient, and empowered in uncertain times. Obama reflects on her personal journey, sharing lessons on leadership, relationships, and self-belief.
bell hooks – “All About Love”
A transformative exploration of love that defies traditional definitions and invites readers to reimagine its role in both personal and societal healing. In this provocative work, bell hooks dismantles the myths surrounding love and advocates for a practice of love that is deliberate, honest, and liberatory.
Vanessa Priya Daniel – “Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning”
This book exposes the systemic obstacles undermining women of color leaders in every arena. Drawing on interviews with 45 influential leaders and her own experiences as an organizer and funder, Vanessa Priya Daniel provides a bold playbook for dismantling entrenched inequities.
Angie Thomas – “The Hate U Give”
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this novel follows Starr Carter, a Black teen who witnesses the police killing of her childhood friend. It’s a powerful and timely story about activism, racism, and finding your voice.
Jesmyn Ward – “Salvage the Bones”
This is a National Book Award-winning novel following a Black family in Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Through poetic prose, Ward captures the struggle of survival, love, and family bonds.
Tayari Jones – “An American Marriage”
A poignant exploration of love, loyalty, and systemic injustice, following the lives of Celestial and Roy as their marriage is irreversibly altered by unexpected circumstances. Tayari Jones weaves a narrative that examines how societal structures and racial bias infiltrate personal relationships,
Gwendolyn Brooks – “Annie Allen”
A vivid and intimate portrait of a Black girl’s journey to self-discovery in Chicago. Through a series of evocative poems, the collection explores themes of race, womanhood, and identity with innovative language and form.
Yaa Gyasi – “Homecoming”
A sweeping novel that follows two half-sisters and their descendants across generations, from the Gold Coast of Ghana to present-day America. Gyasi masterfully weaves together the divergent paths of a family split by history—one branch remaining in Africa, navigating the challenges of colonialism and cultural upheaval, and the other forcibly uprooted by the transatlantic slave trade.
Britt Bennett – “The Vanishing Half”
A novel about twin sisters who take different paths—one passing as white, the other living openly as Black—exploring racial identity and family secrets. As the sisters navigate their divergent worlds, Bennett reveals the deep personal costs of embracing or denying one’s heritage.
Margo Jefferson – “Negroland”
A memoir that unearths the intricate dynamics of race, class, and privilege within Black upper-class society in mid-century America. Through incisive cultural critique and personal recollections, Jefferson reveals a world marked by opulence, internal contradictions, and subtle power struggles.
