Thirty-one books for Black History Month – a random and non-exhaustive list from Dr Rachael Gilmour, Head of English

To celebrate Black History Month our very own Head of English Rachael Gilmour has chosen 31 books which should be on your reading list.

  1. CLR James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)
  2. Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (2006)
  3. Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (1984)
  4. Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016)
  5. Grace Nichols, The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984)
  6. Nadifa Mohamed, The Orchard of Lost Souls (2013)
  7. Yrsa Daley-Ward, Bone (2017)
  8. Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004)
  9. Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman (2014)
  10. Pauline Black, Black by Design: A 2-Tone Memoir (2012)
  11. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
  12. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)
  13. Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2018)
  14. Diana Evans, Ordinary People (2018)
  15. Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth (2011)
  16. Akala, Natives (2018)
  17. Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené, Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible (2018)
  18. Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1954)
  19. Jackie Kay, The Adoption Papers (1991)
  20. David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, The Oxford Companion to Black British History (2015)
  21. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (2013)
  22. Anthony Joseph, Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon (2018)
  23. Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)
  24. Paul Gilroy, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (1987)
  25. Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
  26. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
  27. Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems (2017)
  28. Alex Wheatle, East of Acre Lane (2006)
  29. Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love (2011)
  30. David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)
  31. Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race (2017)

Which book would you add to this list?

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All Things SED Editor

I am the Web and Marketing Administrator in the School of English and Drama. Amongst my various roles, I run the School's website (www.sed.qmul.ac.uk) and its Twitter feed (@QMULsed). I also manage the running of the School's Open Days and draft promotional materials.

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