Dear Black Girl: Letters from Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power by Tamara Winfrey Harris gives encouragement to Black girls at the time they need it the most

Reviews

Have you ever read a book and just knew that it was going to be an experience you would remember forever? Have you ever read a book, got a little way into it, and already started recommending it to everyone you knew? It doesn’t happen often, but there is something so special about when it does. Dear Black Girl: Letters from Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power was just that for me.

A student’s published diary, #BlackInSchool moves the conversation about anti-Blackness in the education system forward

Reviews

#BlackInSchool is a loud and fiercely vital document that moves forward the conversation about anti-Blackness in the educational system. Written by Habiba Cooper Diallo during her final two years of high school in Halifax and published by the University of Regina Press, this is a makeshift diary drawn from a wealth of personal journal entries documenting the experience of being Black in a Canadian school.

After a 20-year publishing hiatus, Gayl Jones is back with a heady historical fiction

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After publishing to great acclaim in the 1980s and 1990s, Gayl Jones disappeared from the public eye. Somewhere in the last few pages of this brutal historical fiction that has been half a century in the making, our protagonist—the observational Almeyda—asks “how can one write such a history and live through it at the same time?”. A fragmented narrative of slavery and survival set in 17th century colonial Brazil, Palmares begs the same question.

Home is Not a Country: A novel-in-verse about identity, belonging, and the true meaning of home

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Home is Not a Country, by award-winning poet Safia Elhillo, is a captivating novel-in-verse about identity and belonging in post-9/11 America. It is told through the eyes of Nima, a Muslim American girl who finds herself longing to be someone else. Little does Nima know, the other girl she dreams of becoming may be more real than she imagined, forcing Nima to fight for the life she never wanted.

Tami Charles’ Muted explores the music industry’s dark side

Reviews

Muted is the perfect verse novel for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo. A fast-paced coming-of-age story about music, the loss of innocence, and the dangers lurking in the shadows of the entertainment industry, it is the type of story that feels slightly too real and leaves you thinking long after you’re done reading. Here is the poignant story of Denver, a seventeen-year-old girl who loves music and would do anything to escape her hometown.