Women, Race, and Class

by Angela Davis (1981)

Written by famed political activist and scholar Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class is a comprehensive study on the women’s liberation movement in America and the negative influences of its leaders’ racial and class biases. “This woman is a genius,” Ward says, “and this is one of the most powerful iterations of her genius.”

Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism

by bell hooks (1981)

This examination of how Black women are doubly oppressed by both their race and gender explores the effects of this stigmatization throughout various movements.

All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave

edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (1982)

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s renowned blog is titled Some of Us Are Brave, which was heavily influenced by this anthology. In Cottom’s words, “It was a text that wanted to make a formal place for Black women’s studies in the canon. It was this idea that feminist studies could not take and had not taken great care with Black women as subjects and Black/Afam studies and not taken seriously Black women as subjects. The knowledge and the narratives of Black women did not fit into either or those, but some of us were brave enough to strike out anyway and create a body of knowledge for ourselves.”

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

by Audre Lorde (1982)

Audre Lorde creates a hybrid “biomythography”—biography, history, and myth—all told through one woman of West Indian lineage growing up and maturing in New York City.

The Women of Brewster Place

by Gloria Naylor (1982)

“This novel is a chorus of the experiences of a group of women living in a shared apartment building,” Perry says. “Its beauty lies in the widely divergent yet deeply interconnected stories.”

Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo

by Ntozake Shange (1982)

A novel about three Black sisters from the South Carolina Low Country who pursue their artistic dreams. This story examines a multitude of topics ranging from spirituality to community, foodways to Gullah Geechee culture, gender to sexuality.

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker (1982)

A classic of the American canon, The Color Purple features a series of letters between two sisters, Celie and Nettie, whose lives take many turns in rural Georgia and across the continent, from lovers and abuse to, finally, independence.

Fish Tales

by Nettie Jones (1983)

“A hauntingly decadent and sexy novel set in Detroit and New York among privileged, self-destructive, and highly glamorous risk-takers,” Jefferson says. Nettie Jones maintains an affinity for extreme desires and the hidden impulses that drive people, and this novel exemplifies this interest.

Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology

edited by Barbara Smith (1983)

“This anthology collects the way Black women have thought about the particulars of our lives, where we fit in the dominant orders, and how we free ourselves and our people,” Perry says.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose

by Alice Walker (1983)

Written from 1966 to 1982, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens contains 36 pieces of Walker’s oeuvre: essays, reviews, articles, and statements that address the civil rights movement, artistic freedom, and womanhood, among many others. Adero says the collection “honors the particular views and concerns of Black women and defined the term ‘womanist.’”

When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

by Paula Giddings (1984)

A seminal text on how African American women’s labor has influenced race and women’s movements throughout American history.

Sister Outsider

by Audre Lorde (1984)

Sister Outsider is a collection of essays and speeches in which Audre Lorde explores intersectionality, love, war, violence, and mobilization, among many other topics.

Linden Hills

by Gloria Naylor (1985)

Thought of as a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno, Linden Hills is set in an affluent Black community whose inhabitants strive for “the dream,” though none can accurately define what the dream is and whether it will satisfy them once — if? — it comes true.

Radiance From the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art

by Sylvia Ardyn Boone (1986)

For the Mende people of Sierra Leone, women are the leaders. Art historian Sylvia Ardyn Boone chronicles their aesthetic, philosophy, rituals, and customs about the mind and body.

Thomas and Beulah

by Rita Dove (1986)

“Complex and gorgeous, this Pulitzer-winning collection chronicles the title characters’ migration to Ohio from the South,” Mathis says.

Blacks

by Gwendolyn Brooks (1987)

A comprehensive collection of all — yes, all — of the prolific and critically acclaimed poet’s writings over a span of 30 years.

Beloved

by Toni Morrison (1987)

Sethe murders her baby so that she will avoid a lifetime of slavery. Years later, that child is now a woman who visits Sethe at her home and forces her to reckon with her past and the ghosts of unfinished business.

Assata

by Assata Shakur (1988)

A former member of the Black Liberation Army and Black Panthers, a refugee, and one of America’s most-wanted women, Assata Shakur writes about her life in Cuba, where she has been granted political asylum.

Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories by and About Black Women

edited by Mary Helen Washington (1989)

The New York Times Book Review once noted that Mary Helen Washington “has had a greater impact upon the formation of the canon of Afro-American literature than has any other scholar.” This short-story collection, which explores what it means to be Black and a woman in America, features a wide range of Black female writers including but not limited to Gwendolyn Brooks, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and Alice Walker.

Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory

by Michele Wallace (1990)

A profound look at how Black people’s artistic rigor has been overlooked and underrepresented across mainstream media, politics, and pop culture.

Waiting to Exhale

by Terry McMillan (1992)

This bestselling novel centers on four women who figure out how to support themselves and each other through the vicissitudes of life and the uncertainty of love affairs.

Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler (1993)

It is California in the early 2020s, and climate change is wreaking havoc on the Golden State. Lauren Olamina is a teenager with hyperempathy. Though this gift is incredibly draining, she must harness it in order to save her loved ones from danger.

Ugly Ways

by Tina McElroy Ansa (1993)

Mudear has died, and her three grown daughters have to come home to Mulberry to bury her. But upon their arrival, they soon realize that their mother is not the only thing that needs burying as family wounds are uncovered and truths are revealed.

The Black Christ

by Kelly Brown Douglas (1994)

“The title says it all: Who and what is the Christ figure in Black religious communities?” Mathis says. “Douglas explores the question through a historical, theological, and womanist lens.”

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1995 (1996)

A compilation of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry that spans more than a half a century. “Giovanni’s work challenges what we think we know of the world, how we see the world, and how we understand ourselves,” Ward says.

Killing the Black Body

by Dorothy E. Roberts (1997)

Dorothy E. Roberts fiercely conveys the literal and figurative assaults on the reproductive rights of Black women by the U.S. government and society at large.

Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler (1998)

In this follow-up to Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina is now a mother and a leader of a new religion. Environmental and economic chaos abound, and the U.S. government views Olamina, a Black female leader, as a threat. Now she must decide: her family or her transformative new faith?

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

by Mary Pattillo-McCoy (1999)

Sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy spent three years in a Black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side in order to provide a candid look at an often ignored milieu of U.S. society.