The Juneteenth Reading List

Rooted traces the experiences of Brea Baker’s family history of devastating land loss in Kentucky and North Carolina, identifying such violence as the root of persistent inequality in this country. Ultimately, her grandparents’ commitment to Black land ownership resulted in the Bakers Acres — a haven for the family where they are sustained by the land, surrounded by love, and wholly free. A testament to the Black farmers who dreamed of feeding, housing, and tending to their communities, Rooted bears witness to their commitment to freedom and reciprocal care for the land.

With words that roast, ignite, and burn while connecting to and coalescing around a singular thesis, That’s How They Get You emphasizes how and why Black American humor is uniquely transfixing. This is a mixture of not just observational anxieties and stream-of-consciousness lucidities but also acute political clarity about America. Edited and with an introduction by Damon Young, the critically acclaimed author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, the collection features new material from an all-star roster of contributors, including Hanif Abdurraqib, Mahogany L. Browne, Wyatt Cenac, Kiese Laymon, Deesha Philyaw, Roy Wood Jr., and Nicola Yoon.

An electrifying collection of poems that tells a universal tale of survival and revolution through the lens of Black femininity. Tara M. Stringfellow embraces complexity, grappling with the sometimes painful, sometimes wonderful way two conflicting things can be true at the same time. How it’s possible to have a strong voice but also feel silenced. To be loyal to things and people that betray us. To burn as hot with rage as we do with love.

Joy is a weapon, not only for resistance, but also a means for healing — a powerful tool that is all-encompassing and necessary. Black Joy Playbook helps you mine your memories to discover what joy looks and feels like to you and then guides you to recreate it in your present-day life. Reclaim your joy with this beautifully designed and thoughtful playbook from the author of the NAACP Image Award winner Black Joy.

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion are shown in a radically new light. James is brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime.

This celebratory edition of the classic poetry collection reminds us of Hughes’s stunning achievement, speaking directly, intimately, and powerfully of Black experiences at a time when Black voices were newly being heard in American literature. With an introduction by poet Kevin Young.

A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present — edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire. This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.

From one of our greatest writers, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk is a profoundly moving novel about love in the face of injustice that is as socially resonant today as it was when it was first published. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy — both the kind that hangs over our country and the kind that is internalized on a molecular level. Stewart uses his personal experiences as a vehicle to reclaim and reimagine spiritual virtues like rage, resilience, and remembrance — and explores how these virtues might function as a work of love against an unjust, unloving world.

In this vulnerable exploration of personal identity, the New York Times bestselling author of I’m Still Here chronicles her efforts to live as her full self in a society that wants women — and Black women in particular — to do anything but that. For Black women seeking to understand the true roots of their burnout, or for anyone wondering what it means to live joyfully in a hostile world, Full of Myself is a breath of fresh air and an invitation to full humanity.

Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent.

In this stunning and deeply heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity, Bryant Terry captures the broad and divergent voices of the American Diaspora through the prism of food. With contributions from more than 100 Black cultural luminaries from around the globe, the book moves through chapters exploring parts of the Black experience, from Homeland to Migration, Spirituality to Black Future, offering delicious recipes, moving essays, and arresting artwork. Black Food is a visual and spiritual feast that will satisfy any soul.

From 1915 to 1970, the exodus of almost six million people who fled the South for northern and western cities in search of a better life changed the face of America. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.

A poignant, rousing debut book of poetry, full of life, from the former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, California. The collection is sharp and raw, wise and rhythmic, a combination that lights up each page. From unearthing histories to searching for ways to dream of a future in a world constantly on the brink of disaster, this young poet sets forth personal and political revelation with piercing detail.

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born, yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Tiya Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman’s life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman’s surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs.

A new edition of the classic New York Times bestseller edited by Toni Morrison, offering an encyclopedic look at the Black experience in America from 1619 through the 1940s. A labor of love and a vital link to the richness and diversity of African American history and culture, The Black Book honors the past, reminding us where our nation has been, and gives flight to our hopes for what is yet to come. Beautifully and faithfully presented and featuring a foreword and original poem by Toni Morrison, The Black Book remains a timeless landmark work.

The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work — images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more — to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader.

Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone).

From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family’s search for home and hope. How Far to the Promised Land is a thrilling and tender epic about being Black in America. It’s a book that questions our too-simple narratives about poverty and upward mobility; a book in which the people normally written out of the American Dream are given voice.

A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl. Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s poetic and powerful memoir will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.

An astounding work of fiction that is deeply honest and electrically funny, Hell of a Book goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.