February is Black History Month, which makes it a particularly great time to celebrate Black voices. Here are 15 recent memoirs representing a variety of Black experiences, including the recent EGOT Viola Davis (who won a Grammy for the audiobook recording of her memoir) as well as athletes, artists, and activists.
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Admissions : a memoir of surviving boarding school
by Kendra James The first African American legacy student to graduate from the elite Taft prep school looks back on her three years there and how disillusioned it made her with America's inequitable education system. |
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Angela Davis : an autobiography
by Angela Y. Davis This new edition of the 1974 life story of the woman at the forefront of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer and prison abolitionist movements features a new introduction by the author. |
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Dinner for one : how cooking in Paris saved me
by Sutanya Dacres The creator and host of the podcast Dinner for One shares how she rebuilt her life after a painful divorce by beginning to cook dinner for one in her Paris kitchen while learning to date again. |
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Finding me
by Viola Davis The critically acclaimed film, television and theater actress presents an inspiring and deeply honest story of her life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her current hard-won success. |
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Home bound : an uprooted daughter's reflections on belonging
by Vanessa A. Bee A consumer protection lawyer recounts her upbringing, which took her from Cameroon to Europe and eventually the United States, where she became one of the youngest members of her graduating class at Harvard Law School. |
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How we fight for our lives : a memoir
by Saeed Jones The co-host of BuzzFeed's AM to DM, award-winning poet and author of Prelude to Bruise documents his coming-of-age as a young, gay, black man in an American South at a crossroads of sex, race and power. |
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I am a girl from Africa : a memoir
by Elizabeth Nyamayaro The award-winning humanitarian and former United Nations Senior Advisor on Gender Equality describes how an aid volunteer saved her life and inspired her work as an advocate for positive change in communities throughout the world. |
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I take my coffee black : reflections on Tupac, musical theater, faith, and being black in America
by Tyler Merritt As a 6'2" dreadlocked black man, Tyler Merritt knows that getting too close to the wrong person can get him killed. But he also believes that proximity can be a cure for racism. Tyler Merritt's video "Before You Call the Cops" has been viewed more than 59 million times. He's appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and Sports Illustrated and has been profiled in the New York Times. The viral video's main point--that the more you know someone, the more empathy, understanding, and compassion you have for that person--is the springboard for this book, which lets us deeply into Tyler's life and his world to help bridge the divides that seem to grow wider every day. In I Take My Coffee Black, Tyler tells hilarious stories from his own life as a black man in America. |
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Love & justice : a story of triumph on two different courts
by Maya Moore The basketball icon--a two-time NCAA champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist, four-time WNBA champion and WNBA MVP--and advocate for prosecutorial changes shares her journey for justice as she stepped away from her career in women's basketball to help free an innocent man--her now husband--from a wrongful conviction. |
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Officer Clemmons : a memoir
by François Clemmons An intimate debut memoir by the Grammy Award-winning artist who famously played Officer Clemmons on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood traces his Oberlin College music studies, his embrace of his sexual orientation and his life-changing chance encounter with Fred Rogers. |
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Scenes from my life : a memoir
by Michael Kenneth Williams Written by the late, iconic actor before his death, this candid and moving memoir of hard-won success, struggles with addiction and a lifelong mission to give back tells the story of his whole life in his own voice, in his own words, as only he could. |
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Straight Shooter : A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes
by Stephen A. Smith Revealing who he really is when the cameras are off, America's most popular sports media figure writes about the greatest highs and deepest lows of his life and career, while sharing his signature, uninhibited opinions about current political and social issues. |
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Uphill : a memoir
by Jemele Hill The Emmy Award-winning former cohost of ESPN’s SportsCenter, who was fired for calling President Trump a white supremacist, shares the whole story of her work, the women of her family and her complicated relationship with God as she forges a new path, no matter how uphill life's battles might be. |
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Wandering in strange lands : a daughter of the Great Migration reclaims her roots
by Morgan Jerkins From an acclaimed cultural critic and the New York Times best-selling author of This Will Be My Undoing comes the story of her journey to understand her northern and southern roots, the Great Migration and the displacement of black people across America. |
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When they tell you to be good : a memoir
by Prince Shakur After immigrating from Jamaica to the United States, Prince Shakur's family is rocked by the murder of Prince's biological father in 1995. Behind the murder is a sordid family truth, scripted in the lines of a diary by an outlawed uncle hell-bent on avenging the murder of Prince's father. As Shakur begins to unravel his family's secrets, he must navigate the strenuous terrain of coming to terms with one's inner self while confronting the steeped complexities of the Afro-diaspora. When They Tell You to Be Good charts Prince Shakur's political coming of age from closeted queer kid in a Jamaican family to radicalized adult traveler, writer, and anarchist in Obama and Trump's America. |