Black History Month is not just 28 days where the fight for African American equality should be spotlighted and then forgotten on March 1st. The discrimination Black Americans face does not start on February 1st and does not end on February 28th. Black women are forced to grapple with two different faces of discrimination, being both a person of color and a woman. Black Americans must work harder and longer to cut through centuries of attempts to silence them. In literature, Black authors compete with libraries full of classic work written by white authors. High school students are taught the classic works of Bronte and Austen, but the education system often does not highlight Black writers and their powerful poetry about the discrimination they face. In the spirit of raising the voices that have been ignored for so long, here is a compiled list of just a few impactful Black women whose voice deserves a seat at any literary table there is:
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, winner and recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was a prolific writer most known for her novel Beloved, a book Polk county in the state of Florida tried to ban. The reason? Parents are uncomfortable with the ugly but real history that her stories of life as a slave document. While there are themes and language in Beloved that should only be read by mature audiences, it is the truths brought into the spotlight that school districts want to stamp out. Despite this resistance, President Obama called Morrison “a national treasure.” Her book Beloved is ruthlessly truthful and deserves its rightful place in the classics.
“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”
Toni Morrison
Ijeoma Olou
Ijeoma Olou’s So You Want To Talk About Race became an important aid to the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in summer 2020. Olou’s work is straight to the point: “When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.” As a queer black woman and self-proclaimed “Internet yeller,” Ijeoma Olou gives eye-opening critiques on feminism, BLM, racism, intersectionality and parenting. Her work, especially her novel So You Want To Talk About Race, is a great foundation for productive conversations about race in America and how we can bring about lasting change.
“When we identify where our privilege intersects with somebody else’s oppression, we’ll find our opportunities to make real change.”
Ijeoma Oluo
Octavia E. Butler
Many writers of literature and film jump at the chance to retake the story of the Edward Cullen-like vampire, with the creature of focus being a tormented white vampire, often having extreme wealth to couple their immortality. Octavia Butler defied the popular stereotype of this privileged vampire and made her vampire a Black woman. In Fledgling, Octavia Butler crafted a character that experiences intense otherness, illuminating the isolation felt in the daily lives of African Americans in this country. As one of the few Black female writers in the science fiction realm, Octavia Butler fuses together imaginary fiction and social critique.
“I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.”
Octavia E. Butler
Nikki Giovanni
Winner of the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award, Nikki Giovanni is recognized as one of the world’s best known African American poets. She has been nominated for a Grammy award and has been named one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 Living Legends. In her work Black Feeling Black Talk, Giovanni calls for the need for a racial reckoning and includes the influences of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Nikki Giovanni once said in an interview, justifying why she continues to write poetry for over 50 years: “Writing is … what I do to justify the air I breathe.”
“Writing is … what I do to justify the air I breathe”
Nikki Giovanni
Angie Thomas
Angie Thomas’s The Hate You Give brings the difficult topic of police brutality to a younger audience, opening the eyes of the youth to injustice before complacency becomes ingrained in them. Angie Thomas, who is only 33 years old, wrote this debut novel based on a short story she wrote in college. While the novel is written for a younger audience, it is not delicate with the systemic oppression Black Americans face at the hands of the police. Her message to the youth reading her book is powerful: “What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
“What’s the point of having a voice if you’re gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn’t be?”
Angie Thomas
There are so many more women who deserve a place on this list of amazing Black female writers to devour and fall in love with their contributions to literary art, but this is a good place to start. If you’re searching for the physical copies, below is a list of independent book stores in Los Angeles you can find them at: