In a scathing op-ed from December 2020, titled Just How White is the Book Industry?, Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek unpacked decades of data to reveal, well, just how white the publishing industry actually is.
The results were bleak. While non-Hispanic white people account for only 60% of the US population, they wrote 89% of the surveyed books that were published in 2018. And according to the #PublishingPaidMe hashtag, which launched on Twitter in the summer of 2020, non-white writers who were published received significantly lower advances than their white counterparts.
Yet despite this, authors of color have always been part of the industry—filling pages with their unique perspectives, delighting and inspiring readers of all backgrounds. And therein, perhaps, is the populace’s sole power to force a significant shift in the industry’s systemic sameness. By reading and celebrating the works of non-white writers, we prove not only that these stories matter, but that there’s a market for them, too.
Here, as we close out Black History Month 2023, the Porch team shares their favorite books by Black authors, and we encourage you to read them in February and beyond.
Breath: A Letter to my Sons by Imani Perry
I’m in awe of Imani Perry in general and this small (yet large) book. Her mind, her prose, the depth of her reading life, the truth and weight of the content. It’s a book to be read slowly—every paragraph a journey.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw
This highly readable short story collection was a sometimes saucy, often poignant, vibrant window into a Black woman’s experience—every story a gem.
Luster by Raven Leilani
An outrageous ride of a novel, both wildly off the wall and eerily within the realms of realism. A Black 20-something down on her luck hooks up with an older white man in an open marriage and ends up moving into their Jersey home. The prose was as funhouse as the story—pop in every sentence.
I have a distinct recollection of coming to a spot in Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson's novel The Birds of Opulence and feeling my heart and mind swell with the beauty of the prose. I loved that book so much; I look forward to dipping into her poetry and reading her forthcoming culinary memoir, Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts.
Samantha Irby's We Are Never Meeting in Real Life provoked a different but equal physical reaction: tears and LOLz. Look, I almost never laugh out loud when reading. But when I read Sam Irby? I laugh constantly. She is simply one of a kind, and her voice makes the many absurdities of modern life go down a little easier. Read any and all of her books!! She’s got a new one, Quietly Hostile, coming out May 16, 2023.
Pleasure Dome by poet Yusef Komunyakaa
Like the memories that we relive over and over, these poems haunt, and evolve, and become part of who you are. They have a music that sneaks up on you. The kind you hum without realizing it.
Against Which by Ross Gay
Any book by Ross Gay will change your life, but I want to shout out his first book. These poems are all muscle and tenderness. If you read them out loud, they will inhabit your whole body. This is the book of poems I reread most often.
Heavy, by Kiese Laymon
The title is perfect. I needed to call my mama after I finished reading this book and tell her I love her.
Especially as a new release, I'm still shouting from the rooftops about The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings. As a reader, I raced through it for the story. As a writer, I kept pausing for the beautiful writing and the world-building and the emotional depth of these characters. I've spent the last six months thinking about the last couple of pages and how much they moved me.
Attica Locke's fictional chronicles of the South—and Texas in particular—in Bluebird, Bluebird and its sequel Heaven, My Home are timely and riveting. Her ability to raise philosophical questions on inequality and hate crimes in a detective novel format is compelling. Plus, who doesn't enjoy a storyline involving a Texas Ranger?
Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson is an essay collection that is equally entertaining and thought-provoking, with laugh-out-loud moments and biting observations on the human condition.
I have re-read Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric numerous times. Not only is she a writer of rich nuance (new gems, harsh gems, appear every time I read it), but her use of poems, images, and lyric essays is model work for all who relish hybridity and hybrid poetics. And… intersectionality, baby. It's illuminated here.
Danez Smith's Homie and Don't Call Us Dead are powerhouses. Really, their work rips you apart. That's a good thing. I have only been able to read half of each collection, but I keep them close. You've got to be prepared for reading Don't Call Us Dead. But prepare yourself, and do read it.
Neither Audre Lorde nor bell hooks were, sadly, ever recommended to me, but I managed to find both, during a time of my life when I felt true honesty and bravery were lacking from the content I was consuming. In A BURST OF LIGHT, Lorde writes frankly and searingly of the body as racially and sexually political while navigating her own personal struggle with cancer. bell hooks’s ALL ABOUT LOVE asks ‘what is love?’ — and explores every facet and avenue of the word and concept in personal, political, and socio-cultural matters of the heart. Both works are just as inspiring and relevant today as ever and, really, you should read anything Audre Lorde or bell hooks ever wrote. They were never recommended to me — I want to recommend them to you.
I am a sucker for craft, for richly drawn scenes and well-established characters, for sentences that you want to read and read again. That said, sometimes I also crave the comfort of a happily-ever-after sure thing. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams is the best of both worlds. It’s got the warm blanket feel of a juicy romance and stellar writing that’ll keep you fully engrossed—and waiting for her next book.
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