Black History Month

Recommended by Professor Ros Ballaster

Pauline Hopkins, an East coast woman in America of African origin, by trade a stenographer, wrote serialised sensation fiction in the first few years of the nineteenth century that looked back to the period of slavery and its legacy in the United States in the Colored American Magazine, a progressive medium for black Americans in Boston and later New York. Read the full review >>

Recommended by Amy van der Merwe, DPhil candidate

Born in Trinidad and Tobago and based in Toronto, Canada, Brand's long poem is likely a response to the murder of Albert Johnson, a Black man, by the Toronto police in 1979. This book reflects the struggle to make Black trauma signify meaningfully in the racial violence of urban Canada, and her elegy confronts the meaning of belonging as a Black person North America.

Recommended by Professor Kate McLoughlin

I'd like to recommend Belonging: Natural Histories of Place, Identity and Home by Amanda Thomson.  Thomson, who lives in the far north of Scotland, finds that it is 'in stillness and quietness that a place, and who we are, can come to us most clearly'.  I love her descriptions of the ancient Caledonian forest: detailed yet serene, making space not to have to think.

Recommended by Olivia Hurton, DPhil candidate

"Staged to great acclaim from 2016 to 2020, in this piece Thompson draws on her real experience of spending months on a cargo ship retracing the Transatlantic Slave Triangle - a route that would have been taken by her ancestors - and questioning the concept of 'home'. Its meaningful interweaving of historical past and personal present, poetic language and symbolism make it, in my opinion, one of the most affecting pieces of contemporary theatre."

Recommended by Professor Marion Turner: 

Colson Whitehead is one of the most brilliant and innovative novelists of our time. This book is hilarious, gripping, and hard-hitting; a page-turning crime caper that lays bare New York in the 1960s. I love its carefully-plotted three-act structure, the way Whitehead juxtaposes the mundane and the shocking, and the compelling main character - hustling furniture-salesman Ray Carney.

Recommended by Sadie Slater (Head of Admin and Finance at the English Faculty):

A classic time-travel fantasy in which a Black woman from the 1970s is transported back in time to the early 19th century, this is an interesting and thought-provoking examination of slavery in the US which really helped me to understand just how profoundly the legacy of chattel slavery has shaped the US of today.

Recommended by Professor Kirsten E Shepherd-Barr

"I would love to recommend the multi-faceted, ground-breaking playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of 'A Raisin in the Sun', the first play by a Black woman playwright on Broadway. Her memoir 'To Be Young, Gifted, and Black' is a landmark, too."

Our Telling Our Stories Better project included book recommendations from English Faculty alumni. Both Nayana Prakash and Hannah Chukwu recommended 'Americanah' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. You can see all book recommendations on our Stories Bookshelf page.

For our next Black History Month book recommendation, English Faculty Operations Manager, Chris Bayliss, has chosen 'Noughts and Crosses' by Malorie Blackman. You can learn more about Malorie Blackman on the Writers Make Worlds website.

Recommended by Kirstie Logan-Fowler, Timetabling and Teaching Support Assistant at the English Faculty:

I recommend Wild, Beautiful, and Free by Sophfronia Scott. An intriguing retelling of Jane Eyre set against the backdrop of the American Civil War and navigating the dangers facing a young mixed-race woman in America.  A fascinating exploration of identity and race with the comfortingly familiar elements of Jane Eyre given a fresh twist in this brilliant reimagining.

Matthew A Henson was a key member of the famed expedition–led by Commander Robert E Peary–that claimed to be the first to reach the geographic North Pole in 1909. In his memoir, Henson details the intensity of the climate, his relationship to the Polar Inuit peoples on whose assistance he depended, and the scale of expedition's achievement. "Henson's writing packs the drama of the arduous trek into each detail, and his language almost absorbs its surroundings..." Read an extract on the LitHits website.

Recommended by Professor Kate McLoughlin

In this novel by Nobel Prizewinner Abdulrazak Gurnah, an unnamed Zanzibari man returns to his homeland after 20 years in England. As an aficionada of literary silences, I enjoy the way Gurnah weaves together a tapestry of different kinds of silences: protective, defensive, punitive and admiring. The burden of what cannot be said is balanced by the sweet serenity of saying nothing.  

Recommended by Sam Himmelfarb, MSt student at the English Faculty.

In 1953, Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award for Fiction, for his novel Invisible Man; he was the first African-American writer to win the award. Five years in the making, this modern epic follows a Dostoevskian underground man as he graduates from a small southern university -- and is ushered into a dynamic and slippery landscape. Ellison's vivid portrait of early 20th century Harlem traces the dramatic flux of African-American identity against the backdrop of shrinking individuality.

Week 3 of the Ten-Minute Book Club (season 4) explores 'African Nationalism' by Ndabaningi Sithole. Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu introduces the literary work of writer and leader Ndabaningi Sithole: "He had a high regard for language which he believed was an instrument for tearing people out of their ordinary perceptions and forcing them to see and feel. He knew that history does not only exist except as it is composed."