Normally, we use our What we are reading feature to share a single book that one member of the library team has enjoyed. But we’ve scaled things up for Black History Month!

This post focuses exclusively on Black writers; and gives us an opportunity to share our discoveries of Black authors, old and new, with each other and with a wider audience.

The theme of Black History Month this year is Celebrating Our Sisters. So, if you’re still stuck for things to read, check out our Celebrating Our Sisters reading list for some more reading ideas.

Let’s see what we’ve been reading…

Annabel tells us “Having read and loved Girl, Woman, Other a few years ago, I wanted to read more of Bernardine Evaristo’s work and that led me to Mr Loverman. The story revolves around Barrington Walker, a 74-year-old, sharply dressed, Antiguan man living in Hackney, as he grapples with the decision to come out to his friends and family, revealing his decades long affair with his best friend Morris. I really enjoyed it, it was funny and poignant in equal measure.”

John enjoyed Revolution Day: The Human Story of the Battle for Iraq by Rageh Omaar, saying: “This is a first hand account of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ by one of Britain’s most respected journalists. Omaar was based in Baghdad during the second Gulf War where he found his Somali heritage and ability to speak Arabic opened doors to the world of ordinary Iraqis normally closed to Westerners during the terrifying last days of Saddam Hussein’s brutal reign. It’s a very readable and humane story that touches on some of the bleakest moments in our recent history with great sensitivity.”

Shani hasn’t yet finished her suggestion, but she seems to be enjoying it so far: “I am currently making my way through Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn, the first book in the Xenogenesis series. I think Butler has a strong sense of questioning what it means to be human, and about the complexities of human nature. I don’t want to say too much about the book as I think it is good to learn along with the main character, and I am looking forward to finding out what will happen. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction or speculative fiction.”

Shani has also been browsing the Celebrating Our Sisters reading list and says that she read both Small Island and White Teeth a while back but that she continues to think about them.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been reading The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez. She tells us, “Starting in the 1850s, The Gilda Stories follows the story of a young runaway slave who escapes and finds shelter in a woman named Gilda. Gilda, a centuries’ old vampire, protects the girl and keeps her safe, introducing her to both humans and vampires from other walks of life. The story explores race and class in the young United States, and the changing face of the nation across an extended time period. If you’re not on board with horror it may not be for you, but the book’s less Twilight and more Carmilla in nature, and I certainly liked it a lot!”

Elizabeth would also recommend the works of Nuzo Onoh, Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison.

Excitingly, Jacqui and Hazel R have both been reading My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Jacqui says, “The plot is in the title, nurse Korede’s prettier younger sister Ayoola has a bad habit of killing her boyfriends. Out of sisterly love and loyalty Korede helps cover up the crimes until it looks like the next victim will be a young doctor Korede is herself in love with. It’s definitely a page turner – I read it in a day. I enjoyed the Lagos setting, and I particularly liked Korede’s work colleagues, unreadable Bunmi, lazy Yinka, and nosey Chichi who moonlights as a shoe saleswoman.”

And Hazel R also enjoyed it, even if the ending didn’t quite satisfy her: “This tale of two sisters set in contemporary Lagos is short, snappy, witty and darkly funny. The character realisations, dialogue and scene-setting are great; the gradual revelations about the sisters’ childhood slowly build your understanding of why they each are the people they are, why spoilt and beautiful younger sister Ayoola has a penchant for bumping off her boyfriends, and why older sister Korede patiently turns up to help her dispose of the bodies instead of shopping her to the authorities.

What it doesn’t do, to my mind, is arrive at a particularly satisfying resolution – but maybe it was never trying to. (Braithwaite says she wrote it in a month to break out of a bad patch of writer’s block; the same interview has some illuminating comments about not taking her work for “the” Nigerian experience, and the tendency of readers from elsewhere in the world to assume that African writers must somehow want to Write The African Experience, rather than just… write a novel.) It’s an entertaining read and made me curious to find some of Braithwaite’s other work to try.”

John learnt plenty from Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, telling us, “I picked up a copy of Ngũgĩ’s searing memoir of his African childhood largely because it covers the years of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya – a pretty horrific episode in Britain’s colonial history that I knew very little about. Suffice to say I was right in thinking it wasn’t exactly our country’s finest hour. But the writing here is most interesting for the descriptions of the 1940s and 50s Kenyan people and landscape, and the extraordinary polygamous family the author grew up in (five mothers and more than twenty siblings).”

And Hazel K tells us about two of her favourite Black fantasy and sci-fi authors “I absolutely recommend NK Jemisin as a black female fantasy writer. I’ve actually just started one of her books. They’re very original with great world-building and magic systems. There was an interesting note in the beginning of the book I’m currently reading about how she wanted to base her fantasy world on ancient Egypt but also make sure she wasn’t writing historical fiction so she needed to de-historify all her research, so as to create a world that felt like ancient Egypt without getting too close to the reality. Sounds like a massive undertaking, especially coming up with names and words that sounded Egyptian without actually meaning anything.

Nnedi Okorafor is also a popular black sci-fi and fantasy writer though I think I’ve only read two of her books so far. She specialises in afrofuturism, which is a subgenre of sci-fi that specifically revolves around the African diaspora. A lot of the (modern) sci-fi books I read imagine a post-racial future, but afrofuturism is very much about combining traditional African culture with fantastical and sci-fi elements, and it’s really refreshing and different compared to a lot of Western sci-fi and fantasy, which feels quite homogenous when you’re reading a lot of it.”

Finally ten quick picks from colleagues who didn’t have time to write a review but still wanted to share the books they love:

• The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph (chosen by Jo C)
• The Sellout by Paul Beatty (Dan F)
• Sista Sister by Candice Braithwaite (Lucy)
• Unearthed: On race and roots, and how the soil taught me I belong by Claire Ratinon (Maureen)
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (Debbbie L)

• Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (chosen by Lucy A)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (Verity)
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Hazel R)
• Black in Time: The Most Awesome Black Britons from Yesterday to Today by Alison Hammond (Maureen)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Charlotte)