black books matter
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'My Blackitude Was Prominent in Everything I Did': André Leon Talley on Wearing Blackness in White Spaces
André Leon Talley’s highly anticipated second memoir, The Chiffon Trenches, just hit shelves on Tuesday and is already a New York Times bestseller. But the buzz built around the book’s supposed bombshells about fashion industry gatekeepers like Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld have arguably threatened to overshadow the larger-than-life presence that is Talley himself—as well…
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Bakari Sellers' Invisible Black America
I know Bakari Sellers. Before I even read his upcoming memoir, I knew his life story like the back of my hand. We’re practically cousins. We were both raised in eerily similar South Carolina towns. Sellers grew up in Denmark, S.C., where my family briefly ran a small diner where people regularly ordered “liver pudd’n”—a…
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'My Memory Is Intact': Will André Leon Talley's Memoir Confirm That the Devil Does Indeed Wear Prada?
Now, we’re not ones to gossip, so you didn’t hear this from us, but word on the catwalk is that André Leon Talley is planning to serve some tea with his new memoir, The Chiffon Trenches. In fact, we’ve been hearing increasing buzz about some of the juicier bits of Talley’s tell-all, which he hopes…
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'So Little of Who I Am Happened in Those 8 Years': Michelle Obama's Book Becoming Is a Netflix Documentary
Michelle Obama, known to us as ‘Forever FLOTUS’, is Becoming the subject of a much-anticipated documentary. According to Forbes, her memoir went on to become a bestseller, selling 10 million copies in 2019 and making $36 million. Now, the book will continue its journey in the visual medium via a documentary on Netflix. Directed by…
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I Don't Want to Die Poor: In His Newest Book, Michael Arceneaux Articulates the Angst of a Generation
It’s a rare feat to score a spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list with your first book—and even rarer to have your finger on the pulse of a national moment with your second. Michael Arceneaux, author, 2018 Root 100 honoree and occasional contributor to The Root has managed to do both; following the…
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The Hate U Give Author Angie Thomas Is About to Hit Us With a New Novel, Concrete Rose
Black lives matter and so do black stories. Author Angie Thomas embodies that statement, and if you thought she was done giving us raw and brutally honest depictions of black reality with her novel-turned-film The Hate U Give, I have news for you: She ain’t. According to People, the acclaimed author has written a new…
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Great Moments in Black Her-story: 10 Books That Celebrate the Presence, Power, and Legacies of Black Women
Black History Month may be over, but for black women (and those who love them), the party’s only half-over, because March is Women’s History Month—and ain’t I a woman? Nestled at the intersection of blackness and womanhood, we know black women’s histories are rich and varied; we may not be anyone’s mules, but we are…
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Black History, Black Stories: 7 Books That Center Our Legacies for Longer Than a Month
“No scene from African American literary history is more familiar than that of Frederick Douglass’s learning to read,” reads the opening line of the introduction of Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, an educational tome that unpacks the long legacy of black literacy and literary acumen; one that began while…
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Alive at 89: For Her First Posthumous Birthday, Toni Morrison Is Getting an Epic Party at the Brooklyn Museum
No one can say we didn’t give Toni Morrison her flowers while she was with us; prior to her death on August 5, 2019, the Beloved author had amassed a Nobel Prize in Literature, a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and countless other accolades. And today, Feb. 18, on what would’ve been…