black books
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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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An Immigrant’s Story: Acclaimed Author Edwidge Danticat Wins $100,000 Prize for Her ‘Genre-Spanning Work’
Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory; The Farming of Bones; Brother, I’m Dying, etc.) has long been considered one of the most gifted voices in the diaspora, garnering a National Book Critics Circle Award, an American Book Award, and a MacArthur Genius grant, among her many honors. This week, the writer and activist can…
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VSB's Damon Young Wins Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Award for What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
What’s more exciting than any work of fiction? The news that one of our favorite essayists, colleagues and play cousins is being recognized for his brilliance! As reported by Publishers Weekly (and our work Slack), Damon Young’s debut book of essays, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, was recently named the nonfiction winner of…
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Made in Harlem: Dapper Dan Releases a Memoir and Talks to The Glow Up About His New Mission
He was born “the poorest of Harlem’s poor” in 1944, and spent decades hustling before breaking into a legitimate trade. Nearly 75 years later, his designs for Gucci were the ones to be seen in at this year’s Met Gala. He launched “logomania” before it became a phrase, disrupting luxury fashion by infusing it with…
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In More Than Enough, Elaine Welteroth Discusses the Double-Edged Sword of #SucceedingWhileBlack
Behind every black woman’s success story is generally a well-developed talent for code-switching and at least one person (often, far more than one) who questions her right to succeed. As Elaine Welteroth recounts in her new memoir, More Than Enough, she experienced plenty of both while building her reputation as one of the most influential…
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A Word: How We Fight White Supremacy Reminds Us That ‘We’ Have the Power
What does it mean to fight white supremacy today? After centuries of trying, those of us actively committed to doing so know that grand gestures are well outnumbered by daily acts expressed in myriad ways with varying levels of visibility. This is the message of How We Fight White Supremacy, a new African American anthology…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 3: Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham
Publisher Synopsis: Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha’s Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by…
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28 Days of Literary Blackness With VSB | Day 1: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Today is the first day of Black History Month, the annual celebration in these here United States of America where schools make kids learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Sprinkle in a few facts about a black person being the first person to do this or that, and before you know it,…
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12 Days of Gifting, Day 11: For the Bibliophiles
As the days are at their shortest and coldest, is there anything better than curling up with a good book? Better yet, in lieu tromping through store after store or guessing at sizes online, is there anything better than walking your fingers to the laptop and gifting a good book (or several) to the bibliophiles…
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Michelle Obama's Memoir Is Becoming an Instant Bestseller
Well, we can’t say we didn’t see this coming: Only four days after its Nov. 13 release, Penguin Random House announced on Friday that our forever first lady Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, sold more than 725,000 units in all formats and editions in the United States and Canada on the first day of its publication…