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  • General Recommendations
  • Staff-Created List

Black Voices

RCPL staff's recommended reading and viewing list for Black History Month.

User from Redwood City Public Library

32 items

  • In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion.
    DVD, 2022[Los Angeles, Calif.] : 20th Century Studios, [2022] — DVD 782.42 SUM
  • By the fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as a chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action,…
    Graphic Novel, 2016Marietta, GA, USA : Top Shelf Productions, [2016] — HISTORY US CIVRIGHT
  • Dimple Pennington knows of her half siblings, but she doesn't really KNOW them. Five people who don't have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad's gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment…
    Book, 2022New York : Scout Press, 2022. — CARTYWIL
  • How We Can Win

    Race, History and Changing the Money Game That's Rigged

    Jones, Kimberly (Kimberly Latrice),
    A breakdown of the economic and social injustices facing Black people and other marginalized citizens inspired by political activist Kimberly Jones' viral video, "How Can We Win.
    Book, 2021New York, New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2021. — 305.896 J719h
  • Mays explores the relationship and differences between the Black American quest for freedom and the Native American struggle for sovereignty in the U.S
    Book, 2021Boston : Beacon Press, [2021] — HISTORY AFRICA
  • A series of connected personal stories drawn from the author's life and work as an ER doctor that explores how we are all broken--physically, emotionally, and psychically--and what we can do to heal ourselves as we try to heal others
    Book, 2020New York : Riverhead Books, 2020. — BIO 610.92 HARPER
  • In Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the poor, the queer, the drivers and dancers, the abused and displaced and vulnerable. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! traces characters for whom…
    Book, 2022New York : Riverhead Books, 2022. — OSUNDE
  • As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets…
    Book, 2022Toronto, Ontario, Canada : Hanover Square Press, [2022] — F BLACK
  • Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture,…
    Book, 2010New York : Crown Publishers, c2010. — 921 LACKS
  • The Warmth of Other Suns

    the Epic Story of America's Great Migration

    Wilkerson, Isabel
    In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western…
    Book, 2011New York : Vintage Books, 2011. — SOC SCI
  • Queen of diverse historicals Vanessa Riley brings readers a vivid, sweeping novel of the Haitian Revolution based on the true-life stories of two extraordinary women: the first Empress of Haiti, Marie-Claire Bonheur, and Gran Toya, a West…
    Book, 2022New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2022] — RILEY
  • To Walk About in Freedom

    the Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner

    Emberton, Carole,
    Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858. Her life story, which she recounted in an oral history decades later, captures the complexity of emancipation. Based on interviews that Joyner and formerly enslaved people had with the…
    Book, 2022New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2022] — 306.3 EMBERTON
  • Tears of My Mother

    the Legacy of My Nigerian Upbringing

    Osefo, Wendy,
    As a teenager, Wendy struggled to carve out her own identity while still walking the narrow path of her mother's expectations. Unwavering family loyalty and obedience gave Wendy the road map to making it in America, but it also drove a wedge…
    Book, 2022New York : Gallery Books, 2022. — BIO OSEFO
  • Black Ghost of Empire

    the Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation

    Manjapra, Kris, 1978-
    The 1619 Project illuminated the ways in which every aspect of life in the United States was and is shaped by the existence of slavery. Black Ghost of Empire focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial…
    Book, 2022New York : Scribner, 2022. — 306.362 MANJAPRA
  • The Black Period

    on Personhood, Race, and Origin

    Geter, Hafizah, 1984-
    A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, The Black Period follows Hafizah on a journey that tells her at every turn she's not worthy. At the same time, she manages to sidestep shame, confront disability, embrace forgiveness,…
    Book, 2022New York : Random House, [2022] — BIO GETER
  • Immortal Valor

    the Black Medal of Honor Winners of World War II

    Child, Robert, 1963-
    Tells the story of seven African American soldiers in World War II who were finally awarded Medals of Honor for their service in 1993 based on the work of a research team at Shaw University in North Carolina.
    Book, 2022Oxford : Osprey Publishing, 2022. — HISTORY WAR WWII
  • Black Joy

    Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration

    Lewis-Giggetts, Tracey M.,
    "With this book, Tracey aims to gift her community with a collection of lyrical essays about the way joy has evolved, even in the midst of trauma, in her own life."
    Book, 2022New York : Gallery Books, 2022. — SOC SCI
  • Born in Blackness

    Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

    French, Howard W.,
    "Revealing the central yet intentionally obliterated role of Africa in the creation of modernity, 'Born in Blackness' vitally reframes our understanding of world history.
    Book, 2021New York, N.Y. : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2021] — HISTORY AFRICA
  • South to America

    a Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

    Perry, Imani, 1972-
    "An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America." Also available in digital formats.
    Book, 2022New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — 917.5 PERRY
  • The 1619 Project

    a New Origin Story

    "The animating idea of The 1619 Project is that our national narrative is more accurately told if we begin not on July 4, 1776, but in late August of 1619, when a ship arrived in Jamestown bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from…
    Book, 2021New York : One World, [2021] — HISTORY US