 | Life According to Motown by Patricia Smith
Buy used from: $5.50 Patricia Smith's first book. I taught this entire book with several high school classes, and they loved it.
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 | For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
Buy new: $9.95 / Used from: $4.00 This is the staple poetry book that should be handed out like a Black girl manual.
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 | The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
Buy new: $9.86 / Used from: $1.25 This is an amazing book. I strongly suggest reading the essay about it Barbara Smith's "Homegirls" first. It's intense.
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 | Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara
Buy new: $10.10 / Used from: $0.15 Exceptional short stories by an amazing fiction writer.
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 | The Black Woman: An Anthology
Buy new: $11.70 / Used from: $7.06 A necessary collection of Black women that has recently come back into print. Make sure it stays in print.
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 | Homemade Love by J. California Cooper
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $3.39 Short stories that you want to share with your girls. I think Julie Dash made a movie based on at least one of the stories.
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 | Bellocq's Ophelia: Poems by Natasha Trethewey
Buy new: $10.92 / Used from: $5.60 Tretheway's second collection takes on the voice of a mixed race woman who comes to New Orleans, becomes a prostitute and the subject of a photographer's eye.
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 | Daughter: A Novel by asha bandele
Buy used from: $0.01 An amazing debut novel from poet, journalist and author of the memoir "The Prisoner's Wife". This book is about a mother and daughter caught in the crossfire of police brutality's aftermath.
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 | Assata: An Autobiography (Lawrence Hill & Co.) by Assata Shakur
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $4.50 Although the bounty on her head is a million dollars, her words are just as alive as she is and just as relevant today as they were during the Black Power Movement.
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 | Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by Bell Hooks
Buy new: $12.48 / Used from: $4.50 I would say start with this if you haven't read bell before. "Feminist Theory", "Talking Back" and "Feminism is for Everybody" are also good, and she writes about damn near everything.
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 | Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series) by Geraldine Audre Lorde
Buy used from: $0.01 Her essays elucidate the politics of women of color so well. Also contains the often-referenced "Poetry is not a Luxury" essay.
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 | Upstate: A Novel by Kalisha Buckhanon
Buy used from: $0.01 OK, admittedly Kalisha is one of my friends, but this epistolary novel talks about how prison affects relationships. It would spark discussion about the prison industrial complex.
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 | The women of plums: Poems in the voices of slave women by Dolores Kendrick
Buy used from: $2.39 Kendrick shakes up form and voices from the past by giving her pages to slave women.
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 | Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
Buy new: $11.89 / Used from: $1.89 The young single mother and heroine becomes a healer and saves her boyfriend by calling on the powers of the ancestors.
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 | Sula (Oprah's Book Club) by Toni Morrison
Buy used from: $0.01 If you haven't read this one yet, you should. About the friendship between two Black women and Black women's sexuality.
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 | In Search Of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker
Buy used from: $0.01 OK, if you haven't seen the strength of mother's, discovered the power of sisterly prose, then this is a book to dive into. If you do know such powers already, enjoy.
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 | In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker
Buy new: $10.40 / Used from: $1.00 Between this and "You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down", these short stories exemplify the agility of Walker's writing.
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 | Girl at the Window: Poems by Pinkie Gordon Lane
Buy new: $16.95 / Used from: $2.13 The Poet Laureate of Louisiana writes contemplative poems in a calm voice that seem so right. This book includes "Lyric: I Am Looking at Music" recited by Nia Long in "love jones".
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 | Natural Birth by Toi Derricotte
Buy new: $10.40 / Used from: $2.00 Derricotte's collection makes readers think about the perceptions of motherhood.
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 | Arcade by Erica Hunt
Buy new: $15.00 / Used from: $6.49 Well-crafted political poems accompanied by Alison Saar's stunning artwork. One of my favorite poems here is "the voice of no".
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 | Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology
Buy new: $17.04 / Used from: $14.59 A staple for a Black woman library with a wide range of voices.
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 | Muse and Drudge by Harryette Mullen
Buy used from: $4.71 From what I understand, Mullen's quatrains were written once a day over the course of year, but they are a fascinating read nonetheless. Also check "Sleeping with the Dictionary".
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 | Drag by Duriel E. Harris
Buy new: $14.00 / Used from: $1.25 Duriel has written one of those rare poetry collections that I gather something new from it each time I reread it. Get a copy as soon as you can.
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 | Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 by Deborah Gray White
Buy new: $15.25 / Used from: $5.53 A necessary history book about the social justice work of Black women.
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 | When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Paula J. Giddings
Buy new: $12.44 / Used from: $1.63 A solid overview on Black women's contributions in America during the club, suffrage, and civil rights movements.
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