The Root's Favorite Reads of 2019Like this list

15 items

• What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

  a Memoir in Essays

  Young, Damon, 1978-

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  "...a series of attempts to find some solidity and lucidity in the relentless absurdity of existing while Black in America." - Damon Young

• American Spy

  a Novel

  Wilkinson, Lauren, 1984-

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  “The first few moments after you meet someone are precious, because the data on them is plentiful and your own subjectivity has yet to interfere.” - Lauren Wilkinson

• How to Be An Antiracist

  Kendi, Ibram X,

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  “Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.” - Ibram X. Kendi

• Dear Haiti, Love Alaine

  Moulite, Maika,

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  "People will often first recall the destitution and sadness that resides within its borders. The pain and violence. But that is not the full picture..." - Maika Moullite

• The Beautiful Ones

  Prince,

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  "The story would focus on his mother, whose gaze was the 'first I ever saw,' and who had never received proper credit for her role in his success." -Dan Piepenbring

• Dapper Dan

  Made in Harlem : a Memoir

  Day, Daniel R.,

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  "Before I ever made anything for a rapper or basketball player, I catered mostly to gangsters and drug dealers, guys with real money in the community, guys like Serge." - Daniel Day

• Dressed in Dreams

  a Black Girl's Love Letter to the Power of Fashion

  Ford, Tanisha C,

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  "I wanted to write a book that acknowledges those everyday struggles and celebrates black innovation in fashion. We are the most creative folks, knowing how to do the most with the very least, in all the best ways." - Tanisha Ford

• Motherhood So White

  a Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America

  Austin, Nefertiti,

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  "I was fighting against white privilege's erasure of Black parenting perspectives and insistence that the word mother automatically meant white." - Nefertiti Austin

• Such a Fun Age

  a Novel

  Reid, Kiley,

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  "Briar Chamberlain was not a silly child. Balloons never sent her into hysterics and she was more concerned than delighted when clowns threw themselves on the ground or lit their fingers on fire." - Kiley Reid

• Magical Negro

  Poems

  Parker, Morgan,

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  "Privilege is asking other people to look at you - I like everything in my apartment except me. I mean I need to buy a toaster. What is the point of something that only does one thing." - Morgan Parker

• Red at the Bone

  Woodson, Jacqueline,

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  “Look how beautifully black we are. And as we dance, I am not Melody who is sixteen, I am not my parents’ once illegitimate daughter—I am a narrative, someone’s almost forgotten story. Remembered.” - Jacqueline Woodson

• I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying

  Essays

  Ikpi, Bassey,

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  “How can you not forgive someone whose whole life was a sprint towards survival?” - Bassey Ikpi

• We Speak for Ourselves

  A Word from Forgotten Black America

  Watkins, D.

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  "He reflects a common perspective among people like me, from the bottom, and you wouldn't know because we normally don't get invites to ivory tower galas and dress-shoe functions." - D. Watkins

• Survival Math

  Notes on an All-American Family

  Jackson, Mitchell

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  "Among the future generations of those captured humans are the men on this book cover, all of whom are my family members, each of whom I photographed and asked the same question: What's the toughest thing you survived?" - Mitchell Jackson

• Breathe

  A Letter to My Sons

  Perry, Imani

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  “Living as prayer. I think that is when I am at my best. Because seeing through prayer provides a remarkable clarity. Not in the doctrinal sense, but because it is, at best, the lens of a love for every tattered inch of this earth.” -…Read moreRead more of this annotation