Some stories reach our souls, and others end up tearing them apart, even if that is not their true objective. And it is because there exists, in our world, so many situations of injustices and impunity, that it becomes impossible not to feel empathy for those who live and narrate them, as with the lives of the characters of these Afro-American writers.
It is necessary to keep making these unhealthy social practices visible, such as racism, racial violence, and the lack of opportunities for certain parts of the population simply because of their skin color, put a stop to them and continue walking for the sake of a fairer and more just and equitable existence.
For this reason, here are some great books that will teach you, first-hand, about the experience of black society through the letters of African-American authors whose plots and narratives will remain deeply rooted in your heart for the rest of your days.
The Color Purple
Its plot is so dense and deep that it even granted its author, Alice Walker, a Pulitzer Prize. It follows Celie, an African-American woman who, at the age of 14, discovers that she is pregnant by her father, who sold her to a man who spends his time maltreating her. Celie will thus experience several traumatic and sad moments, such as the separation from her sister Nettie and other confrontations, while she meets different female figures who will help her overcome her condition and empower herself.
Americanah
A powerful love story wrapped in threads of racism that will make, even the strongest readers, feel powerless. Here, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie tells us the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, two love-struck Nigerian teenagers who are separated by their country’s dictatorship. Ifemelu comes to the United States to study but ends up facing racism, while Obinze seeks to reach her, going from being an undocumented immigrant in London to a wealthy businessman in his home country after facing problems similar to those of his beloved.
The Vanishing half
Britt Bennett became an internationally bestselling author for this book, which follows a pair of twin girls, Desiree and Stella, and their daughters years later. These African-American sisters flee their town, in the American South, in the 1950s, only to find their paths far apart. Stella marries a white man and hides his roots from her family, while Desiree lives heartbroken over the abandonment of her dear sister. As they both cope with the drama of their lives, the lies that got them to the point where they were threats to overshadow them.
My Monticello
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Award and National Books Critics Circle Award for this collection of short stories and a short novel, which follows two descendants of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson who seek refuge in Monticello after trying to escape a wave of violence fomented in a Unite the Right manifestation. This story focuses on the racial problems that have been generated in our contemporary world and how they have taken up old quarrels to foment more hatred instead of a good solution.
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northop’s story of slavery is told, in the hands of writer David Wilson, in this book, whose adaptation reached the Oscar Awards for the crude way it recounts a social injustice. Solomon, a cultured musician of African-American descendants at a time when slavery was still in force, is abducted by two men who offer him a regular-paying job on a music project. He is sold and sent to a Louisiana plantation for 12 years, before his release.
The Sweetness of Water
For moving stories, none like this, by Nathan Harris, who set it in the South of the United States shortly after the emancipation of several slaves and their fight against the chains of racism and a past full of traumas. In this context, George, a white man full of kindness, hires two emancipated brothers to help him plow his land, although this action only causes his neighbors to see them with bad eyes and starts tensions that could be catastrophic for all the characters involved.
The Prophets
Robert Jones Jr. gives us an atypical love story in this novel, which follows Isaiah and Samuel, two slaves on a plantation in Mississippi. The ancestors of both the characters, their present actions, and the lives of others, such as Amos, an elderly slave who adopts Christianity as his religion, are intertwined in this complex plot, touching and shocking in equal parts, whose violent denouement opens the question of what we are doing to stop similar situations that continue to occur in our contemporary lives.
Native Son
Richard Wright, an author who managed to get out of extreme poverty thanks to his writings, gives us in this book one of his most powerful plots. It is the story of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old young man who injures his boss’s white daughter in an accidental event, marked by the racial hatred that he has experienced for years and has left him with a damaging behavior that does not stop growing due to the doubts fostered by a repressive society that seeks to bring him down at any cost simply for being Afro-descendant. His greatest lesson will be the encounter of his individuality in a social struggle that has no end.
The Underground Railroad
Another Pulitzer Prize winner was born thanks to a novel that seeks to bring the reality of racism and enslavement closer, through the eyes of a range of forceful but afflicted characters. Colson Whitehead tells us the story of Cora, a 15-year-old slave who uses a clandestine network of routes and safe houses made by African-Americans to escape from a Georgia plantation. On her journey, she will meet several people who will help her see the bigger picture of slavery and how freedom has been transformed into a powerful currency that not everyone can get access to.
Hidden Figures
If it’s hard enough to be a black person in a world controlled by racism, it’s even worse when you’re a woman. But the three protagonists of this story, Katherine, Dorothy, and Mary, show us, through the hand of Margot Lee Shetterly, that no matter how difficult anything looks, the worst thing that can happen to a human being is to give up without having tried. These women, who did exist in real life, marked history by becoming the first African-American women to help NASA and IBM services make discoveries that led the first American astronaut to make a complete orbit of the Earth.