Book lovers everywhere are familiar with the intense feeling of connecting with fictional characters, or they hope to.
Historically, Black literature was not widely taught or popularized in mainstream media. However, Iconic Black women writers like Zora Neal Hurston and Toni Morrison helped raise a whole generation of writers who wrote with Black women in mind.
Now, Black women writers are making space to represent their core audience through book cover art that depicts Black women in different spaces, places, and hairstyles, such as bantu knots and type 4 afros.
Here are 15 books that showcase natural hair and protective styles for Black women book lovers:
1. Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel
Jayne Allen’s breakout novel, Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, follows Tabitha Walker. Walker is what most Black women set out to be: educated, successful, financially well off, and loved by her ‘picture-perfect’ partner. However, a life-altering diagnosis brings her to the realization that the one thing money can’t buy is time. With her dreams of having a family at risk, Walker is faced with two choices: her family or her career.
2. Black Candle Women
The Montrose women and their collection of spells have kept their family together until the inevitable happens. The youngest Montrose, Nickie, falls in love without knowing the Montrose women are cursed, and anyone they fall in love with will die. To uncover the answers they seek in love, the Montrose women have to venture back to 1950s New Orleans and reckon with the past.
3. Black Girl Call Home
Poet Jasmine Mans is speaking to any Black girl searching for self-acceptance and the real meaning behind healing. Black Girl Call Home is a collection of essays and poetry that explores the intricacies of adulthood as a young, queer Black woman in America.
4. Bright Red Fruit
Safia Elhillo novel Bright Red Fruit follows a young teen named Samira who is desperate to break free from the bad girl stereotype placed on her. During a summer of exploration and poetry, she connects with an older poet named Horus. Despite the bliss of heightened emotions, their relationship leaves Samira with a secret big enough to prove everyone around her right and threaten her future.
5. Drinking From Graveyard Wells
Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s Drinking From Graveyard Wells is a collection of narratives that shines a light on the experiences of African women in the Americas and elsewhere. Ndlovu’s novel enters a naturalization ceremony where participating immigrants must sacrifice what they love most to complete their naturalization process.
6. Seven Days in June
Seven Days in June centers on award-winning author Eva Mercy’s path to rediscovering herself, creativity, and love. After Eva accidentally reconnects with a long-lost lover, she is unsure about whether her heart is in a position to trust again. The only thing she’s sure about is her need for closure. Tia Williams’ novel explores Black motherhood and how love, just like life, can be reborn countless times.
7. Where Sleeping Girls Lie
Sade Hussein’s intense coming-of-age story begins during her junior year of high school, her first year at Alfred Nobel Academy Boarding School after spending her academic career being homeschooled. After Hussein’s first night, she becomes suspect in her roommate’s disappearance, all while navigating the school’s social food chain and healing from personal tragedies. As she works to crack the mystery of her roommate’s disappearance, Hussein ends ups up getting knee-deep in the secrets that lay beyond the foundation of her prestigious boarding school.
8. Sun is Sky
Jedah Mayberry’s Sun in Sky shows readers the darker, secretive side of rural living. When teenage Penny Hill gets shipped off to Mississippi after a mishap with her mother, she is met with family secrets and sudden tragedies. After her grandmother’s death, Hill must decide whether she will take her place or navigate her own journey of self-actualization.
9. Before I Let Go
The concept of finding love, or allowing it to find you, is a concept deeply ingrained in both girlhood and womanhood. However, Yasmen and Josiah Wade realized love isn’t enough to salvage a marriage broken beyond repair — or is it? Kennedy Ryan’s novel is full of stolen kisses, unhealed wounds, and reflection on how reminiscing may help the Wades get love right the second time.
10. Until We Break
Naomi Morgan’s determination to earn a spot in the New York City Ballet pushes her to the brink of mental destruction despite dancing being her therapy. When an injury forces her to reassess her dreams and coping skills, she meets a street artist named Saint. Until We Break is the story of two opposite individuals learning the first rule of life: there are no rules.
11. The Other Black Girl
Every Black woman knows being the only Black woman in any corporate office feels like surveilled isolation, and Nella Rogers is no exception. Rogers is excited when Brooklyn native Hazel begins working at Wagner Books, but the happiness is short-lived after she begins receiving threats to leave Wagner. As the friendship between Rogers and Hazel grows, more unexplained events occur, and secrets at Wagner are brought out of the darkness.
12. Queenie
Twenty-five-year-old Queenie Jenkins is a journalist in London who is fighting to perform at work, dealing with a break-up from her long-term boyfriend, and healing family trauma with all the wrong vices. An age-old tale many Black women have or will experience en-route to full fledge adulthood and learning her worth. Queenie’s story follows all her
13. Ties that Tether
Ties that Tether explores the culture nuance of interracial relationships and breaking generational curses. After promising her mother she would marry a Nigerian man, Azere continuously indulges her mother’s matchmaking until a fated one-night stand with a man who is everything she hoped for, aside from being white. Tether unpacks Azere’s choice between her fulfillment versus being a people pleaser and what either decision says about her identity as a Nigerian woman.
14. Black Girl You Are Atlas
Renee Watson’s collection of poetry and autobiographical essays lets readers into the intricate folds of her childhood in Portland by exploring themes of sisterhood and celebrating Black women. Watson writes to the Black women in her life who have helped her become the woman she is today and urges young Black women after her to be fearless when stepping into their power.
15. Patience is a Subtle Thief
Patience Adewale can be seen everywhere in the eldest daughters. Being the sheltered daughter of a chief does not come easy, especially when there is no comfort to be found at home. Finding independence at the university in Lagos fuels her determination to find her mother, who was banished from their compound years ago — with no explanation.
If your life was a novel, what would you title it? Take a picture of your favorite book and tag us @NaturallyCurly in the story you see yourself in.
