Black History Month 2024

This year’s national theme is Reclaiming Narratives. We asked you for stories, allegories, and histories that work to correct historical inaccuracies, showcasing untold success stories and highlighting the full complexity of Black heritage.

How many of these books have you read?

Your recommendations

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Americanah follows the story of Ifemelu, a Nigerian migrant to the US who navigates trials and tribulations in search of a better life. It is in the US, and as an adult, where she learns through experience, what racism is. Americanah is an award-winning novel and very widely read, so if you haven't already this is your reminder!”

Farhana, LCCOS

The Will to Change - Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks

“This book has changed how I think about love, and made me rethink my relationship with masculinity. bell hooks' book speaks about issues that impact everyone, but keeps in frame the challenges that Black people face in patriarchal households. I now know that reframing traditional concepts of love and masculinity is crucial to a more just and equitable world, and I'm becoming less afraid of showing love to people in my life, through various acts and conversations. This book positions men as agents of change, as crucial allies in the fight against not only sexism, misogyny and patriarchy, but bigotry in all forms. This mission has to engage people across the world, forming a global web of solidarity and care, and choosing to love, radically and freely, is the first step. This book inspires the work we do at TeamUCL, with our All Jokes Aside men's mental health campaign. We're trying to create spaces for male students to meet, keep active, and break down learned barriers that prevent them from expressing how they feel.”

Tommy Garwood, Students’ Union

Blood on the Forge by William Attaway

“Blood on the Forge represents, in my opinion, one of the best examples of the black proletarian novel. Although fiction, its contents shine light on an often unknown yet mass history, of black working-class struggle in the USA. The novel begins in the South, depicting the struggles of black sharecroppers in a deeply and openly racist society. Yet when the three brothers who make up this novel's protagonists move up to the industrial north of the country, they find a different, but equally racist, society awaits them. Through the three brothers’ various developments, you learn about the complex and different characteristics, but also the universal, contained within the experience of black communities. I would highly recommend for anyone interested in the fight against racism and the formation of the black working class.”

Matthew Lee, LCCOS

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

“This is a fantastically sharp, engaging sci-fi novel based on the idea that the five boroughs of New York have human identities and must band together to save their home. It helps if you’ve visited (Jemisin clearly loves the city and celebrates its diversity and energy), but the action is compelling even if you haven’t. The book is also a brilliantly angry allegory that tackles historic and contemporary racism via the creeping white tendrils gradually taking over NYC. Jemisin is a key figure in sci-fi and this novel has a sequel, The World We Make, if you want to read on.”

My Love Story: The Autobiography by Tina Turner with Deborah Davis and Dominik Wichmann

“It's an inspiring story.”

Irina, LCCOS

Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah

“This is the story of Leonard, who at 10 years old makes the journey with his mother from Jamaica to join his father in England. Leonard is part of the Windrush generation, one of thousands of people and families who were persuaded by the government to help rebuild England after the Second World War and make a better life for themselves”.

IOE Library

The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence

“This series of historical detective stories is gripping, amusing, moving, instructive - appropriate for children and adults alike. Each of the four young heroes is either female or foreign or disabled or poor, or several of these. One is an African slave, adjusting our perception of the ancient Romans.”

Christina Egan, Library Services

Black and Queer on Campus by Michael P. Jeffries

“Drawing on interviews with students from over a dozen colleges, this book provides a new, much-needed perspective on the specific challenges Black LGBTQ+ students face on campuses in the US, and the ways they overcome them”.

IOE Library

Sounds Like Home by Mary Herring Wright

“Originally published in 1999, Sounds Like Home adds an important dimension to the canon of deaf literature by presenting the perspective of an African American deaf woman who attended a segregated deaf school. Mary Herring Wright documents her life from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s, offering a rich account of her home life in rural North Carolina and her education at the North Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind, which had a separate campus for African American students”.

IOE Library

Africans and Their History by Joseph E. Harris

“A scholarly yet concise and readable survey of Africa's diverse ethnic groups and societies and their histories. It encompasses the prehistoric era; the continent's great empires prior to European contact, colonisation and enslavement; post-colonial liberation after WW2, concluding with the present day. The second updated edition covers the emergence of post-apartheid, majority rule South Africa and other recent events. The author, an eminent African-American academic, begins his ambitious chronicle with a chapter examining Europeans' racist attitudes towards Africans, and demonstrates that these prejudices were prevalent long before the transatlantic slave trade, having their origins in Greek and Roman classical thought.”

Christopher Josiffe, Library Services

From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt by Donald B. Redford

“In From Slave to Pharaoh, noted Egyptologist Donald B. Redford examines over two millennia of complex social and cultural interactions between Egypt and the Nubian and Sudanese civilizations that lay to the south of Egypt.”

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in UCL Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science

This activity was organised through the Library Liberating the Collections Group. The purpose of this group is to identify and oversee progress with a strategic set of actions intended to enrich the collections, increasing visibility of, and access to, works by authors who have been marginalised (and thus less heard) because of factors such as race, sexuality, gender and disability. Any titles that we don’t already own we will buy and add to our collections and will be available shortly.