Thick
by Tressie McMillan Cottom, PhD

2019 – In this collection of essays, Dr. McMillan Cottom touches on topics such as race, reproductive justice, desirability/respectability politics, and more. These sharp and insightful Black feminist critiques will make you think twice about the social norms that we take for granted.

Zami: A New Spelling of my Name
by Audre Lorde

1982 – In Lorde’s biomythography, she weaves her life stories and experiences into a compelling but sensual narrative. Blurring the lines between myth and biography, her memories of family, relationships, Blackness, and queerness flow from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood.

Fat Girls in Black Bodies: Creating Communities of Our Own
by Joy Arlene Renee Cox, PhD

2020 – Dr. Cox, host of podcast “Fresh Out the Cocoon,” explores what it means to be fat and Black in a world of fatphobia and misogynoir. She pushes against these systems and “explores how to reclaim space and create belonging in a hostile world,” truly creating communities of fat Black girls’ own.

The Body is not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
by Sonya Renee Taylor

2018 – “World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies.”

The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties
by the Combahee River Collective

1982 – The Combahee River Collective Statement is a brief but key piece of Black feminist/womanist thought. In detailing the multiple systems of oppression Black women face, the Combahee River Collective calls for transformation of and equity within the feminist and anti-racist movements.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot
by Mikki Kendall

2020 – “Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?”

Annie John
by Jamaica Kincaid (fiction)

1985 – This coming-of-age novel depicts Annie’s childhood and adolescence in 1950s Antigua. As she ages out of her idyllic childhood and reaches adolescence, Annie realizes the world around her, down to her own family, views her differently as a young lady than as a child. She navigates mother-daughter relationships, cultural norms, and sexuality in short stories puzzled together.

Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler (fiction)

1993 – “When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, fifteen-year-old Lauren suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions.”

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood
by Michele Goodwin

2020 – If you’ve read Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body, Goodwin’s book is a must-read update. Examining reproductive politics across the US, she details the ways that fetal personhood laws and state distrust of pregnancy in poverty has lead to the criminalization of pregnancy and parenthood.

Are Prisons Obsolete?
by Angela Y. Davis

2003 – “Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. Davis seeks to illustrate that the time for the prison is approaching an end. She argues forthrightly for ‘decarceration’, and argues for the transformation of the society as a whole.”

Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought
by Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Editor), Johnnetta Betsch Cole (Epilogue)

1995 – “From the work of abolitionist Maria Miller Stewart and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells to contemporary feminist critics Michele Wallace and bell hooks, Black women have been writing about the multiple jeopardies―racism, sexism, and classism―that have made it imperative to forge a brand of feminism uniquely their own.”

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism
by Bushra Rehman (Editor), Daisy Hernández (Editor), Cherríe L. Moraga (Foreword)

2002 – “Daisy Hernandez of Ms. magazine and poet Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to their experience—to the strength and rigidity of community and religion, to borders and divisions, both internal and external—and address issues that take feminism into the twenty-first century.”

Eloquent Rage
by Brittney Cooper

2018 – “Far too often, Black women’s anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. In Brittney Cooper’s world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. But homegirls emerge as heroes. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one’s own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.”

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
by bell hooks

1999 – “A groundbreaking work of feminist history and theory analyzing the relations between various forms of oppression. hooks examines the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of Black womanhood, Black male sexism, racism in the recent women’s movement, and Black women’s involvement with feminism.”

Quoted descriptions are from Goodreads.

Marcia Bass

Baltimore-based Marcia Bass works with paint and photography to create magically dimensional and otherworldly body art and photos.

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TT The Artist

Executive Producer of Club Queen Records and self-described RAD (rapper-artist-director), TT is on a mission to produce and share Black women’s art–both musical and visual.

Instagram – TT
Instagram – Black Pop Art
Black Pop Art

tubbiana the artist

Shayna’s art is a celebration of Blackness and queerness, centering bodies and sexualities. From prints to jewelry, their work crosses art styles to give bodies a soft, pastel touch.

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Etsy

Black Violin

Kev Marcus and Wil B met in a high school music class and chose to “disrupt people’s impressions of what classical music should be.” Blending baroque classical and hip-hop styles, their Grammy-nominated work does just that.

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Black Violin

Anaïs Art

Anaïs is a self-taught artist, working in digital and physical mediums. She incorporates larger-than-life styles, details, and color schemes into her finely-detailed work.

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Anaiis Art

Fat Femme Fatale

Courtney Shove incorporates body positivity into her love for roller skating, creating prints and stickers featuring bodies of all races, genders, sizes, and personalities.

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Fat Femme Fatale