Kindred

Written by: Octavia Butler 

First line: I lost my arm on my last trip home.

Why you should read this book: This is a groundbreaking novel about the perilous history of Black Americans and their relationships to the white people who enslaved them, cleverly framed as a time traveling story about a young woman named Dana who, like Billy Pilgrim before her, becomes unhinged in time. Over and over, Dana is called back from 1970's LA to the antebellum south, where she must repeatedly save the life of her distant ancestor, Rufus, a rich white man who owns slaves, including another one of her ancestors, Alice, a Black woman who is the object of Rufus's obsession. As Rufus grows up, Dana must protect him to ensure her own birth, but at the same time, she cannot protect Alice from Rufus without preventing her own conception. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: Slavery is brutal.

The Freedom Riddle

Written by: Angela Shelf Medcaris and John Ward 

First line: It was finally Christmas Day! 

Why you should read this book: It is apparently based on a short story written by William Falkner, which was apparently based on a true story. In the antebellum south, an enslaved Black man named Jim makes a deal: it's Christmas day and slavery is, from a literary perspective, supposed to be nominally less inhumane on Christmas, to the point that a man who is totally cool with owning human beings agrees to allow Jim his freedom if Jim can tell him a riddle to which he can't guess the answer. It takes Jim an entire year and a few observations of the natural world, but he succeeds. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I guess I'm personally uncomfortable with this type of narrative because it seems to mitigate the horrors of slavery and I'm not sure we need light hearted stories about human bondage, especially in a country where the evils of slavery continue to echo, loudly, through society and continue to harm living people.

The Cooking Gene

Written by: Michael W. Twitty

First line: The Old South is a place where people use food to tell themselves who they are, to tell others who they are, and to tell stories about where they've been.

Why you should read this book: Powerful and poetic, this nonfiction narrative combines personal memoir, detailed historical research, and educated speculation to draw the reader deeply into its discussion of foodways as an avenue for understanding the history stolen from African Americans. Twitty delves as deeply into his own genealogy and self-image as he does into the discussion of individual ingredients, resulting in a work that is dense with meaning and emotion. Food is the lenses through which an examination of culture and self is made beautifully possible.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're one of those people who only eats six foods.

Wild Seed

Written by: Octavia Butler

First line: Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages.

Why you should read this book: In a vast, sweeping epic spanning two continents and several lifetimes, Doro, an immortal creature whose power to possess human bodies has taken him far from his human roots three thousand years in the past, discovers Anyanwu, a shape shifting healer, who, at three hundred years old, may be the key to Doro's quest to breed a race of superhumans. Anyanwu, who has known tyranny and loss, relishes her autonomy and is reluctant to bend to Doro's power or submit his experimental breeding program, but as the centuries pass, their relationship becomes deeper and more complex. This gripping novel is the first of a four-book story arc known collectively as the Patternist Series.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Content warning for a seriously abusive relationship.