African American Womens History

Brought to you by Penguin. Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa's history has been neglected. Dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, its past has been fragmented, overlooked and denied its rightful place in our...

Africa has been known as "the cradle of mankind", and its recoverable history stretches back to the Pharaohs. But the idea of studying African history is itself new, and the authors show why it is still contested and controversial. This VSI, the first concise work of its kind, will prove essential for anyone interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history. 

Throughout history, African-American women have played a vital and often overlooked role in both the suffrage and civil rights movements in the United States. For more than two centuries, they have stood at the intersection of two monumental struggles, racial equality and women’s rights, refusing to be excluded from either. Their contributions were integral to the very structure and progress of each movement.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. “Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting...

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN)...

The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this “groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States” (Ibram X. Kendi)—the perfect companion to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the...

When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how Black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging Black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations.

"In her latest, Riley provides a fresh take on high seas adventure through the eyes of the courageous, swashbuckling, based-on-a-real-life female pirate Jacquotte Delahaye. The research Riley has done on this 1600s saga is truly remarkable, second only to her depictions of the lush Caribbean...

Featured on Oprah’s Summer Reading List For readers of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, this extraordinary historical debut novel follows three fierce Southern women in an unforgettable story of motherhood and womanhood. It’s 1924 in...

In this incredible second book in a series of autobiographies, the poet, still in her teens, gives birth to a son, tries to keep a job, falls in love, dances, falls out of love, chases after her kidnapped baby, and goes to work in a house of prostitution thinking she is helping the man she loves...

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) possessed one of the twentieth century's most astonishing voices. Historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist. Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer's difficult childhood, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls' reformatory school—where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer.

Maya Angelou has fascinated, moved, and inspired countless readers with the first three volumes of her autobiography, one of the most remarkable personal narratives of our age. Now, in her fourth volume, The Heart of a Woman, her turbulent life breaks wide open with joy as...

The Instant New York Times Bestseller! A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune—an unlikely friendship that changed the world, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the Good Morning America Book Club...

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2025 | BookRiot's Best Books of 2025 | NPR's New Books to Read | Ms. Magazine's Most Anticipated Feminist Book A crucial telling of U.S. history centering the Black women whose magic gave rise to the rich tapestry of American culture, wellness, and spirituality that...

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks...

A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. One of The Millions’ Most Anticipated Reads (The Great First Half 2020 Books) When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother...

Read by “Da Brat” DuPart and her wife Judy DuPart Hip-hop legend “Da Brat” DuPart and her wife Judy DuPart, stars of WEtv’s highly rated reality series Brat Loves Judy, share their journey to the altar and parenthood in this candid relationship guide and marriage memoir. Hip-hop legend...

From The Unexpected Diva author Tiffany Warren—a dishy and dramatic novel of the Harlem Renaissance and its most famous Black debutante, Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose spectacular wedding to poet Countee Cullen was the society event of the year...even though the bride and...