Still pondering what to add to your holiday gift list? Here’s a list that will give you some guidance.
Fiction
Is there someone on your list who loves books about magic and spells? If so, look for “Black Candle Women,” by Diane Marie Brown (Graydon House). It’s a tale of three generations of Montrose women who live in the same house, stick to home, and keep their own company. Everything’s fine until one of them brings home a boy whose presence opens up an old family secret that will change everything.
“Time’s Undoing,” by Cheryl A. Head (Dutton), a novel about a woman who is determined to learn how her great-grandfather died, and how what it means to her safety, is based on the author’s own family history. Head writes the Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series.
“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” by James McBride (Riverhead Books), is a complex novel your giftee may love. When a new housing development is being constructed in Pottstown, Penn., builders found a human skeleton. The people in the neighborhood know whom the bones belonged to, but they’re not talking. This book about racism, community, and survival will make a great gift
Nyani Nkrumah’s powerful debut novel, “Wade in the Water.” (Amistad), tells the story of a white woman who befriends an eleven-year-old Black girl, and the relationship between the two in a racially divided southern city.
General non-fiction
“A Good Mom’s Guide to Making Bad Choices,” by Jamilah Mapp and Erica Dickerson (Harper One), is sharp, hilarious, and a good reminder that you can make mistakes and the kids will probably be just fine.
Black history
“The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders’ Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America’s Great Migration,” by Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld (Bison Books), is the story of the people who headed to the plains decades before the Great Migration, and how their move changed the country.
For the person who really devours history, look for “African American Almanac: 400 Years of Black Excellence,” by Lean’tin Bracks, PhD (Visible Ink Press). This second edition is full of history, mini-biographies, things your giftee might not know. Best of all: it’s completely updated.
Look, also, for “Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights,” by Dylan C. Penningroth (Liveright).
Racism/racial issues
What has racism looked like throughout history? Your social-justice-minded giftee will get a peek in “The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself,” by David Mura (University of Minnesota Press). Meant for both Black and white readers, this is a conversation-starter. Wrap it up with “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future” by Robert P. Jones (Simon & Schuster) for a perfectly thought-provoking gift.
Your giftee likely knows what life has been like since Black Lives Matter stepped into the news. “In Our Shoes: On Being a Young Black Woman in Not-So ‘Post-Racial’ America,” by Brianna Holt (Plume), examines the feeling further, in ways that relate to both culture and pop culture. Pair it with “Real Friends Talk About Race” by Yseult P. Mukantabana and Hannah Summerhill (Park Row Books), for a gift that makes this sometimes-squirmy subject possible to discuss.
Health & wellness
“Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise from Post-Reconstruction to Postwar America,” by Ava Purkiss (The University of North Carolina Press), relates what experts told Black women about exercise and how that factored into the fight for equality.
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