Every year since 2017, Blackfeminisms.com hosts annual lists of academic books a) written by or about Black and African women or b) written with a Black or African feminist lens. These lists contain titles that transcend different fields of study for Black and African feminist scholarship and women’s studies across the diaspora. This list of books published in 2021 focuses on academic perspectives on Black feminism, African feminism, and Black women throughout the diaspora. Check it out below!
- Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra – Anima Adjepong
- Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance – Moya Bailey
- Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America – Keisha N. Blain
- Running From Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America – Karen Cook Bell
- Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South – Regina N. Bradley
- An OutKast Reader: Essays on Race, Gender, and the Postmodern South – Regina N. Bradley
- Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba – Takkara K. Brunson
- The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle – Myisha Cherry
- Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry – Soyica Diggs Colbert
- Demystifying the Engineering PhD – Monica Cox
- Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race Rethinking Blackness in the African American Novel – Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus
- Féminismes africains – Rama Salla Dieng
- The Spirit of Our Work: Black Women Teachers (Re)member – Cynthia B. Dillard
- Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution: Collective Action in the African Diaspora – Crystal Nicole Eddins
- Black and Sexy: A Framework of Racialized Sexuality – Tracie Q. Gilbert
- Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature – Farah Jasmine Griffin
- Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts – Rebecca Hall
- Martin Luther King and The Trumpet of Conscience Today – Regine Michelle Jean-Charles
- Living While Black – Guilaine Kinouani
- Race, Rhetoric, and Research Methods – Alexandria L. Lockett, Iris D. Ruiz, James Chase Sanchez, and Christopher Carter
- Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis – Zakiya Luna and Whitney Pirtle
- Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic – Jennifer L. Morgan
- Virgin Capital: Race, Gender & Financialization in the US Virgin Islands – Tami Navarro
- At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, & Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. – Tamika Y. Nunley
- Experiments in Imagining Otherwise – Lola Olufemi
- Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip Hop Performance – Nicole Hodges Persley
- Breaking It Down: Auditioning for Artists of the Global Majority – Nicole Hodges Persley and Monica Ndounou
- Why Solange Matters – Stephanie Phillips
- Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo – Rachel Afi Quinn
- Digital Black Feminism – Catherine Knight Steele
- Kincraft: The Making of Black Evangelical Sociality – Todnee Thomas
- The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation – Anna Malaika Tubbs
- Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North – Crystal Lynn Webster
- Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America – Psyche A. Williams-Forson
- Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements – Deva R. Woodly
- Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century United States – Katelyn Hale Wood
- The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies – Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso and Toyin Falola
- Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country – Fay A. Yarbrough
Still need more suggestions? Check out the lists for previous years
below:
If you have any recommendations or suggestions for the list, please add them as a comment to this post or send me a message via the contact form.
Special thanks goes to Alexandra Gelbard for additional recommendations.
