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Black History Month 2023

Celebrate Black History Month with these titles, including fiction, non-fiction, and biographies.

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40 items

Yawd : modern Afro-Caribbean recipes / Adrian Forte.
Forte, Adrian, author.
Format: Book

The ONLY cookbook you need this summer! Dive into this bold, flavor-filled cookbook, packed with recipes to bring sun-filled island vibes to your home. Yawd = comfort food that sticks to your ribs! In his first cookbook, star chef Adrian Forte shares more than 100 of his inspiring recipes to get you fired up in the kitchen.

Rehearsals for living / Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
Maynard, Robyn, author.
Format: Book

When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters--a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.

Invisible boy : a memoir of self-discovery / Harrison Mooney.
Mooney, Harrison, author.
Format: Book

A narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard--that of the child at the centre of a transracial adoption--and a searing account of being raised by religious fundamentalists.

The long road home : on blackness and belonging / Debra Thompson.
Thompson, Debra (Debra E.), author.
Format: Book

From a leading scholar on the politics of race comes a work of family history, memoir, and insight gained from a unique journey across the continent, on what it is to be Black in North America.

Disorientation : being Black in the world / Ian Williams.
Williams, Ian, 1979- author.
Format: Book

Bestselling, Scotiabank Giller Award-winning writer Ian Williams brings fresh eyes and new insights to today's urgent conversation on race and racism in startling, illuminating essays that grow out of his own experience as a Black man moving through the world.

Out of the sun : on art, race, and history / Esi Edugyan.
Edugyan, Esi, author.
Format: Book

Two-time Scotiabank Giller Prize winner and internationally bestselling author Esi Edugyan delivers an incisive analysis of the relationship between race and art.

Sure, I'll be your Black friend : notes from the other side of the fist bump / Ben Philippe.
Philippe, Ben, author.
Format: Book

In an era in which “I have many black friends” is often a medal of Wokeness, Ben hilariously chronicles the experience of being on the receiving end of those fist bumps. He takes us through his immigrant childhood, from wanting nothing more than friends to sit with at lunch, to his awkward teenage years, to college in the age of Obama, and adulthood in the Trump administration—two sides of the same American coin.

The skin we're in : a year of black resistance and power / Desmond Cole.
Cole, Desmond, 1982- author.
Format: Book

A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists.

The book of negroes
Hill, Lawrence,
Format: Book

In this "transporting" (Entertainment Weekly) and "heart-stopping" (Washington Post) work, Aminata Diallo, one of the strongest women characters in contemporary fiction, is kidnapped from Africa as a child and sold as a slave in South Carolina. Fleeing to Canada after the Revolutionary War, she escapes to attempt a new life in freedom.

My mother's daughter : a memoir of struggle and triumph / Perdita Felicien.
Felicien, Perdita, 1980- author.
Format: Book

A raw and affecting memoir about a mother and daughter who beat the odds together.