With Women’s History Month in March, now is the perfect time to revisit some old favorites and remind ourselves of the work Black women have done. To get you started, I’ve rounded up a mix of essays and biographies — all by Black women authors and about the Black woman experience — that make perfect additions to any Women’s History Month reading list.
WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We Should All Be Feminists is a personal, well-argued essay, adapted from the popular TEDx talk of the same name. In my opinion, this is the only book on feminism we will ever need. This book does not preach. This is one of the best reads that tells you everything you need to understand about feminism, with the most amazing examples from the author’s personal experiences. This book is so fittingly short and tells you exactly what feminism means. Adichie simply asks that we take a look at how society effects gender dynamics. Society tells us you can’t be both feminine and be taken seriously. Society tells us that if you hadn’t been wearing that miniskirt you wouldn’t have been assaulted. Society tells us that men can’t be sensitive; they must always be hard and strong. Adichie asks us to look at all the little ways societal gender roles are ingrained in all of us. A must read for all genders.
“We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likeable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons.”
SISTER OUTSIDER by Audre Lorde
A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde’s literary and philosophical identities. In this collection of essays and speeches, she addresses the absolute necessity of intersectional feminism and supporting women of color, the importance of using our voices to speak up against injustice, the horrors inflicted by U.S. imperialism and capitalism, and more.
What I particularly love about Lorde is that she celebrates differences. She acknowledges that a lot of discrimination and lack of solidarity results from people being scared of or generally resenting what they are not or what they don’t know, which of course means that they overlook or even repress the beauty of diversity and the power they could generate from the varied knowledge. As a society, we still struggle with this. Case in point: As long as women are busy telling each other how to fill out female roles, the patriarchy can live and breathe. If oppressed groups would show more solidarity, they would not be able to participate in the game. Lorde tells her readers not to be afraid of the anger they experience, as creative disruption is just what we need.
In the essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Lorde says, “I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile wordplay that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word to mean in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.”
ON HER OWN GROUND: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MADAM C.J. WALKER by A’Lelia Perry Bundles
Bundles is the great-great-granddaughter of Walker, and this biography inspired Self Made, the four-part Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer. Madam C.J. Walker was the most financially successful and notable Black woman entrepreneur. On her own, she overcame poverty in the South in the late 1800s and years as a laundress after moving to the Midwest. Following quite literally a dream, she came up with a formula to help Black women grow hair routinely lost through a variety of scalp issues. As a hair culturist, Madam Walker built a business empire from coast to coast and even abroad. She set up her business to enable other Black women to become commissioned sales agents and make more money than they could as domestics, bringing them out of poverty. Madam Walker was motivated to help her race and as a result was a strong anti-lynching voice. Her example as a leader, as well as her faults, are notable.
THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE: THE LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER by Kay Mills
Fannie Lou Hamer was beaten when she tried to register to vote in the South, and this biography tells of the growing resolve that led her to the National Women’s Political Caucus and devote her life to the expansion of civil rights. This is an inspirational book on a Civil Rights activist who was poor, a woman, and oppressed. Near the end of her life in Mississippi, she was able to vote and participate in democracy, but she was still poor. Fannie Lou Hamer became active in the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s when activists were attempting to urge local Mississippi Black citizens to register to vote. Fannie Lou Hamer decided to exercise her democratic rights and never looked back.
Hamer participated in the 1964 Democratic convention in an alternative platform to the white segregationist Democrats who represented her state. She changed history. At the next Democratic convention in 1968, the Mississippi delegation was mixed. She was constantly challenging the power of the white segregationist establishment in her state. It took several years to obtain full voting rights for Black people. She was not a formally educated person, but was passionate and articulate about basic human rights. She realized that white people needed to be free of their hatred. Her story is a worthy one and this book tells it very well.
IDA: A SWORD AMONG LIONS by Paula J. Giddings
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a trailblazer and should get far more recognition and credit than she does. Her investigative reports on lynching, some of which were included in the book, were so thorough and gave the real reasons why Black men and women were lynched. I found her life and work around lynching to be the most interesting part of the book.
The book doesn’t shy away from the political disagreements she got into with prominent Black people during that time. In short, she was not well liked. But she trained herself to speak in a calm, near monotonous voice, to show no emotion. In her diary, she berates herself for tears in front of an audience. She was small framed with dainty features, Christian, and patriotic, and always dressed like a lady, prim and proper. This was the person and the persona that could deliver the facts of lynching to grieving Black church congregations and disbelieving white churches and civic groups.
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