Books I've Read in the Past Twelve Months

In no particular order:

  1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy

  2. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

  3. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

  4. Unbound:My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke

  5. The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

  6. Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas by Alexi Pappas

  7. Shake Loose My Skin by Sonia Sanchez

  8. Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

  9. They Cant Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

  10. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

  11. Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans

  12. Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

  13. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi

  14. The Body is not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

  15. Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong

  16. Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

  17. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

  18. Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

  19. How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

  20. Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

  21. Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson

  22. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

  23. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

  24. Beloved by Toni Morrison

  25. Luster by Raven Leilani

  26. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

  27. The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

  28. Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi

  29. Hagar Poems by Mohja Kahf

  30. If God is a Virus by Seema Yasmin

  31. Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat

  32. Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur

  33. The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

  34. Some of Us Did Not Die by June Jordan

  35. The Best Prey by Paige Quiñones

  36. I am the Darker Brother: an Anthology of Modern Poems by African Americans

Karen Leonard