Black Girl Booksta Tour

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

By: Zora Neale Hurston
Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis
Length: 8 hours 57 minutes

“Zora Neale Hurston’s (Their Eyes Were Watching God, Barracoon) body of work continues to grow and impress. In Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick, 21 short stories, including several “lost” pieces depicting the Great Migration to northern cities and Harlem’s educated New Negro middle class, offer an updated perspective of Hurston’s... Read more

South to America

A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

By: Imani Perry
Narrated by: Imani Perry
Length: 16 hours 32 minutes

“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our DiscontentsAn essential, surprising journey... Read more

All About Love

New Visions

By: bell hooks
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Length: 6 hours 9 minutes

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' ""Love Song to the Nation"" trilogy.  All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring,... Read more

Hold You Down

A Novel

By: Tracy Brown
Narrated by: Patryce Williams
Length: 12 hours 10 minutes

Hold You Down is an edgy novel from rising star Tracy Brown about the perils of love and the ties that bind…

New York City. Late 1980s to early 1990s.

Mercy and Lenox Howard have always only had each other. Growing up on the mean streets of Harlem with an absentee mother meant that they had to have each other's backs. Now young, smart mothers they... Read more

Kindred

By: Octavia E. Butler
Narrated by: Kim Staunton
Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

“A beautiful story of the complex heritage of Dana, a Black woman who mysteriously gets transported from the 1970s to the early 1800 antebellum south where she is faced with saving the white son of a plantation owner from drowning. Throughout, Dana journeys back and forth from present to past, and each of her stays in the past grows longer and... Read more

Homemade Love

By: J. California Cooper
Narrated by: Donna Bailey, Peter Jay Fernandez, Kim Staunton, Susan Spain & Starla Benford
Length: 6 hours 34 minutes

Critics have compared her work to that of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, but J. California Cooper has a warm, witty style that's definitely her own. Each of her short stories is a gem of downhome wisdom, polished with a bit of gossip, some heartbreak, and lots of humor. In "Funny Valentines" a "simple" woman draws one heart on... Read more

Men We Reaped

A Memoir

By: Jesmyn Ward
Narrated by: January LaVoy
Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Bloomsbury presents Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, read by January LaVoy.

Named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times Book Review and New York Magazine

The two-time National Book Award winner and author of Salvage the Bones and Let Us Descend, contends with the deaths of five young men dear to her, and the risk of being a Black man in... Read more

Before I Let Go

Skyland: Book #1

By: Kennedy Ryan
Narrated by: Wesleigh Siobhan & Jakobi Diem
Length: 13 hours 45 minutes

“A beautiful, second-chance, romance story that is also contemporary and makes you feel hopeful, sexy, and exposed. Filled with friendships, familial bonds, hard conversations, black love, and soul food, Ryan takes you on a ride you don't want to get off, but might leave you a little teary-eyed! Read more

We Deserve Monuments

By: Jas Hammonds
Narrated by: Tamika Katon-Donegal
Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

What's more important: knowing the truth or keeping the peace?
When her family moves to Bardell, Georgia, on the cusp of her senior year, Avery
Anderson is uprooted from DC and thrust into the hostile home of her terminally
ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery’s mom and Mama Letty
makes for a frosty arrival and reveals a... Read more

The House of Eve

By: Sadeqa Johnson
Narrated by: Ariel Blake, Nicole Lewis & Sadeqa Johnson
Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

“Amazing…I was completely surprised by the ending of this beautifully told and written book.” —Reese Witherspoon

“A triumph of historical fiction” (The Washington Post), an instant New York Times bestseller, and a Reese’s Book Club pick, set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how... Read more

Their Eyes Were Watching God

By: Zora Neale Hurston
Narrated by: Ruby Dee
Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

“This book is a masterpiece. Zora Neale Hurston explores stages in a woman’s life so powerfully. Ruby Dee’s audiobook narration is the best audiobook narration I’ve ever heard. She expresses so much emotion and personality. She brings the characters to life and she savors every perfectly chosen word of the text. Read more

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

An Oprah’s Book Club Novel

By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton & Prentice Onayemi
Length: 29 hours 48 minutes

“At 29 hours this one might seem like quite a commitment, but after traveling the century with them, you’ll deeply miss the echoes of the voices of Ailey and Belle and even good old Uncle Root. Read more

Finding Me

A Memoir

By: Viola Davis
Narrated by: Viola Davis
Length: 9 hours 15 minutes

“A powerful story about self-understanding and determination to seizing the life you want. Read more

Homegoing

A novel

By: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

“AN EXCELLENT LISTEN. Read more

Shine Bright

A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop

By: Danyel Smith
Narrated by: Danyel Smith
Length: 13 hours 36 minutes

American pop music is arguably this country’s greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country’s founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story—from “one of the generation’s greatest, most insightful, most... Read more

The 1619 Project

A New Origin Story

By: Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman & Jake Silverstein
Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones & Full Cast
Length: 18 hours 56 minutes

“This book was a true education, even coming after many recent books I’ve read on race in America. It details the history of African Americans, making clear not only how central it is to the history of the United States, but how revealing it is of our national character, past and present. Chapters of historical events alternate with poetry and... Read more

Recitatif

A Story

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Zadie Smith & Bahni Turpin
Length: 1 hour 54 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A beautiful, arresting story about race and the relationships that shape us through life by the legendary Nobel Prize winner—for the first time in a beautifully produced stand-alone edition, with an introduction by Zadie Smith
 
“A puzzle of a story, then—a game.... When [Morrison] called Recitatif an ‘experiment’ she... Read more

Take My Hand

By: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Narrated by: Lauren J. Daggett
Length: 10 hours 56 minutes

“Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is historical fiction that addresses a still very relevant topic -- women's reproductive rights, and it does so in a very personal way. Set in 1973 and 2016, the book is based on the true story of forced sterilizations performed by the US government primarily on poor women of color. I loved that the nuances... Read more

Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?

A Novel

By: Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Narrated by: Ronke Adékoluejo
Length: 11 hours 17 minutes

“Yinka is a lovable and relatable disaster—which is to say, she isn’t actually a disaster at all...I adore her.”—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers

“Feel good, funny, and clever, it’s got smash-hit written all over it!” –Josie Silver, New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December

Meet Yinka: a... Read more

My Monticello

Fiction

By: Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Narrated by: Aja Naomi King, January LaVoy, Landon Woodson, LeVar Burton, Ngozi Anyanwu & Tomiwa Edun
Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

“A dynamic, and timely, debut by a new voice in fiction, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson. This collection is comprised of five short stories and one novella all set in the state of Virginia. As you read these stories, you will experience, and feel, the gamut of human emotion as the voices and themes in each are different. The author explores race,... Read more