2025: Book about antiblackness and/or what it is to be Black in this world by a Black author
Book recommendations/suggestions for the Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 book challenge. Find your next book!
read, seed, water, feed book challenge - about prompt support posts
about prompt support posts
All of the prompt support posts (those that begin with "2025: Book written by...", for example) are organized similar to each other.
Each of these posts was created to support the Read, Seed, Water Feed book challenge on Storygraph that I am hosting. They were also created to support learning outside of the university, collective educational efforts, finding new authors to read, finding books, and more.
For each book challenge prompt, I will share the following sections:
- one or more slides with books I have read or am currently reading that I recommend for the prompt
- a list of additional books from my TBR (to-be-read) list for the prompt
- a text listing of the books that I shared in the slides
I might share one or more of the following in addition, depending on capacity and other factors:
- other supportive text as appropriate, such as countries included
- some quotes, notes, and/or reflections about one or more of the books
- links to other posts on the site where I discuss the books or prompt in more detail
I did many things to minimize hierarchy within these posts, and there will still be some things that might feel odd, such as split galleries of slides, which was a choice made to address current limitations in how the galleries work.
If interested, find bingo cards, more background on the prompts, and other reflections, on the Reading Challenge page and if on Storygraph, join the challenge.
Mostly, my goal for prompt support posts is to share books for each prompt, as suggestions and as examples. This section will be first on every post and may be skipped.
Thank you for reading.
Recommended Books
Books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt.
Read, Seed, Water, Feed 2025 reading challenge prompt and description, showing books recommended that I have read or am currently reading. All recommended books are listed lower in the post in the section “Recommended Books in a List.”
More Books from my TBR List
For some prompts, I’m trying to diversify what I read; for others, deepening my knowledge while also growing my perspective. For some prompts, there are definitely more books on my to-be-read (TBR) list than the ones I share that I have read or am currently reading. Here are some of those books:
Nonfiction
- Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism (2008) by Jared Sexton
- Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (2020) by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson
- The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition (2024) by Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen
- Black Scare / Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States (2023) by Charisse Burden-Stelly
- Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations: Revisioning Migrants and Mobilities Through the Critique of Antiblackness (2024) by Philip Kretsedemas and Jamella Nefetari Gow
- Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism (2025) by Eve L. Ewing
- Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (2022, revised and updated) by Saidiya Hartman
- Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis (2014) edited by Katherine McKittrick
- Translating Blackness: Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective (2022) by Lorgia García Peña
Essays
- Black and Blur: consent not to be a single being #1 (2017) by Fred Moten
- Black and Female: Essays (2023) by Tsitsi Dangarembga
- The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (2013) by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
Essays, Art, Interviews
- Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness (2020) by Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, and Andrea Smith
repeated and added notes..
The book can be fiction or nonfiction.
Examples of books for this category include: a book by a Black author that centers antiblackness, whether as the main topic or as one of the themes, a book on afropessimism, and/or a book by a Black author as a Black person but its goal is not to satisfy or educate the white gaze.
The language in this prompt and description was developed collaboratively with my partner who has lived experiences and understandings. We attempted to describe something that felt like it should be a conversation.
reflections
Together with other notes as I was beginning to write here, I previously posted a few reflections and quotes from We Refuse, by Kellie Carter Jackson:
Cead
and from I Saw Death Coming, by Kidada E. Williams:
Cead
link to "distracting thoughts and white disbelief about white violence" post
Recommended Books in a List
There are many other books that I have shared in other categories that would also be included in this prompt. As a list, books I've read or am currently reading that I recommend for this prompt, that were shared in the slides:
Fiction
Nervous Conditions (1988) by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Reformatory (2023) by Tananarive Due
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1969) by Sam Greenlee
Memoirs
Afropessimism (2020) by Frank B. Wilderson III
Another Word for Love: A Memoir (2024) by Carvell Wallace
Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (2019) by Imani Perry
Heavy: An American Memoir (2018) by Kiese Laymon
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (2018) by Austin Channing Brown
Nonfiction
Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction (2017) edited by Racked and Dispatched, with essays and excerpts from Hortense J. Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Frank B. Wilderson III, Steve Martinot, and Jared Sexton.
Antiblackness (2021) by Moon-Kie Jung, João H. Costa Vargas
Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (2021) by Da’Shaun L. Harrison
Black Skin, White Masks (1952) by Frantz Fanon
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920) by W.E.B. Du Bois
I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction (2023) by Kidada E. Williams
I Write What I Like: Selected Writings (1978) by Steve Biko
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016) by Christina Sharpe
Ordinary Notes (2023) by Christina Sharpe
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (2019) by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (2023) by Orisanmi Burton
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (2024) by Kellie Carter Jackson
Get any/all of these books wherever you get your books.
Please support libraries however you can. Find out many ways to get involved in supporting libraries at Libraries for the People.
Please consider purchasing books when they are available from Workshops 4 Gaza's bookstore: Ordinary Notes (2023) by Christina Sharpe, Tip of the Spear (2023) by Orisanmi Burton. When I share books that are available for purchase there at the time of posting, I will list them here after the link.
Thank you for reading.
