The best books by contemporary African American authors and the southern landscape that shaped them

This book epitomizes what it means to be Black and male in American society and how one’s poor choices or the choices that chose one can be overcome. Horton, a native of the segregated South and the by-product of educators, headed north to college and became swept away by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. A major drug smuggler, he spent seven years in prison for his crime. But it was during that time, that poetry discovered him and upon his release he earned a B.A., Master, and PhD degrees. In fact, he describes himself as the only tenured professor with seven convicted felonies. In addition, Horton is an award-winning poet, essayist, musician, and devotes much of his time to outreach into the criminal justice system to provide hope for others. Dead Weight, with its theme of redemption, is destined to become an American classic and should be on the same shelves with The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

In 1946, two African American couples were lynched in rural Georgia by a white mob. Grooms fictionalized that account from the perspective of one of the victims, perpetrators, and a pre-teen eyewitness and in the process comes to terms with redemption, race, and violence not only in the South but in the nation as well. Grooms has the ability to juxtapose the beauty of the Southern landscape with the horrors that have occurred there with breathtaking imagery and conciseness. This book not just deals with the victims of such horrific acts, but the often untold damage done to the progeny of those who perpetrated the act. This is a fiction that will always be relevant as long as a nation struggles with injustice, oppression, and white supremacy.  

Kelly Norman Ellis is the Chairperson for the Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Literatures at Chicago State University. And like those who have made the “Great Migration” before her, she too has taken the South with her in this wonderful debut collection of poetry. In this book, she deftly taps into the Blues ethos to conjure vivid imagery of a Mississippi unique with its patois, cuisine, and customs that have unmistakably shaped her worldview as an adult. It was the South that would try to degrade and dehumanize Black life. But it was the same South where family and a village would instill pride, confidence, and self-worth. This is a book of a poet coming to terms with where she has come from and celebrating the journey. It reinforces the notion that everywhere you go, home is already there.

This is where prose and poetry blossom into memoir. James’ account of growing up impoverished with an absentee father and how a small rural Louisiana community became her surrogate family is both moving and insightful. She engages in an exercise of self-examination of the things that made her a writer and the person she has come to be. There is much grace and beauty in these pages as she seeks a path of truth and understanding and mending a broken relationship with her estranged father. This story is both personal and universal and provides understanding of the human condition. There is much poverty, pain, humor, blues, disappointment, and love in this book. Always love.

This book is reminiscent of Jean Toomer’s Cane. It blurs the lines between poetry, history, and the blues. Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets are at the heart of a book that is both breathtaking and spellbinding. But more than that, this book is a reclamation of the Black female body. Over the centuries the Black female body has been defined by everyone but the Black female. Williams redefines notions of beauty, dignity, and self-worth in a world that is antithetical to the Black female body. This book is a salvo across the bough of social, racial, and political history that has dehumanized Black life throughout the centuries. Not only does Williams, a Nashville native, reclaim all that has been distorted about the Black female body, she celebrates it as well.