100 books like Corregidora

When I read this book as a young lawyer in reproductive rights in the 1990s, it resonated deeply with the daily bias that I witnessed against my clients. Decades later, a highlight of my book tour was being invited to do a talk with Professor Roberts at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Dorothy Roberts’ exploration of “race, reproduction and the meaning of liberty” is powerful.

Her writing clearly lays out how restrictions on abortion, parenting, and access to basic health care are shaped by and also perpetuate American racism. This book inspired me to work for equity and reproductive freedom for all, and hopefully, it will continue to do so for others, too. 

Schwartz’s book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how central black women’s reproduction was to the project of American slavery.

The book illustrates how new doctors needing specialization and clientele found common cause with slaveholders’ needs to control the reproductive capabilities of their enslaved workforce. The ongoing conflicts between slaveholders, enslaved women, and the doctors who were employed to thwart any attempts of resistance and autonomy on their part is truly mind-blowing.

Anyone tracking our current state of affairs post the Dobbs decision, with doctors in states like Texas being forced to choose between providing women necessary healthcare or complying with state law, can see the looming shadow of the history explored in Schwartz’s illuminating book.

I love books that help us understand our present and Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s latest novel, Take My Hand, helps us do just that.

Civil, the protagonist, is a young nurse who’s just secured her first job at a federally funded reproductive health clinic in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama. When she’s sent out on a house call to administer birth control shots to the Williams sisters, ages 11 and 13, Civil must grapple with what she’s being asked to do and why. 

Loosely based on the Relf sisters, the two young defendants at the heart of the Relf vs. Weinberger case, which exposed the involuntary sterilization of thousands of poor women and women of color across the South, this novel takes on a weighty subject with great finesse and care.

This account of Smith’s lauded 35-year career as a midwife in rural Alabama is fascinating.

What I appreciate about this book most is how it maps out the growing tensions that developed between African-American lay midwives and the medical establishment, once the Department of Labor began to regulate midwifery practices in the early twentieth century.

From increased scrutinization and criminalization of folk traditions, like medicinal teas and oil massages, licensed midwives with clinical training found themselves hamstrung by increasing regulation, until they were pushed out of the field altogether in the late 1970s.

The vacuum of maternal healthcare left in their wake has been devastating. Such that, we’re still seeing repercussions to this day. 

Captive is another romance with pirates and passion. It’s part of a larger series featuring the LeVeq family. In this story, privateer Dominic LeVeq, frees and falls for slave Clare Sullivan. Soon they become desperate to have each other. I loved the relationship between these two characters and the devotion that develops between them.  

You can’t understand the role of labor in America unless you understand slavery, which set the original template for American labor exploitation that still echoes to this day.

This book is one of the best explorations of American slavery, its roots, and its integral connection to the capitalism that surrounds us all.

When you appreciate how long and completely slaves were oppressed and who got the gains of the work they did, you will develop a much sharper appreciation for the importance of maintaining worker power today.

Williams is another beautiful writer and what I love most about this book is it dispels the very harmful myths about Black intelligence during and after slavery. The author shares the many ways that enslaved Africans taught each other to read even though reading or teaching a Black person to read was illegal in all of the southern states. Reading, storytelling, and passing on knowledge across generations is part of the African American tradition and Williams captures all of this and more in this beautiful book.

The author and I live near each other and we got to know each other at local writer events. So when I heard that her book won Lee and Low’s New Voices Award, I just had to get Glenda’s book. And I did! She autographed a copy for me which I treasure. This is a tender, powerful, and inspiring picture book. It tells the true story of how Frederick Douglass’s mother would visit him. He was a young child working on a plantation. His mother lived and worked six miles away. At night, she would walk six miles through the dark woods to come to visit Frederick, then head back home before dawn. He knew his mother loved him—it was a love that stretched 12 miles long.

An outgrowth of the 1619 project, this masterful picture book traces a family’s roots from Africa through generations of enslavement in the United States to today. A young girl’s grandmother tells stories in the form of poems that convey joy, terror, heartache, persecution, struggle, and triumph. Illustrations move from light during the times in Africa to dark during the decades of enslavement and back to light in the present. The book ends on a positive note with the girl drawing an American flag—the flag of the country that her ancestors helped build and “that I will help build, too.”

It’s a beautiful book, from the cover to the notes. It’s a neo-slave narrative that follows various enslaved, then freed people. Through this book, I learned how poetry collections can be explorations of history based on fact.

Like any good collection, reading one poem compels you forward, but each poem can stand on its own. She is a master of form. For instance, her persona poetry is powerful. The first poem in the book, “The Trapper’s Boast,” devoid of empathy, shows the business of slavery from an undesirable point of view. 

But what is moving is the ability to fall in love and to care even in the worst conditions, as well as the will to live and strive towards freedom in spite of any threats.

I started writing neo-slave narrative poems about a woman escaping slavery. I imagined that the poems I was writing, like Suck on the Marrow… show more.