100 books like Digital Black Feminism

I bought this book thinking it would be a whimsical read and a fun departure from my non-fiction, academic world. Fast forward a few years, and I have consistently used this book in my teaching of university students in my Digital Cultures classes.

The book might not seem like it’s about the Internet, but the spiritual, inter-generational elements of the story are easily connected to the hopeful stories we see time and again of Black folks online.

Everyone has that one book that is the I-can’t-put-this-down book. Race After Technology was that book for me.

Ruha Benjamin writes in a way that is so down to earth, tackling heavy subjects like algorithms, systemic racism, and more in a way that is somehow accessible, scholarly, and whippingly smart all in one.

I fell in love with this book as a young graduate school student at the University of Iowa. Curled up in my tiny 500-square-foot apartment, I devoured the book, not realizing morning had turned into afternoon and then evening.

At a time in the early 2000s when "serious" scholarship largely included Black people using technology in condescending and pathologizing ways, I read Everett sharply responding with counter-evidence of Black publics' involvement at every turn of media developments.

The book, I remember, made me feel like writing a counter-history that places "us" at the center is not only possible but transformational.

I grew up with Miss Lou, or the famous poet Louise Bennett. With wit and humor that is simply unparalleled, Miss Lou’s writing taught me about the importance of language.

In this collection, Miss Lou shows rather than tells the importance of “labrish” or “gossip”, a quintessential Jamaican practice. While the book, on the surface, isn’t about the Internet, the foregrounding of language, culture, and community here is directly related to the digital practices that I know and love.

This book made me feel hopeful, sad, angry, and most of all, secure, knowing that it was okay for me–and others like me–to hold all of that and let it go.

Springer’s book was one of the first to outline the multiple Black women’s feminist organizations that developed in the late 1960s and 1970s. Situating now fairly well-known groups like the Combahee River Collective alongside lesser-known organizations like the Third World Women’s Alliance, Springer’s brief book is a fabulous primer to Black women’s feminism in an era when many people still think such a thing didn’t exist.

The moral outrage of Audre Lorde is always directed at making the world a better place.

That is her great genius: she can see everything that is wrong, and knows how to awaken in each of us the desire to make things better. She also understands that every revolution begins with a single human being deciding that she, he or they can be a better person and help to make a better world.

Her spirituality is like the ocean: magnificent, scary, greater than us. She’s also perhaps the most important poet of the twentieth century and for the twenty-first century, so she’s just indispensable reading. Absolutely required.

If you haven’t already spent time with her work, you should read “Power” on the Poetry Foundation website today, before you look at any of the books I list above. It will take three minutes and may well change your view of poetry… show more.

Benjamin’s Half in Shadow is an excellent exploration of the life of Nellie Y. McKay (1930-2006), a pioneering scholar of black women’s literature. Fearing it could damage her career in the academy, McKay declined to be caricatured as an older, divorced, black single mother of two children. So, she hid this from all her academic colleagues and friends, including her closest ones. The driving force of Benjamin’s book is trying to make sense of the private life and professional motivations of McKay’s choice to live her life “half in shadow.” Benjamin suggests that black women in the academy face similar pressures to achieve in and conform to predominantly white spaces in ways that do not easily allow them to bring their entire selves into the light.

This anthology of some of Walker’s most powerful works with a focus on discovering ourselves through studying those who came before us is both incredibly informative and emotional. It explores motherhood not only through the biological role but also in a sense of community mothering and foremothers. There is much to learn about our present by examining lessons laid out for us by generations past.

Lorde’s landmark collection of essays amplifies ways of living and knowing long familiar to women and other marginalized groups. Her exploration of eroticism—a fully vivacious, embodied experience of life—as a source of women’s knowledge, wisdom, and power is yet unmatched in American letters.

Essential reading for anyone who has felt unsatisfied or unseen by the narratives handed down by the white, heteronormative, patriarchal powers that continue to hold our imaginations in a vice grip. 

Written with intelligence, wit, and searing social commentary, this book follows Jo, a 28-year-old woman living in a world in which witches are not only real but are feared, put on trial, and killed—she has until the age of 30 to marry a man or else she’ll have to register with the Bureau of Witchcraft and be closely monitored.

On top of that, Jo’s mother disappeared 14 years ago, and we meet her as she is just beginning to accept the idea that her mother might be dead. However, that all changes when she gets an opportunity to honor her mom’s one last request. What ensues is a powerful exploration of grief, autonomy, freedom, desire, community, and so much more. At once heartbreaking and hopeful, Giddings will have you savoring every word.