100 books like Half in Shadow

By Shanna Greene Benjamin,

Here are 100 books that Half in Shadow fans have personally recommended if you like Half in Shadow. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

Keisha N. Blain Author Of Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America

From my list on Black women in the Civil Rights Movement.

Why am I passionate about this?

I first learned about Fannie Lou Hamer more than a decade ago, and I have been deeply inspired by her life story and her words. I didn’t initially think I would write a book about her. But the uprisings of 2020 motivated me to do so. Like so many people, I struggled to make sense of everything that was unfolding, and I began to question whether change was possible. The more I read Hamer’s words, the more clarity I found. Her vision for the world and her commitment to improving conditions for all people gave me a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

Keisha's book list on Black women in the Civil Rights Movement

Keisha N. Blain Why did Keisha love this book?

This is a book that inspired me as a historian and in my approach to activism. Barbara Ransby’s biography of Ella Baker excavates the activist’s life, placing the reader at the nexus of some of the most important moments in civil rights history. Ella Baker’s life also provides a blueprint for local activism and group-centered leadership. It’s a compelling story of how Ella Baker became a mentor, inspiring, listening to, and supporting local activists. 

By Barbara Ransby,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives. In this deeply researched biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Ransby paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide across…


Book cover of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Hajar Yazdiha Author Of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement

From my list on understanding revisionist history politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied forty years of the political misuses of the memory of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as a sociologist at USC and the daughter of Iranian immigrants who has always been interested in questions of identity and belonging. My interest in civil rights struggles started early, growing up in Virginia, a state that celebrated the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I wanted to understand how revisionist histories could become the mainstream account of the past and how they mattered for the future of democracy.

Hajar's book list on understanding revisionist history politics

Hajar Yazdiha Why did Hajar love this book?

This brilliant, best-selling book turned award-winning documentary is so fantastic for unraveling a revisionist history of the “tired old lady who wouldn’t move to the back of the bus.”

Not unlike the way I show how Dr. King’s memory has been sanitized and defanged, Theoharis shows how Parks’ memory has been voided of her long history of radical activism, and her unyielding pursuit of racial and social justice.

I thought about this book a lot as I was writing my chapter on the hidden Black women, the “sheroes” of the Civil Rights Movement who present-day Black feminist activists are resurrecting in public consciousness.

By Jeanne Theoharis,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The basis for the documentary of the same name executive produced by award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks premieres on Peacock on October 19.

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work–Biography/Autobiography
 
2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians

Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013

The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement.

This revised edition includes a new introduction by the author, who reflects on materials in the Rosa Parks…


Book cover of Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier

Alison M. Parker Author Of Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell

From my list on biographies of Black women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian who just spent over a decade writing the biography of the civil rights activist and feminist activist, Mary Church Terrell. I wrote two other history books before I wrote Unceasing Militant, my first biography. I so enjoyed writing it that I plan on writing another, this time on a black woman named Mary Hamilton who was a leader in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the 1960s. The authors I selected approached their biographies of black women with respect and critical compassion.

Alison's book list on biographies of Black women

Alison M. Parker Why did Alison love this book?

Lea VanderVelde’s biography of Mrs. Dred Scott captures the environments in which Harriet Scott lived her life and filed her suit for freedom in 1846 (it took 11 years before the Scotts’ legal case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court). Harriet Scott filed separately from her husband because she believed she could establish her freedom, thereby ensuring the freedom of her two daughters, whose condition followed that of the mother. An illiterate enslaved woman, Harriet Scott left virtually no documents. VanderVelde provides rich context in which to situate and explain Scott’s life and freedom struggle, vividly recreating her world. This informative book is well worth reading.

By Lea Vandervelde,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mrs. Dred Scott as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Among the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case's judges and lawyers. In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key
sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish…


Book cover of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry

Jonathan Shandell Author Of The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era

From my list on Black culture and history in the Civil Rights era.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a theater historian whose research focuses on African American theater of 1940s-50s. While other periods and movements—the Harlem Renaissance (1920s), the Federal Theatre Project (1930s), the Black Arts Movement (1960s), and contemporary theater—have been well studied and documented, I saw a gap of scholarship around the 1940s-50s; I wondered why those years had been largely overlooked. As I dived deeper, I saw how African American performance culture (ie. theater, film, television, music) of the later-20th Century had its roots in the history of those somewhat overlooked decades. I’m still investigating that story, and these books have helped me do it.

Jonathan's book list on Black culture and history in the Civil Rights era

Jonathan Shandell Why did Jonathan love this book?

I’ve taught Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun many times in my university courses. That play transformed African American theater in the Civil Rights era and marked a phenomenal debut for its 29-year-old writer. In her too-short life (she died a few years later from pancreatic cancer), Hansberry built an extraordinary life as a writer, intellectual, and political activist. This biography tells that rich, remarkable story.

By Soyica Diggs Colbert,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Radical Vision as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A "loving, lavishly detailed" (New York Times) and captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry's life, art, and political activism-one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021

"A devoted and deeply felt account of the development of an artist's mind."-Dave Itzkoff, New York Times Book Review (2021 Summer Reading issue)

In this acclaimed biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Soyica Diggs Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work. Celebrated for her play A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry was also the author…


Book cover of In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Anna Malaika Tubbs Author Of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

From my list on Black motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

Anna Malaika Tubbs is the author of the critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She is also a Cambridge Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and a Bill and Melinda Gates Cambridge Scholar. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in Anthropology, Anna received a Master’s from the University of Cambridge in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies. Outside of the academy, she is an educator and DEI consultant. She lives with her husband, Michael Tubbs, and their son Michael Malakai.

Anna's book list on Black motherhood

Anna Malaika Tubbs Why did Anna love this book?

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.

By Alice Walker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker's collection of essays ranging in topics from personal to political. "Thoughtful, intelligent, resonant musings." — Kirkus Reviews

In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist. Among the thirty-six pieces are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.


Book cover of Digital Black Feminism

Raven Maragh-Lloyd Author Of Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age

From my list on internet activism (hint: the kids are actually alright).

Why am I passionate about this?

I write about race and technology, and specifically the histories of Black folks as they influence online activities, from memes and community-building to care networks and activist efforts. I use theory, research, and most importantly lived experiences to tell the story of Black digital practices. The books I choose here represent how diverse my thinking is when it comes to this topic: from fiction to non-fiction, these works are as fluid yet meaningful as I think identity is, on and offline.

Raven's book list on internet activism (hint: the kids are actually alright)

Raven Maragh-Lloyd Why did Raven love this book?

As a young Black and West Indian academic and, importantly, an avid early Twitter user, I finally saw myself in the world of nonfiction works about technology when I first read this book.

Before I even got through the introduction, I dog-eared every other page and ran out of room in the margins for my notes (most of which included an embarrassing number of exclamation points on my part). Digital Black Feminism’s wit and historical heft weaves through multi-generational negotiations with Black feminism and beautifully writes Black women’s contributions back into existence.


By Catherine Knight Steele,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Digital Black Feminism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner, Diamond Anniversary Book Award, awarded by the National Communication Association
Winner, 2022 Nancy Baym Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers
Traces the longstanding relationship between technology and Black feminist thought
Black women are at the forefront of some of this century's most important discussions about technology: trolling, online harassment, algorithmic bias, and influencer culture. But, Catherine Knight Steele argues that Black women's relationship to technology began long before the advent of Twitter or Instagram. To truly "listen to Black women," Steele points to the history of Black feminist technoculture in the United States and its ability…


Book cover of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Sara B. Franklin Author Of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America

From my list on the stories we tell about women.

Why am I passionate about this?

Judith Jones became an important mentor and mother figure to me in my twenties, in the wake of my parents’ deaths. Her personal wisdom and guidance, which I received both in knowing her personally and from the incredible archive she left behind, have been invaluable to me during a particularly tumultuous and transformative decade in my own life. I wrote The Editor as I was coming into my full adulthood, and the books on this list helped shape my thinking along the way at times when I felt stagnant or stuck or needed to rethink both how to write Judith’s life and why her story is so vital to tell.

Sara's book list on the stories we tell about women

Sara B. Franklin Why did Sara love this book?

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. 


By Audre Lorde,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Sister Outsider as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep

The revolutionary writings of Audre Lorde gave voice to those 'outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women'. Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'.

'The truth of her writing is as necessary today as…


Book cover of The Women Could Fly

Marisa Crane Author Of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

From my list on LBGTQ+ speculative books that will break you and then put you back together again.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a queer, nonbinary writer who has always loved reading and writing speculative fiction, whether it be dystopian novels, sci-fi, fantasy, and beyond. I think speculative fiction is such an effective and creative way to hold a mirror up to our society, explore traumatic and heavy themes, and ultimately, show us what it means to be a person, no matter how strange or unfamiliar the world is. Like many millennials, I grew up reading that awful transphobic woman’s magical series but soon realized how limiting that series was, and how there were so many better, smarter, more inclusive books out there, especially those that center queer and trans characters and know how to break my heart ten times over.

Marisa's book list on LBGTQ+ speculative books that will break you and then put you back together again

Marisa Crane Why did Marisa love this book?

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.

By Megan Giddings,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Women Could Fly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'For fans of Margaret Atwood' Elle
'Thoughtful...wry, magical' Guardian
'brimming with wonder' Raven Leilani, author of Luster

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behaviour raises suspicions and a woman-especially a Black woman - can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother's disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go…


Book cover of Songs in Black and Lavender: Race, Sexual Politics, and Women's Music

Bonnie Morris Author Of The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture

From my list on the women’s music movement.

Why am I passionate about this?

My expertise as a scholar of the women’s music movement spans 40 years--ever since I attended my first concert and music festival in 1981. A lecturer at UC-Berkeley, I’m the author of 19 books on women’s history, and published the first book on women’s music festivals, Eden Built By Eves, in 1999 (now out of print.) More recently I’ve organized exhibits on the women’s music movement for the Library of Congress, co-authored The Feminist Revolution (which made Oprah’s list), and I’m now the archivist and historian for Olivia Records.

Bonnie's book list on the women’s music movement

Bonnie Morris Why did Bonnie love this book?

Featuring an Introduction by artist Linda Tillery, the book offers a timely critique of white-centered women’s music events and the possibility of Black women’s music festivals. The author looks at the different experiences of Black audiences in primarily white feminist festival spaces and the role of Black lesbian artists across several generations.

By Eileen M. Hayes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Songs in Black and Lavender as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Drawing on fieldwork conducted at eight women's music festivals, Eileen M. Hayes shows how studying these festivals--attended by predominately white lesbians--provides critical insight into the role of music and lesbian community formation. She argues that the women's music festival is a significant institutional site for the emergence of black feminist consciousness in the contemporary period. Hayes also offers sage perspectives on black women's involvement in the women's music festival scene, the ramifications of their performances as drag kings in those environments, and the challenges and joys of a black lesbian retreat based on the feminist festival model. With acuity and…


Book cover of Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist Organizations, 1968-1980

Melissa Estes Blair Author Of Revolutionizing Expectations: Women's Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics, 1965-1980

From my list on U.S. grassroots feminism.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved history since I was a girl, visiting my grandparents in Virginia and reading American Girl books. I began to focus on women’s history when I learned in college just how much the women’s movement of the generation before mine had made my life possible. So much changed for American women in the ten years before I was born, and I wanted to know how that happened and how it fit into the broader political changes. That connection, between women making change and the bigger political scene, remains the core of my research. I have a B.A. in history and English from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Virginia.

Melissa's book list on U.S. grassroots feminism

Melissa Estes Blair Why did Melissa love this book?

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.

By Kimberly Springer,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Living for the Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The first in-depth analysis of the black feminist movement, Living for the Revolution fills in a crucial but overlooked chapter in African American, women's, and social movement history. Through original oral history interviews with key activists and analysis of previously unexamined organizational records, Kimberly Springer traces the emergence, life, and decline of several black feminist organizations: the Third World Women's Alliance, Black Women Organized for Action, the National Black Feminist Organization, the National Alliance of Black Feminists, and the Combahee River Collective. The first of these to form was founded in 1968; all five were defunct by 1980. Springer demonstrates…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in feminism, African Americans, and education?

Feminism 351 books
African Americans 802 books
Education 108 books