Welcome Readers!
Our 2026 Online Reading Challenge is … KNOW YOUR HISTORY! Each month we will be reading about a different observance month and highlighting a main title about that month.
For February, we will be reading books that reflect on the legacy and contributions of African Americans. Our main title for February is Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:
The astonishing debut novel from the acclaimed bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, and Pet, Freshwater tells the story of Ada, an unusual child who is a source of deep concern to her southern Nigerian family. Young Ada is troubled, prone to violent fits. Born “with one foot on the other side,” she begins to develop separate selves within her as she grows into adulthood. And when she travels to America for college, a traumatic event on campus crystallizes the selves into something powerful and potentially dangerous, making Ada fade into the background of her own mind as these alters—now protective, now hedonistic—move into control. Written with stylistic brilliance and based in the author’s realities, Freshwater dazzles with ferocious energy and serpentine grace. – Grove Atlantic
Looking for some other books that reflect on the legacy and contributions of African Americans or that are written by Black authors? Try any of the following.
- Black Ghost of Empire: the long death of slavery and the failure of emancipation by Kris Manjapra
- Black Mercuries: African American athletes, race, and the modern Olympic games by David Kenneth Wiggins
- Chasing Me to My Grave: an artist’s memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert
- Driving While Black: African American travel and the road to civil rights by Gretchen Sullivan Sorin
- Requiem for the Massacre: a Black history on the conflict, hope, and fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by RJ Young
- Shine Bright: a very personal history of black women in pop by Danyel Smith
- The Swans of Harlem: five Black ballerinas, fifty years of sisterhood, and their reclamation of a groundbreaking history by Karen Valby
- We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American farmers, land, and legacy by Natalie Baszile
As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!