I have a friend who's an older black woman and who I talk to about politics and the state of the world sometimes, she trusts my take on stuff and I want to suggest anything other than Michelle Obamas autobiography which she currently has.
She's a teacher, so bonus points for BIPOC educator authors
+1 for Angela Davis, also bell hooks
Both were educators (professors)
The autobiographies of Assata Shakur and Phoolan Devi.
bell hooks.
Also wanted to share the local high school's portraits displayed outside of Michelle, RBG, and Kamala, and no one else. Pretty cool!
To preface: a lot of my experience with BIPOC women authors is from an education background
Audre Lorde has both excellent poetry and well-written radical essays. She was a black lesbian and wrote a lot about that particular intersectional perspective.
bell hooks has been a major inspiration in my journey as a feminist
We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love is a great book in education specifically
Some other authors/groups off the top of my head:
- Gloria Ladson-Billings (educational lens, equity and cultural interface of education, critical theory)
- Combahee River Collective (released a statement worth reading, interesting history there)
- Louise Erdrich (poetry, novels, mostly fiction, centers indigenous experiences)
- Angie Thomas (YA novelist)
- Kimberlé Crenshaw (coined the term “intersectionality”)
Jesmyn Ward is a great novelist. Honoree Fanonne Jeffers’s debut novel was very good, and seems like the kind of thing an older person would especially enjoy. (Multigenerational story, lots of local history and genealogy and such.)
For non-fiction, in addition to the folks others have mentioned, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
