2025 Black History Month Reading List

In honor of Black History Month, Stone Pigman celebrates the historic and cultural contributions of African Americans. Every year, our Chief Diversity Officer Heather Lonian provides a curated list of essential fiction and non-fiction books about the black experience and the ongoing struggle for justice and equality.

2025 Black History Month Reading List:

James by Percival Everett.  Everett's National Book Award-winning retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim (or James, as he calls himself) expands and subverts Twain's novel while retaining its sense of humor and mischief.   

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.  Set in the fictional Bayonne, Louisiana (loosely based on Gaines' hometown of New Roads) in the 1940s, the novel tells the story of Grant, a schoolteacher, and the only Black man in the community with a college education.  After Jefferson, a Black teenager, is unjustly sentenced to death by an all-White jury, his godmother asks Grant to share his knowledge with Jefferson so that her grandson can die "like a man." 

John Lewis by David Greenberg.  This 2024 work is a definitive account of a giant of the Civil Rights Movement whose courage, decency, and commitment to making "good trouble" continue to inspire.  

Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson.  Justice Jackson, whose given name, Ketanji Onyika, means "Lovely One," recounts her journey from her Miami childhood to Harvard (where she was an Editor of the Law Review), and her meteoric rise through the legal profession that culminated in her ascension to the United States Supreme Court in 2022. 

Creole:  The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color by Sybil Kein.  This collection of essays explores the origins of Louisiana's Creoles and their indelible imprint on the region's history and culture. 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.  McBride's acclaimed 2023 novel opens with the discovery of a skeleton in Pottsville, PA well in 1972, but quickly shifts its focus to the 1920s and the complex dynamics between Black and Jewish neighbors who must unite to protect a child.  

The "Baby Dolls":  Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition by Kim Marie Vaz.  Vaz traces the history of the Baby Dolls, a social club founded by African-American women, from its founding in 1912 to its post-Katrina resurrection.  As one of the first women's groups to "mask" in a Mardi Gras parade, these "'raddy-walking, shake-dancing, cigar-smoking, money-flinging' ladies that strutted their way into a predominantly male establishment" had an enormous influence on Carnival traditions and on the New Orleans Jazz scene. 

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward.  In her memoir, Ward reflects on the loss of five relatives and close friends (all young Black men) within a span of four years. The New York Times, which included the book in its "50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years" raved:  "She is a writer who has metabolized the Greeks and Faulkner — their themes course through her work — and the stories of the deaths of these men join larger national narratives about rural poverty and racism.  But Ward never allows her subjects to become symbolic.  This work of great grief and beauty renders them individual and irreplaceable."