Black women writers have produced over time tremendous works that examine the fabric and quality of American life and democracy.
Alabama has been birthplace and home to a host of talented Black writers, poets and radicals, no doubt influenced by the political, racial and cultural geography of the state and its history.
Here are a list of Alabama Black women writers and poets to read.
Zora Neale Hurston
Fiction, folklore, anthropology
Hurston was one of the most prominent writers of the Harlem Renaissance and traveled throughout the South and Caribbean to collect folklore and document the cultural heritage of the African diaspora.
Selected works are available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Angela Davis
Nonfiction
Perhaps the world’s most well-known, living Black female radical, the 76-year-old author, activist and philosopher hails from Birmingham, which she credits for her political involvement. In the 1970s, Davis worked with the Black Panthers and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to advocate for pro-Black causes and was a fixture in feminist, communist and anti-war movements. She became infamous when in August 1970, J. Edgar Hoover, known for his obsessive surveillance and harassment of civil rights activists, placed her on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for her alleged involvement in a courtroom invasion gone wrong (she had purchased the firearms). Davis was acquitted by an all-white jury at trial.
Some works are available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Ellen Tarry
Children’s books and nonfiction
Born in Birmingham and educated at the Alabama State Normal School (Alabama State University), the journalist and author, born in 1906, is known for her works in children’s literature and adult nonfiction. Frustrated by pejorative portrayals of Black characters in children’s books riddled with stereotypes and written by white authors, Tarry published a series of four Black picture books between 1940 and 1950. Her third, “My Dog Rinty,” was the first high-quality photographic picture book that captured city life and showed Black people in professional positions.
In the 1930s and ’40s, African Americans were still mostly portrayed as farmers and laborers although many had migrated to urban centers outside the South. Tarry, herself, had moved north to Chicago and New York, where she became a minor figure in the Harlem Renaissance, but never gained the prominence of friends and peers such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay.
“The Third Door” is available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Margaret Walker
Poetry and fiction
A poet and writer, Walker was born in Birmingham in 1915 where she lived until she was 10 years ancient. Her family moved to New Orleans where she continued her schooling before moving north to Chicago. There, she became involved in the South Side Writers’ Group collaborating with notable authors Richard Wright and Arna Bontemps. Her 1942 collection of poems “For My People” made her the first Black woman to win a national writing prize and has been heralded as one of the most essential works of poetry to come out of the Chicago Black Renaissance literary movement.
Her only novel, “Jubilee,” is based on the story of her great-grandmother’s life as an enslaved woman during and after the Civil War. The book has been praised as an apt dismissal of “white ‘nostalgia’ fiction about the antebellum and Reconstruction South.”
Walker’s “Jubilee” and other works are available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Angela Johnson
Children’s books, poetry, adolescent adult
The Tuskegee-born writer and poet has spent her literary career chronicling the Black experience in children’s books and adolescent adult fiction. Although Johnson was raised in Ohio, many of her books have connections to Alabama and its history. Her children’s book “The Smell of Sweet Roses,” for example, follows two adolescent girls who sneak out of their house and across town to join a freedom march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement. The girls not only witness but lend a hand change history.
Johnson has published more than 40 books and has been praised for her ability to create timeless, nuanced characters with broad appeal. In 2003, she earned a MacArthur Fellowship aka a Genius Grant for her “significant and lasting contribution to adolescent adult literature.” She has won the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King award three times.
A wide variety of Johnson’s poetry, children’s books and young adult literature is available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Annie L. Burton
Autobiography
Burton was born into slavery on a plantation near Clayton in 1858 and liberated by Union soldiers at the close of the Civil War. She wrote an autobiography detailing the experiences of her life trapped in forced bondage titled “Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days.”
In 1879, Burton moved north to Boston and later New York, working as a laundress and cook to support herself; almost four decades before continued and widespread racial violence, lack of economic opportunity and northern industrial labor shortages spurred more than a million southerners to migrate north. Burton’s autobiography is unique because unlike many of the so-called slave narratives, she did not narrate her experience to a white writer but wrote the book herself. In the 1909 memoir, Burton characterized emancipation as a time for Black people to redefine their lives and develop identities as independent individuals.
“Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days” is available free online at Project Gutenberg. An excerpt can be found in Margaret Busby’s acclaimed anthology of Black women writers, “Daughters of Africa,” which is available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
Sonia Sanchez
Poetry
An influential poet and former professor, the Birmingham-born writer was a leading figure in New York City’s 1960s and 70s Black Arts Movement — a melding of art and activism led by a cohort of pivotal Black writers that included Amiri Baraka, Audre Lord and Maya Angelou.
Sanchez has written more than a dozen poetry books, short stories, essays, plays and children’s books that aim to represent the lived experience of African Americans. The writer is known for her fusion of poetry and musical forms such as blues and jazz, as well as her skillful employment of Black vernacular. Producers of HBO’s hit sci-fi/horror series “Lovecraft Country” recognized this when they chose her poem “Catch the Fire” to culminate the show’s ninth episode; a gripping visualization of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
In the 60s, Sanchez joined the Congress for Racial Equality in New York. That led her to a meeting with Malcolm X. By 1971, Sanchez had joined the Nation of Islam; influenced by its views on Black separatism and liberation, which are evident in her writing. It was at this time that she published, “A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women.”
She left the Nation of Islam a few years later over disagreement on the group’s view on women. Her most acclaimed books of poetry are “Homecoming,” celebrated for its musical influences, and “We a BaddDDD People,” which focuses on the day-to-day lives of Black Americans.
A limited selection of Sanchez’s poetry is available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library.
N.K. Jemisin
Sci-fi and fantasy fiction
Born in Iowa and raised in Mobile with summers spent in Brooklyn, New York, the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship recipient — whose parents met while studying at ASU — is a master at creating fantasy worlds. Jemisin has described feeling like somewhat of an outsider during her childhood in Mobile; it drove her to books and eventually writing, where she could create her own narrative.
In her books, she explores themes of power and control. In her 2015 novel, “The Fifth Season,” she creates a fictional society made up of many ethnicities and species. A member of one group, angered by the widespread oppression of his people, wields his great power to split open the earth they inhabit. It earned her 2016’s Hugo Award, the top literary prize in science fiction; making Jemisin the first Black writer to win the award, and the first person to ever win it three times in a row when she added two more books — “The Obelisk Gate” and “The Broken Sky” — to complete the Broken Earth trilogy.
Unfortunately, none of Jemisin’s books are yet available at the Montgomery City-County Public Library, but readers can recommend the library order titles here (under the “Send a Request” tab).
