In continuing solidarity with the progressive literary community and all who fight racism and anti-Black violence, The JRB presents this Pan-African Anti-Racism and Solidarity reading list: a spreadsheet comprising some three hundred titles by African and diasporan writers that we hope will prove useful as a resource to those seeking works by Black authors.
The list speaks to one of our foundational tenets: centring Black voices in world literary conversations.
Far from comprehensive, this list is meant to be more of a primer on the key texts of the modern Black and African experience. It’s doubtless imperfect in many ways: please help us improve it by sending your ideas to suggestions@johannesburgreviewofbooks.com.
The list is free to download for all: share it far and wide, and let’s ensure Pan-African writing maintains the newfound momentum that has pushed it to the fore in the wake of the global #BlackLivesMatter uprisings and allied calls for decolonization.
A few notes on our approach:
- Pan-African here is used in its political sense, and refers to, broadly, Africa’s indigenous peoples and the modern African diaspora.
- Many of the writers on the list have published extensive bodies of work (cf Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison, to name obvious examples); in most cases, we have listed a single seminal work, or perhaps two, to ensure that all the writers get ‘airtime’, as it were.
- With a few exceptions, we’ve kept titles limited to those published in, or translated into, English.
