Why seeking books by diverse authors is crucial + 6 bangers written by Black authors

I just finished 'Victorian Psycho' by Virginia Feito and 'The Haunting of Hill House' (on audiobook) by Shirley Jackson—one was WONDERFUL, one was pretty good. I'll share which book is which in a future edition. 😎

Friends! I'm Charlotte Chambers, mom, lawyer, person with a reading addiction—took down 95 books in 2024. I'm on book 19 ('Witchcraft for Wayward Girls' by Grady Hendrix') for 2025. Yes, I do know I have a problem.

As Black History Month comes to an end—and we face a fresh (but not new, unfortunately) effort to rewrite and whitewash our country's history, I'm reminded that reading a plethora of racially-diverse authors is crucial.

Starting in 2023, I made a concerted effort to read fiction by BIPOC, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ authors.

This diversity of choice has been an incredible boon to my reading bench and to my life. There is a lot out there I never knew; so much about culture, history, music, and more. I've even learned a bit about myself and my place in the world. (Also, FTR—I seek no acclaim for this. I'm not raising this point for such a purpose. If anything, it's an admission that it took far too long to start. Rather, I want to demonstrate the profound benefits this strategy has garnered.)

Look: if I do say so myself, I've got some street cred when it comes to reading. 😼 I don't know many people outside of academia that read the range, quality, and volume of books that I do. For example, my husband reads Very Good Literature, but maybe he tucks in ten a year. I know people who read, like, 150 books a year, but they tend to be in the sameish genre (usually within the romance realm). But I'll read 'The Man In The Iron Mask' and then 'Slaughterhouse Five' and then 'Happy Place' and then 'Fourth Wing' and then 'David Copperfield' and then 'The Three Body Problem' and then 'Ulysses'. And, I'll read those in, say, six weeks.

This isn't a humble brag: I'm demonstrating I've got some muscle to flex here as I ascertain the quality of various BIPOC-written works I've pursued. (OK maybe it is a tiny bit, but mostly it's for demonstrative purposes 😏.)

And, without a doubt, the novels I've read by BIPOC authors are, in my opinion, at equal levels of quality compared to books by white authors. Books by BIPOC authors have just not been published much, and even when they were, those authors were often denied the full strength of marketing that drives book sales and availability. That isn't to say all of the author-diverse books I've read are all good! I gave the same range of stars to BIPOC (and other diverse) authors as I did white ones. It's just plain easier to get published if you're white–and by a lot–and that's just math.

To the extent we are beginning to see an increase in books published by Black authors: one fair criticism I've heard lately is that publishers now seem to prefer books about Black trauma (this is not a criticism of the people writing, but the decisionmakers on who gets published and where marketing is focused). I can see where that criticism is coming from. So I've also taken steps to fill in my portfolio with happy and fun and fantastical stories by Black writers too. If you want to join me, you really ought to get hooked up with @zai_sylla on IG (or, if you're a bad a$$ and don't have that app, find her on Patreon). This very cool reading club is in the midst of a 30-day reading challenge focusing on Black joy in stories. There will be more group reading opportunities in the future, so get on those updates! Thanks to Zai's vision, I've put two exciting books on the top of my house-sized TBR: 'I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com' by Kimberly Lemming and 'Faebound' by Saara El-Arifi.

While my list below doesn't necessarily reflect this updated interest (since those stories are still in the hopper), and everything below is excellent, here is a fair warning for you—some of these stories may leave your mind, heart, and soul warped in anguish for a bit. But doesn't the best fiction make us feel this way? And as I mentioned in my review of 'Nickel Boys' by Colson Whitehead last week, it is crucial that we keep looking anyway, even when it's hard. We have to face the demons of our past to defeat them.

I really want the books to speak for themselves, so the yapping stops here! This list of fiction written by Black authors ranges in genre—literary realism, horror, science fiction, plus one of THE BEST short story collections I've ever had the pleasure of reading! There is something for everyone here, that's for sure.

Book Reviews

'Transcendent Kingdom' by Yaa Gyasi
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: A woman pursuing her Ph.D. in neuroscience searches for the fundamental cause of addiction. She reckons with her difficult mother and her past—some of which was spent in the American south and, at other times, Ghana. She battles with reconciling her Baptist upbringing, true belief in God, and scientific pursuits.

Review: I wept when this book was over. I connected so much with Gifty, the FMC (as much as I could, acknowledging that I'll never be able to fully understand the kind of experience her character is born from). This book was an early entry point toward an awakening of my own spiritual life. In 'Transcendent Kingdom' we find a meditation on the idea that neither science nor religion can really capture the full truths about human existence and our role in the universe. I appreciate Gyasi's refusal to throw the baby out with the bathwater (avoiding a 'I don't understand it, I can't see it, it's not real' mindset toward spirituality) while acknowledging the inherent problems with religious organization.

First I read Gyasi's 'Homegoing', which is also wonderful. I like 'Transcendent Kingdom' a little bit more. The former is very wide and sweeps through huge swaths of time. The characters are incredible, but we don't get the kind of digging in with those folks that we do with Gifty. Regardless, if you're talking execution of the written word, both are at a 5/5 level of perfection. To say I'm jealous of Gyasi's technical writing chops is a great understatement.

'The Ballad of Black Tom' by Victor LaValle
Genre: Horror
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: Tom, our protagonist, cares for his father, who is ill and no longer able to work. Tom is hired by an eccentric white millionaire in a posh part of greater New York City to play the guitar and attend a weird party. Some very Lovecraftian things happen.

Review: As a horror fan, this book pushed all the buttons for me. LaValle's 'Black Tom' is an antiracist retelling of Lovecraft's 'The Horror at Red Hook'. The monsters are very creepy. The racism even more so. We see Tom, a nice, somewhat optimistic young man get burned down by the world, and then rise from the ashes like a phoenix.

This story is SCARY. I just want you to know! You oughta be cool with horror if you read this book. If you want to dip your toe in and check out this genre, this is a great, basically perfect example of what horror can be. And, novella length, its nice and tight, you should be able to read it in one sitting.

You might dream of Cthulu, but don't worry, it's only a dream...right...?

'The Underground Railroad' by Colson Whitehead
Genre: Historical Speculative Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: The underground railroad is physically real in this historical fiction (tracks and all). Cora, a slave, escapes her plantation, but once she gets into the free states, nothing comes easy as she makes her way North and toward true freedom.

Review: "In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America." Referring to the slave catchers a la the Fugitive Slaves Act of 1793 and 1850, we see that even when slaves escaped to free states, they were not safe.

Haunting, disturbing, and beautifully written—Colson Whitehead is a master writer. I'll admit I put off reading this book for a long time, finally picking it up early in the Pandemic. I was worried I didn't have the stomach for it, or maybe I was just afraid to face some of the truths about this centuries-long tragedy. Better to ignore the painful realities of the past, I thought, because what can I do about them. But the siren kept calling. So many people I knew and respected recommended the book to me. I had to just face it, stop being a brat trying to ignore hard truths, uncomfortable the encounter might be.

Whitehead is an impeccable writer, as noted, and reading this book turned out to be easy as breathing. I stayed up late a few nights because I had to find out what happened to Cora, though the occasional break was necessary. I needed those breaks to exhale a little. Indeed the content is tough to view. It wasn't even the scenes of overt brutality that got me, but rather the quieter moments when Cora reflects on the hopelessness she and so many others felt at the time, or how verbally vicious people were to her no matter where she went. It filled me with deep sadness, but I absolutely loved it and Whitehead became an 'auto-buy' author for me.

Don't be a wimp like I was for a long time. Read the book. Learn about the past so we don't repeat the same mistakes.

'Kindred' by Octavia E. Butler
Genre: Historical Science Fiction
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: The year is 1976, and a Black woman (who is married to a white man) is spontaneously teleported back to a particular period of time prior to the Civil War, straight to a plantation worked by slaves. I'm going to leave it here. You don't need to know much about history to get the gist of what this means.

Review: This was my first Octavia Butler, and it didn't disappoint. Her writing is excellent, of course, many of us knew that already, but I wasn't prepared for the intense emotion I would experience reading it. Few authors can draw a reader to empathy like Butler does. Unlike most of the well-written books I love, I could not binge this one. I had to take breaks (sometimes over days). 'Kindred' is brutal at times. And the brutality has nothing to do with magic or science fiction, but rather the works of men (and women).

As you can imagine, Dana, our FMC, is absolutely terrified when she realizes what time she's sucked into, forced to pretend she is a slave. I promised no spoilers, but I'll just say that this farce continues to become more complicated. So the tension rises, a great slow-burn. Nothing in this book is heavy-handed. It's all 'showing, not telling'. This book is considered a work of science fiction because of the teleporting in time, but...well, I'll just tell you that the stuff happening between the moments of teleportation are definitely not fiction.

This is one of those I encourage you to push through, despite moments of anguish. Butler is worth it.

'Such A Fun Age' by Kiley Reid
Genre: Literary Realism
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: A Black woman is hired as a part-time nanny for a white family. The opening scenes show us an indication of racism in real-time while the nanny shops at a grocery store with her charge, a three-year-old white girl in a party dress. Our FMC also meets and begins dating a white man. Shenanigans ensue.

Review: I won't lie—when presented with the choice between speculative genre and literary realism fiction, I will usually go with speculative. I find books about people in normal life doing normal things often boring. Unless they are done very, very well—and 'Such A Fun Age' really is.

Reading this story is like watching a spider spin a web. The spider appears to be weaving her web one piece at a time, but eventually you see it's all interconnected. That's not just an expression of the mastery of the work itself—the detailed story elements of the web are very good as well. Another great example of 'show, don't tell', Reid gives us a 'day in the life' kind of look at living as a Black woman and working in a white world. The woman our FMC works for seems perfectly lovely. A liberal paragon. But what does that even mean? While she might have some bona fides in the way she carries her membership cards (e.g., ACLU), we see behavior that is just as racist as someone who openly professes to be so. I know many women like this. They tend to say they are 'liberal' but rich and privileged, never having to go without, always fitting in. When you poke at the edges you find they are unwilling to support any measures that would meaningfully impact their existing way of life. In some ways, that is just as insidious as the people who are out with it. Maybe more so because it's trying to package itself as something different, virtuous.

Truth is: this book is just good. You can read what I wrote above into the work if you'd like, but even at the surface-level, the drama and tension is drawn perfectly and the characterization is excellent.

'Out There Screaming: An anthology of black horror' by Jordan Peele
Genre: Medley, Horror
Rating: 5/5
Super Short Synopsis: Each story will speak for itself, but the underlying concept is that of the oubliette—something that Jordan Peele found fascinating as a child (and still does). The oubliette was the inspiration for The Sunken Place in 'Get Out' and here he compiles stories centering on their own versions of the oubliette.

All stories are by Black authors, and they are all 10/10 rock star-level awesome. Masters like N.K. Jemisin ('The City We Became', 'The Broken Earth Series') and Tananarive Due ('The Reformatory', 'The Living Blood') lead a group of incredible horror writers. N.K. Jemisin's story, in particular, will really give you the willies.

What I love about Black horror: the terrifying thing is almost always the persistent racism threaded throughout the stories—all of the monsters, demons, and ghosts can't even compare to the real-life horrors experienced by the characters. I feel a similar affinity to horror written by women, particularly in the body horror subgenre: the fear of just walking around with a female body often eclipses the worries that my house haunted. Horror, like comedy, can draw all of this into sharp relief, and circle the 'main point' without being didactic.

Be brave and read a story each night, right before bed. I double dog dare you!

As always, thank you so much for reading. I also want to share a little about the portrait of Phyllis Wheatley, which I proudly display in caption to this edition of HAVING WRITTEN. Phyllis was enslaved by the Wheatley family during the time she published her first book of poetry—'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral'—and she is believed to be the first African American woman to have a book of poetry published. It's also believed she commissioned an artist named Scipio Morehead, another enslaved person, to create her portrait. Read more about her online. She's pretty bad a$$.

Please remember to please send to your friends, tell them to subscribe! And I would love to engage in (civil) discourse in the comments or privately in email.

As always, have a great week and read banned books. Speaking of: next week, I'll be sharing a list of my favorite banned books of all time,
Charlotte Chambers

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