Phenomenal Black Writers: An Essential Reading List to Survive 2025

Celebrate Black History Month with WURD Radio by focusing on phenomenal Black Philly writers as we create our essential reading list to survive 2025. Please see the essential reading list from several Philadelphia Black writers below:

Lorene Cary’s Recommendations

1. The Price of the Ticket – James Baldwin
2. Your favorite Black children’s book and one new one to read to a child.
3. See Origin, by Ava DuVernay, since a movie script is a powerful form of writing for all of us, but especially those with reading differences or blindness.
4. Jesus and the Disinherited – Howard Thurman

Jeannine A. Cook’s Recommendations

1. Collected Poems – Sonia Sanchez (plus her 19 other books)

2. My General Tubman the Stage Play – Lorene Cary 

3.  Ladysitting – Lorene Cary 

4.  big/small poems for pockets – Ursula Rucker

5. Yellow Wife & House of Eve – Sadeqa Johnson 

6. It’s Me They Follow (Sept. 2025) – Jeannine A. Cook

7. Shut Up & Write (March 2026) – Jeannine A. Cook

Nancy Gilliam’s Recommendations

1. The Stories My Heart Never Told – Alyia Wyatte
2. Somewhere Between God & Mammy – Sabriaya Shipley
3. ORIGINS (LAMENTATIONS OF THE BLACKBIRD) – Ashley Mae
4. Beneath the Crown – Compiled by Natima Sheree

Tre Johnson’s Recommendations

1. Black Popular Culture – Michele Wallace
2. Black Women Writers at Work – Claudia Tate
3. The Loneliness Files – Athena Dixon
4. Heavy – Kiese Laymon

Sara Lomax’s Recommendations

1. The Price of A Child – Lorene Cary
2. The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois – Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
3. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents – Isabel Wilkerson
4. The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin

Ursula Rucker’s Recommendations

1. Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature & Music – Melanie R. Hill
2. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto – Tricia Hersey, Founder of The Nap Ministry
3. We Want Our Bodies Back (poems) – Jessica Care Moore 
4. Ma’At Mama (audio book) – Ursula Rucker

Additional Book Recommendations

1. The Warmth of Other Suns – Isabel Wilkerson
2. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story – Nikole Hannah-Jones
3. The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap – Mehrsa Baradaran

Black & Banned: Black Authors Who’s Banned Work Belongs in Your Library

1. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas (2017)
2. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (1969)
3. The Color Purple – Alice Walker (1982)
4. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You – Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds (2020)
5. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison (1970)
6. The Hill We Climb – Amanda Gorman (2021)
7. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – Mildred D. Taylor (1976)
8. The New Kid – Jerry Craft (2019)
9. Ghost Boys – Jewell Parker Rhodes (2018)
10. Hood Feminism – Mikki Kendall (2020)
11. The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Alex Haley (1965)
12. Black Boy – Richard Wright (1945)
13. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
14. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison (1952)
15. All American Boys – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (2016)
16. All Boys Aren’t Blue – George M. Johnson (2020)
17. Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
18. The Undefeated – Kwame Alexander (2019)