5 Buzzy Audiobooks by Black Authors
By Erin Murphy
The world of books moves quickly–luckily, your friendly neighborhood audiobook team is here to keep you in the know. Read on to learn more about the buzz-worthy titles by Black authors that everyone is pressing play on.
There’s rich and imaginative historical fiction works Harlem Rhapsody and Junie (which happens to be a Good Morning America book club pick), a second novel from listener-favorite author Charmaine Wilkerson, and non-fiction that informs as much as it entertains from rockstar writers Eve L. Ewing and Ira Madison III.
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
In 1919, Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all. Amidst rumors of her tumultuous affair with W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie is determined to prove herself. But as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.
Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Sixteen-year-old Junie, enslaved on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, spends her days cooking and cleaning and tending to the master’s daughter. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds. Her nights are spent consumed with grief over the death of her older sister, Minnie. When guests arrive, upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. With time ticking down, Junie grapples with an world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?
Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing
If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. In Original Sins, Eve L. Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. By demonstrating that it’s in the DNA of American schools to serve as a mechanism for maintaining inequality, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom.
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
When Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot and saw her brother lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as she knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved and the case has had an enduring pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy, but when Ebby’s high profile romance falls apart, that’s exactly what they get. So Ebby flees to France and begins to thinks about the lost stoneware jar that had been brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family’s history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.
Pure Innocent Fun by Ira Madison III
You can recall the first TV show, movie, book, or song that made you feel understood—that shaped how you live, what you love, and whom you would become. It gave you an entire worldview. In Pure Innocent Fun, Ira Madison III explores the key cultural moments that inspired his career as a critic and guided his coming of age as a Black gay man in Milwaukee. Brimming with a profound love for a bygone culture and alternating between irreverence and heartfelt insight, Pure Innocent Fun, like all the best products of pop culture, will leave you entertained and surprisingly enlightened.
