10 awesome books by Black writers you should read in April

1. What is not yours is not yours by Helen Oyeyemi

This is my first foray into a collection of short stories, and it was really good. Helen Oyeyemi's writing is lyrical, bold, twisted, transfixing, and mesmerizing.

Isaac Fitzgerald described What is not yours is not yours as linked by the overarching theme of keys, each story — as rich and satisfying as an epic — bursts with fantastical imagination and a sly, playful intelligence that will leave you laughing even as your head spins.

2. Blackass by Igoni Barrett

This debut novel describes contemporary Lagos with infectious vivacity and exactness. Blackass is a provocative, contemporary reworking of Kafka’s Metamorphosis — but set in the bustling metropolis of Lagos and what it would be like for a Nigerian to wake up with white skin.

3. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing is a stunning, unforgettable account of family, history, and racism.

It is a beautiful story of two half-sisters in 18th-century Ghana and the lives of their many generations of descendants in America.

4. The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela

The Kindness of Enemies is both an engrossing story of a provocative period in history and an important examination of what it is to be a Muslim in a post 9/11 world.

5. The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

Petina Gappah’s The Book of Memory is about an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has been convicted of murder.

6. The Face: Cartography of the Void by Chris Abani

A profound and gorgeously wrought short memoir by acclaimed Nigerian-born author and poet Chris Abani that explores his personal history and complex sense of identity through ameditation on the face.

Lit Hub described Face as Chris Abani’s exploration of his own face as a kind of mini-memoir, unpacking the histories, stories, and genealogies contained (and fetishized) inside this window to the soul.

7. Collected Poems by Gabriel Okara

Described as “the elder statesman of Nigerian literature and the first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa.”, Gabriel Okara: Collected Poems includes the poet’s earliest lyric verse along with poems written in response to Nigeria’s war years; literary tributes and elegies to fellow poets, activists, and loved ones long dead; and recent dramatic and narrative poems.

8. Tales of the Metric System by Imraan Coovadia

Playwrights, politicians, philosophers, and thieves, all caught in their individual stories, burst from the pages of Imraan Coovadia’s Tales of the Metric System as it measures South Africa’s modern history in its own remarkable units of imagination.

9. Rachel’s Blue by Zakes Mda

Rachel’s Blue explores what happens when a rapist fights for parenting rights over the rape-conceived child

10. And After Many Days by Jowhor Ile

Set in the bustling town of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, this is a story of how a family's life is disrupted by the sudden disappearance of seventeen-year-old Paul Utu, beloved brother and son.

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