5 Books by African Women to Read This March

March feels like a turning point. The year is still young, but serious enough to demand intention. And if you’re going to read this month, let it be stories that stretch you, unsettle you a little, and leave you thinking long after you’ve closed the book.

African women have been writing with urgency, honesty, and an almost stubborn refusal to shrink their truths. These five books are not “soft” reads. They are layered. Emotional. Political. Intimate. And deeply human.

Here’s what to pick up this March.

The Sex Lives of African Women is bold from its first chapter, titled “Self-discovery.” What begins gently, almost cautiously, quickly shifts into stories that are raw, explicit, and unafraid of discomfort. Sekyiamah curates real-life narratives from African women across the continent and diaspora, centring desire in a way that is rarely afforded to them.

A recurring thread through many of the stories is the exploration of polyamory, kink, and BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism). But what makes this book significant isn’t shock value. It’s context. Each woman explains where her curiosity began. How religion, culture, silence, shame, or trauma shaped her. How reclaiming her body became political.

For readers interested in African feminism, sexuality studies, or gender discourse, this book is essential. It challenges the reductive stereotype of the “conservative African woman” and replaces it with layered humanity.

If you love a boarding school mystery with emotional weight, this one will pull you in fast.

Sade Hussein, grieving her father and entering Alfred Nobel Academy for her third year of high school, expects awkwardness. She does not expect her roommate to disappear after the very first night or to become the quiet suspect everyone whispers about.

Àbíké-Íyímídé builds tension carefully. Rumours spiral. A student turns up dead. Sade, already carrying the heaviness of family tragedy, is forced to navigate elite school politics and the intimidating “Unholy Trinity” — the most powerful girls on campus. There’s also Persephone, magnetic and complicated, drawing Sade in ways she doesn’t fully understand.

At its core, this is a young adult mystery about trauma and identity. But it’s also about power, who has it, who protects it, and who gets sacrificed to preserve it. The boarding school setting feels glossy on the outside, rotting underneath. And Sade’s emotional journey makes the suspense personal.

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Memoirs can sometimes feel curated. This one feels excavated.

In Finding Me, Viola Davis writes about her childhood in Rhode Island with painful clarity. Poverty. Hunger. Unstable living conditions. She does not romanticise it. The early chapters are difficult because they are honest.

What stands out is not just the hardship, but the spark. That moment when her sister asked her, “What do you want to be?” A simple question. But it planted a possibility in a life that did not offer many.

The memoir moves from childhood survival to artistic ambition in New York City, therapy, self-examination, and the slow, deliberate work of healing. It’s not framed as a fairytale of success. It’s framed as a fight to reclaim identity.

For readers interested in resilience, creativity, and the emotional cost of ambition, this book lingers. It’s about becoming and unbecoming at the same time.

Set in the fictional village of Kosawa, this novel feels painfully real.

How Beautiful We Were tells the story of villagers fighting an American oil company whose drilling has poisoned their land and water. Told through multiple perspectives, particularly members of the Nangi family, the novel stretches across decades of resistance.

Mbue was influenced by environmental struggles in places like the Niger Delta and by activists such as Ken Saro-Wiwa. You feel that history in the pages. 

This isn’t just an environmental novel. It’s about power imbalance, corporate greed, political complicity, and the cost of standing up to systems designed to crush you. The pacing allows you to sit with the community. To understand what is at stake. To see what hope looks like when it’s bruised but not gone.

If you care about climate justice, postcolonial politics, or community resistance, this book deserves your time.

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Few novels capture modern Nigeria’s social divide with this much tenderness and tension.

Wúràolá is a young doctor from a wealthy family, pressured by expectations at every turn, from her demanding job to her family to her relationship. Eniolá, on the other hand, is navigating public shame after his father’s job loss pushes the family into debt and poverty. His world shrinks as survival becomes urgent.

Their lives move in parallel, occasionally intersecting, until the novel builds toward a devastating collision.

Adébáyò writes with patience. She gives us family dynamics in full, the interfering aunties, the quiet sacrifices, the generational burdens. Political corruption, social injustice, mental strain, and violence against women are woven into everyday life rather than presented as abstract issues.

This is a novel about class, dignity, and the complicated choices people make when pushed to the edge.

These five books by African women are not grouped just because it’s March or because representation sounds nice in a headline. They belong together because they confront something: silence around sexuality, institutional power, poverty, environmental exploitation, and class inequality.

They are intimate and political at once.

If your March reading list needs depth, complexity, and voices that refuse to be simplified, start here. Read slowly. Let the discomfort sit where it needs to. And let the stories change you a little.