9 Books With Black Female Lead Characters
The old folks call it “making a way out of no way.” In the film Lemonade, Beyoncé describes it as “[spinning] gold out of this hard life.” But the best definition of the art of black women and femmes holding down communities, surviving impossible odds, and bearing unbearable burdens, generation after generation after generation was coined by CaShawn Thompson: “#BlackGirlsAreMagic.”
For decades, black writers throughout the Diaspora have encased that incomprehensible essence of black femme survival into prose, celebrating black womanhood in all of its complexities, and highlighting the ever-present struggle for freedom from the intersections of racial, class and gendered oppression.
While mainstream culture has obsessed over dystopian literature that warns of persecution in the distant future, black writers haven’t had the luxury of fantasizing threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—or the need for revolution. They lived it, and their stories reflected it. Even as the mother of Afro-Futurism, Octavia Butler used science fiction, fantasy and magical realism in her novels to critique the very present troubles of systemic and intersectional domination.
Through putting pain to paper, black writers who center black femme stories amplify the voices of erased and ignored people and aid in the transference of magic: whatever could not be survived in real life. Even if the characters they inspire die in the book, the magic lives on, through the readers, through documentation and through time, resisting and persisting in perpetuity on the page.
And black women and girls need these stories. We need our truths told and to see ourselves surviving to reignite our own magic, to remind us of where we’ve been and to expand our awareness of what’s possible, each story breaking a chain somewhere in us and making us a little more free.
Out of that desire, I wrote the revolution story Book of Addis: Cradled Embers. A 17-year-old Igbo girl who sees visions and dreams dreams, Addis is a gardener enslaved to the first president of a new country. When she accidentally kills her enslaver, she becomes the face of the second great revolution in the nation's young history and a symbol of hope to oppressed people longing for freedom.
Written entirely in black vernacular, Book of Addis not only honors the poetry and genius of black dialects, but is an homage to a true magical black woman named Oney Judge who escaped from George Washington in 1796 and lived to tell her story. Even as Washington pursued her until the day he died, Oney defied the first president of the United States and died of old age, a free woman.
Though learning of Oney's true story lit the fire, so many black girls in literature cradled the embers of my imagination and ultimately my revolution. Here are 9 free and magical black girls in literature that might do the same for you:
1/11Through putting pain to paper, black writers who center black femme stories amplify the voices of erased and ignored people and aid in the transference of magic: whatever could not be survived in real life. Even if the characters they inspire die in the book, the magic lives on, through the readers, through documentation and through time, resisting and persisting in perpetuity on the page.
And black women and girls need these stories. We need our truths told and to see ourselves surviving to reignite our own magic, to remind us of where we’ve been and to expand our awareness of what’s possible, each story breaking a chain somewhere in us and making us a little more free.
2/11Tashi from Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker
After Alice Walker’s most famous work, The Color Purple, became a best-selling book and an Oscar-winning movie, the author revived minor characters to star in a continuation of the story, Possessing the Secret of Joy. In this book, Celie's daughter-in-law, Tashi is an Olinka woman dealing with the trauma of the female genital mutilation ritual performed on her in her village. Fighting to heal both physically and mentally, Tashi discovers the secret of black joy, the heart of what #BlackGirlMagic is all about: continued resistance in the face of oppression. Though Walker abandons the black southern vernacular that made The Color Purple so intriguing, she’s true to Tashi, who learned Standard English from Celie’s sister Nettie, a teacher. Her prose will break your heart by the end of the first chapter—a testament to her skill in any form.
3/11Xuela from The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid
Xuela is an outcast, motherless child on the island of Dominica. And in her isolation — no mother, no mother country — she is able to find freedom on the periphery, rejecting the social norms a mother would have taught her about womanhood. She is able to reject ideas of love and propriety and standards of beauty and behavior. In doing so, she owns her own body physically and sexually, and is able to know herself intimately and define herself for herself. Seeing such a self-possessed woman on the page can open a whole world of possibilities for young girls to know they can choose who they want to be.
4/11Ifemelu from Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
When Igbo-Nigerian born Ifemelu comes to modern America to further her studies after 9/11, she encounters American-bred racism, and her mental health suffers, especially a painful violation. She ends up isolating herself even more from loved ones back in Nigeria. Wielding the power of the pen, Ifemelu writes her way into the American dream. Through blogging, her thoughts on race, pan-Africanism, feminism and economics allow her to sustain herself financially in a foreign world as she discovers who she is and what it means to be home. Combined with untranslated Igbo words, Adichie’s signature imagery of American and U.K. life serves up a delicious and unapologetic Diasporic Blackness that highlights both the multifacetedness and the connectedness of the black experience.
5/11Dana from Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
On the surface, Dana is a college-bound beauty growing up in 1980s Atlanta, but she privately bears the burden of being the secret daughter of her bigamist father and her best friend's sister. Dana yearns for legitimacy outside of her father, outside of men, and comes to understand herself and her own mother more than she thought possible. Jones tells this story in two parts; the first is Dana’s and the second is from her half-sister Chaurisse, showing how the same facts can lead to separate truths in the mouths of different people. This is powerful for young women to see that life is more than our individual experience of it—“truth” is as wide as the world is round.
6/11Sierra from Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Sierra Santiago is literal magic in this fantasy novel about an Afrolatina in modern-day Brooklyn who discovers her gift for shadowshaping—connecting ancestral spirits with paintings—to fight off an unknown killer and save her community. In this New York Times best-seller, Older brings to the forefront the oft-erased Afrolatinx community and tackles colorism, gentrification and the importance of knowing who you are and where you’re from. When Sierra stumbles upon her hidden family history, she unlocks an entire spiritual dimension that helps her grow into her purpose, teaching young women that the power they’re looking for is always within their reach.
7/11Sula from Sula by Toni Morrison
Growing up in Medallion, Ohio, in the early 1900s, Sula never has much in the way of material possessions or loving family, outside of her best friend Nel. But Sula grows into a woman who takes pride in having nothing and wanting nothing she can't give to herself. She revels in being alone, and as unkind as her actions may be, she wants Nel to be free too. Morrison writes on a loom, weaving place, time and history into the telling of her story, long before Sula is even introduced. That’s because she can only be understood if you understand where she’s from. If you trust the genius that Morrison is, Sula will be worth the wait.
8/11Lilith from The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
Though enslaved on a Jamaican sugar plantation in the 19th century, Lilith is a spirited teenager who dreams of a better life and is determined to break the cycle of her persecution. She's recruited by a group of enslaved women who are planning a rebellion by any means necessary. In a hypnotic Jamaican vernacular, James tells the story of the Night Women in their own tongue, lending veracity and long-overdue dignity to a people taking freedom into their own hands, and reminding readers that there is power and magic in our tongues. Telling our own stories in our own ways is inherently revolutionary.
9/11Janie from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Three different men try to define Janie's existence at the turn of the 20th century in the American South. But Janie is not one to be contained. The overall-wearing woman in a racist, patriarchal world learns that no one is dependable but control over herself is freedom. One of the most well-known black female novelists, Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston's most famous book. Her crafted black southern vernacular was among the first black books to be celebrated as much for the telling of the story as the story itself. Every modern writer who chooses to craft black vernacular as opposed to Standard English owes a debt to Hurston and Janie who opened the door for black syntax to be recognized for the art it is.
10/11Book of Addis: Cradled Embers by Brooke C. Obie
When 17-year-old enslaved girl Addis accidentally kills her enslaver, the first president of the young country Amerika, she unwittingly becomes the face of the greatest conflict in the nation’s short history. On the run for her life, with unlikely friends and a world of enemies, Addis simultaneously becomes the most wanted person alive and a symbol of hope for enslaved people longing for freedom.
Written in an 18th century black Diasporic vernacular, Book of Addis reaches back in time to explore the intergenerational impact of oppression and plots a daring path into the future. An epic tale of love, loss, and the cost of liberation, Book of Addis: Cradled Embers is the first novel in a 3-part literary fiction series.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated.
