Books like The Vanishing Half

01

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates · Memoir

Between the World and Me is a letter from Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son, Samori, about what it means to live in a Black body in the United States.

A kindred literary fiction read.

02

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou · Memoir

Maya Angelou's first volume of autobiography covers her childhood and adolescence in Stamps, Arkansas and San Francisco during the 1930s and 1940s, ending with the birth of her son at age sixteen.

A kindred literary fiction read.

03

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi · History

Stamped from the Beginning is Ibram X.

A kindred literary fiction read.

04

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson · Memoir

Isabel Wilkerson's second book proposes a reframing of American racial hierarchy: rather than thinking of racism primarily as prejudice, she argues that the United States has operated as a caste society, with Black Americans at the bottom of a rigidly maintained hierarchy similar in its structure — though different in its specific mechanisms — to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany.

A kindred literary fiction read.

05

Educated: A Memoir

Tara Westover · Memoir

Educated is Tara Westover's memoir about growing up in a survivalist family in rural Idaho and eventually earning a PhD in history from Cambridge University.

A kindred literary fiction read.

06

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · Literary fiction

Americanah follows Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who leaves Lagos for America as a university student and spends fifteen years navigating a country that insists on categorizing her in ways Nigeria never did.

Both dig into race and identity.

07

Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng · Literary fiction

Lydia Lee is dead before the first sentence ends.

Both dig into race and identity.

08

Light in August

William Faulkner · Literary fiction

Light in August is one of Faulkner's greatest novels and, for many readers, a more accessible entry into his work than The Sound and the Fury.

Both dig into race and identity.

09

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison · Literary fiction

Song of Solomon follows Macon Dead III — called Milkman — from his birth in 1930s Michigan through his eventual journey southward in search of family gold that turns into a search for something far older: his own origins and name.

Both dig into the american south.

10

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Trevor Noah · Memoir

Born a Crime is Trevor Noah's memoir about growing up mixed-race in South Africa during the final years of apartheid and its chaotic aftermath.

Both dig into race and identity.

11

Inclusive Conversations

Mary-Frances Winters · Business

Inclusive Conversations is Mary-Frances Winters's guide to having substantive, productive conversations about race, identity, and equity in organizational settings.

Both dig into race and identity.

12

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa · History

This Bridge Called My Back, first published in 1981 and edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, is a landmark anthology of writing by women of color in the United States.

Both dig into race and identity.