Octavia Butler was a pioneering African American and female author of science fiction. She changed the genre by creating stories where she, as a Black woman, was represented. Her novels—like her post-apocalyptic winner of the 1994 New York Times Notable Book of the Year award Parable of the Sower—show black resistance in the face of racial injustice.

Butler’s Parable of the Sower was recently adapted into a graphic novel by Damian Duffy that won a 2021 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic.

Angie Thomas’ 2017 debut novel The Hate U Give, abbreviated as THUG, is a New York Times best seller. The novel tells the poignant story of protagonist Starr’s struggle for justice as the only witness to the fatal police shooting of her unarmed best friend Khalil.

Thomas creates characters so real that readers know them deeply. Even with a subject so heavy and dark, Thomas still creates moments of life that are sweet and even funny. That is how life goes sometimes, isn’t it?

The book has also won Audie awards for YA and Best Female Narrator, so if you’re an audiobook listener, take a listen. Either way, this book is well worth reading.

Author of the 2015 award-winning non-fiction book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates weaves historical fiction with elements of magical realism in his new novel The Water Dancer.

Set on a slave plantation in antebellum Virginia, the novel follows protagonist Hiram Walker—slave son of the plantation owner—as he learns to use his gift of Conduction. This gift—the ability to free himself and others from slavery through magical transportation—is a trope used in many African American stories and songs. Along the way he finds mentors, such as Harriet Tubman, hero of the Underground Railroad, who help him.

Themes from Between the World and Me resurface here—resistance, freedom, sense of home, and the evils of capitalism—along with a story so captivating that you can’t stop reading.

After experiencing racial violence in her own family, and one month after the murder of George Floyd, Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts found herself in a rainy dance-off with her daughter. In this moment she realized the power and strength of black joy as resistance, resilience, and restoration.

In the 36 essays that make up Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration, Lewis-Giggetts shows how, in the midst of discrimination, tragedy, heartbreak, and prejudice, preserving black joy becomes a weapon of resistance for Black people.

Founder of The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey, also known as the Nap Bishop, created the tenet that Rest is Resistance. Grounded in Black liberalism, Afrofuturism, and spirituality, Hersey's Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto creates a framework on how to break from the destruction of capitalism and white supremacy by disengaging from grind culture where our worth is measured by productivity.

Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, Stamped from the Beginning, and Antiracist Baby, says of Hersey’s book, “Her message is essential: Sit down. Lay down. Slow down. Rest is a necessary step in reclaiming our power to resist systemic oppression.”

It is a radical idea to claim rest as our divine birthright and to know we are inherently worthy without needing to DO anything. And while that is true for all people, it is Black women who are ushering in this revolutionary way of resistance.