“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free,” Frederick Douglass said in a now famous speech he gave on July 5, 1852. In that spirit, the editors at Poets Against Racism USA offer some suggestions for poetry books to read during Black History Month. Check them out from your library or purchase them from your local bookstore or via Bookshop.org. (Independent bookstores need your support more than ever.)
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, edited by Kevin Young. Library of America, 2020.
ISBN: 9781598536669
And We Rise by Erica Martin. Viking Books for Young Readers, 2022.
ISBN: 9780593352526
Call Us What We Carry: Poems by Amanda Gorman. Viking Books, 2021.
ISBN: 9780593465066
Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin. Beacon Press, 2014.
ISBN: 9780807084861
Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes. Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2021.
ISBN: 9781681199443
Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, edited and compiled by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
ISBN: 9780393352733
Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.
ISBN: 9780060882969
Such Color: New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith. Graywolf Press, 2021.
ISBN: 9781644450673
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes. Vintage, 1995.
ISBN: 9780679764083
The Complete Poetry by Maya Angelou. Random House, 2015.
ISBN: 9780812997873
We also welcome your suggestions, which you can post as comments on our Facebook page or convey to us directly by sending an email to poetsagainstracism.usa@gmail.com.