Paid subscriptions, book purchases, suggestions, engagement on the site, social sharing, advertisements, and feedback help support African American Literature Book Club’s (AALBC) mission of celebrating Black culture through books. Here are excerpts from our AALBC.com eNewsletter – July 13, 2022 – Issue #363
Our bestsellers list has been published continuously since 1998 and is the most visible list focused on Black Books in existence. Spread the word about our list. Don’t let one or two lists that we don’t control determine which books are important.
Fiction: Sales were led by preorders for Running to Fall: A Novel written by Kalisha Buckhanon and published by AALBC Publishing (Sept 6, 2022) Essence magazine selected Running to Fall for their “18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer” list.
Nonfiction: The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry by Chichi Agorom was the #1 bestselling fiction book. It was followed by the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert.
Children’s Books: Sailing Commitment Around the World with Captain Bill Pinkney is the top book in the children’s category. Written by Captain Bill Pinkney with illustrations by Pamela C. Rice, the picture book for early readers tells the story of Captain Pinkney’s historic solo sail around the world in 1990.
Poetry: Collections by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Ai Ogawa, Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni make our list this period and ensure there is poetry everyone can enjoy
Our bestsellers list has been published continuously since 1998 and is the most visible list focused on Black Books in existence. Spread the word about our list; don’t let one or two lists, we don’t control, determine which books are important.
Fiction: Sales were led by preorders for Running to Fall: A Novel written by Kalisha Buckhanon and published by AALBC Publishing (Sept 6, 2022) Essence magazine selected Running to Fall for their “18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer” list.
Nonfiction: The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to Who You Are Beneath the Armor You Carry by Chichi Agorom was the #1 bestselling fiction book. It was followed by the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert.
Children’s Books: Sailing Commitment Around the World with Captain Bill Pinkney is the top book in the children’s category. Written by Captain Bill Pinkney with illustrations by Pamela C. Rice, the picture book for early readers tells the story of Captain Pinkney’s historic solo sail around the world in 1990.
Poetry: Collections by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Ai Ogawa, Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni make our list this period and ensure there is poetry everyone can enjoy
AALBC Book Review
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa
“Since the first African enslaved men, women, and children reached American shores, there has been a Black-white divide in who survives, how they live, and who dies, from birth to end of life,” the author writes. “Despite decades of social, economic, and educational progress and what has unquestionably been the rise of a robust Black middle class, racial disparities have remained intact. Yes, something about being Black is creating a health crisis, and that something is racism. It is the American problem in need of an American solution.”
Dr. Freeman said to look deeper, and Villarosa does this to startling effect, beginning with the tragic fate of the Reif sisters, who were taken from their Montgomery, Alabama home in 1973 and sterilized by a government clinic. It didn’t matter that Minnie Lee Rief was 14 or that her younger sister, Mary Alice, was 12. They couldn’t read or write. The author further adds that about 100,000 to 150,000 poor women, mostly Black, were sterilized with government programs over decades.
