African American Memoirs

In Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, Jad Abumrad—creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton's America—tells the story of one of the great political awakenings in music: how a classically trained 'colonial boy' traveled to America, in search of Africa, only to return to Nigeria and transform his sound into a battering ram against the state—creating a new musical language of resistance called Afrobeat.

How did a Black child, growing up in segregationist Mississippi during the early 1900s, become the commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Corps during the brutal Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935? In this gripping, never-before-told tale, biographer Thomas E. Simmons brings to life Robinson’s outstanding success in becoming a pilot, his expertise in building and assembling his own working aircraft, his influence on the establishment of a school of aviation at Tuskegee Institute, and his wartime service.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

There’s an African proverb that says “It takes a village to raise a child”. Hollywood producer and best-selling author DeVon Franklin offers a personal twist: It Takes a Woman. In this riveting and soul-stirring Audible Original, Franklin introduces us to the women who raised him—a “village of love” that selflessly came together to shape him into the man he is today.

This program is read by the author. A fearless debut audiobook memoir in which beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a biracial black woman in America. Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning...

Autobiography of Hall of Fame basketball star Clyde Drexler, one of basketball history's most dynamic players. Through his fifteen-year career as an NBA player, Clyde Drexler played with elegance and flair, leadership and poise, integrity and an ability to come through in the clutch. He led the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals twice and helped the Houston Rockets win the NBA championship in 1995. A ten-time All-Star, a member of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, and now a member of basketball’s Hall of Fame, Drexler reached the top of his profession without revealing many of his inner thoughts on himself or the game.

A rebellious boy’s journey through the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family—this is the riveting story of a generation told through one dazzlingly poetic new voice. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: a mother who led the new nation’s...

To many in the age of Obama, America had succeeded in "going beyond race", putting the divisions of the past behind us. And then 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and then Baltimore blew up; and then gunfire shattered a prayer meeting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. Suddenly the entire country awakened to a stark fact: Young Black men are an endangered species.

William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.

Winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and the 2025 GLCA New Writers Award By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race. Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity...

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: The TODAY Show, Vanity Fair, Financial Times, W Magazine, Oprah Daily, LibraryReads Praised as “funny and witty” by Kwame Alexander on the TODAY show, now published in the US for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the “trailblazing”...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments. “The Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures...

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake". Activating multiple registers of "wake" - the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness - Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation.

An immigrant mother’s long-held secrets upend her daughter’s understanding of her family, her identity, and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir “Riveting . . . [Wong] tells her story in vivid conversational prose that will make readers feel they’re listening to a...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD A “gripping, revelatory” (NPR) memoir of hard-won success, struggles with addiction, and a lifelong mission to give back—from the late iconic actor beloved for his roles in The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and Lovecraft Country...

"Ashley C. Ford brings listeners into her life in this outstanding coming-of-age story...Listeners will cheer as Ford attends college and weep as she visits her father in prison, and when he is finally released." -- AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner This program is read by the author...

Born in Hamburg in the 1930s, Marione Ingram fled Nazi Germany only to find racism as pervasive in the American South as anti-Semitism was in Europe. As a white woman and a Holocaust refugee, Marione was the most unlikely of heroes in the fight for civil rights for African Americans. This is her empowering story - a tale of courage, strength, and determination.

Bloomsbury presents Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, read by January LaVoy. Named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times Book Review and New York Magazine The two-time National Book Award winner and author of Salvage the Bones and Let Us Descend, contends with the deaths of five young men...

"This is a full-bodied performance, complete with salty language and harrowing situations, but listeners will love Chilton's portrayal of Breezy's determination to find her place in the world." -- Audiofile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner Belonging on the shelf with Jeannette Walls’s The...