Books That Might Change Your Life
This list is by no means exhaustive. I know I’m forgetting hundreds of books. Most likely I will be adding to it until I die. Share with your homies.
Fiction
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Paradise by Toni Morrison
…EVERYTHING BY TONI MORRISON
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Animal by Lisa Taddeo
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
Pachinko by Min Jin Li
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Non-Fiction
All About Love by bell hooks
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller
The Pain We Carry by Natalie Y. Gutierrez
First Gen by Alejandra Campoverdi
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
But What Will People Say? NAVIGATING MENTAL HEALTH, IDENTITY, LOVE, AND FAMILY BETWEEN CULTURES by Sahaj Kaur Kohli, MAEd, LGPC
Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff
we are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby (very funny!)
The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande
A House of my Own by Sandra Cisneros
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Mariposa Boy by Rigoberto González
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande
For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts by Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Buddha in Your Mirror by Greg Martin Hochswender and Ted Morino
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldua
You Sound Like a White Girl by Julissa Nayely Arce Raya
The Color of Water by James McBride
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz
The Farming of the Bones by Edwidge Danticat
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
All books by Jason Reynolds
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottesa Moshfegh
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Solito, Javier Zamora
Poetry
The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Post Colonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
Unpeopled Eden by Rigoberto González
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss
Guillotine by Eduardo C. Corral
Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair
King Me by Roger Reeves
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
All the Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran
When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Díaz
The Carrying by Ada Limón
Thief in the Interior by Phillip B. Williams
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (novel in verse)
Half of the World in Light by Juan Felipe Herrera
Winter Stars by Larry Levis
The Collected Works of Emily Dickinson
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
Be Recorder by Carmen Gimenez Smith
The Essential Haiku Edited by Robert Hass
The Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis
Still Life with two dead Peacocks and a Girl by Diane Seuss
Bestiary by Donica Kelly
Everything by Yusuf Komunyakaa
Second Empire by Richie Hoffman