When I look back at all the disappointments, annoyances, and struggles of 2020, I have to recognize it worked wonders for my bookshelf. All the chaos and social distance made for an outstanding reading year. I decided to do a 2020 Year-end Reading Round-Up to inspire your reading in the new year.

This year, I read about 16 books. That’s a little low for bookstagramers and book bloggers but blows my previous years out of the water. I picked up my first book right around St. Patrick’s day when I realized how few Irish authors I’ve read. Then the country shut down. Then racial, civil turmoil hit a boiling point and chased me to write into the literary embrace of James Baldwin.  My favorite writers of the year are Brit Bennet, Elizabeth Acevedo, and James Baldwin, who wrote their tails off and gave us something phenomenal to stick with us.

With no further ado, here’s my GloBelle Affairs recommended reading List for 2020. 

Dubliners

This is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my roommate was reading the same book in Spanish. All the stories take place around Dublin and have a kind of melancholy, hopelessness to them. Joyce wrote the book leading up to the 1919 War of Independence. Two years after Joyce wrote the collection of stories, the Irish launched an uprising against British Rule. The stories reflect the Irish nationalism and limitations Irish people felt their lives had at the time.   

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

This1988 novel provided the burst of optimism I needed after reading the Dubliners. It’s not particularly a work of literature with a magical use of words and literary devices. It is, however, more encouraging and light-hearted. Santiago wants more for his life than watching sheep and starts having dreams telling him to go to Egypt. 

Everything starts pointing him toward Egypt, so he just does it. He sells his flock (aka all his wealth and security) and leaves Spain for Egypt. Like an alchemist, the journey, like all travel, is transformative. The book encourages everyone to just do it. Seek your calling. I needed to hear this story in 2020—a world’s bestseller.

The Fire Next Time 

The thoughts that flow through James Baldwin’s mind are incredible to witness. This book gives us so many discussion-provoking gems that you can sit at a coffee shop with your most intellectual friends to debate or discuss. Most notable is the opening essay, a letter to his nephew, in which he discusses survival in America. In the letter, he summarizes the bottom-line of survival in America, “You can only be destroyed by believing that you really are what the white world calls a nigger.”  

So long as you don’t adopt the white perspective, you can survive. Maintain the “Double-Consciousness” that W.E.B. Du Bois coins. He also urges survival, “And now you must survive because we love you, and for the sake of your children and your children’s children.”

Baldwin also describes what it is like to be a black military service member in America on page 53, which still remains relevant in 2020. He discusses religion – both Islam and Christianity – which replicates some of the same conversations that Frederick Douglas in the 19th century and what Americans are still talking about in the 2020s. 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin 

I started reading this to find quotes to challenge this new P.R. attempt to cast or re-brand the character, Uncle Tom, as a hero and the term “Uncle Tom” as a compliment. He wasn’t, and it isn’t. When I read this book, what ended up happening was being reminded how little things had changed in America since Beecher Stowe published the epic in 1852. I found myself nodding and thinking, “I’ve experienced this. Oh, this is just like the passage from James Baldwin’s Fire Next Time written a century and a decade later. I’ve seen this happen, and I’ve heard Kentuckians have this exact, ironic conversation concerning their faith in God and the lives of black people in 2020.” It’s still relevant. Get the audiobook if reading 500 pages is too overwhelming. 

The Fire This Time 

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote, “God gave Noah the Rainbow sign, no more water – fire next time.” Baldwin hinted at a sign of promise for America in 1963, but he warned about the fire that would come to America if the nation did not take heed. In 2020, America is in the fire this time. Inspired by James Baldwin, The Fire This Time was released in 2017 as a collection of essays and poems from multiple black perspectives.  

In one essay, Garnette Cadogan discusses the differences between walking while black in Kingston, New Orleans, and New York City and the double consciousness black people must employ while living in America. In his native Kingston, walking as a form of therapy to clear his mind, get exercise, and sunshine. But when he moves to America, walking…with his skin color… walking becomes fraught with dangers. “I recognized that the way I would treat dangerous people when I was growing up in Jamaica was the way people began treating me,” he says. It is a reminder of how simple, everyday actions like walking are shaped by a white person’s perception of one’s blackness. Exercise should not be a death risk, but, as we all know, in 2020, it is. And it’s relatable. All the essays are relatable.

All About Love

One of my favorite media gurus is a YouTube channel called For Harriett, and the creator, Kim, had a “Read More Bell Hooks” campaign. So, amid the chaos that was the Summer of 2020, I picked up her “All about Love Book.” Bell Hooks is an African-American Stanford Alum who hails from Western Kentucky and is a leading voice in Black feminist thought. Since we share some of the same identities, I was already interested in what she has to say. 

Hooks starts by discussing how everyone thinks they know love. Based on the teachings of love in our American society, most of us have no idea. We have a lot of unlearning to do. The book’s motivation was that America moved so far from love that it may never find it again. American society just doesn’t model the best definition of love. America’s foundation is characterized by violence, hate, and lack of respect. Each generation continued to hand down those teachings. Love is an action, never a feeling. It is not centered on romance and sexual attraction. Love starts on a strong foundation of respect. Key quotes that I found best captures the author’s thesis: 

“An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as (we) were taught to believe that we were loved.”

“When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights – that we respect and uphold their rights.”

“As one man bragged about the aggressive beatings he had received from his mother, sharing that ‘they had been good for him,’ I interrupted and suggested that he might not be the misogynist woman-hater he is today had he not been so brutally beaten by a woman as a child.” 

ABUSE is NOT LOVE!!

I think this is a must-read for people who want to learn to love their children, partners, friends, and humankind, in general, better. The book is also beneficial in helping audiences recognize the often blurry difference between love or abuse. That way audiences can put up healthy boundaries.

Clap When You Land  

This was my favorite book of 2020. Elizabeth Acevedo knocked Louisa May Alcott off her throne and became my favorite author after this book. By page 12, I was ugly crying. I continued crying until the very end when I was still crying but cheering on women’s strength when they unit. 

In November of 2001, there was a plane crash that most Americans vaguely remember. Some 200 people from the sky and five on the ground, headed to the Dominican Republic died. Once investigators confirmed that it wasn’t another terrorist attack like the one in September, it faded out of memory. But American Airlines flight 587 rocked the New York Dominican community. Everyone within the New York DR community knew someone personally affected by this tragedy. The author, a poet by trade and part of that community, imagined this story and wrote this prose- in-verse fiction about what could have been. Oh, and there are mentions of LGBTQ experiences. People like knowing that ahead of time for whatever reason. It’s not a big part of the book. 

This book had beautiful depictions of Caribbean culture, New York Dominican culture, African- Diaspora culture, delicious food, class strife, themes of secrets, forgiveness, family, belonging, and using chess as the symbolism of life and family. I look forward to this story being picked up and turned into a movie. It was so good!

I heard Acevedo perform her poem, “Hair” years ago. I didn’t realize she was the same author I’d fallen in love with until I did some post-novel author exploration.  Based on our shared relationship to hair politics and her uncanny way to express it, I already loved Elizabeth Azevedo’s expression before I picked up her novel. To learn more about why Ms. Acevedo appears twice on this Year-End Reading Round-up, check out her talk at Summit on Inequality and Opportunity.

Lead from The Outside Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change

Stacy Abrams distinguished herself as the Belle the 2020 election. She turned Georgia Blue and predicted that Georgia was a swing state several years ago. After the election, I realized that I had never read a single leadership book by a black woman. This is astounding considering all of the formal military leadership education I’ve had. All the leaderships by white men were informative but never took racism or sexism into consideration as obstacles to navigate. Even white women’s leadership books (i.e., Lean In) were tone-deaf to the idea that not all people would get the same results doing the prescribed methods based on how they look. Ms. Abrams addresses those obstacles and how to use them as pathways rather than stumbling blocks. This is a book I’ll continue to reference. I read this for Non-fiction November and think

The Vanishing Half

My Junior League’s book club featured this book to read and discuss in Decemeber. After slavery, this mullato guy built a society for beige-colored mullatos on his daddy’s plantation. For generations, no one married or procreated with dark-skinned people. The story tells the divergent lives of twin sisters. They vanish from town. One passes into white society and lives a privileged life. The other twin returns to the hometown with a very dark child. This child is so dark no one in the beige village has ever seen such a person, and her presence creates a spectacle.

With all else being the same, the proximity to whiteness that the twins chose during Jim crow is used to represent privilege, inter-generational trauma, and intersectional identities. The dynamics of the LGBTQ community layered with bi-racial identities come into play as well as, yet again, the double consciousness between how a person identifies oneself and how that person is identified by society.

The author knows how to weave magic out of words. I found myself captivated all the way through. . Her use of literary devices to set scenes is phenomenal. This is one of the best reads of the year and sets a gold bar for writing. This was a fascinating read that will make a great movie. 

To Build a Better World

After the election and discussions of American Democracy being threatened by the media spin doctor and fear-mongers, I decided to buy this book. That’s when I realized how non-diverse the leadership and International Affairs section of my personal library was. I also wanted more academic substance to determine if American democracy was at peril. I didn’t get that out of this book by leading scholar-diplomats, Condeleeza Rice and Philip Zelikow. The pair focuses their framework centering Germany and the Soviet Union during the Cold War with a lot of historical analysis but minimal modern reflection (the book was initially published in Sept 2019). It speaks of our divided world in the late 1980s but not much on how divided international politics are now. Overall, it’s a good read, just not what I was hunting for at the moment. It’s graduate-level, international affairs required reading worthy. 

Democracy

 by Condoleezza Rice- Optimistic stance that authoritarian regimes are not more potent than the natural human desire for freedom. She touches on historical examples of fights for democratic principles across the globe. Using her experience as a diplomat and the 66th Sec State, she references the democratic struggles of Russia, Columbia, Kenya, Ukraine, and countries in South West Asia, as well as her experiences growing up in Birmingham during Jim Crow. She even discusses potential outcomes of competing interests and ideas of freedom clash. One can argue that the structures of democracy and the “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” that cause democracies to crumble have been shaken since Rice published this text. I wonder if she maintains her position that considering democracy threatened is alarmist and premature. This text should be part of the Global Affairs/ National Security Studies cannon.  

The Poet X

After reading Elizabeth Acevedo’s Clap When You Land, I became obsessed and had to read everything I could by the author. This book comes off as auto-biographical and coming of age. It’s about an Afro-Latino spoken-word poet from Harlem. Some of the themes are sexuality, religion, adjusting to developing bodies. The stories through poems discuss the challenges little girls transforming into womanhood have while navigating this gross society we’ve built for them and the well-intended, poorly executed ways parents call themselves protecting these children. As I said, I stan for Elizabeth Acevedo, so I loved this work. 

Key Quotes: “I am the baby fat that settled into D-cups and swinging hips so that the boys who called me a whale in middle school now ask me to send them pictures of myself in a thong.”

“Just because your father’s present, doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.”

“When your body takes up more room than your voice, you are always the target of well-aimed rumors.”

Check Elizabeth’s phenomenal spoken word poem, “Rat Ode” that she dedicated to a professor who told her rats were not noble enough for a poem.

The Black Kids 

This Young Adult fiction by Christina Hammonds Reed captures the 1992 Rodney King Riots in L.A. through the eyes of a wealthy black girl named Ashley. As in so many of the books I’ve read this year, this book explores themes of identity and double consciousness. Ashley realizes her community no longer sees her as “one of the girls,” but as “one of the black kids.” That comes with a whole host of implications. No matter the best attempts made by black parents to protect their children from the inescapable trauma that stems from systemic racism, eventually, some event is bound to happen to knock the rose-colored glasses off. There’s a lot I can relate to in this book. It even has a character with my sister’s name – something I’ve never seen in literature considered classics in academia.

“We have to walk around being perfect all the time just to be seen as human. Don’t you ever get tired of being a symbol? Don’t you ever just want to be human?” 

The moment a black person in America gets categorized or documented as flawed is the moment abuse and even death becomes justified. And that expectation of perfection is the level of pressure and anxiety black Americans live with daily.  That’s what the young protagonist realizes in this book.

A Promised Land 

The most anticipated release of the year (and pretty pricy) President Obama’s memoir takes 600 pages to cover his presidency up to Bin Laden’s Execution. I have not completed this work. But it needs to be on your bookshelf. I must brag, I got mine for $23 at T.J. Max. I think there was a fold in the book jacket that made it unfit to sell full price. I have to brag on that deal because it’s selling for $30+ at other major retailers. 

Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

 Written by Princeton professor, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., is the harsh critique of American Democracy I was somewhat hoping for, but knowing otherwise, when I read the perspectives of Condoleezza Rice. The main idea of the book centers around the “value gap” that is so interwoven in our ‘democratic’ system, as well as the ‘racial habits’ that America does to sustain this gap. It discusses the state-sanctioned terror on Black Americans while providing systemic, unearned value to white Americans. It suggests Black Americans aren’t actually experiencing democracy – at least not in the same way white Americans are. The value gap informs all decisions and actions, including academic major, schools, career-fields, the concept of justice, housing, and policy. The author pinpoints the black political classes as “accomplices in the demise of black America. To the author, it’s the same ol’ democracy, just in black. 

I think the professor’s intended primary audience is the politically educated, black academic class. The average reader would need some pre-requisites on history taught from the black perspective, which doesn’t gloss over or whitewash historical events before grasping some concepts or buying off on them. The book takes for granted readers have a baseline understanding. 

Mexican Gothic 

Not my typical genre. It’s mystery, horror, and suspense set in 1950s Mexico. I can’t say I connected or identified with it in the same way I did other books. I have a lot of questions about most of the creative choices the author made. Mostly, during a time of pandemic and thwarted travel, I just didn’t get enough of a sense of place and setting that I was craving. But the cover is stunning, and I get to fit in with all the book nerdy cool kids ’cause this was the most anticipated book drops of the year and on all the influencer’s nightstands. Perhaps it will make a better movie. I just wasn’t moved. Maybe I’ll try to reread it. Idk.

I think what made me love this reading list was that I found so much of me reflected in the pages. My 2020 reading experience spoke to my experiences in a way that Dickens and Hemmingway never could. That’s why I found them all so engrossing.  I haven’t really found the words to describe the novelty of seeing myself written in novels for the first time. Perhaps that word doesn’t exist in English yet.

Alright! That’s all I have. That’s my Year-End Reading Round-up. What books would you recommend? Let me know in the comments or on my Insta (@globelleaffairs) so I can start my 2021 based on your recommendations.

1. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (an Autobiography)

2.       Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

3.       The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois

Written during a time when there was public debate on whether black people had souls, readers might conclude the purpose of the book is to humanize people who had been considered real estate just 40 years earlier. You have to read Up From Slavery first, to fully appreciate W. E. B. DuBois’ epic
takedown of all Booker T’s methodology and beliefs on education in one pointed chapter. Fortunately, there’s a book called “Three Negro Classics” that maintains both works together conveniently so you can flip back and forth as a reference.  Additionally, this is where W.E. B. DuBois introduces the concept of double consciousness, which is an important concept and theme to understand for all other African-American literature on this list. These
three books should be read independently but with the relationship of the
Authors’ and their diverse backgrounds in mind. You’ve got a fugitive, formerly enslaved man, a man freed at the end of sanctioned slavery, and a pedigreed man born in a free society, all giving their perspectives, which, of course, will be born from their experiences.

4.       The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson

5.       The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

6.       Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs

According to historian Henry Louis Gates, before the end of the Civil War, more than one hundred former slaves published moving stories of their captivities and their escape. No group of enslaved people anywhere during any other era left such a prolific testimony to the horror of their bondage and servitude. Many slave narratives, including Fredrick Douglas, speak of the commonality of slave rapes. But Harriot speaks to the dynamic,  turmoil, and madness such actions and the potential of rape brings to all the women of the household—wives and enslaved girls.

7. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin  

Why on Earth did I wait so long to be introduced to James Baldwin? I’ve never
wanted to be part of a writer’s social circle more than when reading any essay by this literary legend. The way he writes of being young, black, and gifted in
Harlem and the impact of the church on black American lives is not only artistically talented but timeless in its themes. There’s plenty of Baldwin out there but here is a good place to start. I enjoyed the thought-provoking layers of how sex and religion are intertwined in society Baldwin displayed in the reading. We get to witness a lot culture in this book. There’s plenty of Baldwin out there but here is a good place to start.

8. Native Son by Richard Wright

9. Autobiography of Malcolm X

10. Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or A  Nightmare
by James H. Cone
As far as Black History Month books are concerned, this one is pivotal. Read this book after reading Malcolm’s biography (ok, who am I kidding? Most are just going to watch the movie…but I implore you to buy the book at least for reference!).  This was required reading for my African American History course at the University of Kentucky. I re-read the book again this past Kwanzaa. After eight years of a changed perspective, I still find it relevant and a must. This book examines the legacies of two of the most influential leaders of last century.  All too often, commentators ask, “What would MLK say?” about today’s issues. You cannot know Martin without the study of Malcolm, and yet Malcolm is not studied in schools.

Key Quote: “In order to offset Malcolm’s appeal to the black community, Martin was adopted as the darling of their white liberal community and was portrayed by the media as the ideal black leader.”

11. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Kwame Ture (Formerly Known as Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton.

I still have the “used” Wildcat Textbooks sticker for $10.40 on my copy. It’s one of the few required readings I maintained from college. Before coming to conclusions on the Black Panther Party based on the assessment of J. Edgar Hoover, read this book to get the full picture. This Black History Month book breaks down the Black Panther Party from those most intimately involved with the organization, which is the best source of information.

12.  African-American Poetry: An Anthology 1773-1927 edited by Joan R. Sherman

13. The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, edited by Joanne M. Braxton
This book has been on my bookshelf since childhood. I actually think it belongs to my mom, technically…but hey, what’s her’s is mine, right?  One of my favorites, “Negro Love Song” (page 49 in my edition), is not included in the African American Poetry Anthology.  It must be recited in call-and-answer form.

19.   Great Speeches by African Americans, edited by James Daley

20.       Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race And Inheritance  by Barack Obama

This book follows the identity struggle of Barack Obama, the man, not the legend or political figure. His story reflects the experience of all Black Americans exploring their identity in America through the lens of double consciousness with the added hurdles of being the son of an absent African father and a white American mother who grows up as the only black person in his family and lives in Hawaii and later Indonesia. In his search for a workable meaning to his life, he travels to Africa and ends up in the  South Side of Chicago as a Black American.

21.     Black Feeling, Black Talk by Nikki Giovanni

      Nikki Giovanni came into prominence after unleashing her heart on paper in response to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Robert Kennedy, and the pressing need she saw to raise awareness of the plight and the rights of black people. After the death of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965, Black American activists fell into two camps: Revolutionary Nationalists and Cultural Nationalists. Nikki Giovanni was a headliner in the Cultural Nationalist movement, using the arts to reflect pride in African American history, identity, and culture. Nikki is undoubtedly an intellectual. But before that, she is Black and a woman whose talent with words is merged with the universal Black experience. Her poems reflect the arts and history of the time. BTW, there’s a two-hour conversation between Nikki and James Baldwin available on YouTube. It’s profound. And again, their experiences in 1970 are the same and relatable as black experiences in America today.

22.      The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur

27. Roots: The Saga of An American Family  by Alex Haley
This Pulitzer Prize-winning epic was turned into a heavy miniseries that did not romanticize the reality of the slave-holding South. Although parts conflicted with genealogy work, and parts also were proved plagiarized, this work ignited a new fuel to African-American history and African-American genealogy work. Of course, due to poor documentation of African-American families, contradictions would be expected. My dear cousin read this entire work for a high school book report — significantly more pages than anyone else. And despite being encouraged to just watch the movie, of course, she got the emotion that the miniseries couldn’t capture. I encourage others to do the same.

This book was received into our family as a Kwanzaa gift to my dad from a family friend. In the inscription, she wrote:

 

“I am overwhelmed by all the life lessons you have taught me over the years. You epitomize the motto: It takes a village to raise a child.” 

 

She went on to speak of her days being the only black student at the same high school I attended (although she graduated several years before I enrolled) on the same all-white dance team as me, attending the same predominantly white university, and even working in tech in California like me and how it framed her expedition on The African Continent. She visited the village of Alex Haley’s legacy and felt compelled to share the enlightening experience with those closest to her.  The book has accompanied me through 5 different homes before I read it just last year.

 

This American story begins with 33 chapters of self-determination and autonomy in The Gambia, followed by seven chapters of horrors of on board a slave ship, then dedicated to 79 chapters documenting the American experience of an African family.

 

Key Quote: “Kunta wondered if he had gone mad. Naked, chained, shackled, he awoke on his back between two other men in a pitch darkness full of steamy heat and sickening stink and a nightmarish bedlam of shrieking, weeping, praying and vomiting.  He could feel and smell his own vomit on his chest and belly. His whole body was one spasm of pain from the beatings he had received in the four days since his capture. But the place where the hot iron had been put between his shoulders hurt the worst.”


28. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in he U.S. by Geneva Smitherman and H. Samy Alim

This reading is a study of linguistic studies. It makes the theisis that Obama owes his election success largly in his abilities to successfully coat-switch from a Washington insider to culturally Black modes of conversation. In addition to breaking down the necessity of linguistic code-switching, it goes into an unsugar-coated synopsis of American history.

Optional Reading

2.   Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriot Beecher Stowe

What other books do you think should be on the Black History Month Books list? Comment below so I can check them out and add them to a later book list.