As Black History Month comes to an end in the UK, West One Music Group have compiled a list of recommended reading and watching, to help celebrate, educate, and widen our understanding - not just for one month but all year round.
Have a look at some of the books, films, documentaries and TV shows that we recommend below:
BOOKS
UK Focused:
- Why I’m No Longer Speaking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
- The Good Immigrant (UK & US edition) – Nikesh Shukla
- Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire – Akala
- Black and British: A Forgotten History – David Olusoga
- Afropean: Notes from Black Europe – Johny Pitts
- Don’t Touch My Hair – Emma Dabiri
- Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging – Afua Hirsch
- The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
- The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment – Amelia Gentleman
- Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation – Colin Grant
- Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space – Derek Owusu
- Slay in Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible – Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené
- I Will Not Be Erased”: Our stories about growing up as people of colour – gal-dem
- Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change – Chelsea Kwakye and Ore Ogunbiy
- Me and White Supremacy – Layla F Saad
- Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored – Jeffrey Boakye
- White Teeth – Zadie Smith
- Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo
–
- Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
- Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – Bell Hooks
- How to be an Antiracist – Ibrham X. Kendi
- The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – Robin DiAngelo
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
FILMS / DOCUMENTARY
UK Focused:
- Rocks (Sarah Gavron)
- The Last Tree (Shola Amoo)
- Pressure (Horace Ové)
- Sitting in Limbo (Stella Corradi)
- Blue Story (Andrew Onwubolu)
- A Moving Image (Shola Amoo)
- Bullet Boy (Saul Dibb)
- No Shade (Clare Anyiam-Osigwe)
- Babylon (Babylon)
–
- I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)
- The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (David France)
- 13th (Ava DuVernay)
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Göran Olsson)
- Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan, Damon Davis)
- What Happened, Miss Simone? (Liz Garbus)
- If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Stanley Nelson)
- The Hate U Give (George Tillman Jr.)
- Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada)
- Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler)
- BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)
- Mudbound (Dee Rees)
TV SHOWS
- Black and British: A Forgotten History
- Enslaved with Samuel Jackson
- Noughts & Crosses
- When They See Us
- Small Axe
Also check out gal-dem, the online and print UK publication committed to sharing perspectives from women and non-binary people of colour, Spotify’s Black History is Now and Apple Music’s Blackout Radio.
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