February is Black History Month, a time for focused reflection and recognition of Black history and achievement. Here are six books to read by Black scholars from the UBC Faculty of Arts that explore crucial themes of Black history, identity, and resistance. From the power of Black voices in literature and music to the ongoing struggle against racial divides, these scholars provide critical insights into Black experiences in Canada and beyond.
Black Writers Matter
Black Writers MatterEdited by Whitney French, Assistant Professor, School of Creative Writing
About the book: An anthology of African-Canadian writing, Black Writers Matter offers a cross-section of established writers and newcomers to the literary world who tackle contemporary and pressing issues with beautiful, sometimes raw, prose. As editor Whitney French says in her introduction, Black Writers Matter “injects new meaning into the word diversity [and] harbours a sacredness and an everydayness that offers Black people dignity. ” An “invitation to read, share, and tell stories of Black narratives that are close to the bone,” this collection feels particular to the Black Canadian experience.
About the author: Whitney French (she/her) is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology, and nature in her work. Her novel-in-verse, Syncopation, is forthcoming with Wolsack and Wynn Press (Fall 2025).
Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial Divides
Radical Empathy: Finding a Path to Bridging Racial DividesBy Terri Givens, Professor, Department of Political Science
About the book: Structural racism has impacted the lives of African Americans in the United States since before the country’s founding. Although the country has made some progress towards a more equal society, political developments in the 21st century have shown that deep divides remain. The persistence of inequality is an indicator of the stubborn resilience of the institutions that maintain white supremacy. To bridge our divides, renowned political scientist Terri Givens calls for ‘radical empathy’ – moving beyond an understanding of others’ lives and pain to understand the origins of our biases, including internalized oppression. Deftly weaving together her own experiences with the political, she offers practical steps to call out racism and bring about radical social change.
About the author: Terri Givens’ research and teaching focuses on comparative politics in Europe and the US, including immigration policy, the politics of race, and anti-discrimination policy. She conducted ground-breaking research on the radical right in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s, including a focus on the role of gender and race in electoral politics. Her current research project focuses on the intersection of migration and race politics in a global context.
Blackheart Man
Blackheart ManBy Nalo Hopkinson, Professor, School of Creative Writing
About the book: Nalo Hopkinson’s latest novel, Blackheart Man, is a speculative fiction novel that blends elements of Caribbean folklore, mythology and science-fiction. The novel takes readers to the fantastical land of Chynchin which is facing conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within.
In the story, the Blackheart Man’s sinister presence coincides with the arrival of colonizers trying to force a trade agreement. Veycosi, a mischievous and fame-seeking griot (poet and musician), fears that he’s connected with the Blackheart Man’s resurgence, and finds himself in over his head trying to stop him.
Fifteen years in the making, Blackheart Man is an intricately woven story of friendship and magic that interrogates race, class, and politics.
About the author: Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican-born Canadian speculative fiction writer and editor who teaches Creative Writing at UBC. Her novels and short stories often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling. In 2021, she won the Damon Knight Grand Master award, a lifetime achievement award for science fiction.
The Evolution of Black Women’s Voice: From Blues to Beyoncé
The Evolution of Black Women’s Voice: From Blues to BeyoncéBy Alexis McGee, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, Writing, and Media
About the book: From Blues to Beyoncé amplifies Black women’s ongoing public assertions of resistance, agency, and hope across different media from the nineteenth century to today. By examining recordings, music videos, autobiographical writings, and speeches, Alexis McGee explores how figures such as Ida B. Wells, Billie Holiday, Ruth Brown, Queen Latifah, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Janelle Monáe, and more mobilize sound to challenge antiBlack discourses and extend social justice pedagogies. Building on contemporary Black feminist interventions in sound studies and sonic rhetorics, From Blues to Beyoncé reveals how Black women’s sonic acts transmit meaning and knowledge within, between, and across generations.
About the author: Alexis McGee is an interdisciplinary scholar who engages with fields such as Rhetoric, Composition/Writing Studies, Black Studies, Critical Pedagogies, Sound Studies, as well as Women and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on Black women’s rhetorical uses of voice, literacies, and expression.
The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race
The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of RaceBy Jemima Pierre, Professor, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice
About the book: What is the meaning of blackness in Africa? While much has been written on Africa’s complex ethnic and tribal relationships, Jemima Pierre’s groundbreaking The Predicament of Blackness is the first book to tackle the question of race in West Africa through its postcolonial manifestations. Challenging the view of the African continent as a nonracialized space—as a fixed historic source for the African diaspora—she envisions Africa, and in particular the nation of Ghana, as a place whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics.
Against the backdrop of Ghana’s history as a major port in the transatlantic slave trade and the subsequent and disruptive forces of colonialism and postcolonialism, Pierre examines key facets of contemporary Ghanaian society, from the pervasive significance of “whiteness” to the practice of chemical skin-bleaching to the government’s active promotion of Pan-African “heritage tourism.” Drawing these and other examples together, she shows that race and racism have not only persisted in Ghana after colonialism, but also that the beliefs and practices of this modern society all occur within a global racial hierarchy. In doing so, she provides a powerful articulation of race on the continent and a new way of understanding contemporary Africa—and the modern African diaspora.
About the author: Jemima Pierre is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies in the Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ), and Faculty Associate in the Department of Anthropology at UBC. Her research and teaching engages with Africa and the African diaspora across three broad areas of inquiry: 1) the relationship of political economy to race, as articulated through capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism; 2) migration, transnationalism, and diaspora; and 3) the ethics and politics of western knowledge production and disciplinary formation.
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum NorthBy Crystal Webster, Associate Professor, Department of History
About the book: For all that is known about the depth and breadth of African American history, we still understand surprisingly little about the lives of African American children, particularly those affected by northern emancipation. But hidden in institutional records, school primers and penmanship books, biographical sketches, and unpublished documents is a rich archive that reveals the social and affective worlds of northern Black children. Drawing evidence from the urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Crystal Webster’s innovative research yields a powerful new history of African American childhood before the Civil War. Webster argues that young African Americans were frequently left outside the nineteenth century’s emerging constructions of both race and childhood. They were marginalized in the development of schooling, ignored in debates over child labor, and presumed to lack the inherent innocence ascribed to white children. But Webster shows that Black children nevertheless carved out physical and social space for play, for learning, and for their own aspirations.
Reading her sources against the grain, Webster reveals a complex reality for antebellum Black children. Lacking societal status, they nevertheless found meaningful agency as historical actors, making the most of the limited freedoms and possibilities they enjoyed.
About the author: Crystal Lynn Webster is an award-winning historian and educator. Her research focuses on Black children in early America. Webster is currently writing her second book, tentatively titled Condemned: How America’s First Courts and Prisons Terrorized Black Children.
