A selection of recommended Canadian books for all ages — both fiction and nonfiction — by Black writers.
Malaika's Costume
For ages 3-7. It's Carnival time. The first Carnival since Malaika's mother moved to Canada to find a good job and provide for Malaika and her grandmother.
The Stone Thrower
For ages 4-8. Jael Ealey Richardson writes about her father, Chuck Ealey, a Canadian Football League star.
Africville
For ages 4-7. A young girl visits Africville in Halifax, Nova Scotia and imagines what the community was like many years ago.
Oscar Lives Next Door
For ages 4-8. Meet Oscar Peterson, who will someday become a legendary jazz pianist. He started out as a boy who loved to play the trumpet, until tuberculosis left his lungs too weak to blow the horn.
The Journey of Little Charlie
For ages 10-13. When his poor sharecropper father is killed in an accident and leaves the family in debt, twelve-year-old Charlie strikes a deal with Cap'n Buck and agrees to track down some folks accused of stealing.
The Field Guide to the North American Teenager
For teens. A hilarious YA contemporary realistic novel about a witty Black French Canadian teen who moves to Austin, Texas, and experiences the joys, clichés, and awkward humiliations of the American high school experience--including falling in love. Winner of the William C. Morris YA Debut Award.
When Morning Comes
For teens. Written from the points of view of four young people living in Johannesburg and Soweto in 1976, one white, one South Asian, one a Black student and one a Black gangster, this book explores the roots of the Soweto Riots and the relationships between the races in a South Africa about to explode.
This Book Betrays My Brother
For teens. In beautiful, lyrical, and intimate prose, Molope shows the dilemmas facing a young woman as she attempts to find her place in a new, multiracial, and dynamic nation emerging into the world after more than a century of racist colonialism.
Legacy of Light
For teens. The Effigies must uncover the connection between Saul, Blackwell, and the Phantoms before it's too late in this epic conclusion to the Effigies trilogy.
Fifteen Dogs
To settle a bet about the nature of humanity, Greek gods Hermes and Apollo grant human intelligence to a group of fifteen dogs at a Toronto veterinary clinic.
Have You Met Nora?
Adopted--and abused--by her mother's employer, then sent to an exclusive boarding school to buy her silence, Nora found that "passing" as a white woman could give her everything she never had. Now, an ex-classmate who Nora betrayed many years ago has returned to her life to even the score.
What We All Long For
n the 1970's, a family flees Vietnam, but they tragically lose their six-year-old son, Quy, in the process. Years later, Quy's sister, Tuyen, and her friends live in Toronto while Quy, now a dangerous criminal, makes his way to Toronto.
I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter
Canadian author David Chariandy writes a letter to his daughter to share with her the story of his life and to talk to her about the politics of race in her world.
The Polished Hoe
Winner of the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize and of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean) When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep.
Traverse
From Toronto’s poet laureate (2012–15) comes a new book that is a tour de force in confessional verse. This autobiographical sequence in 980 lines contains 70 stanzas of “skeletal sonnets” composed, astonishingly, in one day and one evening.
The Hanging Of Angélique: The Untold Story Of Canadian Slavery And The Burning Of Old Montréal
Writer, historian and poet Afua Cooper tells the astonishing story of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a slave woman convicted of starting a fire that destroyed a large part of Montréal in April 1734 and condemned to die a brutal death.
Half-Blood Blues
A brilliant jazz musician, Hiero, is arrested by the Nazis and never heard from again. He is twenty years old. He is a German citizen. And he is black. Fifty years later, his friend and fellow musician, Sid, must relive that unforgettable time, revealing the friendships, love affairs and treacheries that sealed Hiero's fate.
The Alchemists of Kush
A story of two boys, separated by seven thousand years, but connected by immortal truth. One is known to the streets as the Supreme Raptor, and the other is known to the Greeks as Horus, son of Osiris.
Daughters of Silence
Flights are grounded throughout Europe due to a volcanic eruption, and Dessie finds herself stranded in Addis Ababa, her birth place. Grieving her mother's recent death, Dessie heads to see her grandfather and pieces together family secrets.
Inde-Pen-Dence
A deeply moving story of the coming of age of a country and a boy, at the time of Barbados' independence from Britain in 1966.
Steal Away Home: One Woman's Epic Flight To Freedom--And Her Long Road Back To The South
Recounts the story of Cecelia Jane Reynolds who was born into bondage in Louisville, Kentucky, escaped to Canada in 1846 and ultimately returned to Louisville almost twenty years later.
Supplying Salt and Light
From an internationally renowned poet comes this collection of poems about backgrounds and outlines and shadows and sources of light.
The Illegal
A literary thriller that addresses the fate of undocumented refugees who struggle to survive in nations that do not want them.
Falling in Love with Hominids
A collection of 18 short stories exploring the boundaries of culture and imagination combined with elements of fantasy.
Things Are Good Now: Stories
Explores the scars of violence and the weight of love and guilt on the soul. Women, men, and children cross continents in search of a better life to find themselves struggling with the chaos of displacement and the religious and cultural clashes they face in their new homelands.
In the Black: My Life
Jolly successfully launched the first entirely Black-owned Canadian radio station.
Dear Current Occupant: a Memoir
A creative nonfiction memoir about living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Return
After his father dies, Haitian-born Dany leaves Montreal in order to return his father's body to Baraderes, the village in Haiti where he was born.
Voodoo Hypothesis: Poems
Voodoo Hypothesis is a subversion of the imperial construct of "blackness" and a rejection of the contemporary and historical systems that paint black people as inferior, through constant parallel representations of "evil" and "savagery."
Dr. Edith Vane And The Hares Of Crawley Hall
A campus satire, tells the story of the titular English scholar, who must deal with scheming colleagues, a missing friend, and a haunted workplace.
They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, And Growing Up
A powerful, moving memoir about what it's like to be a student of colour on a predominantly white campus.
Wayside Sang: Poems
Wayside Sang concerns entwined migrations of Black-other diaspora coming to terms with fossil-fuel psyches in times of trauma and movement.
Polar Vortex
Priya and Alexandra have moved from the city to a countryside town. What Alex doesn't know is that in moving, Priya is running from her past.
Shut Up You're Pretty
A debut story collection where femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.
Blank: Essays & Interviews
A collection of previously out-of-print essays and new works by M. NourbeSe Philip, exploring questions of race, the body politic, timeliness, recurrence, ongoingness, art, and the so-called multicultural nation.
The Pain Tree: Stories
Pain Tree is an engaging, thought-provoking read that transports readers fully to another place.
Reproduction
Army has never met his father, but his fascination with his absent father--and his absent father's money--begins to grow as odd gifts from Edgar begin to show up.
The Rage of Dragons
Game of Thrones meets Gladiator in this blockbuster debut epic fantasy about a world caught in an eternal war, and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.
