‘Well-Read Black Girl’ Turns Books Into Community

Many top literary prizes nominate black women, but few of those women have actually won awards. It’s been 25 years since literary titan Toni Morrison became the first and only black woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature, and 35 years since Alice Walker became the first black woman to receive the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Color Purple. Five years later, Morrison became the second and, to date, only other black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved in 1988.

Glory Edim wants to change that. With her new book, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, she’s looking to celebrate the voices of black women in literature, from recognized novelists to lesser known voices. The anthology shares personal essays from black women writers about the literary experiences that gave them the confidence to tell their own stories.

While crafting her debut book, Edim looked to the work of Toni Cade Bambara. She studied Bambara’s anthology curation style, which included essays from notable black women writers like Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison. Edim said with her own book, she wanted to “capture the energy and vibrancy of what it means to be a black women in the literary space, and how we can reflect on these literary reflections and memories in a powerful way.”