Black Caucus American Library Association Literary Awards
First presented at the Second National Conference of African American Librarians in 1994, the BCALA Literary Awards acknowledge outstanding works of fiction and nonfiction for adult audiences by African American authors.
Monetary awards are presented in the following categories, First Novelist, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Honor Book citations are also awarded in fiction and nonfiction without any accompanying monetary remuneration.
The BCALA also host an annual conference, the National Conference of African American Librarians.
12 Books Honored in 2022
Winner Fiction
Razorblade Tears
by S. A. Cosby
List Price: $26.99Flatiron Books (Jul 06, 2021)
Fiction, Hardcover, 320 pages
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A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.
Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys. Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption.Honor Book Fiction
The Sweetness of Water
by Nathan Harris
List Price: $28.00Little, Brown and Company (Jun 15, 2021)
Fiction, Hardcover, 368 pages
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S SUMMER 2021 READING LIST
In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, “a miraculous debut” —Washington Post
In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys.
Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox.
With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.Harris’ debut novel, The Sweetness of Water, won the 2021 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Harris’ novel tells a story set in the waning days of the Civil War. The tale is about an unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever.
Honor Book Fiction
The Trees
by Percival Everett
List Price: $17.00Graywolf Press (Sep 21, 2021)
Fiction, Paperback, 288 pages
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An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone
Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.
The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.
Honor Book Fiction
Yellow Wife
by Sadeqa Johnson
List Price: $26.00Simon & Schuster (Jan 12, 2021)
Fiction, Hardcover, 288 pages
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"Wholly engrossing, exquisitely researched, and so timely. Sadeqa Johnson brings a fresh telling to a story we think we already know, making it beautifully relatable and human. Riveting and suspenseful, I highly recommend this novel." —Kathleen Grissom New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House This harrowing story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia. Born on a plantation in Charles City Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a privileged life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the plantation’s medicine woman, and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. Freedom on her eighteenth birthday has been promised to her, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known and unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous "Devil’s Half-Acre," a jail where the enslaved are broken, tortured, and sold every day in Richmond, Virginia. There Pheby is exposed not just to her Jailor’s cruelty but also to his contradictions. To survive Pheby will have to outwit him but soon faces the ultimate sacrifice.
Winner First Novelist
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
List Price: $28.99Harper (Aug 24, 2021)
Fiction, Hardcover, 816 pages
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I was so enraptured by the story of this modern Black family, and how author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers wove the larger fabric of historical trauma through the family’s silence through generations…”—Oprah Winfrey, Announcing The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois as the Next Oprah’s Book Club Selection
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, the ambitious and uncompromising debut novel from National Book Award-nominated poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, takes readers into the intimate lives of Black and Indigenous women who have fought racism and sexism to weave their experiences into America’s larger tapestry. Fashioning a microcosm of our fraught national history, Jeffers crafts a complex narrative of forced accommodation, courageous resistance, and resilience, as she deftly chronicles the journey of one American family through centuries—from the white appropriation of native lands to the African slave trade, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. Jeffers frames her wholly original narrative with “Sorrow Songs”—a term borrowed from W.E.B. Dubois: ancestral memories that unfold as beautifully-rendered, almost mythic tales.
The novel centers on Ailey Pearl Garfield as she pushes against the expectations of her African American middle-class upbringing. On the path to fulfilling her family’s wish for her to become a doctor, Ailey attends an historically Black college in Georgia, not far from the rural homestead where her ancestors were once enslaved. Ailey straddles the present and the past as she reconnects with this side of her heritage, whose traditions clash with those of her imperious, light-skinned paternal grandmother, to whom skin tone is paramount. As Ailey struggles to learn who she is and what she wants, she must reckon with the complicated racial history that has shaped her family, uncovering buried truths about her ancestors—both invigorating and difficult.
In creating this world, Jeffers has drawn on stories from her own family. Remembering childhood summers spent in Georgia with her grandmother, she recalls, “I wasn’t a child who played well with others. I preferred to sit still in corners and eavesdrop on elder relatives. I first learned of slavery and lynching, and the difficult history of this country not from books, but from eavesdropping on old, Black folks. After I became a creative writing major, I kept returning to the ancestral land of my mother and grandmother, and I began writing about a southern, Black family that had survived the horrors of historical racism and white supremacy.”
Winner Nonfiction
Just As I Am
by Cicely Tyson
List Price: $28.99Amistad (Jan 26, 2021)
Nonfiction, Hardcover
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Read Our Review of Just As I Am
An Instant AALBC Bestseller!
The stunning life-story of Academy, Tony, and three-time Emmy Award winning actress and trailblazer, Cicely Tyson, that details her incredible six-decade career on and off screen.
At 94, Cicely Tyson is a dynamic and legendary actress. A Harlem native, she began her career as a fashion model, gracing the covers of Ebony and Jet. She transitioned to acting in 1951 and is still featured in coveted roles depicting strong, Black women outside of caricature or stereotypes. She played Viola Davis’s mother in How to Get Away with Murder, Coretta Scott King in King, Jane Pittman in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Mother Watts in Trip to Bountiful.
What is perhaps most incredible has been her ability to appeal to viewers across race and generations by embodying characters that are fresh and current. From classics such as Roots and Sounder to contemporary programming like House of Cards and Saturday Night Live, of which she was the first Black female host, Ms. Tyson is iconic, timeless, and highly-respected.
Now, Cicely Tyson travels from stage to page to bring the world an unprecedented peek into her closely guarded personal life and the grounding forces of family and faith that have informed her life. Ever humble, Ms. Tyson says, “The greatest gratification has come in refining my craft, not in gazing upon its merits.”
Just As I Am is an autobiography from the heart. In three sections—Planted, Rooted, and Bountiful—Ms. Tyson delves into revelatory life lessons from each major role, lessons that are unexpected, profound, and that have helped her navigate per personal and public lives in tandem. From the years spent at her mother’s elbow and in the grounding, nurturing pews of her church family to delving into her ancestry with the help of genealogy experts, Ms. Tyson’s spirit of curiosity rings true with poetic authenticity.
Just As I Am is Cicely Tyson’s personal testimony of how nine decades of experiences—some magnificent, others sorrowful, some on screen, many away from it—that have given birth to the woman she is still becoming.
Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
List Price: $32.00One World (Feb 02, 2021)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 432 pages
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A chorus of extraordinary voices comes together to tell one of history’s great epics: the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present—edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on Fire.
The story begins in 1619—a year before the Mayflower—when the White Lion disgorges “some 20-and-odd Negroes” onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the African presence in what would become the United States. It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.
Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith—instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.
This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present.
Honor Book Nonfiction
Ebony: Covering Black America
by Lavaille Lavette
List Price: $60.00Rizzoli International Publications (Feb 02, 2021)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 304 pages
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In 1945, Ebony’s legendary founder John H. Johnson set out to create a magazine for Black America much like that of the trailblazing Life Magazine, and that he did.
For the African American community, Ebony has been a breath of fresh air, speaking on issues and events from the Black perspective, celebrating Black standards of beauty and elevating heroes of Black America—athletes, entertainers, activists, elected officials, or some combination thereof. Ebony: Covering Black America, by Lavaille Lavette, is a celebration of the treasure trove of the magazine's rich history, glamorous covers, groundbreaking cultural impact, and authentic coverage of Black American life from the magazine's inception to the present. "Ebony was Black America's social media long before the birth of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram", says Lavette.
Curated by Lavette, this all-out feast of a book is packed with exclusive contributions by a host of celebrities, influencers, and cultural icons, including Common, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade, Sean Combs, Kimora Lee Simmons, Ciara, and Venus Williams. The book also includes more than 600 covers and photographs featuring political forces such as Martin Luther King Jr., Michelle and President Barack Obama, and Congresswoman Barbara Jordan; entertainers such as Diana Ross, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Oprah Winfrey, and Prince; as well as sports heroes like Serena Williams, Muhammad Ali, Russell Westbrook, and Simone Biles. Lavette has chosen select articles, features, and reportage of note, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s advice column, and Ebony Fashion Fair photo shoots, divided into categories found within the magazine, including Civil Rights & Social Justice, Love & Family, Ebony Men, Ebony Women, and Ebony Music.
Unique in the quality of its photographs and contributors and chronicling everything from fashion and food to politics and social change, to sports and entertainment, Ebony: Covering Black America is a monumental milestone in African-American history and culture, and will be a treasured volume for the magazine's legion of loyal readers.
Honor Book Nonfiction
A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
by Hanif Abdurraqib
List Price: $27.00Random House (Mar 30, 2021)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 272 pages
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A stirring meditation on Black performance in America from the New York Times bestselling author of Go Ahead in the Rain
“Whether heralding unsung entertainers or reexamining legends, Hanif Abdurraqib weaves together gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance. I read this book breathlessly.”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
At the March on Washington in 1963, Josephine Baker was fifty-seven years old, well beyond her most prolific days. But in her speech she was in a mood to consider her life, her legacy, her departure from the country she was now triumphantly returning to. “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too,” she told the crowd. Inspired by these few words, Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance.
Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain, infused with the lyricism and rhythm of the musicians he loves. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio.
Honor Book Nonfiction
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
List Price: $30.00Penguin Press (Feb 16, 2021)
Nonfiction, Hardcover, 304 pages
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For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life’s blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Winner Poetry
Black Girl, Call Home
by Jasmine Mans
4-time National Bestseller, Poetry
- A 2024 National Bestselling Book – Poetry
- A 2023 National Bestselling Book - Poetry
- 2022 BCALA Literary Award
Berkley Books (Mar 09, 2021)
Poetry, Paperback, 256 pages
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From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity.
With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America—and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.
Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.
“Each poem is a meditation on a moment, a memory, and a history that guides the reader through the experience of Black womanhood in a way I’ve not experienced before. These poems both explode and glimmer on the page. They demand to be read, to be shared, to be revisited time and time again.”
—Clint Smith, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed
“You are carrying in your hands a Black woman’s heart.”
—Jericho Brown, author of Pulitzer Prize winner The Tradition
Honor Poetry
I Am the Rage
by Martina McGowan, Illustrated by Diana EjaitaList Price: $14.99
Sourcebooks (Feb 02, 2021)
Poetry, Paperback, 112 pages
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I am The Rage is a poetry collection that explores racial injustice from the raw, unfiltered viewpoint of a Black woman in America. Dr. Martina McGowan is a retired MD, a mother, grandmother, and a poet. Her poetry provides insights that no think piece on racism can; putting readers in the uncomfortable position of feeling, reflecting, and facing what it means to be a Black American.
This entire collection was created during 2020, many shortly after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, to name but a few.