BOLD BLACK BEAUTIFUL – Harvest Life

421 Years of Black Women Using Their Words

This book list is derived from the African American Women Using Our Words Timeline I developed for I AM WOMAN: Expressions of Black Womanhood in America. As with most creative projects, I had no idea where the timeline would lead.

This is by no means a full list of creative works or published/recorded documents by Black Women in America. More accurately, it’s a highlight reel of some of the historical works in the public domain. Some of the women were/are prolific writers and have multiple publications which are not listed within my timeline.

Begin With A Seed

The I AM WOMAN Project began with the idea that resistance and speaking up for ourselves are not a new concepts for Black Women. Lo and behold, a bit of digging reveals Black Women have been speaking, shouting, fighting, and resisting being controlled and abused since before our words were written down.

Discover a Forest

The Timeline in I AM WOMAN: Expressions of Black Womanhood in America includes 421 years of documented words by African descended Women in the United States of America proclaiming who they are and telling their stories in their own words. The Book List spans 421 years of Black Women in America advocating for themselves, their families, their communities and their people while exhibiting an impressive breadth of accomplishments throughout the centuries.

Black Women in America have a long and truly empowering history. Our truth cannot be hidden forever. Neither will freedom elude us forever. We are our most loyal encouragers. We are our own best defenders. Black Women have always been their own most worthy heroes.

Everything before 1924 is public domain and can be downloaded for free. May the readings liberate your mind, heart and soul. May your vision and understanding be infinitely expanded. Asè.

Book List, 1600-2021

1600	Isabel de Olvera	Affidavit
1746	Lucy Terry Prince	Bars Fight, August 28, 1746
1773	Phillis Wheatley	Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
1849	Jarena Lee	Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee
1854	Francis Ellen Watkins Harper	Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects
1850	Sojourner Truth	The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
1859	Harriet Wilson	Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In A Two-Story White House, North
1861	Harriet Jacobs (aka Linda Brent)	Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
1863	Old Elizabeth	Memoir of Old Elizabeth a Coloured Woman
1863	Susie King Taylor	Reminiscences of My Life in Camp
1865	Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten	Life on the Sea Islands
1868	Elizabeth Keckley	Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
1890	Octavia R. Albert	The House of Bondage
1891	Lucy Ann Delaney	From the Darkness Cometh the Light; or Struggles for Freedom
1892	Anna Julia Cooper	A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South
1892 1895	Ida B. Wells	Southern Horrors: Lynch Law and in All Its Phases A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States
1893	Amanda Smith	An Autobiography: The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist: Containing an Account of Her Life Work of Faith, and Her Travels in America, England, Ireland, Scotland, India, and Africa as an Independent Missionary.
1896	Gertrude Mossell	The Work of the Afro-American Woman
1898	Kate Drumgoold	A Slave Girl’s Story: Being An Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold
1926	Hallie Brown	Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction
1904	Virginia Broughton	Women’s Work, as Gleaned from the Women of the Bible
1919	NAACP	Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1898-1918
1942	Margaret Walker	For My People (poem reading)
1950	Gwendolyn Brooks	Annie Allen
1953	Katherine Johnson	Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position.
1959	Lorraine Hansberry	Raisin in the Sun
1968	Audre Lorde	The First Cities
1969	Maya Angelou	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
1970	Shirley Chisholm	Unbossed and Unbought
1983	Alice Walker	The Color Purple
1988	Toni Morison	Beloved
1986	Rita Dove	Thomas and Beulah
2001	Mae Jamison	Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments From My Life
2001	Condoleezza Rice	Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me.
2008	Kamala Harris	Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer
2009	LaShawnda Jones	My God and Me: Listening, Learning and Growing on My Journey
2010	Carole Simpson	NewsLady
2015	Amanda Gorman	The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough
2018	Stacey Abram	Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change
2018	Michelle Obama	Becoming
2019	Valerie Jarrett	My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward
2019	Susan Rice	Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.

On June 24, 2018, Renata Cardenas, an author and beauty entrepreneur known by her lifestyle brand, Renata Del Carmen, hosted a photo shoot for Black Women in Brooklyn Bridge Park for her BOLD BLACK BEAUTIFUL project. Her goal was to create beautiful images of Black Women that would represent standards of beauty as stock photography on the internet. On her Eventbrite post Renata wrote, “Out of curiousity I googled, “Beautiful Woman.” I simply wanted to know what the cyber world at large considered beautiful. While I can totally apprecitae a good algorithm, I was certain that they missed the mark that day. I didn’t see any women that looked like me. Not even Beyonce.”

The I AM WOMAN project is born from a similar space. LaShawnda Jones (author/publisher for Spirit Harvest and photographer for SH Images) was tired of the negative images of Black Women in the media. She was exhausted from witnessing the abuse of Black Women perpetrated throughout society because they are rarely seen as worthy of respect and decent treatment. She wants to combat these situations with images and words of Black Women representing themselves by sharing their own experiences of womanhood in their own words.

Renata’s inspiration and goals for BOLD BLACK BEAUTIFUL are very similar to the I AM WOMAN project. Seeing a great opportunity to connect and possibly build towards a partnership, LaShawnda reached out to Renata and asked if she could do back-up photography during the BOLD BLACK BEAUTIFUL photo shoot and share information about her own project with the BBB participants. Renata graciously said yes and a great day of creative synergy and amazing feminine energy was shared by all present – including the male supporters and photographers.

The lack of recognition, respect and love Black Women receive in the cyber and public spears has spurred an amazing response from Black Women who see themselves and each other as the beautiful beings they are. Cheers to sisterhood, solidarity and the determination to create nurturing spaces in a world that perfers not to see you.