The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (HarperCollins)

This 800-page book is a sweeping epic that journeys through the history of one African American family across several centuries. It jumps back and forth between eras, from slavery to the antebellum south to present times, and does so in a way that makes it as thrilling as a murder mystery. The book’s main protagonist, Ailey, is clever and perceptive and it’s rewarding watching her grow from an angsty kid to a gifted researcher. The stories of female characters such as Aggie, an enslaved woman intent on toppling the sadistic man who bought her from Africa, create a landscape of formidable women who show how resoluteness can change the course of history.

Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley (Faber)

This debut poetry collection is abundant with thoughtful storytelling. Each poem is ruminative and distills the intimacies of Black girl/womanhood with fascinating images, compelling observations and a nomadic sense of questioning, while honouring the concept of silence and the ways it plays out in one’s interior life. These delicate poems unpick encounters with loved ones, friends and animals (there’s a beautiful poem about snails) and also focus firmly on the wider world, with poems such as Pandemic vs Black Folk written with the sharpest of tongues.

Look for Me and I’ll Be Gone: Stories by John Edgar Wideman (Canongate)

These short stories are the kind that stay with you; Wideman deploys an experimental literary style that forces you to pause with each sentence. With emotional precision and bold storytelling, they largely cover the African American experience. There’s a letter addressed to the narrator’s son, who has been charged with murder. There’s another about two chickens crossing the road, pondering the meaning of captivity. Wideman’s stories are preoccupied with how lives are shaped by incarceration and the criminal justice system and how these experiences can warp time. His tales are not easy reads but they are extremely absorbing, with Wideman’s stream-of-consciousness style evoking raw emotion and empathy.

Out of the Sun: Essays at the Crossroads of Race by Esi Edugyan (Serpent’s Tail)

Edugyan has written a remarkable set of essays unlike anything else. This is a deeply curious book that delves into the representations of Black people in western art, studying the fine details of paintings such as David Martin’s portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay and Johann Gottfried Haid’s painting of Viennese courtier Angelo Soliman. Edugyan oscillates between past and present, moving from the atrocities of the slave trade in Canada to recent debates around “transracialism”. She writes from a subjective, personal perspective, too, telling intriguing stories about how her parents met, her travels as a writer and her belief in ghosts.

A Brief History of Black British Art by Rianna Jade Parker (Tate Publishing)

This book by the brilliant critic and curator Rianna Jade Parker explores the pivotal contributions that African and Caribbean-descended artists have made to the landscape of art in Britain. Though a quick read, it’s bountiful in the number of artists and histories it discusses, which will be unknown to many. Concise biographies of Frank Bowling, Anthea Hamilton, Denzil Forrester and Maxine Walters offer insight into their lives and practices, and in her introduction, Parker touches on the social and political realities affecting Black cultural production. She also writes of how and why Black British artists “have long been relegated to the niche,” and notes that the under-historicised Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960s was a genesis point of contemporary Black British art.