Enjeti and her family moved to the South when she was small. Since then, she’s called the South her home. But as a mixed-race Brown girl, many people there didn’t necessarily make her feel welcome. Now, as an adult, she’s able to look back and reflect on her experience with racism. At the same time, she addresses her complicity in systemic racism. She discusses ways she can embody antiracist values and fight for oppressed people in her own community and beyond. These essays feature her thoughts on feminism, the new South, gun violence, voter suppression, and so much more.

For most of his career, Randall Kenan was described as a “writer’s writer,” a writer who isn’t necessarily widely loved by the general public, per se, but people in his field really respect and admire his work. But shortly after Kenan died in 2020, his short story collection, If I Had Two Wings, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Its reception introduced Kenan’s work to a whole new audience.

Black Folk Could Fly is a posthumous collection of nonfiction works from throughout his career. In it, he writes about his childhood in rural North Carolina, his move to New York City to work on his writing career, and his travels around the country to interview Black people about their experiences. Kenan was always pondering: What does it mean to be Black in America today? Through his writing, we can observe the progression of his thought process as he considers this question and reads the works of other Black writers on the topic.

South Carolinian Dorothy Allison is one of the most well-known queer writers of her generation. She grew up in rural South Carolina and wrote about her childhood experience with sexual assault in a way that few writers had at the time. She was an example to so many women, giving voice to something far too many young girls have experienced. Her prose is brilliant—so many details in a single sentence.

Allison writes about living as a queer woman, working through her childhood trauma even as she came into her own as an adult. This book, which is under 100 pages, contains an overflowing wealth of wisdom from one of America’s greatest writers.