Every year, November marks the announcement for the year’s Booker Prize winner, and while the prestigious award has been making great improvements in the diversity of its nominees, Black voices remain few and far between.

Only five Black writers have been awarded the prize in the 56 years since its creation, only one of them being a woman.

While the lack of diversity in the publishing industry is a problem of its own (with certain reports showing that the UK publishing industry is less accessible to Black authors than it was pre-2020), it is crucial for readers to engage with the works of underrepresented writers, both for personal growth and to reaffirm the importance of these voices in literary spaces. 

From an educational standpoint, reading the works of Black writers allows for a glimpse into the Black experience and Black schools of thought.

For example, in nonfiction classics such as Audre Lorde’s essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (in which Lorde explores how Blackness was repeatedly ignored in feminist circles) or James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name (a collection of essays exploring Baldwin’s identities as a Black man, a writer, a gay man, and a New Yorker), the topic of race is tackled head-on as the writers reveal the limits of intersectionality in the late 20th century.

More recently, bestselling novels such as Brandon Taylor’s debut Real Life or Kiley Reid’s Such a Fun Age bring to light the number of microaggressions that Black individuals experience daily. 

However, while many of the most popular Black writers have historically been American, it is important to actively seek out Black British voices to understand the presence of race in Britain, something that is so often cast aside in favour of conversations on class.

From nonfiction books such as Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge to award-winning novels such as the Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (winner of the 2019 Booker Prize) and Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (winner of the 2021 Costa Book Award for a debut), the Black literary sphere offers a wide range of innovative and insightful titles that prove that Black Britons deserve their moment in the spotlight. 

Image Credit: Micah Petyt