Freed Man & Freed Woman, and Child sculptures by Adrienne Rison Isom at the Juneteenth Memorial Sculpture Monument at the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center. Photo credit: Jennifer Rangubphai [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Today is Juneteenth! For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, Juneteenth is a day to celebrate and commemorate the liberation of Black people in the United States from post-Civil War enslavement. In this moment, when Black people are still fighting for equality and are pushing against racism and injustice, Juneteenth is the perfect time for all of us to educate ourselves on how Black people, particularly Black women living in the margins, define liberation.

We’ve put together a Divine Nineteenth list of Black feminist-womanist thinkers, writers, poets, storytellers, and activists that we think you should get to know. We’ve linked to their suggested books below to provide background information on them and their works. If you like what you read, we challenge you to take it one step further by purchasing your books from Black-owned bookstores.

In no particular order… we present our Divine Nineteenth:

Selecting our Divine Nineteenth was a challenge, because we wanted to provide a mixture of well-known and lesser-known Black feminist writers. We hope you appreciate the variety of genres present and the range of historic and contemporary Black feminist voices on liberation and emancipation from patriarchy and white supremacy culture.

GenderAvenger's Divine Nineteenth for Juneteenth

In no particular order… we present our Divine Nineteenth:

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