10 Books that Inspired Kimberly McIntosh's 'Black Girl, No Magic'
By Damian Barr's Bookshop
10 Books that Inspired Kimberly McIntosh's 'Black Girl, No Magic'
By Damian Barr's Bookshop
Smart, accessible, thoughtful, entertaining and frank: our Book of the Week on the podcast is Black Girl, No Magic by Kimberly McIntosh. Informed by years of social policy research and campaign work as well as her own personal experiences, this debut essay collection investigates the intersection of race and class in the UK. She discusses dismantling the myth of social mobility for those who conform to expectations, how systematic injustice impacts us all, and many other urgent questions.
Don’t worry if you’re not an expert on any of the above; this is a great place to start no matter your background.
Discover the books that inspired the author with captions prepared by Kimberly. Happy reading!
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
£9.99 £9.49Baldwin is my favourite essayist and this examination of race and racism in America is so varied: the role of the protest novel in social movements, life in Harlem, what it means to be a black person abroad and what that tells us about home. Near the start he writes that: 'I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticise her perpetually.' I feel that way about England, too and I think essays are a great way to do that.
Peach Pig: The debut collection from the Young People’s Laureate for London, Forward Prize-shortlisted author
Cecilia Knapp
£10.99 £10.44Peach Pig is a poetry collection and I love Knapp's ability to capture the tensions of "social mobility", being a woman and maneuvering carefully through a patriarchal society to try and avoid violence (and the inevitable failure of that endeavour), the relentlessness of grief, and the mundanity of millennial angst and malaise, sometimes all in a single poem. Her evocative descriptions of the coast are unparalleled.
Heart Of The Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain
Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie, et al.
£12.99Through a mixture of interviews and research, the academics and organisers chart the lives of black Women in Britain in the 1980s. From family life, to treatment by public service and activism and resistance, it's an important archive of black women's lives that I'm glad is back in print.
Ordinary People
Diana Evans
£9.99 £9.49A beautiful and moving interrogation of motherhood, marriage, midlife, race and expectation set in South London. The plot follows the track list of the John Legend album Ordinary People, which I'd recommend putting on while reading.
Just Us: An American Conversation
Claudia Rankine
£12.99 £12.34An intimate exploration of whiteness and white supremacy in America. Technically an essay collection, Just Us has the feel of a coffee table book with striking colour images sat side by side the text to illustrate the core arguments or compliment them. She includes conversations, responses and reflections from the people she writes about, her views in dialogue with them throughout.
Everything I Know About Love
Dolly Alderton
£10.99 £10.44A hilarious memoir on growing up in the early 2000s and looking for love in all the wrong places and finding enduring love through friendship. For anyone who had a raucous twenties and remembers the delights of MSN messenger.
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay
£13.99 £13.29Gay has such an extraordinary range. This is one of the first essay collections I read that straddled serious social commentary with laugh-out-loud humour; treating pop culture with the same esteem as the politics of sexual violence to reveal something new about how the society she's writing from functions. This collection gives space to be a black woman that's messy and wrong and rejects respectability politics.
Thick And Other Essays
Tressie McMillan Cottom
£12.99 £12.34This collection of essays by the academic and New York Times columnist is the perfect blend of personal story and analysis. Covering body image, black womanhood, beauty, and class, her work is both smart and readable, as the best cultural criticism should be. I read it in one sitting.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Legend Classics)
Oscar Wilde
£8.99 £8.54My English teacher gave me a copy of the classic novel about art, vanity and youth because I'd loved The Importance of Being Earnest. I still have the copy on my shelf.
I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde
£26.99
A collection of writing by Audre Lorde, some from other collections like Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light alongside previously unpublished essays and speeches. A friend gifted it to me in my early twenties and it had a big impact on me.
black girl, no magic: reflections on race and respectability
Kimberly McIntosh
£16.99Support the author and the Literary Salon by buying your copy today!