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- Colonialism
Abdel-Magied, Yassmin. Listen, Layla. Melbourne, Australia: Penguin Random House Australia, 2021. (Authoritarianism)
The last time Layla went to Sudan she was only a young child. Now she feels torn between her Sudanese and Australian identities. As political tensions in Sudan erupt, so too do tensions between Layla and her family.
Alexander, Kwame. The Door of No Return. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2022. (Enslavement)
A novel in verse about a boy escaping enslavers during the nineteenth century.
Baitie, Elizabeth-Irene. Crossing the Stream. New York: Norton Young Readers. (Pollution)
Ato and his friends have entered a competition to win entry to Nnoma, the island bird sanctuary that Ato’s father helped create. But something is poisoning the community garden where their project is housed, and Ato sets out to track down the culprit.
—. Flying Up the Mountain. Norton Young Readers, 2023.
When Ato and his friends visit Nnoma, the West African bird sanctuary in Ghana that Ato’s father helped build before he died, the trio uncovers a sinister plot to exploit the sanctuary and must work together to protect it.
Edinger, Monica. Africa Is My Home — A Child of the Amistad. Candlewick Press, 2013. (Enslavement)
Nine-year-old Magulu and three other children are sold and taken aboard the Amistad. A mutiny occurs aboard ship. A trial in New Haven that eventually goes all the way to the Supreme Court is argued in the Africans’ favor by John Quincy Adams.
—. Nearer my freedom : the interesting life of Olaudah Equiano by himself. Minneapolis: Zest Books. (Enslavement)
Using Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography as the source, the text shares Equiano’s life story in found verse. Readers will follow his story from his childhood in Nigeria, enslavement at a young age, liberation, and life as a free man.
Elhillo, Safia. Home is not a country. New York: Make me a World. (Anti-immigration)
Nima doesn’t feel understood. By her mother, who grew up faraway in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like she belongs somewhere else.
Jamieson, Victoria. When Stars Are Scattered. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2020. (Refugee Crisis)
Omar and his younger brother Hassan live in a refugee camp. When an opportunity for Omar to get an education comes along, he must decide between going to school every day or caring for his nonverbal brother.
Mandela Zari. Zindzi and Ziwelene. Grandad Mandela. Quarto / Lincoln, 2018. (Apartheid)
Mandela’s great grandchildren learn that he was a freedom fighter who put down his weapons for the sake of peace, and who then became the President of South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prize-winner.
Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers. New York: Random House. (Anti-immigration)
A Cameroonian immigrant arrives in Harlem hoping for a better life for his family, but when the economy collapses, their marriage begins to fall apart and all four members’ lives are dramatically upended.
Mwangi, Meja. The Mzungu Boy. Berkeley: Groundwood / Publishers Group West (dist.), 2005. (Colonialism)
Mzungu Boy offers a tonic to the disturbingly widespread Out of Africa syndrome, where whites are strong pioneers alone facing an unforgiving environment. The novel is set in the early 1950s as the MauMau movement is gathering strength in the “White” Highlands.
Naidoo, Beverley. Burn My Heart. New York, NY: HarperCollins / Amistad, 2009. (Colonialism)
Two boys one white, one black, share an uneasy friendship in Kenya in the 1950s as the independence struggle erupts.
–. Out of Bounds. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Seven stories, spanning the time period from 1948 to 2000, chronicle the experiences of young people from different races and ethnic groups as they try to cope with the restrictions placed on their lives by South Africa’s apartheid laws.
Nunn, Malla. Sugar Town Queens. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. (Racism)
This YA novel tells the story of Amandla, a 15-year-old mixed race South African girl, living on the edge of hunger in a Black shantytown with her white mother.
Nyong’o, Lupita. Sulwe. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. (Colorism)
When five-year-old Sulwe’s classmates make fun of her dark skin, she tries lightening herself to no avail, but her encounter with a shooting star helps her understand there is beauty in every shade.
Onoseta, Rimma. How You Grow Wings. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Young Readers. (Colorism)
Debut author Rimma Onoseta explores classism, colorism, cycles of abuse in this powerful novel set in present-day Nigeria.
Quartey, Kwei. Gold of our fathers. New York, NY: Soho Crime. (Pollution)
Detective David Darko’s new boss is transferring him from Accra, Ghana’s capital, out to remote Obuasi, an area now notorious for the illegal exploitation of its gold mines.
—. Murder at Cape Three Points. New York, NY: Soho Crime. (Pollution)
Three Points has long been inhabited by villages of fishers, but real estate entrepreneurs and wealthy oil companies have been trying to bribe the villagers to move out.
Raina, Arushi. When Morning Comes. Vancouver: Tradewind Books, 2016. (Apartheid)
A series of chance meetings between students set in motion a chain of events against the backdrop of Johannesburg in apartheid South Africa in 1976.
Robert, Na’ima B. Far From Home. London: Frances Lincoln / Janetta Otter-Barry Books, 2012. (Colonialism)
Two girls are worlds apart but are linked by a terrible secret as they struggle with adolescence, family and a painful colonial legacy as the turbulent history of Zimbabwe is brought to life.
Sisulu, Elinor B., and Sharon Wilson. The Day Gogo Went to Vote. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996. (Voting Rights)
Thembi and her beloved great-grandmother, who has not left the house for many years, go together to vote on the momentous day when black South Africans vote for the first time.
Sullivan, Tara. The Bitter Side of Sweet. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. (Child Labor)
Kept as forced labor on a chocolate plantation in the Ivory Coast, Amadou and his younger brother Seydou had given up hope, until a young girl arrives at the camp who rekindles the urge to escape.
Wolo, Mamle. The Kaya Girl. New York: Little, Brown and Company. (Income Gap)
Two girls meet by chance in Makola, Accra’s largest market where Abena’s Aunt Lydia owns a fabric shop and Faiza struggles as a “Kayayoo” or “Kaya” which simply translates as head porter girl. Author Wolo uses the market square as a space to examine social relations, beauty standards, economic disparities, child labor and stereotypes against people from Ghana’s rural north.
Wright, Adrienne. Hector : a boy, a protest, and the photograph that changed apartheid. Salem, MA: Page Street Publishing. (Apartheid)
This powerful story gives voice to an ordinary boy and sheds light on events that helped lead to the end of apartheid.