READING BLACK LIVES

BOOK GROUP
The Reading Black Lives Book Group was founded in 2020 by Denise Woodin with a commitment to read books written by Black authors from the U.S. and abroad. Genres include contemporary novels, historical fiction, mysteries, and biographies. Join us for a discussion and fellowship on the book we have just read. All are welcome!
For more information, please contact [email protected].
"Absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable." — Alice Walker
"A work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel." — The Saturday Review of Literature

Nella Larsen’s fascinating exploration of race and identity—the inspiration for the Netflix film directed by Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.
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One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
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Currently reading:
​Passing ​by Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen, one of the most acclaimed and influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance, was born Nellie Walker in Chicago on April 13, 1891. Her father was mixed-race, her mother was a Danish immigrant, and she struggled to find a community to which to belong. After working for some years as a nurse, primarily in the Bronx, Larsen became the first black woman to graduate from the New York Public Library School and worked in various branches before landing in Harlem, the center of African-American culture.

She became active in Harlem's artistic community and wrote her first novel, Quicksand, published in 1928. A critical though not financial success, it was awarded a Bronze Medal by the Harmon Foundation in recognition of Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes in Literature. Her second novel, Passing, came out the following year.

​Larsen was the first African-American woman  to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Due to personal and professional struggles following a highly publicized divorce, Larsen had stopped writing by the end of the 1930s. She resumed work as a nurse until her death in 1964.
credit: Barnes & Noble
Summary
Married to a successful physician and ensconced in Harlem's vibrant society of the 1920s, Irene Redfield leads a charmed existence-until she is shaken out of it by a chance encounter with a childhood friend who has been "passing for white." An important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen was the first African-American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Her fictional portraits of women seeking their identities through a fog of racial confusion were informed by her own Danish-West Indian parentage, and Passing offers fascinating psychological insights into issues of race and gender.

Upcoming Reads in 2026

  • May,  July - TBA

Previous Reads

  1. ​Deacon King Kong – by James McBride
  2. Beloved – by Toni Morrison
  3. Such a Fun Age – by Kiley Reid
  4. The Vanishing Half – by Brit Bennett 
  5. An American Marriage – by Tayari Jones
  6. The Good Lord Bird – by James McBride
  7. If Beale Street Could Talk – by James Baldwin 
  8. Memorial – by Bryan Washington 
  9. Their Eyes Were Watching God – by Zora Neale Hurston
  10. Americanah – by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
  11. The Watsons Go to Birmingham – by Christopher Paul Curtis
  12. Washington Black – by Esi Edugyan
  13. Devil in a Blue Dress – by Walter Mosley
  14. Girl, Woman, Other – by Bernadine Evaristo
  15. On Beauty – by Zadie Smith
  16. On the Rooftop - by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
  17. Harlem Shuffle – by Colson Whitehead
  18. When We Were Birds – by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
  19. The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois - by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers​
  20. How Beautiful We Were - by Imbolo Mbue
  21. The Sellout - by Paul Beatty
  22. The Violin Conspiracy - by Brendan Slocumb
  23. Hidden Figures - by Margot Lee Shetterly
  24. The House of Eve - by Sadeqa Johnson
  25. Take My Hand - by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
  26. The Known World - by Edward P. Jones
  27. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - by James McBride
  28. Black Cake - by Charmaine Wilkerson
  29. Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People - by Tiya Miles
  30. One of Our Kind - by Nicola Yoon
  31. The Fraud - by Zadie Smith
  32. James - by Percival Everett
  33. The Mothers - by Brit Bennett
  34. ​Homegoing - by Yaa Gyasi
  35. ​The Wedding - by Dorothy West
  36. ​The Street - by Ann Petry
  37. Come and Get It - by Kiley Reid
  38. Yet Here I Am: Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home - by Jonathan Capehart
  39. Dream Count - by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  40. Hell of a Book - by Jason Mott
  41. Passing  -  by Nella Larsen