20 Bestselling Nonfiction Books
Period: March/April - 2021
The African American Literature Book Club’s Bestsellers List has been published continuously since 1998. It celebrates the bestselling titles from our curated selection of books written by or about Black people. Learn More below.
★ New: The BLK Bestsellers: America’s Bestselling Books
Fiction: Richard Wright’s previously unpublished novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, is our bestselling fiction title. The Man Who Lived Underground was written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the height of Wright’s creative powers.
Nonfiction: Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice, Nkechi Taifa’s powerful memoir, outsold all other books this period and was given a rave review by AALBC.
Children’s Books: The 11-time AALBC bestseller, Whose Knees Are These?, by Jabari Asim led a very crowded field of popular children’s books. We cap our bestsellers list at 20 books, and our children’s list could have easily included 40 titles.
Poetry: The Tradition by Jericho Brown debuts on our bestsellers list at #1. The critically acclaimed work received many honors including winning a Pulitzer Prize.
More About our Bestsellers List
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You will learn about books selling well in the Black community that may never show up on lists published by corporate entities. Spread the word about our list; don’t let one or two lists, which we don’t control, determine which books are important.
We collect our bestselling titles from all our sales channels. The majority of our sales come from this website and our in-person events. We also include sales generated through our affiliate relationships, including Bookshop.org, Libro.fm (audiobooks), and Amazon.com*.
*For a few years, we actively boycotted Amazon but have discontinued this practice to ensure we do not exclude authors who are exclusive to that platform. We still discourage exclusivity but support all Black authors.