Resources



DR.  S.  Y.  EVANS



Database of Black Women's Autobiography



AFRICANA MEMOIRS

Chronological Book List & Poem

The chronological list (link PDF above) offers a sample of 355 Black women’s memoirs, mainly focusing on African American women. This booklist of life writing can be supplemented with the 305 books by Life Members of the Association of Black Women Historians resource ABWH Booklist. Together, these two lists offer a comprehensive entry point to better understanding Black women’s life and history in the United States of America. Resources used to make this list are below. Enjoy!

SOURCES
Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women in the Ivory Tower, 1850-1854: An Intellectual History, 2007
Stephanie Y. Evans, “U.S. Women of Color” (Syllabus), University of Florida, Spring 2010
Stephanie Y. Evans, “Black Autobiography” (Syllabus), Clark Atlanta University, Spring 2012
Stephanie Y. Evans, AfricanaMemoirs.net (website), 2013
Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as Tools for Youth Empowerment, 2014
Mia E. Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones and Barbara D. Savage, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, 2015
Melanie Hill, “African American Women Autobiography” (Syllabus), Rutgers University, Fall 2020
Joycelyn Moody, Ed. A History of African American Autobiography, 2021
Stephanie Y. Evans, Black Women’s Yoga History: Memoirs of Inner Peace, 2021
Evans, Stephanie Y. “Letters to Our Daughters: Black Women’s Memoirs as Epistles of Human Rights, Healing, and Inner Peace.” In The Black Intellectual Tradition in the United States in the Twentieth Century. Cornelius Bynum and Derrick Alridge, eds., 2021.



ASK ME HOW I KNOW  

Water is wet, fire is hot
And fat meat is greasy
Listen to Black women

Ancestors gave us
Answers to a test you can't cheat on
Listen to Black women


Hundreds of years, we've worked and LABORED
Mass rape, lynching, they sold our babies
Listen to Black women


Listen again: hundreds of years, we've worked and LABORED
Mass rape, lynching, they sold our babies. Sold. Our (Their/Own). Babies.
Listen to Black women


Erasure of truth, erasure of Black women victims
Institutionalizing silence, mandating complicity
Listen to Black women


We believe our "lyin' eyes"
No need to review the video
Listen to Black women


There is a reason
They fired six hundred thousands of us
Listen to Black women


No one likes to hear
I told you so, especially when you already KNOW you should
Listen to Black women


And we don't have one "representative" or a cute sell out talking head
We have innumerable autonomous committees of fact checkers
Listen to Black women


We are often wrong
Like when we support bombing other countries, kidnapping others' babies, or alienating queer siblings
Listen to Black women (who don't support that foolishness)


We do not agree with each other (but we scored 92% on the last group project)
We do not have all of the answers, but we are experts at disambiguation (make it plain)
Listen to Black women


We are only human, Toni Morrison was adamant about that
No more or less human than anyone else. Yes, we are human, too.
Listen to Black women


It is never too late to be on the right side of humanity
To read and research and learn. We write books--read them and act accordingly
Listen to Black women


There is no prize to win
This is simply soul work--the work YOUR soul must do--the work MY soul must do
Listen to Black women


Ask me how I know
What do I do for a living?
Listen to Black women
          SYE January 26, 2026