The Emancipator curated the best antiracist nonfiction books of 2026 so far, featuring works published from January through June.
The Racial Wealth Gap
A Brief History
by Mehrsa Baradaran
Norton, Feb. 3
Baradaran examines the policies that created and continue to sustain the racial wealth gap between Black Americans and White Americans. It is an authoritative historical study of the forces of wealth creation for White Americans and wealth destruction for Black Americans.
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The People Can Fly
American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time
by Joshua Bennett
Little, Brown and Company, Feb. 3
How does it feel to be seen as both promising and a problem? Bennett, an MIT professor, delves into Black history, Black literature, and his own life story to answer that very question, and more. The People Can Fly is an endearing remembrance of Black brilliance at a time when racist figures are striving to obliterate the brilliance of Black people.
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The Mixed Marriage Project
A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
by Dorothy Roberts
Atria/One Signal Publishers, Feb. 10
Roberts blends her parents’ groundbreaking research on interracial couples with a fascinating memoir about growing as a daughter of an interracial couple. The Mixed Marriage Project is one of those most intimate, nuanced, and astute meditations on interracial families ever written.
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On Morrison
by Namwali Serpell
Hogarth, Feb. 17
Serpell rigorously surveys the fiction, essays, dramatic works, and poetry of Toni Morrison. The closeness of her reading of Morrison is only matched by the profoundness of her insights.
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Citizenship
Notes on an American Myth
by Daisy Hernández
Hogarth, Feb. 17
Who belongs in the United States? Drawing on her own family experiences, Hernández argues that citizenship is less a neutral legal status than a powerful national myth that has often been used to include some people while excluding others.
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Chain of Ideas
The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age
by Ibram X. Kendi
One World, Mar. 17
Kendi takes the reader around the world to show how a once fringe conspiracy theory, known as great replacement theory, has become the most dominant political theory of our time. The captivating storytelling brings to life an immense body of research on how our politics arrived at this anti-democratic moment and what we must do to break the chain.
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Darkology
Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment
by Rhae Lynn Barnes
Liveright, Mar. 24
Barnes explores the history of blackface performance and its enduring influence on American entertainment and popular culture. This landmark book examines how racist caricatures have affected public perceptions of Black identity while revealing their lasting cultural effect.
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Here Where We Live Is Our Country
The Story of the Jewish Bund
by Molly Crabapple
One World, Apr. 7
Crabapple carefully tells the inspiring history of the Jewish Bund, a socialist, secular, and anti-Zionist movement that emerged in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century. Those revolutionaries offer us so many lessons for our political imagination, solidarity, and liberation.
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Gather
Black Food, Nourishment, and the Art of Togetherness
by Ashanté M. Reese
W.W. Norton & Company, Apr. 14
Reese offers a powerful vision of food justice that centers Black communities and the collective power of food, gathering, and abundance. Through stories of gardens, family reunions, repasts, and protests, Reese shows how Black communities have long used food to build stronger, more equitable, and sustainable systems.
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Nasty Work
Resist Systems, Explore Desire, and Liberate Yourself
by Ericka Hart
Crown, Apr. 14
Hart blends personal narrative with political critique to explore how desire, healing, and liberation are shaped by race, gender, disability, and structural inequality. She urges readers to rethink power and reclaim self-determination.
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Stealing America
by Linford D. Fisher
Liveright, Apr. 28
Stealing America traces the often-overlooked history of Indigenous enslavement in North America. Fisher reveals how Native peoples were systematically kidnapped, exploited, and displaced through colonial and early American labor systems. He shows how these practices shaped U.S. economic and territorial expansion while continuing to influence Indigenous marginalization and historical memory today.
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Backtalker
An American Memoir
by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Simon & Schuster, May 5
At a time when we all need more speaking truth to power, Crenshaw inspires with her decades of backtalking, which preceded her groundbreaking work on intersectionality, critical race theory, and #SayHerName. Backtalker is the remarkable life story of one of the most influential legal scholars in U.S. history.
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Love, Me
A Letter to Black Women in A Toxic Country, Career, and Relationship
by Tiffany D. Cross
Legacy Lit, May 5
Love, Me is a necessary and timely exploration of the challenges Black women face in relationships, workplaces, and a society that often overlooks their contributions, humanity, and well-being. Blending personal reflection, humor, and cultural analysis, Cross encourages Black women to reclaim their hope, self-worth, and power while advocating for a more equitable society.
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Migrant Heart
Essays About Things I Can’t Forget
by Reyna Grande
Atria/Primero Sueño Press, May 12
Migrant Heart is an exquisite memoir-in-essays that weaves between the forces of trauma and healing. Grande unwraps a clear-eyed picture of the multifaceted inner world of a migrant from Mexico, turning pain into power.
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On Witness and Respair
Essays
by Jesmyn Ward
Scribner, May 19
Ward, a two-time National Book Award-winner, essays on how bearing witness to individual tragedy and systemic injustice can become an act of repair. It is a book for the moment, with incisive insights on the emotional labor of living through racism, on the power of resilience, on the beauty of telling the story.
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America, U.S.A.
How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
Crown, May 26
On the eve of the nation’s 250th birthday, Glaude, Jr. called on the nation to finally face itself, finally face its grotesquely racist history and present, finally unwrap its mythology that covered it all up. A mighty book.
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Bloody Numbers
The Early Atlantic Slave Trade and the Invention of Modern Corporeality
by Pablo F. Gómez
University of Chicago Press, Jun. 8
Gómez shows how the officials behind the early Atlantic human trade transformed enslaved Africans into quantifiable populations. Enslavers measured, counted, averaged, and calculated almost everything about enslaved bodies, rendering these humans being into numbers that presumably predicted behaviors, diseases, and profits.
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The Price of Exclusion
The Pursuit of Healthcare in a Segregated Nation
by Nicole Carr
Dey Street Books, Jun. 16
Carr shares the epic story of Black medical professionals who battled racial exclusion and ill health in order to do their jobs: heal their communities. The Price of Exclusion shows the price is still being paid in persisting racial health disparities.