Western Libraries' Black Reads: Seven Titles Worth Your Time Year-Round
Published on January 06, 2026
This past February, Western Libraries (WL) staff took part in WL Black Reads, an initiative organized by the WL EDIDA Committee to highlight Black authors and stories across a range of genres. To mark Black History Month 2026, committee members gathered on February 19th to share book talks on seven carefully selected titles from the collection — and the conversation that followed made one thing clear: these books deserve a much wider audience.
Black History Month may be behind us, but the richness of Black storytelling, scholarship, and experience doesn't belong to a single month on the calendar. Whether you're looking for your next novel, a memoir that will stay with you, or critical non-fiction that reframes how you think about history and belonging, this list has something for you. All seven titles are available to borrow through Western Libraries.
The Seven Reads
The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr (Coach House Books, 2022) is perhaps the list's most decorated title — winner of the 2022 Giller Prize and, notably, the first LGBTQ+-themed novel to take that honour. Set in 1929, it follows Baxter, a queer Black porter navigating the indignities and quiet longings of life on the rails. Atmospheric, visceral, and deeply human, it's a story about invisibility and desire that readers will not soon forget. Unlimited e-book access is available, with print copies also on hand.
Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin (Knopf Canada, 2024) is a formally daring debut fiction structured around the 59 articles of the historical 1685 French colonial decree that defined the conditions of slavery. Each article becomes its own linked story — moving across realism, dystopia, and historical fantasy — accompanied by drawings by visual artist Torkwase Dyson. It won both the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. A single-user ebook is available through our catalogue, with print copies also accessible.
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (Viking Canada, 2023) is a stunning novel rooted in the Black and Indigenous history of southwestern Ontario. Set in the mid-1800s, it unfolds as an exchange of life stories between a young Black journalist's protégée and an elder who arrived via the Underground Railroad — weaving together love, survival, and the tangled ancestry of a continent. Winner of the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Copies are available through Western Libraries and affiliate libraries.
They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life, and Growing Up by Eternity Martis (McClelland & Stewart, 2020) is a memoir by award-winning journalist Eternity Martis, set during her undergraduate years in London, Ontario. She chronicles navigating racism, an abusive relationship, and the exhausting labour of existing in predominantly white spaces. Honest, funny, and essential. Winner of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction. Available as an e-book and in print through Western Libraries.
Body So Fluorescent by Amanda Cordner and David di Giovanni (Playwrights Canada Press, 2023) is a play that explores Blackness, otherness, and appropriation through the fractured recollections of two friends trying to piece together what happened on a dance floor the night before. Shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, it's a compact, charged piece of theatre available as an e-book through our catalogue.
BlackLife: Post-BLM and the Struggle for Freedom by Rinaldo Walcott and Idil Abdillahi (Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2019) offers sharp, unflinching analysis of anti-Black racism as embedded not just in state structures but in the foundational ideologies of Western modernity. Drawing on literature, theory, music, and public policy, Walcott and Abdillahi argue that real change requires confronting how deeply Black death has been normalized — and who has the power to challenge that. Unlimited eBook access is available.
Autistic and Black: Our Experiences of Growth, Progress and Empowerment by Kala Allen Omeiza (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2024), rounds out the list with an anthology that centres the intersecting experiences of Black and autistic people from around the world. Covering topics from the Black Lives Matter movement to anti-Black racism in mental health systems, it's an important and often overlooked conversation. Unlimited e-book access is available through OMNI.
A note on access: All seven titles are available through Western Libraries — several with unlimited e-book access, with print copies and additional holds available through the Affiliates and Western's broader catalogue. Visit Western Libraries to find them.
