In today’s classrooms, it’s essential for educators to create environments where all students feel seen, valued, and empowered. For Black girls in K-12 classrooms, the journey through education can come with troubling challenges—from criminalization and abuse to a lack of educational policies and culturally competent teachers. Resources designed with the needs of Black students in mind can make a world of difference.
This list of 14 books is designed specifically to help teachers nurture, inspire, and support Black girls in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education. From stories that celebrate Black girlhood to insightful guides for fostering inclusive learning spaces, these books provide invaluable tools for educators committed to affirming and uplifting every student.
Interested in books for children, young adults, parents, or educators with Black protagonists and Black authors? Check out the Books for Black Kids book directory! It’s a work in progress with over 2,000 listings and counting.
Making Black Girls Count in Math Education: A Black Feminist Vision for Transformative Teaching
In this book, Nicole M. Joseph details the systems, policies, and practices that contribute to inequalities and imbalances in mathematics education for Black girls from preschool to graduate school. She offers practical tips to foster success as well as a call-to-action to transform math learning environments, curriculum design and implementation, and testing and assessments.
Read more about the resource here.
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
Pushout discusses how policies, practices, and prejudice may force Black girls into juvenile detention and an uncertain future. This is touted as the first book to tell the stories of young Black girls who experienced a school-related arrest and entered the penitentiary system, often due to misunderstandings among teachers, administrators, and the justice system.
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The State of Black Girls: A Go-To Guide for Creating Safe Space for Black Girls
Designed with teenage readers in mind, this book offers a guide to equip Black girls to succeed inside and outside the classroom. “This book offers perspectives, activities, and prompts that can help you to know what factors are at play in life and in society, and how to navigate them with poise and success.”
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Teaching Black Girls: Resiliency in Urban Classrooms
Teaching Black Girls uses an ethnographic study to showcase both the resiliency and vulnerability of Black female students at urban schools. Using qualitative research methods to explore intersectionality at play, the book examines how this resiliency is racially and culturally relevant. The findings in this resource are relevant for graduate students and practicing teachers alike.
Read more about the book here.
Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls
Through research, case studies, interviews, and reflections on real life, this resources uses the blues to create a radical, healing guide for Black and Brown girls in the classroom. “The result is this radiant guide to moving away from punishment, trauma, and discrimination toward safety, justice, and genuine community in our schools.”
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Hear Our Truths: The Creative Potential of Black Girlhood
A guide to using art and creativity in self-expression, Hear Our Truths expounds upon the “Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths,” or SOLHOT, youth intervention. This book explores Black feminist thought and methodology as a way to “affirm complexity, interrogate power, and produce humanizing representation of Black girls’ lives.”
Read more about the resource here.
Strong Black Girls: Reclaiming Schools in Their Own Image
Strong Black Girls discusses the issues encountered by Black girls and teenagers while pursuing an education, some of which may be invisible to the untrained eye. Storytelling, essays, letters, poetry, and discussion questions are used to explore these narratives and continue the discussion towards a culturally relevant reform in public institutions.
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Cultivating Joyful Learning Spaces for Black Girls: Insights into Interrupting School Pushout
This book provides insights from educators and clinical practitioners into creating learning environments to support Black girls and teenagers. “The key to disrupting such punitive pushout is for educators to develop meaningful relationships with Black girls—connections that are grounded in cultural understanding and focused on helping Black girls develop their identities as valued individuals and contributors to the larger community.”
Read more about the guide here.
All About Black Girl Love in Education: Bell Hooks and Pedagogies of Love
Building upon bell hooks’ All About Love, this resource shows how teachers, school leaders, community educators, and researchers can transform the narrative of Black girls and teenagers in K-12 education. Scholars and educators interested in urban education, race and ethnicity in education, gender studies, literacy, multicultural education, and diversity and equity in education will appreciate how these strategies connect theory and practice inside and outside the classroom.
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Black Girls’ Literacies: Transforming Lives and Literacy Practices
Black Girls’ Literacies aims to facilitate inclusive environments to promote language and literacy education through writing, literature, digital media, community engagement, and more. The accompanied framework offers a strategy to comprehend the nuances and complexities involved in creating diverse spaces with this goal in mind.
Read more about the guide here.
Educating Black Girls
Using trends and statistics, this book offers over 50 possible strategies to create a culturally relevant academic environment to foster success for Black girls in elementary and secondary education.
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Investing in the Educational Success of Black Women and Girls
This four-part book discusses the challenges encountered by Black women and girls from preschool to university, as well as potential implications and strategies for practitioners, policymakers, teachers, and administrators.
Read more about the guide here.
Teaching Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls
With several tips to center Black female excellence in the classroom, this book is a call-to-action for educational justice and fairness. Teaching Beautiful Brilliant Black Girls aims to counter the obstacles faced by Black students by showcasing their beauty, talents, and brilliance.
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The Black Girl in the Classroom
This guide offers practical advice to foster self-esteem; Black history, heritage, and culture; career development; and classroom lessons to promote success and inclusion for Black girls.
Read more about the book here.