MALAIKA WA AZANIA
The Timbila Library - 120 books to read by age 28
Here is my revised list of the Top 120 books to read by age 28. It’s a mix of fiction and non-fiction, deliberately chosen for the profundity of their message or the extent to which they disturbed my comfort – which is what some books ought to do.
1. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
2. Masaikategang a Magodimo – J.M.K Mekgwe
3. House of Hunger – Dambudzo Marechera
4. Black Sunlight – Dambudzo Marechera
5. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
6. No Longer At Ease – Chinua Achebe
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
9. It’s Bigger Than Hip-hop – MK Asante
10. When Rain Clouds Gather – Bessie Head
11. Welcome To Our Hillbrow – Phaswane Mpe
12. We Need New Names – NoViolet Bulawayo
13. These Bones Will Rise Again – Panashe Chigumadzi
14. Indaba, My Children – Credo Mutwa
15. How to Write About Africa – Binyavanga Wainaina
16. Forced to Grow – Sindiwe Magona
17. I Write What I Like – Steve Biko
18. The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court – Mmatshilo Motsei
20. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
21. Pedagody of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire
22. Allah is Not Obliged – Ahmadou Kourouma
23. The Black Jacobins – C.L.R James
24. The Cry of Winnie Mandela – Njabulo S. Ndebele
25. The World of Nat Nakasa – Essop Patel (ed
26. Hurling Words at Consciousness – Mukoma wa Ngugi
27. The African Condition – Ali Mazrui
28. Native Nostalgia – Jacob Dlamini
29. Inside Quattro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO – Paul Trewhela
30. Black Skin, White Masks – Frantz Fanon
31. The Wretched of the Earth – Frantz Fanon
32. The New Tribe – Buchi Emecheta
33. Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
34. Weep not, Child – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
35. Never Again – Flora Nwapa
36. The Death of Nowongile – Monde Nkasawe
37. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
38. Mandela’s Ego – Lewis Nkosi
39. Stay With Me – Ayobami Adebayo
40. Maru – Bessie Head
41. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
42. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neal Hurston
43. The Quiet Violence of Dreams – K. Sello Duiker
44. Down Second Avenue – Eskia Mphahlele
45. Call Me Woman – Ellen Kuzwayo
46. Peasants Revolt – Govan Mbeki
47. Ghana Must Go – Taiye Selasie
48. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born – Ama Ata Aidoo
49. Our Sister Killjoy – Ama Ata Aidoo
50. Decolonising the Mind – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
51. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
52. Love in Times of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
53. Veronica Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
54. Noti (Night) – Kaoberdiano Dambara
55. The Joys of Motherhood – Buchi Emecheta
56. Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa – Dambisa Moyo
57. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
58. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
59. Woman at Point Zero – Nawal El Saadawi
60. Revolution 2.0 – Wael Ghonim
61. A Man of the People – Chinua Achebe
62. They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky – Benjamin Ajak
63. Mornings in Jenin – Susan Abulhawa
64. The Art of Forgetting – Ahlam Mosteghanemi
65. Hani: A Life Too Short – Beauregard Tromp and Janet Smith
66. Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory – Kimberle Crenshaw
67. Cities Without Palms – Tarek Al-Tayeb
68. Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago – Rashad Shabazz
69. Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred – Mark Gevisser
70. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie
71. The Will to Die – Can Themba
72. Devil on the Cross – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
73. A Grain of Wheat – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
74. Decolonising the African Mind – Ibekwe Chinweizu
75. The Land is Ours: The Political Legacy of Mangaliso Sobukwe – Motsoko Pheko
76. Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism – bell hooks
77. Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
78. The Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Colour – Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (eds)
79. Burger’s Daughter – Nadine Gordimer
80. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
81. Freedom in Our Lifetime – Anton Lembede
82. So Long A Letter – Mariama Ba
83. Dintshontsho tsa Lorato – L.D Raditladi
84. Daughters Who Walk This Path – Yejide Kilanko
85. Memoirs of a Born Free: Reflections on the Rainbow Nation – Malaika Wa Azania (I’m not being self-absorbed, I promise)
86. When we Speak of Nothing – Olumide Popoola
87. A Man Who is Not a Man – Thando Mgqolozana
88. Bones – Chenjerai Hove
89. Breath, Eyes, Memory – Edwidge Danticat
90. Waiting for the Rain – Charles Mungoshi
91. A House for Mr Biswas – V.S Naipaul
92. Unity and Struggle – Amilcar Cabral
93. Mihloti – Miriam Tlali
94. We Are Going to Kill Each Other Today: The Marikana Story – Athandiwe Saba, Lucas Ledwaba, Sebabatso Mosamo and Thanduxolo Jika
95. City of the Beasts – Isabel Allende
96. Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary – Ernest Harsch
97. Beloved – Toni Morrison
98. Say You’re One of Them – Uwem Akpan
99. Discourse on Colonialism – Aime Cesaire
100. The Coloniser and the Colonised – Albert Memmi
101. Black Docker – Sembene Ousmane
102. The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran
103. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo Logde
104. On Trial for my Country – Stanlake Samkange
105. Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English – Ken Saro Wiwa
106. I Do Not Come To You By Chance – Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani
107. On Black Sisters’ Street – Chika Unigwe
108. The Motorcycle Diaries – Ernesto “Che” Guevara
109. When They Call You a Terrorist – Asha Bandele and Patrisse Cullors
110. Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
111. Back to Black – Kehinde Andrews
112. How Democracies Die – Steven Levintsky and Daniel Ziblatt
113. And They Didn’t Die – Lauretta Ngcobo
114. They Called Me Queer – Kim Windvogel and Kelly-Eve Koopman
115. Discipline and Punish – Michael Foucault
116. Biafra Testament – Kalu Okpi
117. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote – Ahmadou Kouroma
118. Metamorphosis and Other Stories – Franz Kafka
119. Not a Fairytale – Shaida Kazie Ali
And the final one is:
120. Corridors of Death: The Struggle to Exist in Historically White Institutions – Malaika Wa Azania.