Below is a list of suggested reading that is by no means exhaustive. When you purchase from the links below, you are supporting either Baldwin and Co., or Community Book center, both of which are Black-owned independent bookstores here in New Orleans.   

We've divided the titles between the two in order to support both as much as possible. 

New Orleans History 

• Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans

• ***The Yellow House:   A story of East New Orleans, a forgotten part of the city, missing from maps handed out to tourists, and the story of Broom's family.***

-This tells the story of how the majority of Black New Orleanians got relegated to the low-lying land of New Orleans East.

• Fire In The Hole: The Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors -A book about the Mardi Gras Indians

• ***The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World***

-This is the true history of the Free Women of Color in the US, and negates the fiction of the Quadroon Balls

• The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square

• The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
  
  
• The Code Noir of 1685: Translation by John Garrigus

• The Code Noir of 1724: Translation by Vernon Valentine Palmer

*Scroll down to click pdf link on site

• Codigo Negro of 1763: Essay by P.E. Hoffman

Children’s and Young Adult Books with African Diasporic Folklore

• Rick Riordan Presents: Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky-A Tristan Strong Novel, Book 1

• Root Magic

• This Poison Heart

• Rick Riordan Presents: Ballad & Dagger-An Outlaw Saints Novel

• Dread Nation

• The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

• Will Do Magic For Small Change

Vodou & African Traditional Religions (ATRs)

• Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals

• Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Aje in Africana Literature

• A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau



Novels with African Traditional Religious Themes

• Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel

• Mama Day

• Libertie: A Novel