Purchase Books by 2024 Legacy Award finalists
Thank you for purchasing books from our Legacy Award finalists. This year’s book vendor is Sankofa Books, a Black-owned bookstore in Washington, DC.
About Sankofa Video, Books, & Cafe:
“Named after the internationally acclaimed film called SANKOFA (produced by the founders) , Sankofa Video, Books & Café carries with it an expectation of quality and discovery. Founded in 1998 by filmmaking couple, Haile and Shirikiana Gerima, Sankofa Video and Books specializes in videos and books about people of African descent around the world.
SANKOFA, which is an Adinkra term for “going back to our past in order to go forward,” obtained numerous awards and special screenings internationally, but domestically no distribution company would touch it. A story about a woman who travels to her past on a plantation, and other enslaved Blacks that plan and execute rebellion, was not an easy topic to get funded or distributed once completed.
Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe is nestled in the college campus corridor of Georgia Ave, in Washington, DC, across from Howard University, two blocks from Benjamin Banneker Sr. High School.” Learn more on Sankofa.com.
*some titles may not be available on Sankofa.com
Debut Fiction
Elizabeth Acevedo – Family Lore
Soraya Palmer – The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts
Kai Thomas – In the Upper Country
General Fiction
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Chain-Gang All-Stars
Cheryl A. Head – Time’s Undoing
Ayana Mathis – The Unsettled
Mihret Sibhat – The History of a Difficult Child
Speculative Fiction
Johnny Compton – Spite House*
Mary McLaughlin Slechta – Mulberry Street Stories*
Moses Ose Utomi – Lies of Ajungo
Historical Nonfiction
Victor Luckerson – Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street
Donovan X. Ramsey – When Crack Was King
Yepoka Yeebo – Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World*
Memoir Nonfiction
Dionne Ford – Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Healing*
Emmanuel Iduma – I Am Still With You: A Reckoning with Silence, Inheritance, and History*
Cassandra Jackson – The Wreck: A Daughter’s Memoir of Becoming a Mother*
Leta McCollough Seletzky – The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.*
Aomawa Shields – Life on Other Planets*
Poetry
Amanda Gunn – Things I Didn’t Do With This Body*
Patricia Spears Jones – The Beloved Community*
Van Jordan – When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again*
Airea Dee Matthews – Bread & Circus*
Charif Shanahan – Trace Evidence*
Creative Fiction Anthology
Ntozake Shange, Edited by Imani Perry – Sing a Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange
Learn More about Our 2024 Merit Award Winners
The North Star Award
The Ella Baker Award
The Madam C.J. Walker Award