Edited by National Book Award finalist Ibi Zoboi and featuring some of the most acclaimed best-selling black authors writing for teens today - Black Enough is an essential collection of captivating stories about what it’s like to be young and black in America.

A selection of the Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List.

Black is...sisters navigating their relationship at summer camp in Portland, Oregon, as written by Renée Watson.

Black is...three friends walking back from the community pool talking about nothing and everything, in a story by Jason Reynolds.

Black is...Nic Stone’s high-class beauty dating a boy of whom her momma would never approve.

Black is...two girls kissing in Justina Ireland’s story set in Maryland.

Black is urban and rural, wealthy and poor, mixed race, immigrants, and more - because there are countless ways to be Black enough.

Contributors:

Justina Ireland
Varian Johnson
Rita Williams-Garcia
Dhonielle Clayton
Kekla Magoon
Leah Henderson
Tochi Onyebuchi
Jason Reynolds
Nic Stone
Liara Tamani
Renée Watson
Tracey Baptiste
Coe Booth
Brandy Colbert
Jay Coles
Ibi Zoboi
Lamar Giles

Listening Length

11 hours and 14 minutes
Author

Ibi Zoboi, see all
Narrator

Bahni Turpin, see all
Audible release date

January 8, 2019
Language

English
Publisher

HarperAudio
ASIN

B07HPBVF7H
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	11 hours and 14 minutes
Author	Ibi Zoboi, Tracey Baptiste, Coe Booth, Dhonielle Clayton, Brandy Colbert, Jay Coles, Lamar Giles, Leah Henderson
Narrator	Bahni Turpin, Ron Butler
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	January 08, 2019
Publisher	HarperAudio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07HPBVF7H
Best Sellers Rank	#37,486 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #13 in Anthologies & Short Stories for Teens #48 in Short Stories in Teen & Young Adult Literature #63 in Coming of Age Fiction for Teens

Customer reviews

5 star		82%
4 star		13%
3 star		4%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		1%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

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Snapshots of life, beautiful turns of phrase

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

This collection of vignettes is a lovely read, glimpses of self-discovery in a number of ways. Each story is a gem, filled with gifts of language like these:

"Tessa was a person who could wreak havoc with a sentence. Sixteen years doesn’t seem like long, but how many lives could a person with that kind of power have ruined in her time?"

"The man cried so badly, his tears glittered like constellations of stardust."

"All night, his fingers had flown over his keyboard, writing line after line of code so fast, it felt like he was playing music."

"It was the nerdiest, most backhanded compliment Mak had ever gotten, Kamari suggesting that Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty, and pleasure, was Mak’s mother."

I'd typically choose one quote as representative of the book, but with so many voices, just one feels like neglecting the others. Each character discovering and learning to embrace their true selves is beautiful, varying from Black enough to sexual identity, breaking free of parental rule, letting intelligence and horniness shine, and so much more.

It's a book of teens learning their place in this world, and making it their own with growing confidence and strength. Beautiful, I recommend for anyone who has ever felt not enough.

5 people found this helpful

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Hannah H

Phenomenal

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 4, 2021

Verified Purchase

Phenomenal book. Phenomenal stories of Black children experiencing Blackness in different ways. Fantastic authors. Lovely characters.
This collection of stories covers a wide range of adventures. Enjoyable for any and all teen and adult readers as the stories range from exploring queerness, being biracial, and immigrating from other countries, to dealing with divorce and half-siblings and more.
If you’re a white reader, like I am, this will build empathy and knock down pre-conceived notions of what it means to be Black in America. If you’re a Black/African-American reader, I imagine that you will feel seen and feel lots of comradery with the characters.

Definitely put this on your list of must-reads.

4 people found this helpful

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Toni R. Horton

Collection of short stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2021

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My child wanted to purchase to read; seems to enjoy it.

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Write4one

Reflective and innovative !

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

This was a refreshing read. Each story was a journey into the minds of our youth and the experiences which form their adulthood. I don’t think it’s for 6th or 7th grade but 8th graders could appreciate the messages. Also, it gave me the opportunity to read some of my favorite authors and develop interest in some I haven’t read.

Helpful

Allison Garwood

Heartwarming!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 22, 2020

Verified Purchase

It's hard to find YA books by Black authors. And when I find them, they are often about the very painful issues my son battles on a daily basis. But sometimes, we want a break from harsh realities AND a Black MC. Every once in a while, I find a book like Black Enough that walks this great, beautiful line, and serves up meaningful, fun, encouraging short stories featuring sharp, strong, creative, admirable Black kids. My son and I love to read this together. And I think he'll enjoy reading it again when he's in his teens.

13 people found this helpful

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Amanda Martin

Summer read for the teen Queen

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 8, 2020

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And she ABSOLUTELYYYYYYY LOVEEEESSSSS IT!. I thought that having her read over the summer would be an enrichment. She thought it would suck but this book make her tuck her tail between her legs. Her "assignment" was to spend 30 minutes each evening reading. Well let me tell you that we have to call her away from is and dont dare disturb her during her reading time. It was worth the purchase.

One person found this helpful

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Deborah Zeman

Leaves you wanting more

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 4, 2020

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As much as I enjoyed these stories, I wanted them to continue. This was a book that celebrates diversity of men & women, both in terms of race, religion, family values. The voices come across the page, grabbing the reader from the first word. Sometimes I forgot that this was a book of stories about young African Americans. These stories could have been about black, or white orAsian kids...amazing stories. I’ll now go and read each authors creations..

7 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Nice variety to the Stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 26, 2020

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Some of the stories were goofy and fun, some were contemplative and melancholy, all had something to say about a wealth of topics: coding, heavy metal, colorism, divorce, patriarchy, rural America, geekdom, first love, family dynamics, queerness, class, and (most controversial of all) Ross from Friends.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

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So inlove with these stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 21, 2021

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The stories are pretty much the best. I have probably read this thing about three or four times already that is how much I love the book if you guys wanna low more about your roots it’s called black enough so obviously is that a targeted audience I would recommend for all people of all ages race, etc to read the book and buy especially because it was not that expensive as well so yeah.

Joana Cabral

Esperava algo diferente mas foi bom para conhecer autores novo.

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on January 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

Confesso que esperava algo diferente desta história e essa expectativa, sem dúvida, acabou por influenciar a minha opinião.

“Black Enough” é uma colecção de contos escritos por autores pretos que visa mostrar situações comuns de ser jovem e pertencente a uma minoria nos EUA. No entanto, nem sempre esse facto é o que está em evidência nestes textos, afinal ser adolescente por si só pode ser um verdadeiro drama que é transversal a todos os seres humanos.

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muppetshow

schön divers

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on August 10, 2020

Verified Purchase

Sammlung von schönen Geschichten. sehr gutes Vorwort

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CerysAnne

Unforgettable and impactful - a collection not to be overlooked

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 27, 2019

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Black Enough is a collection of short stories written by seventeen authors - none of whom I knew prior to reading this book, yet they're all now officially on my radar - on being young and black in America, and I was really excited to dive into this novel; luckily, I wasn't disappointed by it.

Told either in first, second, or third person perspectives', this collection includes a variety of stories that made this reader experience many different emotions.

Now, whilst some stories were fun and light-hearted to read: stories of unrequited crushes, being young, finding love and gaining freedom, other stories touched on more life-defining and serious moments a teenager could go through in their life: moments of discovering ones sexuality, the power of music, a forbidden romance between rival families, the tragedy of death, suicide, family issues, along with dealing with racism, homophobia, and so much more.

It's 400 pages of two Introductions and seventeen unique and (some) powerful stories that I could not get enough of.

When I wasn't laughing out loud and smiling big at the fun and entertaining stories included - such as ones like 'Black. Nerd. Problems.', 'Woah!', 'Kissing Sarah Smart', and 'Into the Starlight' - I was devouring the meaningful story that was being told; a story that made me think, feel, and listen to the message within - like with 'Black Enough', 'Warning: Color May Fade', 'Out of the Silence', 'Wild Horses, Wild Hearts', and 'The Trouble with Drowning'.

There is one story in particular - Gravity by Tracey Baptise - that is quite triggering as, told in second person perspective, this story shows how a young girl deals with being sexually assaulted in a public area, though being young and having made the first move, she weights the options on whether to tell or keep quiet as she knows from second-hand experience that some, if not many people will twist her story on her and say she asked for it. Whilst I liked the story, how it was written, and the way this author had me seeing the story play out so vividly in my mind, it was just too vivid for my taste, and considering it was told in second person perspective, it was hard to feel separate from the character, and left me feeling uncomfortable throughout the entire story.

My reason for the four stars however, has to do with the fact that considering each story is a short story, the lack of a blurb to let us know not what the story was about - but WHO - left me feeling confused at times; was I reading about a young girl, or a young boy? Sometimes the gender, along with the characters' name, wasn't revealed for pages later, and it made me struggle to connect with the story when I started reading one in a female's perspective, but all along it was a male's.

Overall though, this collection was perfect and really delivered some unforgettable and impactful stories that I'm still thinking about days later. You'll either love them, or hate them - each story is different enough to get a different reaction from its reader.

I'd definitely recommend this collection of short stories to anyone looking for one.

TW: sexual assault, words of racism and homophobia

One person found this helpful

Robbie

Very readable but somehow lacking a spark

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 2, 2020

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

This is a collection of really readable short stories, but somehow it never quite did it for me. I should admit that I only half read the description, and thought they were autobiographical stories, which they are clearly not. Either way, I wanted to learn something new about being young and black in America and... did I? I'm not really sure.

Overall, over the course of a set of fun, mostly page-turning, sometimes touching short stories, I learned that black american kids are kids, much the same as white British kids are kids. With the exception of a few words I had to look up and bits of slang, I'm not sure there was anything I learned here that I didn't know already from TV shows. That may be because I've watched a lot of TV shows which feature young black people in America, and have just been watching This Is Us, which deals with much more nuance with the theme of a black person in a majority white community. That crops up a few times here, as do the class divides that emerge in a socially aspirant population.

I am also very aware that in the 'woke' world we live in, there is a lot of messaging that goes on: this collection clearly has an agenda, and with that in mind I realised it's hard to know if this is an accurate representation of being young and black in America.

Overall, these are well-written, enjoyable stories, sometimes touching, often intriguing. Like all collections of short stories, it lacks something, for me, because just as you get to know the characters they disappear, but each of the writers in this collection have other novels, so you can use this to find out who you want to read next. Only one of the stories was so odd/dull that I found I had to skip it, and the last two were among the best, so make sure to read to the end.

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