About us
Black Girls Read Book Club (also known as Black Girls Read Chicago) is a monthly Chicago-based book club that celebrates Black women writers. This is a book club for Black women interested in reading and discussing books written by Black women from the United States and around the world. We read fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and our book discussions take place at various locations in the city. By collectively elevating and celebrating the work of Black women writers, we affirm that our stories matter.
Upcoming events
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#119: Take What You Can by Naima Coster + 10th Anniversary Celebration
Hall Branch, Chicago Public Library, 4801 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL, USOur September book selection is Take What You Can by Naima Coster! We will also be celebrating our 10th anniversary! Stick around after our discussion for free books, prizes, and other treats.
Support Black Girls Read Chicago by purchasing Take What You Can from Bookshop or from LibroFM (affiliate links).
About the book: Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other and became immediate best friends. Then, they bonded as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. When Milly suggests Val move to New York so they can raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it’s a resounding yes.
Despite their excitement, the pair secretly wonders if their friendship has always worked best as a trio. On that first trip to France, these two motherless daughters were taken under the wing of an older woman named Helene. She showered them with money, love, and attention and showed them the possibilities of an independent and abundant future. But now, without Helene and her guidance, who are Milly and Val?
Milly, a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, is occupied with her desire for freedom. Val, a brilliant journalist, is unsure whether she fits into Milly’s new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they’ve grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to the rift that began all those years ago in France. What they’ve long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood.
Weaving between Brooklyn brownstones and the glittering beaches of southern France, Take What You Can is a dazzling novel exploring what it means to be a mother when you have none, a sister without blood ties, and a woman in pursuit of the life she wants. With her signature sharply observed prose, Naima Coster illustrates how to be—and to stay—someone’s person through all phases of life.
39 attendees
Virtual Author Event: Q&A with Naima Coster (author of Take What You Can)
·OnlineOnlineJoin Black Girls Read Chicago for a virtual Q&A with Naima Coster, author of our September book club pick, Take What You Can!
We will have a spoiler-free conversation about Take What You Can, so feel free to attend even if you have not yet finished the book. And please come with questions for Naima!
Support Black Girls Read Chicago by purchasing Take What You Can on Bookshop or LibroFM (affiliate links).
About Naima: Naima Coster is a New York Times bestselling author and a recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honor. Her new novel, Take What You Can, will be published by Viking in August 2026. Her novel, What’s Mine and Yours, was a Read with Jenna pick, a statewide read for One Maryland One Book, longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Esquire, Marie Claire, Ms. Magazine, and more. Her first novel, Halsey Street, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and named a must-read by People, Essence, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library. Naima’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Time, Kweli, and The Cut, and in numerous anthologies. Naima teaches creative writing at CUNY Baruch College. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
17 attendees
#120: The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
Chicago Bee Branch, Chicago Public Library, 3647 South State Street, Chicago, IL, USOur October book selection is The Reformatory by Tananarive Due!
Support Black Girls Read Chicago by buying The Reformatory from Bookshop or LibroFM (affiliate links).
About the book: Gracetown, Florida. June 1950.
Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr. is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.
Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules, but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.
The Reformatory is a “hallucinatory, haunting, terrifying, and moving” (S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed) work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.
15 attendees
Past events
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