The best books about Black women’s friendships

I rarely let a book go from my shelves, but this is one I’ve pulled down twice and passed on to two friends after they noticed the Passing title on the spine. I told them it was about two biracial childhood friends, Clare and Irene, who collide later in life as Clare passes for white secretly in 1920s Harlem. Whoah… they were hooked. I discovered this oldie but goodie in a college Harlem Renaissance course, with author Nella Larsen recently rediscovered as a national literary treasure. The 2021 Netflix film adaptation is pretty awesome. Read this psychological thriller for a perfect portrait of the Jazz Age and pre-Civil Rights era race relations in America.

No other novel is more important to me than this one. A college professor introduced it to me in my sophomore year and, as the third Toni Morrison book I’d read, it just spoke to me in a way no other book has before or since. Sula and Nel grow up in Depression-era Ohio, but limitations on black people’s and women’s lives necessitate their different paths: Sula goes rogue to the big Ohio city while Nel succeeds as a housewife in their all-Black birthplace known as “The Bottom.” You would never know an approximately 150-page book could deliver so much spectacular drama and so many unforgettable characters across three generations in America. When Sula returns to The Bottom after a ten-year absence, she and Nel’s friendship endures the ultimate test.

This is the absolute, hands down best collection of interlinked stories framed as a novel I have ever read in my life. You will fall in love with each and every one of these colorful, dynamic, and heartwarming women who find themselves in one tenement building in 1970s Harlem. Mattie Michael, Etta Mae Johnson, Lucielia "Ciel" Turner, Melanie "Kiswana" Browne, Cora Lee, Lorraine, and Theresa all come from different backgrounds but intersect around one major theme: surviving urban America as Black women. By the end, you will roar in celebration and respect for their journeys to self-fulfillment, self-discovery, and self-empowerment despite incredible odds. 

When this book premiered in the mid-nineties, I was fairly young but absolutely shook by these grown thirtysomething women’s stories of not just finding romance but finding themselves with a lot of help from their friends. You will be hard-pressed to pick a favorite character among Savannah, Robin, Bernadine, and Gloria but I will give you a tip: Don’t even try. They are all strong, exuberant, and self-determined professional women at the centers of their families and communities. The search for real, true, lasting love plays out across one year in Arizona that changes their lives. On nearly every page, McMillan will entertain you or break your heart but never let you forget the power of best girlfriends.

I have to tip-toe around descriptions of this book as they are hard to give without spoilers, but that’s a testament to how good it is and how amazing it is to read. The twist and turns across the lives of two young girls in Atlanta, Dana Lynn and Chaurisse, only get more winding as they age with (drumroll) the same father who just happens to be married to both their different mothers. You’re in for a ride as the story progresses with readers knowing the secret some characters know, some don’t and some will find out. Filled with humor but always reverent to themes of race in America and Black women’s lives in it, this contemporary novel shows what it truly is for friends to be just like sisters.