2025’s Best Historical Fiction, BIPOC Edition
Just last week, I was recording the latest Hey YA episode with my cohost, Kelly Jensen, when I made a comment about the tragic state of American public school education—especially when it came to teaching history. I brought it up because she had mentioned a book by Kim Hyun Sook (No Rules Tonight), and it reminded me of Sook’s other graphic memoir, Banned Book Club. The thing with the latter book was that it was the first time I’d ever heard about South Korea’s Fifth Republic, a military regime that exerted an authoritarian rule over the country until as recently as 1987—1987!
All this is to say that historical fiction has long been one of my favorite genres. It’s also been a way I’ve learned about people of the past, even when my curriculum was lacking. Considering the importance of knowing the past, the fact that reading immersive fiction increases empathy, and how BIPOC people don’t often have as much influence over the narrative surrounding them, I feel like reading more BIPOC historical fiction is something everyone should be doing.
I assembled the list of historical fiction gathered below by looking at the Most Anticipated lists for 2025 that were compiled by The Times, Goodreads, and Netgalley. The books will take you everywhere—from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s to 19th-century China and France.
The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston and Deborah G. Plant
A never-before-published Hurston novel is always going to be noteworthy. After Hurston’s 1950s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain challenged some long-held views surrounding Moses, she wanted to give another Biblical figure the same treatment. Here, she writes of Herod the Great—friend of Marc Atony and Julius Caesar—as the forerunner of Christ.
A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke by Adriana Herrera
Adriana Herrera writes some banger historical Latine romances (also see: An Island Princess Starts a Scandal), and this latest one has us in Paris in 1889. There, running an underground women’s clinic, is physician Aurora Montalban Wright. What Aurora is doing is dangerous, so it’s no surprise that she eventually finds herself in a pickle—and has to then accept help from the infuriating Duke of Annan. She also accepts help into his bed…a few times, actually. And though they make excellent bedfellows, the Duke’s got his own problems as a titled Afro-Latine person that society is ready to judge harshly. As he starts to envision a real future for the two of them, complicated pasts rise up to muddy things.
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
Jessie Redmon Fauset is known as the “Midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” for discovering and fostering the growth of writers like Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen. In 1919, she was appointed as the new literary editor of The Crisis—the Negro magazine at the time—by its founder, W.E.B. Du Bois. With Jessie leading the way, subscriptions soared, and the literary component of the Harlem Renaissance started to take shape. There was just this one thing, though: she was having an affair with Du Bois, who was not only her boss and 14 years older, he was married, too. Harlem Rhapsody explores this long-held secret affair, as well as the racism and sexism Fauset fought through to forge a path of success and legacy for herself.
The Lotus Shoes by Jane Yang
Little Flower is a child when she is sold to Linjing’s family as a muizai. Linjing, jealous over Little Flower’s bound feet and what they symbolize, sabotages the other girl’s future. But then things shift. They started off as rivals in the Fong household, but eventually turn into friends. Then a scandal hits, and both of their lives are upended, but what’s tragedy for Linjin could be little Flower’s salvation. Question is: will she take advantage?
**Subscribers, continue below for 15 new BIPOC books out this week**
What have you been reading lately? Let’s chat in the comments!
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