Good Reads for Globetrotters: A Traveler's TBR List

As a youngster growing up in middle America, Lori L. Tharps says she often fantasized about traveling around the world, like her idol, Josephine Baker. But she couldn’t find many books written by or about Black women who shared her wanderlust.

So with her second book, the co-author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, decided to remedy that and share how her travel experiences – specifically to Morocco and Spain – altered her ideas about race and identity.

“Now that I live here permanently with my Spanish husband, I can say that high school me was right,” says Tharps, who manifested in her high school diary that Spain was going to be life-changing

“I hope Kinky Gazpacho inspires other Black American women to travel abroad, so they can see themselves outside of an American context where Black women are often reduced to a stereotype.”

3. Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure by Elaine Lee

Lee is an avid traveler and seasoned journalist who edited Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure, a pioneering anthology published in 1997 that includes 52 engaging travel tales by writers such as Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Jill Nelson, Alice Walker and Pearl Cleage.

“It was time to amplify our voices and check out Mother Earth through our lens,” Lee says.

Nearly three decades later, she published Go Girl 2 to spotlight a new generation of voices in travel literature and to update travel resources, including social media travel groups. According to Amazon, the book includes “54 travel tales, poems, and photos designed to inspire, educate, and entertain Black women globetrotters.”

Contributors include Linda Villarosa, Faith Adiele, and Evelyn White, and two of the topical themes are overcoming travel anxiety and dealing with racism while traveling.

4. Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories edited by Natasha A. Kelly and Olive Vassell

With Mapping Black Europe, editors Natasha A. Kelly and Olive Vassell explore the roots of Black communities in the European capital cities of Berlin, Brussels, London, Luxembourg City, Oslo, Rome and Warsaw, and offer answers to questions such as, what is the state of Black memory, and how is community activism involved?

“The inspiration for the book and much of my professional work is very personal. It aligns with my journey to understand the continent where I was born and to know my people's history there,” says Vassell, a journalist and Fulbright specialist born in London.

“It started when I began travelling through Europe as a teen and would see people who looked like me, but with whom I couldn’t communicate. I wanted to know our connection.”

5. American Runaway: Black and Free in Paris in the Trump Years by Audrey Edwards

Veteran magazine writer and editor Audrey Edwards made good on her promise to leave the U.S. when the social and political climate changed in 2016. Edwards left her beloved Brooklyn, New York, for an extended period and moved to Paris, France, a city often adopted by Black American expats.

That move to the “City of Light” inspired Edwards’s book, American Runaway (available at audreyedwardswrites.com), described as a rich collection of essays, cultural and political commentary, and personal “race stories.” Currently, Edwards continues to split her time between New York and France, and in 2026, she will have hosted a Black History Month event in Paris.

“I’m in Paris now more than ever, about a third of the year,” she says.