This month, we’ve urged you to shop Black-owned, female-led businesses. Now let’s put that same energy into Netflix queues and library hauls. To help, here’s an expanded Read, Watch, Listen with Black female creators like Zinzi Clemmons, Nia DaCosta, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw.

Will streaming Queen & Slim cure white supremacy? Nope. But celebrating great work from great women is always a step towards the greater good, and these incredible picks more than deliver… and prove there’s never an excuse to overlook the undeniable talent of Black women that already illuminates the creative arts.


Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall 
Mikki pulls from her own experience with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization to explore how race and class divide women and corrode the feminism we all need.

Queen & Slim directed by Melina Matsoukas 
In this revelatory thriller, a young couple goes on the run after killing a police officer in self-defense.

Intersectionality Matters with Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw 
Kimberlé is a lawyer, advocate, and scholar who breaks down the intersectional movement, and what “inclusivity” actually means.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons 
In this debut novel, a young woman deals with the death of her mother as she begins her own unexpected journey towards parenthood.

Love & Basketball directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood 
Childhood best friends aspire to be pro basketball players… but as they grow up, their desire to play the game threatens to pull their bond apart.

Jesus and Jollof
Jollof is a rice dish popular in West Africa. Jesus is… well, you know. Luvvie Ajayi and Insecure’s Yvonne Orji talk about both in this warmly hysterical podcast, which they almost named “Two Goat Queens.” (Really.)

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby 
TV writer Samantha Irby is the best friend we wish we had, and her collection of essays will make you laugh until you cry. (But, like, in a good way.)

Grown-ish
A spinoff of Black-ish, this sly comedy follows Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi) as she goes off to college and—just like Jon Snow—realizes she knows nothing. Oops.

Chilombo by Jhené Aiko 
In her most experimental album yet, Jhené Aiko incorporates crystal alchemy sound bowls into her beats to help listeners open up their chakras. (We think it actually works.)

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Two Black families in Brooklyn—a successful married couple and a single mother—struggle with identity and gentrification when their only children begin dating and become teen parents.

Little Woods directed by Nia DaCosta
After the death of their mother, sisters (played by Tessa Thompson and Lily James) find themselves in a dangerous world of drug trading and deception.

Radical Imagination with Angela Glover Blackwell 
Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with “thinkers and changemakers” to come up with radical solutions to some of America’s biggest problems.

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis 
After accidentally killing a man, Clementine and her friends must risk everything for their freedom before it’s too late.

Still Star-Crossed
Theater nerds, rejoice! Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes made a must-watch “sequel” to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet filled with secret affairs, palace coups, and very elaborate corsetry. Binge up!

Ungodly Hour by Chloe x Halle 
These so-stylish-it-hurts sisters have just released their second studio album, Ungodly Hour, and it’s full of summer dance bops.