The Blacker the Berry

An Apple Books Classic edition.

Revelatory and illuminating, Wallace Thurman’s groundbreaking Harlem Renaissance novel dares to openly explore intraracial colorism.

Emma Lou’s deep, dark complexion makes her the pariah of her light-skinned family. Convinced that their bias is a byproduct of their unsophisticated rural hometown, she leaves Idaho to attend college in California before finally settling in 1920s New York, where Black culture is thriving.

But the familiar shape of colorism follows her from one coast to the other. And even bleaker, Emma Lou herself has been poisoned with the same prejudice. With a heroine as flawed as she is beguiling, The Blacker the Berry deals candidly with the compounding effects of race, gender, and color in a way that feels both of its time and ahead of it.