An Obama Presidential Center Invitee’s Chicago Summer Reading List
Earlier this month, our very own Cynthia Okechukwu was invited to Obama Presidential Center for a sneak peek at the President’s 2026 Summer Reading List (and after, was on Barack Obama’s Instagram!).
As one of our beloved guides and the founder and host of Black Girls Read Book Club—and one of the kindest and smartest people we know—we asked Cynthia to give us her list of Chicago summer reads.
Here’s Cynthia’s Chicago summer reading list.
📚 Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, and for me it's easy to see why she is so celebrated to this day. Her depiction of the mundane joys and heartaches of life as a Black girl and then woman on Chicago's South Side is so beautifully written, lyrical, and vivid.
📚 Majestic Hills by Dawn Turner
Turner's 2021 memoir Three Girls from Bronzeville, one of my favorite non-fiction books about Chicago, is a hard act to follow, but I think Majestic Hills is such a fun pivot. I've found it impossible to tear myself away from this page-turner of a thriller since I started it.
📚 Chicago House Musicby Marguerite L. Harrold
Real Chicagoans know about this city's immense influence on arts and culture in the U.S. and around the world. This book will give you an inside look at the origins and development of house music—music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago—and gives credit where it's due to the genre's Black and queer innovators.
📚 Last Summer on State Streetby Toya Wolfe
The demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project was in many ways devastating for the individuals, families, and communities that called it home. This fictional coming-of-age story about a fateful last summer for a group of girls growing up in that housing project deeply moved me, and raised thought-provoking questions about the human impacts of policy decisions.
📚 Strangers Behind Closed Doors by Catherine Adel West
This suspensful murder mystery set in a luxury hotel in Chicago had me on the edge of my seat with each twist and turn. I loved that it's not your average thriller, since it doesn't shy away from exploring how racism, classism, and sexism create a system that fails Black women victims.
📚 1919 by Eve L. Ewing
The "Red Summer" of 1919 was a period of racial violence that transformed the United States, and Chicago was not exempt from the upheaval. What better way to learn about the 1919 Chicago Race Riot than through poetry by Eve L. Ewing, one of Chicago's finest writers and educators?