Books like My Girlish Days by Karen L. Evans

it is a novel

A poignant drama about the Charles family's prized piano and its significance in the present and the past of black America.

Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a drama set in 1960s Pittsburgh focusing on a man's journey from slavery to freedom.

A girl like that follows Katie O'Shannon, a rising stage performer, and Sam Nelson, an ambitious lawyer, as they confront faith, love, and justice in Chicago, facing the challenges of immigration and ambition.

A tale of friendship and the passage of time, Seven Guitars explores the African-American experience through the lens of a group of young blues musicians in 1948 Pittsburgh.

Set in Pittsburgh's Hill District, Jitney is a 1970s drama by August Wilson that follows gypsy cabdrivers who serve black neighborhoods.

In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.