This month I’m celebrating books about vibrant black communities. Here are three terrific titles about coming of age and being nurtured by the village around you:

Sweet Summer: Growing up with and without My Dad: In this charming memoir, the late Bebe Moore Campbell contrasts the day-to-day of the school year around her mother in Philadelphia with the laidback summers of rural South Carolina around her dad.

Betsey Brown: There is no other novel that captures the essence of growing up in St. Louis than this classic by Ntozake Shange.

We Didn’t Know Any Gangsters: These amazing poems by Brian Gilmore will transport you to the middle-class DC of government workers and loving black families.

David Haynes teaches in the creative writing program at Southern Methodist University and for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He has written seven novels for adults and five books for younger readers. His most recent is A Star in the Face of the Sky. He currently serves as the Treasurer of the AWP Board of Trustees.