By Floella Benjamin:

When I first came to Britain I felt like a tortured soul, because people abused my colour daily. I was made to feel unworthy. But I learnt to come to terms with who I was because my parents told me about my history and my ancestors, which helped to instill confidence in me. That's why I believe Black History Month is important. It gives you a sense of belonging and understanding about yourself through celebrating your history and culture. It also gives others the opportunity to celebrate and respect your history too. I personally would like to celebrate Black History Month every month but as it's only in October that we focus on black history, then we have to make sure that the celebration is inclusive of everyone. Black History Month gives the feeling of high self esteem, belonging and confidence. To know that you are worthy is the best feeling in the world for young children especially. For black kids it teaches them about themselves, for white children it gives them a better understanding of different cultures.

Black authors I admire are Maya Angelou (I love her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings), Malorie Blackman (Pig Heart Boy), and Grace Nicholls and John Agard for their ability to bring Caribbean-ness to life, and to evoke the culture and essence of life there. Of the people who have influenced my life, my mum and dad were most influential. So was Martin Luther King, and of course, Barack Obama. But the late soul singer, James Brown had a massive influence on my teenage years. His song Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud gave me and other black people ownership of how we were to be described. Up until then other people chose what we were to be called, and they were usually derogatory names which were hurtful and abusive. Now, finally we had a say in how we were to be addressed, and that was a great feeling. I am proud of who I am, and love the colour of my skin.

Read more about Floella Benjamin and watch a video

Buy Floella's autobiography, Coming to England

See all of our BHM titles at up to 40% off

Black History Month (BHM) is held every October in Britain. The key aims are to:

The origins of BHM go back to 1926 when Carter G Woodson, editor for 30 years of the Journal of Negro History, established African Caribbean celebrations in America. It is still celebrated there in February each year. Akyaaba Addai Sebbo is viewed as the person who set up Black History Month in Britain. Akyaaba worked for the Greater London Council (GLC) and worked with them to establish the event in 1987.

"We could call it just history month, but it's more than that. It's about forgotten heroes and stories that we never get told at school. We are taught more about the Battle of Waterloo at school than the relevance of Dr Martin Luther King. We hope this month goes some way to fill in the gaps."

Willber Wilberforce, Director of Programmes, 1xtra

Waterstones.com is pleased to be marking Black History Month 2009, highlighting some of the best current books on black history and experience, and profiling some of the world's greatest black authors - check out the author index below, and take a look at our fantastic selection of Black History Month books with up to 40% off the RRP.

Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe is an ever-present on university and school syllabuses everywhere, and in recent years authors such as Andrea Levy, who won both the the 2004 Orange Prize and the 2005 Whitbread Prize (now the Costa Award) with her novel of the Caribbean diaspora, Small Island, and the wonderful Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who won the Orange Prize in 2006 with Half of a Yellow Sun, have demonstrated the cultural importance and popularity of both black writing and by extension, black history. Benjamin Zephaniah is one of our most popular and socially aware performance poets, and the precociously brilliant Helen Oyeyemi, who wrote her novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school, is one of the latest crop of talented young black authors.

You can read more about these and many other leading black authors on our Black History Month Author Index