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Feb 12, 2024 · Getty Images. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) at a book fair, New York, New York, circa 1937. The daughter of two formerly enslaved people, Zora Neale Hurston was a prominent figure in the Harlem ...
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- The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Buy on Amazon. In The Sellout, Paul Beatty introduces us to a young, Black watermelon-and-weed grower, named Me. When Me’s father is gunned down by police, and his hometown Dickens is erased from the map, he decides to face one injustice by burying it beneath another.
- The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Buy on Amazon. Jemisin’s unmissable, triple Hugo-Award-winning trilogy, The Broken Earth, takes place in the Stillness — a world in which society is structured around surviving nuclear winters.
- Beloved by Toni Morrison. Buy on Amazon. The seminal work from a giant of modern literature, Beloved chronicles the experiences of Sethe, an ex-slave living with her daughter in a house haunted by secrets.
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Buy on Amazon. Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God was out of print for nearly 30 years, due to its readers’ initial rejection of its strong, Black, female protagonist.
- Maya Angelou. Acclaimed American poet, author and activist Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928. Often referred to as a spokesman for African Americans and women through her many works, her gift of words connected all people who were “committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States.”
- James Baldwin. Though he spent most of his life living abroad to escape the racial prejudice in the United States, James Baldwin is the quintessential American writer.
- Amiri Baraka. Born in 1934, poet, writer and political activist Amiri Baraka used his writing as a weapon against racism and became one of the most widely published African American writers.
- Octavia Butler. In a genre known for being traditionally white and male, Octavia Butler broke new ground in science fiction as an African American woman.
- Toni Morrison. Among numerous accolades, Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and the first Black woman to be an editor at Random House.
- Anna J. Cooper. Author and Black liberation activist Anna J. Cooper was born into slavery in the 1850s yet earned a doctorate in history from the University of Paris, becoming the fourth African American woman in history to get a doctorate.
- James Baldwin. Best known for his essays on race, class, and sexuality (although he also wrote novels and plays), James Baldwin was a champion and leading voice of the American civil rights movement.
- Gwendolyn Brooks. The first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for her 1949 collection "Annie Allen"), Gwendolyn Brooks was a revered poet and author.
Oct 17, 2023 · The ultimate Black History Month reading list. Thirty-five of the best books by Black authors, from Angela Davis to Ibram X. Kendi, James Baldwin to Bernardine Evaristo. The breadth of Black experience is such that coming up with a “best” books list is nearly impossible. However, there does exist a common understanding about which works one ...
Oct 3, 2024 · The Color of Water (1996) The Good Lord Bird (2013) The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (2023) James McBride Novelist and memoirist James McBride in 2020. An accomplished jazz musician and a journalist, McBride became a best-selling author with his first book, The Color of Water, a memoir of his white, Jewish mother.
African American literature is the corpus of fictional, dramatic, and poetic works produced by American writers of African descent. To most readers, it’s associated with the boldly experimental output of the Harlem Renaissance — the jazz-inflected, Manhattan-centered artistic movement in the early 20th century that saw Black authors like Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes win ...
