My Reading List

MY READING LIST

Below is a partial list of books I’ve read over the years and enjoyed. I’ve grouped them in categories that are purely subjective. Several authors on the list have more books than noted.

Classics

Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

William Attaway – Blood on the Forge

James Baldwin – Blues for Mr. Charlie, Just Above My Head, If Beale Street Could Talk

Toni Cade Bambara – The Salt Eaters

Lerone J. Bennett – Before the Mayflower: A History of Black  America

Gwendolyn Brooks – Maude Martha

Claude Brown – Manchild and the Promised Land

William Wells Brown – Clotel

Charles Chesnutt – The Marrow of Tradition

Alice Childress – A Short Walk

W.E.B. DuBois – The Souls of Black Folk

Ralph Ellison –  Invisible Man

Ernest J. Gaines – In My Father’s House, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Chester Himes  – If He Hollers, Lonely Crusade

Zora Neal Hurston – Their Eyes were Watching God, Dusk Tracks

Charles Johnson – Middle Passage

James Weldon Johnson – The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man.

John O. Killens – Youngblood, And Then They Heard the Thunder

Clarence Major – Emergency Exit

Paule Marshall – Brown Girl Brown Stone

Louise Merriweather – Daddy was a Numbers Runner, Fragment of the Ark

Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Tar Baby, Song of Solomon, Sula

Ann Petry – The Street

Alice Walker – The Color Purple, In Love and Trouble,  Meridian, The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Margaret Walker – Jubilee

Dorothy West – The Wedding

John A. Williams – The Man Who Cried I Am

Richard Wright – Native Son, Black Boy, The Long Dream

Children’s Authors

Virginia Hamilton- The People Could Fly

Countee Cullen –The Lost Zoo

Irene Small – My Nana and Me;   Kevin and His Dad;  Jonathan and His Mommy      http://irenesmall.com

Teen

Mildred Taylor – Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry  

Rosa Guy – Edith Jackson

John Steptoe – Marcia

Walter Dean Myers – MalcolmX: A Fire Burning Brightly, Fallen Angels, Bad Boy:A Memoir

Brenda Wilkinson – Ludell and Willie, Ludell’s New York Time

Irene Small – Don’t Say Aint

Contemporary

Walter Mosley – Devil in the Blue Dress

Marita Golden – And Do Remember Me

J. California Cooper – In Search of Satisfaction

Bebe Moore Campbell  – Sweet Summer; Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine

Gloria Naylor – Mama Day

Paule Marshall – Daughters; Brown Girl, Brownstone

Sherley Anne Williams – Dessa Rose

John A. Williams – The Click Song; Night Song

James McEachin – Tell Me A Tale

Anita Richmond Bunkley – Black Gold

Edward P. Jones – The Known World

Stephen L. Carter – Emperor of  Ocean Park

Barbara Chase Riboud – Hottentot Venus

Mary Monroe – The Upper Room

Diane McKinney Wetstone – Blues Dancing

Biographies and Autobiographies

Biography of Zora Neal Hurston Sorrow’s Kitchen by Mary Lyons

Alex Haley – The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Melba Pattillo Beals – Warriors Don’t Cry

Bricktop – Bricktop and James Haskins

Miriam Makeba – Miriam Makeba, My Story

Langston Hughes – The Big Sea, I Wonder as I Wander

Ben Carson – Gifted Hands

Sidney Poitier – Heart of a Man

Maya Angelou – Heart of a Woman

Ishmael Beah – A Long Way Gone

Anna Christian – Meet it, Greet it, and Defeat it!, The Biography of Frances E Williams, Actress/Activist

Books from the Harlem Renaissance

Wallace Thurman – The Blacker the Berry , Infants of the Spring

Nella Larsen – Passing, Quicksand

Jessie Redman Fauset – There is Confusion, Chinaberry Tree

Jean Toomer – Cane

Rudolf Fisher – Walls of  Jericho

Claude McKay – Home to Harlem, Banana Boat

Writers from the Diaspora

Chinua Achebe – (Nigeria ) – Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease

Jacques Romaine – (Haiti Masters of the Dew

Aime Cesaire – (Martinique) Return to my Native Land

Buchi Emecheta – (Nigeria )  The Bride Price

Ferdinand Oyono – Boy

Peter Abraham –(South Africa A Wreath for Udomo, Mine Boy

James Ngugi –(Kenya)  Petals of Blood, Weep Not Child

Edwidge Danticat – (Haiti Breath, Eyes, and Memory

Ayaan Hirshi Ali –((Somalia  Infidel

Chimanada Ngozi Adichie – (Nigeria)  Half a Yellow Sun

Helon Habila – Waiting for an Angel

Camara Laye – The Radiance of the King

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