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