African American History Month: Fiction & Literature

This is a fictionalized autobiography of a 110-year-old former slave woman who witnessed more than a century of African American history and struggles, from the time of the southern confederacy to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Evans's debut collection of short stories, mostly about the experiences of young African American and mixed race women, is filled with funny, wise, readable gems.

Inspired by research into her own family's history, Tademy created this epic family saga about four generations of women living in 19th and early 20th century Louisiana.

This book of poetry is a snapshot of African American society as seen through the eyes of Nikki Giovanni and is a great introduction to her work. Her poems, written in the 1970s, make you feel like you're living through the era along with her, and pack an emotional punch.

McFadden tells the story of a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer named Easter Bartlett (loosely based on Zora Neale Hurston) who flees the Jim Crow South to pursue her dreams, but encounters her fair share of hardship along the way.

A 14 year-old boy is both attracted and repulsed by the church, his father, and everything his father represents; he longs to experience all the world has to offer, but he is terrified by sin. Ranked by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove—a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

Colson Whitehead's semi-autobiographical novel about two teenage brothers navigating between black and white worlds and coming of age in 1980s New York is clever, funny, and drenched in pop culture nostalgia.

Set in a rural Mississippi town on the Gulf Coast, a pregnant teenage girl and her family eke out a precarious existence in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Winner of the 2011 National Book Award.

McKinney-Whetstone examines three generations of South Philadelphia women, and the impact that mental illness, a mother's secrets, and a daughter's disappearance have on their lives.

Based on his experiences teaching at Locke High School, Tervalon's powerful first novel is told in the voices of young people living in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1990s.

A compilation of the greatest work by one of the most significant writers of the Civil Rights Era. Includes essays and works of fiction.

Without a word of explanation, 89-year-old Isabelle asks her hairdresser, Dorrie, to drive her from Arlington, Texas to Cincinnati, Ohio to attend a funeral.  Dorrie agrees to this outlandish request because it will provide her with much needed time apart from her teenage son and the new man in her life.  Isabelle is white and Dorrie is black, but this is not Isabelle’s first interracial interaction. 

Just as his strength is about to give out, Morris, a young U.S. Navy enlistee, is pulled out of the waters of Pearl Harbor by a sailor who later perishes from one of the relentless Japanese Imperial Army torpedo attacks.  When Morris returns home to Boston, he calls upon his rescuer's sister, Beatrice, to pay his respects.  The comfort they offer each other is a godsend, while the sexual attraction they feel is as compelling as it is forbidden.  Beatrice is black and Morris is white, and during the early 1940s Beatrice’s friends and relatives believe that nothing but trouble will come from this liaison. Morris tells no one about Beatrice because he is married and has a young baby that he has yet to get to know.

When Raina’s African-American mother and Nancy’s Japanese-American father fall in love and move in together, the grown-ups’ peers object to the relationship. The daughters, on the other hand, are highly competitive basketball players totally immersed in the rivalry between their South Central Los Angeles high schools.  And Nancy quietly grapples with her one-sided attraction to Raina.

At the age of 21, Harriet Heming leaves behind her Monticello home and her life as a slave. With her fair skin and red hair, she is able to pass as a white woman, but without being granted emancipation by her father, Thomas Jefferson, she must guard this secret for the rest of her life because of the laws of slavery and miscegenation. This is a sequel to Chase-Riboud’s landmark novel, Sally Hemings, which documents the relationship between President Jefferson and his slave mistress.

Poems about desire, new love, lost love, and enduring love.

In 1939 with the reluctant blessing of her Philadelphia Negro family, classical singer Delia Daley marries David Strom, a German Jewish émigré, who teaches physics at Columbia University. Delia masterfully transmits her musical gifts to their three children, but the seething racial hatred of the era constricts and jeopardizes their lives to such a degree that the family’s Jewishness becomes totally eclipsed.

This collection of short stories by celebrated fantasy author Nalo Hopkinson is incredibly original and beguiling. The stories throw you straight into new and fantastic worlds that you will wish to stay in longer.  Whether it be the quirky and adorable world of “Miss Emily Breakfast,” or the chilling coming of age “The Easthound,” this is a collection you will not be able to put down. 

 

In 1953, pale, watchful Boy Novak flees her abusive rat-catcher father, alights in the small New England town of Flax Hill, and warily settles into an almost happy marriage with widower Arturo Whitman. She cannot, however, shake her inherent distrust of his uncannily beautiful gentle daughter, Snow, and after the birth of her own daughter, Bird, she sends Snow to live with relatives in the South. A mesmerizing Snow White reimagining that incisively explores the history of race relations in America, the complexity of parental love, and the mutability of appearance and perceptions. Oyeyemi's writing is assured and natural and her storytelling masterful.

After a war in the distant past between rival gods, the losing deities were forced to become slaves to mortal humans. A young woman, named possible heir to the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, finds her life increasingly complicated by these subjugated gods.

In 2025 California, a time of urban squalor, rampant violence, and deadly decay, anarchy rules. An eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward with a small band of followers. This book, and its follow-up, Parable of the Talents, brought fame to the Pasadena born Butler.

 Roxane Gay levels a breath-taking punch with the story of Mireille Duval Jameson,  who is kidnapped and held for ransom where she is beaten, raped and mentally abused.  When released, she is in severe shock and suffering from PTSD, all of which brings up unspoken family issues.  Without sensationalism and with great truth, the novel is a response to the notion of closure and complete healing for victims of PTSD, but also about a type of healing that allows a victim to have a life.  A therapist tells her that she will get better, but she will never get over what happened.

In this near future post Zombie apocalypse, civilian troops are sent into Manhattan to flush out the remaining undead after the major firefights decimated their number.  Mark Spitz is a member of one such three person squad, scouting out old office buildings and trying to come to terms with the trauma of having survived the worst of it. But reconstruction of everyday life is not going as smoothly as the reports would have the general populace believe and Spitz may soon be in store for something a lot worse than the drudgery of straggler patrol.

In a post apocalyptic Africa, Onyesonwu is born as a product of powerful magic and shameful rape. Ostracized by both local tribes, Onye and her mother live a quiet life. But Onye soon comes to realize that the circumstances surrounding her birth have imbued her with unexpected magical power. As she fights to learn to wield her natural gift, she must also break free from the confines of her expected role in life.

In Tananarive Due’s first short story collection, the reader is presented with a combination of haunting speculative fiction and horror that will astound. Intense and packed with emotion, these tales truly take advantage of the short story format, fitting mystery, despair, death and hope into tightly wound and rich worlds. Whether you find yourself lost in Gracetown, Florida or flung into a sparse apocalyptic future, Due’s stories will transport you far away from the everyday.

 

Jed, middle-class, black and gay in 1980s' Chicago, hopes to find freedom and acceptance in Berlin, as did William Bradshaw in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories. Darryl Pinckney's writing style and plot structure weave stream of consciousness, reflection and critical commentary, into a uniquely modern story.

A fantasy and historical novel that explores the experience of American slavery through the eyes of Cora, who escapes on a railroad that runs underground in antebellum America. Her experiences as she journeys from Georgia to the north are amazingly portrayed by Whitehead. The book often lurches from the gruesome violence that defined slavery to a world of fantasy, with all of it grounded in the horrific reality of slavery.

An eleven-year-old runaway slave, a nine-year-old freed by her master, and a seven-year-old son of a plantation owner find themselves alone during the Civil War and must rely on each other to survive.

The Youngers, a working-class black family, struggle against economic hardship and racial prejudice. Winner of the New York Drama Critic's Award and the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

After her parents' divorce, biracial teenager Nina Armstrong doesn't feel like she fits anywhere; however, she finds meaning and inspiration when she learns about her great-great grandmother's escape from slavery in the 1850s.

Isabel, a young American Revoluntionary-era slave, wades through the dangerous shoals of staying loyal to her disabled sister, spying for the rebels, and facing her Tory master's cruelty. This book was a National Book Award finalist. Be sure to check out the sequel, Forge, as well.

During World War II, 18-year-old Ida Mae Jones passes for white so she can join the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), serve her country, and fulfill her lifelong dream of flying. Smith tells a riveting story about a little-known chapter of World War II history, set against the backdrop of Jim Crow America.

Two garbage men argue about and explore the links between the aftermaths of slavery, the legalized discrimination of Jim Crow America, and African American lives during the 1950s. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

Ten plays by prominent and emerging African American women playwrights. Reflective of modern issues, many of these plays are in formats which are theatre breakouts 

A compilation of poetry (1974 - 2004) by Rita Dove, who was the first African American United States Poet Laureate, 1993-1995. The subject matter and form of her work are diverse and expansive.

Award-winning poet Natasha Trethewey's collection explores race through the history of the United States. The poems are personal and historical. Natasha Trethewey was United States Poet Laureate, 2012 - 2014.

Thirteen-year-old Jojo lives in southern Mississippi with his baby sister, their neglectful mother, their grandfather, and their dying grandmother. When their mother Leonie gets a call that their father Michael is being released from prison, they embark on a road trip full of revelations that may harm, as much as heal.

Essays, poetry, memoirs and fiction comprise this collection of writings by African American Women, who lived during the nineteenth-century. There are familiar and well-known women: Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, however there are many more who deserve attention.

It is not very often that a book merits being called brilliant--this one does. A historical novel about slavery, adventure, dashed dreams, and unexpected possibilites, all portrayed in language that is lush, evocative and revelatory. Edugyan has the ability to meld plot, characterization and language to perfection.

Whitehead's previous genre explorations are synthesized into a lean and horrifying prison novel ripped from the pages of history. His writing has become so even and cool that you don't feel the shank sliding into your gut as you finish the story.

Daniel Cumberland was a free Black man studying law in Massachusetts when he was kidnapped and sold as a slave in the South. Unable to settle into his old life after a friend buys his freedom, he becomes a Loyal League operative, fighting undercover. Janeta Sanchez is a proud Cubana living with her father in Florida until he is arrested, and she believes that she can secure his release by gathering information for the Confederacy from the Loyal League. This unlikely pair is forced to work as a team, and their prickly relationship is complicated by their growing attraction to each other.

 

A collection of essays, speeches, numerous types of reviews, which examine and celebrate African American heritage. Her ability to see and express unique perspectives on many subjects will make readers think and see the world around them in a new way.

Robin Coste Lewis, Los Angeles Poet Laureate, uses words, metre, rhyme and format to examine the artistic representation of black female enslavement through the millenniums.

This poetry has the full-hearted voice of rap, beat, hip-hop, and will pull you in, as Goodwin firmly, beautifully shatters everyone's assumptions and preconceptions.

Poet and writer Nikki Giovanni's insights and words are as sharp and precise as ever. She speaks truth not only to power, but to all of us, and in language that is clear, bold and cannot be misconstrued.

A coming-of-age tale about 13-year-old Jordan Garrison who has issues: lectures from his widowed father about how to be a man; becoming distanced from his younger siblings; entering high school; and then the sudden death of his father. Jordan’s hip, warm grandmother seems to be his only support, until a shopkeeper, Snackman, provides guidance by giving the young man a frayed, stained piece of kente cloth. This brings knowledge of his rich African-American heritage that culminates in a Kwanzaa ceremony.

Thelonius “Monk” Ellison is a serious Black novelist whose books barely sell. Depressed by family problems and the rejection of his latest manuscript, he overcomes his tendency to “write white” and produces a parody of ghetto fiction using a pseudonym. To his horror, no one recognizes it as a parody, and it becomes a huge bestseller, forcing Monk into further deceptions.

Belle da Costa Greene was a rare books librarian, best known for developing the personal library of J. P. Morgan. She was beautiful, intellectually brilliant, loaded with charisma, and knew what she wanted out of life. Born to Black parents, she could and easily did pass for white. This illuminating, compelling fictionalized biography brings to life the times in which she lived, the early part of the 1900s, and her life.

In lyrical, elegiac prose, Jesmyn Ward writes hauntingly about the inner power achieved by a teenage slave, Annis, whose parents were a Black mother and the white man who enslaved them. 

S.A. Cosby excels in another tense thriller set in his native Virginia. A son returns home to help with a family emergency and almost instantly finds himself embroiled in a deadly web of escalating violence.