Diversity: African / African American

TITLE & AUTHOR

145^th Street: Short Stories

Wrenchingly honest of short stories capturing the heartbeat of one memorable block in Harlem.

23 Shades Of Black

NYPD cop Filomena Buscarsela has pretty much seen it all in her five years on the force. But after she recognizes the victim of a fatal toxic leak, which occurred outside her jurisdiction, her instincts tell her that something is not what it seems to be.

Amistad

PATE, A

True story of the 1839 mutiny on the Spanish ship "La Amistad". When the ship is intercepted by the US Navy, and the captives imprisoned, a series of charged trials for their freedom begins that call into question the controversial institution of slavery.

Another Way To Dance

SOUTHGATE, M

Black ballet dancer Vicki is certain she loves to dance, but can she contend with racism and doubt surrounding her talents?

Autobiography Of Jane Pitman

A fictional biography of a black woman born in slavery whose long life span saw the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of her people.

Autobiography Of Malcolm X

The absorbing personal story of Malcolm X's rise from hoodlum, dope peddler and pimp to dynamic leader of the black revolution.

Beloved*

In post-Civil War Ohio, the past continues to haunt the ex-slave Sethe, and the surviving members of her family.

Black Boy

Richard Wright's unforgettable story of growing up in the Jim Crow South. The book is told from the perspective of the adult Wright, who was still trying to come to grips with the cruel deprivations and humiliations of his childhood.

Black Like Me

GRIFFIN, J

Bluest Eye

Haunting story of a young black girl who prays every night for blue eyes, thinking that blue eyes would change her life and make it better.

Bride Price

EMECHETA, B

A story about a Nigerian girl who is allowed to finish her education because a diploma will enhance her bride price, who then rebels against traditional marriage customs.

Brown Girl In The Ring

Bud, Not Buddy*

When his mother dies in 1936, Bud hits the road, convinced that his mother's posters of a jazz band would lead him to the father he has never met.

Clover

Clover Hill, who is a shrewd South Carolina orphan, is raised by her stepmother, a white woman frowned upon by Clover's black kinfolk.

Color Purple

WALKER, A

A triumphant novel of a black woman's life in the South.

Come A Stranger

After returning to a Connecticut dance camp, her former friends treat Mina differently, and she becomes aware for the first time that she is the only black girl there.

Confessions Of Nat Turner

STYRON, W

A 25^th anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel based on the true story of an abortive slave rebellion in 1831 gives a chilling account of a noble man's moral decline.

Dancer

HEWETT, L

16-year-old Stephanie works hard toward her goal of becoming a professional ballerina, but there are complications.

Danger Zone

KLASS, D

When promoters pick an American High School Dream Team for a tournament in Italy, Jimmy Doyle has to persuade the talented African American inner-city kids who make up most of the team that he deserves the opportunity.

Durango Street

When Rufus Henry gets out of work camp for Grand Theft Auto, he has only one place to go - back to Durango Street. Almost right away, he gets on the wrong side of the Gassers, has to join the rival Moors - and starts running for his life.

Edgar Allen*

NEUFELD, J

The bitter repercussions of a white family's intended adoption of a black child.

Education Of Mary: A Little Miss Of Color

In 1832, Prudence Crandall, a Quaker educator in Connecticut, closed her Canterbury Female Seminary and reopened it as a school for young black women. This novel revolves around the formation of that school and the storm of controversy it created in town.

Face At The Edge Of The World

Fallen Angels

Fennel Family Papers

A professor at the bottom rung of the History Department ladder at a minor South Carolina university sees a chance to redeem himself when he discovers that one of his students is a direct descendant of the notorious Capt. Jack Fennel - who's the key to a Civil War-era historical controversy.

Flyy Girl

16-year-old Tracy Ellison is willing to go much further than any of her girlfriends as she sets out to lure the most popular boys in her neighborhood. Spoiled by her relatives and too much for her mother to handle, Tracy uses her personal brand of intimidating flattery to conquer one guy after another - until she meets her match in Victor Hinson, her Mr. Everything.

Forged By Fire*

While his mother was serving a prison sentence for child neglect, Gerald lived with his aunt. Then, one day, his mother returns with her new husband and Angel, Gerald's little sister. As the children grow up, it becomes more and more apparent that Angel needs Gerald's protection from her father's sexual abuse. But who will protect Gerald?

Gathering Of Old Men

In this eloquent novel, set in Louisiana in the 1970's, eighteen old, black men each claim to have shot a white man, and in the process, experience their first taste of power and pride.

Girls At War, And Other Stories

Go Tell It On The Mountain

Autobiographical novel of a family in Harlem composed of an angry father, a stoic mother, a rebellious older son and a sensitive younger one.

Going Where I'm Coming from : Memoirs of American Youth 

Multicultural perspective on establishing identity and experiencing life as a young person. Well-known writers recall things from their growing up with perception and poignancy.

Good Negress

Denise Palms is transplanted from her grandmother's rural Virginia home to the chaos of big-city Detroit in 1963 to help care for the baby expected by her mother and stepfather.

Hang A Thousand Trees With Ribbons: The Story Of Phillis Wheatley

A fictionalized biography of the eighteenth-century African woman who, as a child, was brought to New England to be a slave, and after publishing her first poem when a teenager, gained renown throughout the colonies as an important black American poet.

Heaven

JOHNSON, A

When Marley, who is African American, learns that her itinerant uncle is really her father and her loving "parents" are her aunt and uncle, she has to come to terms with her feelings of anger, betrayal and curiosity as to who she really is.

Home Across The Road

A carefully drawn portrait of seven generations of North Carolina families, the white Redds who owned the Rosemary plantation, and the black Redds who worked there as slaves.

I Hadn't Meant To Tell You This*

Two girls, one a poor abused white girl, the other a middle class African American whose mother had left the family, build a friendship in spite of their cultural and racial differences.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman confronting her own life with dignity.

I Thought My Soul Would Rise And Fly

The ending of the Civil War has brought, in theory, long-sought freedom, but the former slaves at Davis Hall are still tied to the plantation. Patsy, who has secretly learned to read and write, keeps a diary in which she questions what freedom means and writes of her hope to be a teacher.

If Beale Street Could Talk

Fonny, a talented young artist, finds himself unjustly arrested and locked in New York's infamous (prison) tombs. His girlfriend, Tish, is determined to free him, and to have his baby.

If You Come Softly*

For 15-year-old Jeremiah, who is black, and Ellie, who is Jewish, the love they find is special and rare. But can it withstand the prejudice the world around them feels towards a mixed relationship?

In Love And Trouble: Stories Of Black Women

WALKER, A

The lives of many black women and the hardships that they went through are described in this collection of short stories.

Intruder In The Dust

This novel of a young, white Mississippi boy's attempt to save an elderly black man accused of murder is sharp commentary on the difference between race relationships in the North and in the South.

Invisible Man

Compelling saga of a black man who struggles from the South to the North, always encountering other people's preconceived notions about him.

Jazz

MORRISON, T

Morrison, in her sixth novel, enters 1926 Harlem, a new black world then (``safe from fays [whites] and the things they think up''), and moves into a love story - with a love that could clear a space from the past, give a life or take one.

Join In: Multi-Ethnic Stories By Outstanding Writers For Young Adults

GALLO, D (ed.)

Collection of short stories representing a wide variety of ethnic cultures, including African American, Asian, Hispanic and Native American.

Juneteenth

Everyone is shocked when Senator Sunraider, mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet, calls an old black minister to his deathbed. A story emerges of how the senator, an orphan raised by the minister, denied everything to achieve his goals.

Lena*

When their mother dies, Lena and Dion, disguised as boys, run away in search of their mother's family.

Lesson Before Dying

Set in the 1940's, this is a heartbreaking story of friendship between two black men, one condemned to die.

Let The Circle Be Unbroken

Liar’s Game

Dana Ann Smith leaves her husband in New York and finds new love in Los Angeles, only to learn that her new beau has a rocky romantic past - and his ex is coming to LA. So, for that matter, is Dana's ex-husband.

Life For A Life

HILL, E

Life In Prison

Like Sisters On The Homefront*

WILLIAMS-GARCIA, R

When 14-year-old Gayle becomes pregnant a second time, her mother sends her to Georgia to live with her Uncle Luther. Strong-willed and impulsive, Gayle eventually makes friends with her pious cousin Constance, but develops a true affinity for Luther's stubborn, spirited grandmother.

Lilies Of The Field

Homer Smith, a black ex-GI, encounters Mother Maria Marthe, the leader of a group of German-speaking nuns, and is soon playing a pivotal role in helping them realize their dream of building an adobe chapel in the desert.

Living By The Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987*

WALKER, A

This is a collection of work on the themes of race, gender, sexuality, and political freedom within the author's life and the lives of friends, family and ancestors.

Losing Absalom

PATE, A

Absalom Goodman worked all his life to build a home for his family. Now the neighborhood has changed for the worse, lifelong dreams have turned into bitter realities, and Absalom is dying of cancer.

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

MCCALL, N

A black Washington Post reporter who served time recounts his life and brilliantly shows why prison has become a rite of passage for many young black men.

Mama

MCMILLAN, T

Focusing on the African-American woman's experience, Mama reflects on children, men, money, loneliness and alcoholism through Mildred Peacock's life and family.

Marked By Fire*

When a tornado hits Abby's small black community, her family is driven apart. Over a span of 20 years, she experiences the best and the worst life has to offer.

Men Of Brewster Place

NAYLOR, G

Ben, the kind, alcoholic janitor from The Women of Brewster Place returns as a mythical minstrel of sorts, wandering in and out of the lives of Brewster's male denizens, introducing their stories, each a quest for the meaning of manhood.

Milk In My Coffee

Two people, Jordan Greene, a young black urban professional, and Kimberly Chavers, a white painter, come to terms with the attitudes that shape their identities, while learning painful lessons about getting beyond what the eye can see.

Miriam’s Song: A Memoir

Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy is a story of growing up in South Africa under apartheid. Miriam's Song is the story of Mark's sister, who was left behind in South Africa. It is the gripping tale of a woman who came of age amid the violence and rebellion of the 1980s, and finally saw the destruction of apartheid and the birth of a new, democratic South Africa.

Monster; The Autobiography Of An LA Gang Member

Monster Kody, today known as Sanyika Sakur, spent 16 years as a gangbanger in South Central Los Angeles. His account begins at age eleven, when he was inducted into the ranks of the Crips, and ends (hundreds of bodies later) with Scott serving a seven-year prison term for beating a crack dealer.

Monsters

16-year-old Steve Harmon, on trial as an accomplice to a murder, records his trial in the form of a film script as he tries to sort out who he is and what is real.

Mother Of Pearl

Set in the Deep South in the late 1950s, Mother of Pearl vividly brings to life the extraordinary inhabitants of the small town of Petal, Mississippi.

Motown And Didi

MYERS, W

Didi dreams of college and her boyfriend Motown dreams of steady work, but first, both of them must survive in the brutal present, which is Harlem - a backdrop of junkies, threats, danger and death.

Mouse Rap

It’s summertime in Harlem, and The Mouse (as he calls himself) and his friends look beyond dance contests and basketball for diversion. The rumor of a huge cash stash hidden in Harlem by a 1930’s gangster offers intriguing possibilities.

Native Son

Caught up in forces of racism he can't understand or control, Bigger Thomas, a black man living in Chicago in the early 1930’s, turns to violence.

Not Without Laughter

The poignant story of a young black boy's awakening to the sad and the beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town.

Outside Shot*

A Harlem youth on a basketball scholarship finds he is unprepared for the pressures of class, college sports and love.

Paradise

MORRISON, T

Settled by nine African American clans during the 1940s, the town Ruby, Oklahoma represents a small miracle of self-reliance and community spirit.

Pudd'nhead Wilson

In this funny but biting novel, a young slave woman exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's.

Reappearance Of Sam Webber

After his father’s desertion, Sam learns that family can come in various colors, shapes and sizes. An award winning portrayal of the daily joys, hopes and hungers of a middle-class black family, and that the worst of circumstances can be a blessing in disguise.

Road To Memphis*

The saga of the Logan family of Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry continues as Cassie comes to the aid of a black youth trying to flee the state after injuring a white boy.

Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry*

Unforgettable book of black pride and black heritage. Cassie Logan, daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, is determined to maintain her dignity through a turbulent year.

Sarny, A Life Remembered

In this companion novel to Nightjohn, the young slave girl Sarny is now a free woman. A widow, she flees the plantation in search of her children who have been sold away.

Scorpions*

Jamal knows that being the leader of the Scorpions is a bad idea, but he wants to anyway. It's only Tito who knows the real Jamal; it is Tito who steps in when Jamal's life is threatened.

Skin I'm In*

An African American girl learns to accept herself when tough kids at school harass by following the example of a strong African American teacher.

Slam*

17-year-old Greg "Slam" Harris can do it all on the court, but his grades aren't so hot. When his teachers put pressure on him, he blows up, and suddenly Slam is going one-on-one with his future.

Song Of Solomon

Macon Dead, an upper-class Northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family the danger and despair of the rank and file blacks with whom he shares the neighborhood. The plan leads his son onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped.

Sounder*

This extraordinary, moving story tells about a black family of sharecroppers saved from a posse by their loyal coon dog.

Spite Fences

Maggie Pugh has lived in Kinship, Georgia, all her life. Nothing has changed until the summer of 1960 when Maggie's friendships within the black community threaten an entire society's way of life.

Starplace*

Growing up in the early 1960's, Frannie has never given much thought to the color of her skin until Celeste, an African-American moves to her Oklahoma town.

Sugar

The story of two women: a modest, churchgoing wife and mother, and the young prostitute she befriends.

Sula

Traces the lives of two black women from their youth in small-town Georgia, through their divergent paths of womanhood to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.

Tears Of A Tiger

Andy is an African-American teenager whose life derails when, after a long evening of drinking, the car he drives crashes, killing his best friend. His guilt and despair lead him to turn away from family, friends and his plans for the future.

Tell Me How Long The Train's Been Gone

At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

This classic of black literature, written in 1937, tells with sympathy and immediacy the story of Janie Crawford's evolving selfhood through three marriages.

Things Fall Apart

The tragedy of a leading member of the Obi tribe in Africa in the days when white men were first appearing on the scene.

To Be A Slave

Eloquent personal testimony of the men and women who lived through slavery in the USA.

Toning The Sweep

Ola, Emmie's grandma who lives in the California desert is dying of cancer. Emily borrows a video camera and begins to record Ola's friends, reminiscing about their times together. In giving her grandmother a gift of 'memories of her people', Emily's knowledge and understanding of her own family, and especially of Ola, grows.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

This 1852 novel of slavery poses the question: "What is it to be a moral human being?"

Waiting To Exhale

MCMILLAN, T

Watsons Go To Birmingham - 1963

An engaging novel of a middle-class black family's trip from Flint, Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama, in the tumultuous days of the Civil Rights movement.

Ways Of White Folk

HUGHES, L

Hughes depicts black people colliding - sometimes humorously, more often tragically - with whites in the 1920s and '30s.

What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day

CLEAGE, P

Ava Johnson decides to sell her hair salon in Atlanta and move to San Francisco. On the way, she summers in Idlewild, the small town in northern Michigan where she grew up. Will she be able to move on, however, when her friends and family need her?

When We Were Colored

Taulbert looks back at his "colored" childhood in the segregated South with striking honesty and unusual affection, revealing the deep sense of community, optimism and self-worth instilled by his family.

White Romance*

As her all-black high school becomes more racially mixed, Talley befriends a white girl, who shares her passion for running, and becomes romantically involved with a drug dealer.

Women Of Brewster Place

NAYLOR, G

Chronicle of the communal strength of seven diverse black women who live in decaying rented houses on a walled-off street of an urban neighborhood.

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine

CAMPBELL, B

Chicago-born Armstrong is fifteen, black and unused to the ways of the segregated Deep South, when his mother sends him to rural Mississippi. He is killed for speaking a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, and the precariously balanced world and its determined people are changed forever.

Zack*

BELL, W

Child of a mixed marriage, Zack Lane finds out why his mother won't talk about her side of the family in this tale of race hatred and personal identity.