Black History

This 1952 classic explores a black man's predicament in mid-twentieth century America. Winner of the National Book Award, this novel also made Modern Library's list of the "100 best novels of all time."

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Gwendolyn Brooks, a key black poet of the Civil Rights Era, was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize.

One of only a handful of novels published by black women during the forties, the story of ambitious Cleo Judson is a long-time cult classic. The Living Is Easy is delightfully wry and ironic humor--even bitchiness--of the novel coexists with a challenging moral and social complexity. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

"Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture." (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Poet, dramatist, essayist, fiction writer and political activist, Amiri Baraka is considered by many to be the most influential and preeminent African-American literary figures of our time. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

This collection of literary works documents and captures the social and cultural turmoil of the 1960s' Black Arts Movement. Many of the contributors became prominent, nationally and internationally. Others receded into the cultural landscape. But their collected works presents a manifesto to bring about change in Black thought and action, generated from a Black aesthetic. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the most celebrated living American writers. Her novel Beloved won the American Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that tells the story of two sisters through their correspondence. (Descriptive content provided by Syndetics™, a Bowker service)

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was one of the most beloved American poets of her generation. Her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is also a treasured classic.

This novel is the story of an African sold into slavery in America, and of his descendants. It was adapted into a Pulitzer Prize winning TV miniseries.