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This collection of titles by Black authors encompasses decades of literary work. These titles are driven by diverse experiences — inside you will find comedy, drama, suspense, love, and sorrow, all brought to life by authors with a command of attention-grabbing language.
Near the top of the list, you will find contemporary titles, with classic literary titles following after.
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The Water Dancer
Ta-Nehisi Coates - One World
Format: Book
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Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her — but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram... |
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The Vanishing Half: A Novel
Brit Bennett - Riverhead Books
Format: Hardcover
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From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together... |
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The Girl with the Louding Voice: A Novel
Abi Dare - Dutton
Format: Book
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The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale... |
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Transcendent Kingdom: A novel
Yaa Gyasi - Knopf
Format: Book
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Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked... |
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The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
Format: Paperback
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Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police... |
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Memorial: A Novel
Bryan Washington - Riverhead Books
Format: Book
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A funny, sexy, profound dramedy about two young people at a crossroads in their relationship and the limits of love.
Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher,... |
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Deacon King Kong: A Novel
James McBride - Riverhead Books
Format: Book
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In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range.
In... |
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Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Z. Z. Packer - Riverhead Books; 1st edition
Format: Book
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Packer dazzles with her command of language, surprising and delighting us with unexpected turns and indelible images, as she takes us into the lives of characters on the periphery, unsure of where they belong. We meet a Brownie troop of black girls who are confronted with a troop of white... |
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The Color Purple
Alice Walker - Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition
Format: Book
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A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance... |
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Kindred
Octavia E. Butler - Beacon Press; 25th Anniversary edition
Format: Paperback
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The first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California,... |
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Beloved
Toni Morrison - Alfred A. Knopf; 1st edition
Format: Book
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Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long... |
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The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Format: Book
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The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue... |
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Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin - Delta Trade Paperbacks
Format: Paperback
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Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting... |
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