fiction & poetry
recommended reading
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward — Rich with Ward's distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is "an odyssey through rural Mississippi's past and present" and a majestic and unforgettable family story about fathers and sons, legacies, violence, and love.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston — a feminist classic of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Their Eyes Were Watching God narrates Janie Crawford's ripening from a vibrant but voiceless teenage Black girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (really anything by Toni Morrison — Sula, Beloved, Song of Solomon) — A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin — A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two "letters, " written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism.
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson — From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga — This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to feminists of color as they emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities — race, class, gender, and sexuality — systemic to women of color oppression and liberation."
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi — Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi's extraordinary novel illuminates slavery's troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed--and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker — 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 and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience.
Kindred by Octavia Butler — Kindred is Butler’s most celebrated, critically acclaimed work, held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afro-futurism movement. It tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana’s own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
I Wonder as I Wander by Langston Hughes — In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and brings to life the famous and the humble, from Arthur Koestler to Emma, the Black Mammy of Moscow. It is the continuously amusing, wise revelation of an American writer journeying around the often strange and always exciting world he loves.
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara – The story of a community of black people searching for the healing properties of salt who witness an event that will change their lives forever. Some of them are centered, some are off-balance; some are frightened, and some are daring. From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.
Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks (specifically Maud Martha and In the Mecca) — Spanning more than 30 years, this collection of literary masterpieces by the venerable Ms. Gwendolyn Brooks, arguably Illinois' most beloved Poet Laureate and Chicago's elder black literary stateswoman, Blacks includes all of Ms. Brooks' critically acclaimed writings.
The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor — In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects--a common prison and a shared home.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison — A milestone in American literature, Invisible Man has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood, " and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (really anything by Octavia Butler) — When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.
Electric Arches by Eve Ewing — Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Ewing's narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. She imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances — blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. Her visual art is spare, playful, and poignant, inviting fresh conversations about race, gender, the city, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up.
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy — The Turner House is a perfect study of a family right on the edge of change. The Turner matriarch is nearing the end of her life, and all 13 siblings have something to say about that. Highlighting the oppression of domestic life; the messy, chaotic complications of sibling relationships; and the almost physical ache and longing for family and home; Flournoy delivers a beautiful elegy on kin, modern life, and the things that keep us connected, as well as the things that keep us apart.
Passing by Nella Larsen — Married to a successful physician and prominently ensconced in Harlem's vibrant society of the 1920s, Irene Redfield leads a charmed existence — until she is shaken out of it by a chance encounter with a childhood friend who has been "passing for white." An important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen was the first Black woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Her fictional portraits of women seeking their identities through a fog of racial confusion were informed by her own Danish-West Indian parentage, and Passing offers fascinating psychological insights into issues of race and gender.
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn — Expertly evoking the rhythms of Jamaica and the bustling streets of New York, Patsy weaves between the lives of mother and daughter, Patsy and Tru, in vignettes spanning more than a decade as they ultimately find a way back to one another. As with her masterful debut Here Comes the Sun, Dennis-Benn charts the geography of a hidden world — that of a paradise lost, swirling with the echoes of lilting Patois, in which one woman fights to discover her sense of self in a world that tries to define her.
