Summer Reading List for Africana Literature

The following is a sampling of many of my favorite Africana authors, novels, and theoretical works. This list of course, is by no means comprehensive, as the variety of compelling works available by writers of the African diaspora is very broad and dynamic. However, the following are among the most noteworthy and influential.

The Slave Narrative/Reconstruction
Clotel; Or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember edited by James Mellon
When I Was a Slave, edited by Norman R. Yetman
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass or My Bondage and My Freedom
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Women's Slave Narratives by Annie L. Burton, et al.
12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from The Civil War to WWII by Douglas A. Blackmon
A Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

The Harlem Renaissance
 
By Zora Neale Hurston:
Dust Tracks on a Road
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Seraph on the Sewanee 
Jonah's Gourd Vine
Moses, Man of the Mountain
The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire by Tananarive Due
The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen
Cane by Jean Toomer
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by J.W. Johnson
Gods Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by J.W. Johnson
There is Confusion by Jessie Fauset
The Big Sea by Langston Hughes
Banana Boat by Claude McKay

Modernists/The Chicago School
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Black Boy ( American Hunger ) by Richard Wright
Native Son by Richard Wright
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

By James Baldwin:
Giovanni's Room
Go Tell it on the Mountain

Universal Apartheid/Pan-Africanism
Long Walk to Freedom: With Connections by Nelson Mandela
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid by Nancy L. Clark and William H. Worger
Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography--The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa by Mark Mathabane

The Civil Rights Movement
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
Free At Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle by Sara Bullard, Julian Bond
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls Lanier, Lisa Frazier Page
Strength to Love by Martin Luther King, Jr.
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Black Power Movement
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
Women, Culture and Politics by Angela Davis

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley/Malcolm X
Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed 
Yellow Back Radio Broke-down by Ishmael Reed
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton by Bobby Seale
Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton

Black Women's Renaissance Writers
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou

By Alice Walker
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
The Third Life of Grange Copeland
The Temple of My Familiar
Meridian
The Color Purple

By Toni Morrison:
Beloved
Sula
The Bluest Eye
Song of Solomon
Home


Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Contemporary African American Women's Fiction and Theory
Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa
The Hand I Fan With by Tina McElroy Ansa
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sistah Soulja
Push by Sapphire
Corregidora by Gayle Jones
Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash

Afro-Futurism, Fantasy and Science Fiction:
Blood Colony by Tananarive Due
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson
The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy ed. Uppinder Mehan and Samuel R. Delany
Voodoo Dreams: A Novel of Marie Laveau by Jewell Parker Rhodes

By Octavia Butler:
Wild Seed
Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents
The Ancestors (Collection) Brandon Massey, Tananarive Due, L.A. Banks
Louisiana by Erna Brodber
Immortal by Valjeanne Jeffers

Re-Visioning History in the Contemporary Age:
Dessa Rose by Sherley Anne Williams
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
Jubilee by Margaret Walker