• The Best African American Literature - Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The Best African American Literature - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  • The Best African American Literature - The Narrows by Ann Petry
  • The Best African American Literature - Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • The Best African American Literature - Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Best African American Literature, recommended by Farah Jasmine Griffin

An ever-growing body of authors are writing about the reality of what it means to be black in America, says Farah Jasmine Griffin, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Here she recommends five works of African American literature, from greats like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to lesser-known gems by Ann Petry.

  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War by Tera Hunter
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism by Erik McDuffie
  • The best books on African American Women’s History - Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain

The best books on African American Women’s History, recommended by Keisha N. Blain

Black women’s stories are often untold, but their critical role in American society and politics is finally being broadly acknowledged. Black activists today are building upon the legacy of African American women who have been using every open avenue to seek social justice for centuries. And “no matter how many obstacles are erected to impede them,” says award-winning historian Keisha N. Blain, Black women “are unstoppable.”

  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Passing by Nella Larsen
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Cane by Jean Toomer
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - When Harlem Was in Vogue by David Levering Lewis
  • The best books on The Harlem Renaissance - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

The best books on The Harlem Renaissance, recommended by William J. Maxwell

It was a golden age for American culture, a flourishing of Black literature, music and the arts that exploded in the 1910s and lasted through to the Great Depression. It was focused on Harlem, the area of New York City above Central Park, but its origins and its impact were much, much broader. William J. Maxwell, Professor of English and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, recommends some of the best books on the Harlem Renaissance.