African-American Books

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private. A deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations. Also available as an audiobook.

The astonishing untold history of America's first black millionaires--former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties--self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American business heroes such as Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison.

A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1990 Payne embarked on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X. His goal: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations.

When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States.

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice-- her early years growing up in the hostile environment of Birmingham, Alabama; her rise in the ranks at Stanford University to become the university's second-in-command and an expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs; and finally, in 2000, her appointment as the first Black woman to serve as Secretary of State.

Harriet Tubman served a pivotal role in leading slaves to freedom in the decade before the Civil War. This biography offers a demythologized chronicle of her life and work with information about her life as a slave, role as conductor on the Underground Railroad, work as a military scout during the Civil War, and postwar activism for blacks and women.

Through self-exploration, storytelling, and honest conversation with family and friends, Heavy seeks to bring what has been hidden into the light and to reckon with all of its myriad sources, from the most intimate--a mother-child relationship--to the most universal--a society that has undervalued and abused black bodies for centuries

Author Kenji Jasper only knew his maternal grandfather, Jesse Langley Sr., as a quiet man who smoked too many cigarettes, drank too much liquor and quoted the Bible like it was the only book he'd ever laid eyes on. Jesse's children rarely hugged him, and his nearly sixty years of marriage to Sally seemed cold and complicated. But when the man who declared himself "The Lone Ranger" passed away in late 2002, Kenji began a long and life-changing journey to learn more about the grandfather he barely knew.

Acclaimed by leading historians and critics when it appeared shortly after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this foundational biography wends through the corridors in which King held court, posing the right questions and providing a keen measure of the man whose career and mission enthrall scholars and general readers to this day.

An unusual and irresistible look at Maya Angelou's life as well as her myriad interests and accomplishments by the people who know her best--her longtime friends Marcia Ann Gillespie and Richard Long, and her niece Rosa Johnson Butler. Features over 150 sepia portraits, family photographs, and letters.

Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early. But this was the late 1960s in Bronx's ghetto, and Eddie was introduced to the Black Panther Party, just gaining a national foothold. By sixteen, his devotion to the cause landed him in prison. When exonerated, Eddie--now called Jamal--became the youngest spokesperson and leader of the Panthers' New York chapter. Later, during more than twelve years in Leavenworth, he earned two degrees and found a new calling.

Rosa Parks is best known for the day she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus, sparking the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. Yet there is much more to her story than this one act of defiance. In this straightforward, compelling autobiography, Rosa Parks talks candidly about the civil rights movement and her active role in it. Her dedication is inspiring; her story is unforgettable.

Based on new research, this is the story of how Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, Bob Feller, and barnstorming introduced integrated baseball to America.

Peace was a talented young African-American man who escaped the slums of Newark for Yale University, only to succumb to the dangers of the streets -- and of one's own nature -- when he returned home. When Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with Peace, his college roommate for four years. Peace's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, and he carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, "fronting" in Yale and at home

In Sisters in the Struggle, we hear about the unsung heroes of the civil rights movements such as Ella Baker, who helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who took on segregation in the Democratic party (and won), and Septima Clark, who created a network of "Citizenship Schools" to teach poor Black men and women to read and write and help them to register to vote.

A prophetic memoir by the activist who "articulated the intellectual foundations" (The New Yorker) of the civil rights and women's rights movements. Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land.

Strange Fruit Volume I is a collection of stories from early African American history that represent the oddity of success in the face of great adversity. Each of the nine illustrated chapters chronicles an uncelebrated African American hero or event. From the adventures of lawman Bass Reeves, to Henry "Box" Brown's daring escape from slavery.

In November 1960, all of America watched as a tiny six-year-old black girl, surrounded by federal marshals, walked through a mob of screaming segregationists and into her school. An icon of the civil rights movement, Ruby Bridges chronicles each dramatic step of this pivotal event in history through her own words.

Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.

Pecola Breedlove--an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Also available as an audiobook.

Charisma Bland was born and raised in the heart of Baltimore, where she learns that a moment's pleasure can sometimes lead to a life of pain. Against her better judgment, she has a one-night stand that changes her life forever. Turning over the family business to her cousin, she leaves behind her past. Charisma moves to Miami, where she meets Mr. Manny Manifesto, aka Mr. Baseball. After a chance meeting, Charisma sees an opportunity to start anew, and she and Manny attempt to build a relationship.

Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. When riots consume his neighborhood he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago to go to college, find a new identity, and leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind.

In the entertainment industry, there is a secret society of women vying for an opportunity to live a lavish lifestyle by snagging a famous young millionaire. Betty Blaise, or Fly Betty to those who truly know her, was not in it to be a wife. She had her sights set higher. While most of these women use sex as their weapon, Betty developed one that proves much more powerful. But when she encounters a man that she would never have anticipated falling for, the very rules Betty once lived and died by are going to be put to the test.

Soot, a young Black boy, lives in a rural town in the recent past. The Kid, a possibly imaginary child appears to a Black author on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. As their stories build and converge, they astonish. As the nation reckons with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news, what it can mean to be Black in America? Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind?

Ptolemy Grey is a 91-year-old man, suffering from dementia and living as a recluse in his Los Angeles apartment. Then Robyn Small, a 17-year-old family friend, appears and helps clean up his apartment and straighten out his life. A reinvigorated Ptolemy volunteers for an experimental medical program that restores his mind, and he uses his last days--shortened now by the medical experiment--to delve into the mystery of the recent drive-by shooting death of his great-nephew, Reggie.

In her bestselling novel, The Coldest Winter Ever, Sister Souljah introduced the world to Midnight, a brave but humble lieutenant to a prominent underworld businessman. Now, in a highly anticipated follow-up to her million-selling masterpiece, she brings readers into the life and dangerously close to the heart of this silent, fearless young man.

The remarkable story of J. P. Morgan's personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white to leave a lasting legacy that enriched the nation.

In this multifaceted, brilliantly colored, intensely musical novel, Jeffery Renard Allen tracks the interwoven lives of two brothers, Lucius and John Jones, who are married to two sisters, Gracie and Sheila McShan. For them, their parents, and their children, life is always full of departures; someone is always fleeing town and leaving the remaining family to suffer the often dramatic, sometimes tragic consequences.

Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both gifted with extraordinary power. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by structural racism and brutality. Their futures might alter the world. When Kev is incarcerated for the crime of being a young black man in America, Ella - through visits both mundane and supernatural - tries to show him the way to a revolution that could burn it all down

This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative rendering of the lives of seven generations of black men and women.

Ephram Jenkins has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at," is already quite damaged, but Ephram is forcibly drawn to her. As soon as she becomes a young woman and has any power of her own, Ruby flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York City. Years later, when a funeral forces her to return home, 30-year-old Ruby will find herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

Welcome to Soul City, where roses bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk along Cornbread Boulevard, musical genres become political platforms and children use their pocket money to buy records from the Vinyl Man. When Jackson visits Soul City on amagazine assignment a mayoral election is imminent and the opposing parties a fighting for control of the city's soundtrack. Amidst the increasingly hostile campaign he becomes smitten. What he discovers in this town reveals as much about himself as it does about human nature and the meaning of race.

On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he's a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer--an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders--and the one person who seems not to judge him. When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift.

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Uptown dives into the high-rolling world of Manhattan real estate. When money, power, and respect are at stake, a Harlem family's bonds are strained to the breaking point.

Opal Pruitt is just about to turn 18 in the oppressively hot summer of 1936. She works hard at her job, takes care of her beloved Granny, and dreams about boys with her cousin Lucille. The young black teenager's journey to adulthood will be forged in fire, though, as the Ku Klux Klan attacks her Colored Town neighborhood and she endures a vicious beating at the hands of an unknown white attacker.

Anyone worried that life in a small town could get boring hasn't lived in Henry Adams: With a pig on trial, the town's foster children still trying to find their place, and new love blossoming, there is plenty to occupy our favorite residents. Preston Miles is the only one of the original foster children with no information about his biological family, but an email from his maternal grandmother will change that. Former town mayor, Riley Curry is convinced his pet hog Cletus acted in self-defense when he killed Morton Prell and plans to prove that in a court of law.

Six critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning authors bring the glowing warmth and electricity of Black teens in love to this charming, hilarious, and heartwarming novel that shines a bright light through the dark.

Reinvents the King Arthur legend and "braids together Southern folk traditions and Black Girl Magic into a searing modern tale of grief, power, and self-discovery" (Dhonielle Clayton, New York Times bestselling author of The Belles).

Mysterious disappearances. An urban legend rumored to be responsible. And one group of friends determined to save their city at any cost. Stranger Things meets Jordan Peele in this utterly original debut from an incredible new voice.

Kassidy Maddox enjoys being the center of attention, juggling three men until she meets a new one who wants her for himself, and Jacobi turns to Kassidy for advice when she meets a boy who seems too good to be true.

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

Dream Country is the story of five generations of young people from one African American family chasing an elusive dream across centuries and continents. Gibney conjures an ambitious, sinuous novel from a family tree twisted to its breaking point by slavery and colonialism but ultimately held together by hope and determination.

Told entirely in verse, Ada's story encompasses her earliest memories as a child, including her abuse at the hands of a young cousin, her mother's rejection and descent into addiction, and her father's attempts to create a home for his American daughter more like the one he knew in Nigeria.

When legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots Enchanted Jones at an audition, her dreams of being a famous singer take flight. Until Enchanted wakes up with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night. Who killed Korey Fields? Before there was a dead body, Enchanted's dreams had turned into a nightmare. Because behind Korey's charm and star power was a controlling dark side. Now he's dead, the police are at the door, and all signs point to Enchanted.

Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could destroy her community. It could also get her killed.

Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.

Through letters to his little sister, whi is living in a different foster home, sixth-grader Lonnie, also known as "Locomotion," keeps a record of their lives while they are apart, describing his own foster family, including his foster brother who returns home after losing a leg in the Iraq War.

Amal Shahid is an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he's seen as disruptive by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal's bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words and art.

Struggling to adapt within her newly blended family in 1964 Mississippi, young Sunny witnesses increasingly scary community agitation when activists from the North arrive in town to help register African Americans to vote.

An honors student at Jefferson Academy, seventeen-year-old Kiera enjoys developing and playing Slay, a secret, multiplayer online role-playing game celebrating black culture, until the two worlds collide.

Robin Perry, from Harlem, is sent to Iraq in 2003 as a member of the Civilian Affairs Battalion, and his time there profoundly changes him..

Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood and the new--white--family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.

Half-god, half-human Rue is snatched from her Houston home to Ghazan, a secret land of gods, by her estranged father, then must face an evil determined to steal everything from her.

Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's a pack of lies. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer. But Malcolm's efforts to leave the past behind lead him into increasingly dangerous territory.

Tells the story of a young girl's dramatic escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad, from the perspective of her beloved rag doll.

Ari J. is in the first grade now, and she knew this school year would be perfect. She had perfect clothes. She had a perfect pair of glasses to give her perfect sight. The only thing that Ari J. thought was not perfect was her kindergarten hair.

Relates the experiences of a dark-skinned, curly-haired child who wishes he could look more like the lighter-skinned children in his community until his mother helps him realize how wonderful he is inside and out.

After school orchestra practice, young Nic carries his double bass through rough neighborhoods to his grandfather's home, where he and Grandaddy Nic play jazz music with friends, delighting the neighbors.

American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland encourages a young ballet student, with brown skin like her own, by telling her that she, too, had to learn basic steps and how to be graceful, and that some day, with practice and dedication, the little girl will become a firebird, too.

lmore Green likes being an only child, so when his parents bring a new small person, his baby brother, into the house he is not pleased and does his best to keep the new small person out of his life.

In illustrations and rhyme, describes the dancing of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, one of the most famous tap dancers of all time.

Granny teaches her grandson to cook the family meal in this loving celebration of food, traditions, and gathering together at the table

When Joshua, Krista, and their friend, Charlene, find Granddad's souvenirs of World War II, he takes the opportunity to tell them about the war and his experiences as a Tuskegee Airman.

Confronted with daily racism, Black children are encouraged and supported by artists, athletes, writers, performers, and leaders who tell them that their lives matter.

This picture book for children shares the story of Zara as she seeks the perfect dress for Eid, while offering insight into her Muslim culture.

Charlie Lamonte is thirteen years old, queer, black, and questioning what was once a firm belief in God. So naturally, she's spending a week of her summer vacation stuck at an all-white Christian youth backpacking camp.

Makeda June Kirkland is eleven-years-old, adopted, and black. Her parents and big sister are white, and even though she loves her family very much, Makeda often feels left out. When Makeda's family moves from Maryland to New Mexico, she leaves behind her best friend, Lena--the only other adopted black girl she knows--for a new life.

After seventh-grader Jerome is shot by a white police officer, he observes the aftermath of his death and meets the ghosts of other fallen black boys including historical figure Emmett Till.

Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit their grandmother, Big Ma, and her mother, Ma Charles. Across the way lives Ma Charles's half sister, Miss Trotter. The two half sisters haven't spoken in years. As Delphine hears about her family history, she uncovers the surprising truth that's been keeping the sisters apart.

Eight-year-old Steve Satlow is thrilled when Jackie Robinson moves into his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in 1948, although many of his neighbors are not, and when Steve actually meets his hero he is even more excited--and worried that a misunderstanding over a Christmas tree could damage his new friendship.

Born on Water Island in the Virgin Islands during a hurricane, which is considered bad luck, twelve-year-old Caroline falls in love with another girl--and together they set out in a hurricane to find Caroline's missing mother.

Unable to celebrate the holidays in the wake of his older brother's death in a gang-related shooting, Lolly Rachpaul struggles to avoid being forced into a gang himself while constructing a fantastically creative LEGO city at the Harlem community center.