Black History Month Book List

This page has the list of the books I have read for Black History Month, other notable books by African Americans or others of African descent, as well as books by others about black history. 


Official Black History Month Reading Selections

 

2011:  50 Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson

2012:  Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2013:  The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

2014:   Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

2015:   Kindred by Octavia Butler

2016:   Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

2017:   (1) Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

      (2) Black Boy (American Hunger) by Richard Wright

2018:   Poems 1921-1930 by Langston Hughes

2019:   Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

2020:   (1) The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

(2) Color by Countee Cullen    

2021: (1) Poems 1931-1940 by Langston Hughes   

(2) How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

2022: (1) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

(2) The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray

2023: (1) Allensworth The Freedom Colony by Alice Royal

(2) Best Short Stories by Black Authors (edited by Langston Hughes)

2024: (1) Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

(2) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

 

Other notable books by African American, African, or other black authors:

 

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Brian Mealer

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The Honor Code by Kwame Anthony Appiah

I Greet The Dawn (Poems) by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Poems by Phillis Wheatley

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

White Rage by Carol Anderson

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Two-Headed Woman by Lucille Clifton

The Blacker the Berry by Joyce Carol Thomas

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (Part 1)

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (Part 2)

Five-Carat Soul by James McBride

Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds & Jason Griffin

White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler

As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

Hadriana In All My Dreams by Rene Depestre

A Raisin in the Sun (Audio production) by Lorraine Hansberry

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

Zeely by Virginia Hamilton

A Mighty Long Way by Carlotta Walls Lanier & Lisa Frazier Page

God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson

Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Hard Times Require Furious Dancing by Alice Walker

Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley Ford

When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds

Coal by Audre Lorde

Omar by Rhiannon Giddens (with Michael Abels)

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Jazz Poems by Various Authors

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana

Luster by Raven Leilani

Hurricane Child by Kasen Callender

James by Percival Everett

Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds

The Mountaintop by Katori Hall

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monae, et al. 

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead


 

Books on Black History by other authors:

 

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein

Reconstructing the Gospel by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol.1 by M. T. Anderson

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

Devil In The Grove by Gilbert King

The End of Policing by Alex Vitale 

July’s People by Nadine Gordimer

Ragtime (the Musical)

Red Tails, Black Wings by John B. Holway

The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward

Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe










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