Black Lives, Black Stories for Adults

Glendale Library, Arts & Culture staff has developed reading lists that provide further education about the Black experience and how we can work together to create a more just society. The list is arranged alphabetically by the author’s last name. It is being continuously updated.

Click on the book cover to access the library’s copy of each title.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

[Book] [eBook]

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

[Book]

 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

[Book] [eBook] [Audio CD]

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

[Book] [eBook]

 

Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man by Marcus Baram

[Book]

Fire shut up in my bones: a memoir

by Charles M. Blow

[Book] [eBook]

 

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

[Book]

Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael by Stokely Carmichael

[Book]

 

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[Book] [eBook] [eAudio]

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis

[eAudio]

 

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

[Book]

The world according to Fannie Davis : my mother's life in the Detroit numbers

by Bridgett M. Davis

[Book] [eBook]

 

The Novels of Samuel R. Delany : Babel-17, Nova, and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

by Samuel R. Delany

[eBook]

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard For White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

[Book]

 

W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America: the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

By W.E.B. Du Bois

[Book]

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas by Sam Durant (ed.)

[Book]

 

Invisible Man

By Ralph Ellison


[Book] [eBook] [Audio CD]

1919

By Eve L. Ewing


[Book] [eBook] [eAudio]

 

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings in Chicago's South Side

By Eve L. Ewing


[eAudio]

How To Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

By Crystal Marie Fleming

[eBook]

 

The Annotated African American Folktales

edited with a foreword, introduction, and notes by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar

[Book]

Hunger: a memoir of (my) body

by Roxane Gay

[Book] [eBook]

 

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

By bell hooks

[eBook]

Their Eyes Were Watching God

By Zora Neale Hurston

[Book] [eBook]

 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

by Harriet Jacobs

[Book] [eBook]

How to Be an Antiracist

By Ibram X. Kendi

[Book] [eBook]

 

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

By Ibram X. Kendi

[Book] [eBook]

When They Call You a Terrorist: a Black Lives Matter Memoir 

By Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele ; [with a foreword by Angela Davis]

[Book] [eBook]

 

Heavy : an American memoir 

by Kiese Laymon

[Book] [eBook]

March

By John Lewis and Andrew Aydin ; art by Nate Powell

A graphic novel

[Book] [eBook]

 

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches 

By Audre Lorde

[Book] [eBook]

The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison

[Book]

 

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

By Trevor Noah

[Book] [eBook]

The audacity of hope : thoughts on reclaiming the American dream

by Barack Obama

[Book]

 

Black Ink: Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing

Edited by Stephanie Stokes Oliver ; foreword by Nikki Giovanni

[Book]

So You Want to Talk About Race

By Ijeoma Oluo

[Book]

 

Gordon Parks: Collected Works

Photography by Gordon Parks

[Book]

Busted In New York and Other Essays

By Darryl Pinckney ; foreword by Zadie Smith

[Book]

 

African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness

Edited by Mark Reid

[eBook]

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

By Richard Rothstein

[eBook]

 

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change The World, and Become a Good Ancestor

By Layla F. Saad

[Book] [eBook]

For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf : a choreopoem

by Ntozake Shange

[Book]

 

Race For Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

[eBook]

The Color Purple

By Alice Walker

[Book] [eBook]

 

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race

Edited by Jesmyn Ward

[eBook]

The underground railroad: a novel

by Colson Whitehead

[eBook]

 

Caste: The Origins of our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

[Book]

Early Works / Richard Wright

By Richard Wright

[Book]

 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

By Malcolm X, with the assistance of Alex Haley

[Book]

A People's History of the United States

By Howard Zinn 

[Book] [eBook]