Black History Month Adult Booklist

Adult

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

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Fiction

Nonfiction

Biographies of Politicians and Statesmen

Poetry

Cookbooks and Culinary History

Artists

Music

FICTION

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**eBook (graphic novel)**

Kindred

by Octavia Butler

The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

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**eAudio**

Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

Now thought of as essential reading in American literature, this novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. The Invisible Man is narrated by a nameless main character who details growing up in a Black Southern community. He's eventually expelled from college and then becomes a leader of a Black nationalist group.

An American Marriage

by Tayari Jones

Centers around newlyweds Celestial and Roy, whose marriage is strained when Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. A portrait of wrecked hearts and the consequences of a skewed justice system that often criminalizes young black men. This is, at its heart, a love story, but a love story warped by racial injustice. And, in it, Jones suggests that racial injustice haunts the African-American story.

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction, Whitehead's novel follows escaped slaves, Cora and Caesar, and their harrowing journey as they navigate the underground railroad. But as they travel from state-to-state, they're trailed by a relentless slave master who will stop at nothing to catch them.

Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing follows the parallel paths of sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed -and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation.

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**eAudiobook**

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Originally published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God has become one of the most important and enduring works of modern American literature. Written with Zora Neale Hurston’s singular wit and pathos, this Southern love story recounts Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny."  A tale of awakening and independence featuring a strong female protagonist driven to fulfill her passions and ambitions.

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is arguably Morrison's most well-known. It tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who escaped to Ohio in the 1870s—but despite her freedom, finds herself haunted by the trauma of her past.

Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

NONFICTION

The movement : the African American struggle for civil rights

by Thomas C. Holt

In The Movement, Thomas C. Holt provides an informed and nuanced understanding of the origins, character, and objectives of the mid-twentieth-century freedom struggle, privileging the aspirations and initiatives of the ordinary, grassroots people who made it. Holt conveys a sense of these developments as a social movement, one that shaped its participants even as they shaped it. He emphasizes the conditions of possibility that enabled the heroic initiatives of the common folk over those of their more celebrated leaders. This groundbreaking book reinserts the critical concept of "movement" back into our image and understanding of the civil rights movement.

Black magic : what Black leaders learned from trauma and triumph

by Chad Sanders

A powerful exploration of Black achievement in a white world based on honest, provocative, and moving interviews with Black leaders, scientists, artists, activists, and champions.

Black boy out of time : a memoir

by Hari Ziyad

An eloquent, restless, and enlightening memoir by one of the most thought-provoking journalists today about growing up Black and queer in America, reuniting with the past, and coming of age their own way.

With her fist raised : Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the transformative power of black community activism

by Laura L. Lovett

The first biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist activist whose work made children, race, and welfare rights central to the women's movement. Historian Laura Lovett weaves together a biography of an activist who was intersectional to the core revealing a remarkable legacy that few have known until now and will appeal to readers interested in urban studies, activism, and Black women's history.

You'll never believe what happened to Lacey : crazy stories about racism

by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

The writer and performer from Late Night with Seth Meyers and her sister share anecdotes about their absurd everyday experiences with racism, from being followed by security at department stores to being mistaken for prostitutes.

Do right by me : learning to raise black children in white spaces

by Valerie I. Harrison and Kathryn Peach D'Angelo

For decades, Katie D’Angelo and Valerie Harrison engaged in conversations about race and racism. However, when Katie and her husband, who are white, adopted Gabriel, a biracial child, Katie’s conversations with Val, who is black, were no longer theoretical and academic. The stakes grew from the two friends trying to understand each other’s perspectives to a mother navigating, with input from her friend, how to equip a child with the tools that will best serve him as he grows up in a white family.

BIOGRAPHIES OF POLITICIANS AND STATESMEN

A Promised Land

by Barack Obama

Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

The truths we hold : an American journey

by Kamala Harris

From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite us, and the long struggle to discern what those truths are and how best to act upon them, in her own life and across the life of our country.

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Lead from the outside : how to build your future and make real change

by Stacey Abrams

Stacey uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Stacey has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change.

United : thoughts on finding common ground and advancing the common good

by Cory Booker

United States Senator Cory Booker sounds a stirring call to reorient our civic discourse around the principles of empathy and solidarity. Telling candid, inspiring stories from his life and career, and imparting lessons learned from people who motivated him to serve, he speaks of rising above discord, tending to our shared resources, and embracing our common destiny.

It worked for me : in life and leadership

by Colin Powell and Tony Koltz

Colin Powell, one of America's most admired public figures, reveals the principles that have shaped his life and career in this inspiring and engrossing memoir.

A Reason to Believe Lessons from an Improbable Life

by Deval Patrick

2020 Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick, “an inspirational figure guided by optimism and hope who presaged the rise of President Obama” (The Boston Globe), recounts his extraordinary journey from the South Side of Chicago to the governorship of Massachusetts.

MLK: An American Legacy : Bearing the Cross, Protest at Selma, and The FBI and Martin Luther King. Jr

by David J. Garrow

These three insightful works-including Pulitzer Prize winner Bearing the Cross- span the remarkable life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This collection from professor and historian David J. Garrow provides a multidimensional and fascinating portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., and his lifelong mission to upend prejudices deeply entrenched in society and enact legal change that would achieve equality for African Americans one hundred years after their emancipation from slavery.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1965,  Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement.

Up from slavery

by Booker T. Washington

Born in a Virginia slave hut, Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) rose to become the most influential spokesman for African Americans of his day. In this eloquently written book, he describes events in a remarkable life that began in bondage and culminated in worldwide recognition for his many accomplishments. In simply written yet stirring passages, he tells of his impoverished childhood and youth, the unrelenting struggle for an education, early teaching assignments, his selection in 1881 to head Tuskegee Institute, and more.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave

by Frederick Douglass

Published seven years after his escape from slavery, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”(1845) is a powerful account of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture into which Frederick Douglass was born. It brought him to the forefront of the antislavery movement and drew thousands, black and white, to the cause. Written in part as a response to skeptics who refused to believe that so articulate an orator could ever have been a slave, the "Narrative "reveals the eloquence and fierce intelligence that made Douglass a brilliantly effective spokesman for abolition and equal rights, as he shapes an inspiring vision of self-realization in the face of unimaginable odds.

POETRY

African-American poetry : an anthology, 1773-1927

edited by Joan R. Sherman

In the 19th century, abolitionist and African-American periodicals printed thousands of poems by black men and women on such topics as bondage and freedom, hatred and discrimination, racial identity and racial solidarity, along with dialect verse that mythologized the Southern past. Early in the 20th century, black poets celebrated race consciousness in propagandistic and protest poetry, while World War I helped engender the outpouring of African-American creativity known as the "Harlem Renaissance.” The present volume spans this wealth of material, ranging from the religious and moral verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters (ca. 1753–1784) to the 20th-century sensibilities of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.

Angles of ascent: a Norton anthology of contemporary African American poetry

edited by Charles Henry Rowell

The anthology focuses on post-1960s poetry and includes such poets as Rita Dove, Ai, Nathaniel Mackey, Natasha Trethewey, Kevin Young, Terrence Hayes, Elizabeth Alexander, Major Jackson, Carl Phillips, Harryette Mullen, and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Black sister: poetry : by black American women, 1746-1980

edited by Erlene Stetson

An anthology containing a wide range of poetry by Black women writers including Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou, Margaret Walker, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

The Oxford anthology of African-American poetry

edited by Arnold Rampersad

For over two centuries, black poets have created verse that captures the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their variety of visions and styles, The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry aims to offer nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people.

The Complete Poetry

by Maya Angelou

The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelou’s words live on in this complete collection of poetry.

Selected Poems

by Langston Hughes

From the publication of his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, in 1926, Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in black writing in America.

Quilting the black-eyed pea : poems and not quite poems

by Nikki Giovanni

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is a tour de force from Nikki Giovanni, one of the most powerful voices in American poetry and African American literature today. From Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgment in the 1960s to Bicycles in 2010, Giovanni’s poetry has influenced literary figures from James Baldwin to Blackalicious, and touched millions of readers worldwide.

1919

by Eve L. Ewing

In 1919, her second collection of poems, Eve L. Ewing explores the story of a Century old riot in Chicago— through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city.

The black unicorn : poems

by Audre Lorde

The Black Unicorn is a collection of poems by a woman who, Adrienne Rich lauds "for the complexity of her vision, for her moral courage and the catalytic passion of her language.”

She’s Strong, but She’s Tired

by R.H. Sin

From New York Times bestselling author R.H. Sin, an ode to the women who have chosen to fight for themselves. A poetic documentation of pain, loneliness, courage, and triumph.

COOKBOOKS AND CULINARY HISTORY

Jubilee : recipes from two centuries of African American cooking

by Toni Tipton-Martin

More than 100 recipes that paint a rich, varied picture of the true history of African American cooking--from a James Beard Award-winning food writer.

Sweet Home Cafe cookbook : a celebration of African American  cooking

by Albert Lukas and Jessica B. Harris

A celebration of African American cooking with 109 recipes from the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Sweet Home Café. Since the 2016 opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, its Sweet Home Café has become a destination in its own right. Showcasing African American contributions to American cuisine, the café offers favorite dishes made with locally sourced ingredients, adding modern flavors and contemporary twists on classics.

Bound to the fire : how Virginia's enslaved cooks helped invent American cuisine

by Kelley Fanto Deetz

"In grocery store aisles across the country, smiling images of 'Aunt Jemima' and other fictional black cooks can be found. These sanitized and romanticized images in popular culture, represent the untold stories of enslaved men and women who influenced the nation's culinary traditions even as they were forced to prepare food for their oppressors. Kelley Fanto Deetz draws upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a nuanced study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. These highly skilled cooks drew upon skills and ingredients from their African homelands to create complex, labor-intensive dishes such as oyster stew, gumbo, and fried fish.

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

by Michael Twitty

A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.

Sallie Ann Robinson's kitchen : food & family lore from the lowcountry

by Sallie Ann Robinson

In her third cookbook, Sallie Ann Robinson brings readers to the dinner table in South Carolina's Lowcountry. Born and raised on the small, remote island of Daufuskie, Robinson shares the food and foodways from her Gullah upbringing.

A Date with a Dish

by Freda DeKnight

An outstanding feast of distinctively American culinary genius, this comprehensive collection of authentic African-American recipes was assembled by a well-known cooking columnist for Ebony magazine. Freda DeKnight was baking bread and biscuits by the time she was five years old. In the course of her career as a teacher and counselor of culinary arts, she assembled and shared thousands of fabulous recipes, the best of which appear here.

Hog and Hominy

by Frederick Douglass Opie

Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas.

The People’s Place

by Dave Hoekstra

Celebrated former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra unearths stories as he travels, tastes, and talks his way through 20 of America's soul food restaurants Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved the fried catfish and lemon icebox pie at Memphis's Four Way restaurant. In New Orleans, beloved chef Leah Chase recalls introducing George W. Bush to baked cheese grits and scolding Barack Obama for putting Tabasco sauce on her gumbo.

Sweetie Pie's Cookbook: Soulful Southern Recipes, from My Family to Yours

by Robbie, Norman and Tim Montgomery

Sweetie Pie's Cookbook includes 75-100 color photos and an Index. The beloved owner of the wildly popular Sweetie Pie's restaurant, and star of the OWN reality television show Welcome to Sweetie Pie's shares recipes for her renowned soul food and the lessons she's learned on the path to success.

Kevin Belton's New Orleans Kitchen

by Kevin Belton

A nationally and internationally recognized chef and educator as well as the star of PBS/WYES’s New Orleans Cooking with Kevin Belton, and now Kevin Belton’s New Orleans Kitchen, Chef Kevin is known for his expertise in creating New Orleans cuisine as well sharing it’s culture and culinary heritage.

ARTISTS

Soul of a nation : art in the age of Black power

edited by Mark Godfrey and Zoé Whitley

In the period of radical change that was 1963-1983, young black artists at the beginning of their careers in the USA confronted key questions and pressures. How could they make art that would stand as innovative, original, formally and materially complex, while also making work that reflected their concerns and experience as black Americans? This significant new publication, accompanying an exhibition at Tate Modern, surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of twentieth-century black artists, including Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams and Frank Bowling.

I too sing America : the Harlem Renaissance at 100

by Wil Haygood

The exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, a period of cultural blossoming that occurred in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920-50s. Curated by Columbus native and highly acclaimed writer Wil Haygood, the exhibition includes work by Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, and others who interpreted the lives of African Americans during this time. In addition, the exhibition includes unprinted photographs by James Van Der Zee obtained through the artist's estate and a private collection of vernacular photographs of African American life.

Kara Walker : after the deluge

Inspired by hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, an African-American artist explores the politics of race, slavery, and gender through a series of images from the South, with examples of her work justaposed with historical artworks. Learn more about her narrative in Art:21 Season 2 episode 1: Stories.

Nick Cave : until

This book documents Cave's most extensive work to date, turning his art inside out. Cave takes us inside the belly of one of his iconic sculptures with an immersive environment populated by a dazzling array of found objects, echoing some of Cave's and America's most confounding dilemmas: gun violence, racial inequality, injustice within our cities' police departments, and death. Learn more about his narrative in Art:21 Season 8 episode 1 Chicago. Also available as a DVD.

Kehinde Wiley: An Economy Of Grace

Known for his vibrant reinterpretations of classical portraits featuring African-American men, New York-based painter Kehinde Wiley has turned the practice of portraiture on its head and in the process has taken the art world by storm.

Amy Sherald

Through her monumental portraits of African American subjects, Amy Sherald explores alternate narratives of blackness through the exclusion of color from the notion of race. The Baltimore-based artist is best known for her stylized, figurative paintings of vibrantly dressed individuals rendered in grayscale skin tones against flat, highly-saturated backgrounds that evoke a sense of timeless identity.

Kerry James Marshall

The most comprehensive book yet on this inspired, inventive chronicler of the African-American experience Alabama-born, Chicago-based Kerry James Marshall. Critically and commercially acclaimed, the painter is known for his representation of the history of African-American identity in Western art. Marshall synthesizes different traditions and genres in his work while seeking to counter stereotypical depictions of black people in society. Learn more about his narrative in Art:21 Season 1 episode 3: Identity.

Basquiat: a Quick Killing in Art

A vivid biography of the meteoric rise and tragic death of art star Jean-Michel Basquiat Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. In less than a decade, he went from being a teenage graffiti artist to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. A legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat was a fixture of the downtown scene, a wild nexus of music, fashion, art, and drugs. Along the way, the artist got involved with many of the period's most celebrated personalities, from his friendships with Keith Haring and Andy Warhol to his brief romantic fling with Madonna. Nearly thirty years after his death, Basquiat's story-and his art-continue to resonate and inspire.

Mark Bradford : tomorrow is another day

Mark Bradford's exhibition for the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is born out of his longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world we all inhabit. His selection of ordinary materials represents the hair salon, Home Depot, and the streets of Los Angeles--both the culture industry and the grey economy. Bradford renews the traditions of abstract and materialist painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist. Learn more about his narrative in Art:21 Season 4 episode 4: Paradox.

Theaster Gates : how to build a house museum

Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates, whose projects range from small-scale sculptures to ambitious urban interventions, investigates the transformative powers of art in this provocative book. Learn more about his narrative in Art:21 Season 8 episode 1 Chicago. Also available as a DVD.

Carrie Mae Weems : Kitchen table series

The 20 photographs and 14 text panels that make up the artwork tell a story of one woman’s life, as conducted in the intimate setting of her kitchen. The kitchen, one of the primary spaces of domesticity and the traditional domain of women, frames her story, revealing to us her relationships--with lovers, children, friends--and her own sense of self, in her varying projections of strength, vulnerability, aloofness, tenderness, and solitude. 'Kitchen Table Series' seeks to reposition and reimagine the possibility of women and the possibility of people of color, and has to do with, in the artist’s words “unrequited love." Learn more about her narrative in Art:21 Season 2 episode 5: Compassion. Also available as a DVD.

Gordon Parks : the new tide, early work, 1940-1950

Focusing on new research and access to forgotten pictures, "The New Tide, Early Work 1940-1950" documents the importance of these years in shaping Gordon Parks' passionate vision. The book brings together photographs and publications made during the first and most formative decade of his 65-year career. During the 1940s Parks' photographic ambitions grew to express a profound understanding of his social, cultural and political experiences.

MUSIC