The ReadDown

African American Fiction Classics

Revisit classics by African American authors that have resonated with readers around the world. These beloved novels by literary giants such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison continue to shape the culture of America.

1

Sister Outsider

by Audre Lorde

In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

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2

Song of Solomon

by Toni Morrison

With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

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3

Not Without Laughter

by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’ award-winning first novel follows a black boy’s coming-of-age in a largely white Kansas town.

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4

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

by James Weldon Johnson

Originally published in 1912, this novel by James Weldon Johnson was one of the first to present a frank picture of being black in America.

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5

Through the Ivory Gate

by Rita Dove

When a woman returns to her Midwestern hometown as an artist-in-residence to teach puppetry to schoolchildren, her homecoming also means dealing with memories of racism, rejected love–and truths about her family.

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6

A Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life.

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7

The Tragedy of Brady Sims

by Ernest J. Gaines

Ernest J. Gaines’s new novella revolves around a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between the white sheriff and the black man who “whipped children” to keep order.

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8

The Sport of the Gods

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

This original collection by Paul Laurence Dunbar includes the short novel The Sport of the Gods, Dunbar’s essential essays and short stories, and his finest poems, such as “Sympathy,” all which explore crucial social, political, and humanistic issues at the dawn of the twentieth century.

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9

Black No More

by George S. Schuyler

Black No More is a masterwork of speculative fiction and a hilarious satire of America’s obsession with race.

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10

Passing

by Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen’s powerful, thrilling, and tragic tale is about the fluidity of racial identity that continues to resonate today.

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11

If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, James Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

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12

Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century.

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13

Amiable with Big Teeth

by Claude McKay

A monumental literary event: the newly discovered final novel by seminal Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay, a rich and multilayered portrayal of life in 1930s Harlem and a historical protest for black freedom.

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14

Cane

by Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer’s innovative and groundbreaking novel depicts African American life in the South and North, with a foreword by National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree Zinzi Clemmons.

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