African American Literary Studies @ SIUE: A Reading List

The following list is comprised of books that Tisha Brooks, Elizabeth Cali, and I covered and are planning to cover in our African American literature courses.

• A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury by Aaron McGruder 
• A West Indian Slave by Mary Prince
• Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
• Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990 - 2010 by Elizabeth Alexander 
• Daughters of the Dust (Screenplay and film) by Julie Dash
• Dear Darkness by Kevin Young 
• Decoded by Jay Z 
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
• Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess 
• Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman
• Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
• My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid
• Nat Turner by Kyle Baker 
• Of One Blood by Pauline Hopkins
• Open City by Teju Cole
• Our Nig by Harriet Wilson
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 
• Sula by Toni Morrison
• The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates 
• The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka 
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• The Bondwoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser 
• The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano
• The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead 
• the new black by Evie Shockley 
• The Norton Anthology of African American Literature edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie McKay
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction by Toni Morrison

Related:
African American Literary Studies @ SIUE