Award Winning African American Literature for the Classroom
Discover award-winning African American literature for the classroom, featuring iconic works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker. This curated list includes fiction and biographies like Beloved, The Color Purple, and Roots, perfect for enriching curriculum with essential, celebrated voices.
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Middle Passage
by Charles Johnson
A freed slave escapes his bad debts in New Orleans by stowing away on a slave ship en route to Africa.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Sethe. Proud and beautiful, she escaped from slavery but is haunted by its heritage - from the fires of the flesh to the heartbreaking challenges to the spirit.
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Churchboys & Other Sinners
by Preston L. Allen
Preston Allen's stories explore the boundary between boy and man, church and smut shack in spare, deadpan prose.
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Quicksand and Passing
by Nella Larsen
Two novels of 1920s Harlem describe Helga Crane's search for freedom and personal expression, and Irene's friendship with Clare, who attempts to pass for white.
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I Know why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
The moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman. ". . . I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood . . . have I found myself so moved . . . Her portrait is a Biblical study of life in the midst of death".--James Baldwin. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
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The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Set in the period between the world wars, this novel tells of two sisters, their trials, and their survival.
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Roots
by Alex Haley
It begins with a birth in 1750, in an African village; it ends seven generations later at the Arkansas funeral of a black professor whose children are a teacher, a Navy architect, an assistant director of the U.S. Information Agency, and an author. The author is Alex Haley. This magnificent book is his.
