African American Literature

... Read A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi... Summary

Written and first performed in 1960 as part of the national celebrations of Nigeria’s independence from Britain, A Dance of the Forests features a unique combination of classically European dramatic elements and traditional Yoruba masquerade traditions which make the play resistant to both staging and traditional Western criticism. Since 1960, few attempts have been made to perform the play, due to its complexity and ambiguity. A Dance of the Forests presents an allegorical criticism of... Read A Dance of the Forests Summary

After Tupac and D Foster, published in 2008, is Jacqueline Woodson’s fifth middle grade novel and her 24th book overall. It is a coming-of-age story of three African American girls who are best friends growing up in Queens, NY, in the 1990s. During this time, the cultural icon Tupac Shakur is shot, imprisoned, and ultimately killed in a second shooting. These events have a huge impact on the main characters as they grow up and... Read After Tupac and D Foster Summary

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, is an award-winning work of fiction published in 1993. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction that same year. The story is arguably a work of historical fiction based on true accounts of young Black men on death row in Louisiana in the 1940s.Plot SummaryThe story opens in a courtroom in 1947 Louisiana, where a 21-year-old Black man named Jefferson, is accused of killing... Read A Lesson Before Dying Summary

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A Man of the People is a 1966 novel by Chinua Achebe. Achebe, a Nigerian novelist and well-known figure of African literature, also wrote Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964). A Man of the People chronicles political unrest in an African nation that only recently gained its independence from Britain. The novel opens with the narrator, Odili Samalu, awaiting the arrival of Minister Nanga, also known as Chief Nanga, at Anata Grammar... Read A Man of the People Summary

Ambiguous Adventure is a 1961 novel by author Cheikh Hamidou Kane. The plot of this novel mirrors much of Kane’s life, including his birth in Senegal and studies in Paris. The version used for this guide is the 2012 edition from Melville House Publishing.Ambiguous Adventure discusses the duality of man within the context of colonial and postcolonial societies. The novel splits the colonized and the colonizer into two distinct and opposing cultures: The former (the... Read Ambiguous Adventure Summary

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Published in 1970, Ama Ata Aidoo’s play Anowa tells the gripping story of its title character, who serves as an allegory for Africa itself. No stranger to Africa’s political and societal turmoil, Aidoo, a Ghanaian playwright, uses Anowa to interrogate the relationships between men and women, husbands and wives, women and motherhood, mothers and daughters, society and the individuals comprising it, and the future encroaching on ancient traditions. Aidoo's other well-known works include "No Sweetness... Read Anowa Summary

Apex Hides the Hurt, a 2006 novel by American author Colson Whitehead, follows a nameless, emotionally muted nomenclature consultant, or an expert in creating brand names. The novel toggles between the protagonist’s memories of success at his company, and his current consulting assignment—renaming a town. The novel satirizes contemporary American consumer culture and features themes of race and identity. Whitehead uses humor and revelation as key narrative techniques in this story about a man who... Read Apex Hides the Hurt Summary

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When Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun premiered in 1959, it was the first play by a Black woman to open on Broadway, as well as the first play with a Black director. The title comes from Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which asks, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Content Warning: The play and this guide discuss themes of racism and slavery.The play tells the... Read A Raisin in the Sun Summary

Chinua Achebe’s 1964 novel Arrow of God portrays an Ibo leader as he confronts the British administrators and missionaries in his town. The text, Achebe’s third novel, is part of a series of books called The African Trilogy. Arrow of God won the first ever Jock Campbell/New Statesman prize for African Literature.The novel focuses on Ezeulu, who is the High Priest of Ulu. Ulu is the most important deity in the town of Umuaro, and... Read Arrow of God Summary

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A Soldier’s Play (1981) was written by Charles Fuller. It premiered off-Broadway with the Negro Ensemble Company in 1981, and was arguably the company’s most successful work to date. It ran for nearly 500 performances and earned the Critics Circle Best Play Award and the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play is loosely based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (1924), an unfinished novella about a well-liked, handsome sailor who is falsely accused of a... Read A Soldier's Play Summary

“A Summer Tragedy” is a short story written by poet and fiction author Arna Bontemps. It was originally published in 1933 in Opportunity and has since been included in multiple anthologies, including Bontemps’s 1973 short story collection The Old South: “A Summer Tragedy” and Other Stories of the Thirties. Bontemps is also known for the 1959 biography Frederick Douglass: Slave, Fighter, Freeman. Focusing on an elderly Black couple who have endured a difficult life of... Read A Summer Tragedy Summary

“A True Story, Word for Word as I Heard It” is a short story by Mark Twain, first published in 1874 in the Atlantic Monthly. Mark Twain was an American writer known for such classics as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In its critique of slavery and racism, the story anticipates Huck Finn; it also explores themes of The Possibility of Human Connection, Black Women Defying Racism and Sexism, and... Read A True Story Summary

“Aubade” is a contemporary love poem by American poet Major Jackson. Published in 2017 in Jackson’s fourth collection of poetry Roll Deep, the poem first appeared in The New Yorker in 2015. The title of the poem references a form of love song or poem that marks the dawn—the time of day when lovers must separate. Aubades were popular in medieval times, and unlike a serenade, which accompanies the evening and nightfall, an aubade evokes... Read Aubade Summary

“A Visit to Grandmother” is a short story by American author William Melvin Kelley, first published in his collection Dancers on the Shore (1964). The story centers around Chig, a 17-year-old boy, and his father, Dr. Charles Dunford, as they visit Chig’s grandmother in Nashville, Tennessee. During their visit, Charles challenges issues that have long damaged his relationship with his mother, and the confrontation reaches a breaking point when he exposes his long-held resentment over... Read A Visit to Grandmother Summary

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Originally written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018) is the transcribed posthumous autobiography of the life of Oluale “Cudjo Lewis” Kossola (1841-1935), written by Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). Known for her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston was a writer, anthropologist, folklorist, and filmmaker. In all her work, she held a special appreciation for Black life and Black culture of the US South. Her works... Read Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Summary

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Toni Morrison’s Beloved was published in 1987. It is inspired by the real story of an African American woman named Margaret Garner, who, while attempting to liberate herself and her children from enslavement, killed her own daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement. It tells the story of Sethe, a self-liberated, formerly enslaved woman who kills her daughter in the same manner. This daughter later returns to haunt the family. The novel is widely classified... Read Beloved Summary

Betrayal in the City is a play by Francis Imbuga. First published in 1976, the play’s powerful indictments of government corruption in post-colonial Africa, the cost to voiceless citizens, and the numbing effects of daily violence make it both an important work of art and an act of extreme courage by its author. There is one complicated question at the heart of the play: what chance do the citizens of a country have if the... Read Betrayal in the City Summary

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Ta-Nehisi Coates’s nonfiction book Between the World and Me was published 2015. The book takes the form of a long letter to Coates’s son Samori at age 15, and the title borrows from a poem by famed Black author Richard Wright. The text focuses on the psychological and physical trauma of racial violence that haunts generations of Black people, considering themes like The Precarity of the Black Body in the United States, The Danger of... Read Between the World and Me Summary

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Richard Wright’s “Big, Black, Good Man” is available at Esquire’s website and was originally published in the print version of the magazine on November 1, 1957. Told in a limited third-person narration, the story is set in Copenhagen, Denmark and is about racial misunderstanding.Olaf Jensen, the night porter at a cheap waterfront hotel, is on duty the night before his sixtieth birthday. Olaf has had a mostly satisfactory life with his wife, Karen, and feels... Read Big Black Good Man Summary

The short story “Big Boy Leaves Home” (1936) is the first published work of Richard Wright (1908-1960), a celebrated African American author who is best known for his 1940 protest novel Native Son. Most of Wright’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction deal with the experiences of working-class Black people (especially men) in the United States. His protagonists, like “Big Boy,” struggle against overt racism and racist violence in their communities, ultimately facing crises that force them... Read Big Boy Leaves Home Summary

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Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) by Texas native Attica Locke, published by Little, Brown and Company, is a 2018 Edgar and Anthony award-winning mystery novel. It was also selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Kirkus Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2017. The first in the Highway 59 series follows Texas Ranger Darren Mathews through the backroads of Texas in search of justice and reform... Read Bluebird, Bluebird Summary

Bronx Masquerade is a young adult novel written by New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes. It was published in 2002. Bronx Masquerade chronicles an academic year in the lives of high school students in Mr. Ward’s English class. It includes the ways they relate to each other and their classwork, which prominently features Harlem Renaissance writers, as well as their hopes and dreams. The novel is written in both prose and poetry, with each... Read Bronx Masquerade Summary

Bud, Not Buddy is a 1999 children’s realistic historical novel by American author Christopher Paul Curtis. Ten-year-old protagonist Bud Caldwell is an orphan living in Flint, Michigan in 1936. Four years after the death of his mother and after a series of abusive and neglectful foster homes, Bud sets out to find his father, whom he believes is the locally famous jazz musician Herman E. Calloway of Grand Rapids. Bud encounters a host of characters... Read Bud, Not Buddy Summary

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“Cat in the Rain,” a short story by American author Ernest Hemingway, was first published in the 1925 collection In Our Time. Hemingway’s story, like much of his work, is semi-autobiographical and based on his experience as an expatriate in Europe after World War I. Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, shared a love of cats, and it’s thought he wrote this story for her while they lived in Italy and France. The short story... Read Cat in the Rain Summary

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Marilyn Nelson is part of a coterie of writers who published in the late-1970s and 1980s after the revolutionary fervor of the Black Arts Movement. Though the period during which Nelson wrote is less acknowledged than those aforementioned, it was a time when diverse Black poetic talents emerged. Nelson’s contemporaries included Afaa Michael Weaver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Rita Dove, Ntozake Shange, Melvin Dixon, and Essex Hemphill. Their work grappled with the aftermath of the Vietnam War... Read Chosen Summary

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Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (1998) is a work of narrative nonfiction by Antjie Krog originally published in South Africa. This guide refers to the American edition of the text (1999) that includes an epilogue, glossary, Cast of Characters, and introduction not included in the South African edition, as well as the addition of the subtitle. Krog, an Afrikaner poet-turned-journalist who covered the Truth... Read Country of My Skull Summary

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Deacon King Kong was published in 2020 and written by American author James McBride. It is an example of near-historical fiction written about American cities and social issues. McBride’s 1995 memoir about growing up in a mixed-race family in Brooklyn, The Color of Water, was both a commercial and critical success, and his own life experience aligns with some of the narratives and issues in Deacon King Kong. McBride’s novel The Good Lord Bird won... Read Deacon King Kong Summary

Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature is a nonfiction book published in 1986 by the Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. In the Introduction, titled “Towards the Universal Language of Struggle,” Ngũgĩ writes: “This book, is a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching literature” (1). Decolonising the Mind is a... Read Decolonising the Mind Summary

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Published in 1980, Devil on the Cross by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o explores themes of Exploitation and Theft Under Capitalism, The Treatment of Women in the Workforce, and The Legacy of Colonialism through its complex, nested narrative and ironic exaggeration. The story centers on the female protagonist Jacinta Warĩĩnga as she leaves her complicated and abusive life behind to return home. On her journey, she experiences self-discovery and newfound autonomy, as well as the... Read Devil on the Cross Summary

Harryette Mullen’s “Dim Lady” may remind some readers of 17th century English playwright and poet William Shakespeare’s well-known “Sonnet 130,” in which the speaker of the poem makes a mockery of his beloved’s physical appearance. During Shakespeare’s time, fashion encouraged poets to write flowery poetry that extolled the virtues and the beauty of their beloved. However, the speaker of this sonnet toys with poetic conventions of the time, describing the physical attributes of the speaker’s... Read Dim Lady Summary

Dreams in a Time of War was originally published in 2010. This study guide uses the 2011 Anchor Books edition, a division of Random House, Inc. A multilayered and faceted coming-of-age memoir of family, community, and Kenyan society, Dreams in a Time of War details the childhood and early adolescent years of acclaimed writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Set in mid-twentieth century colonial Kenya, the book offers an intimate portrait of Ngũgĩ’s life as it unfolds... Read Dreams in a Time of War Summary

Zora Neale Hurston’s “Drenched in Light” is set in 1920s Florida and follows a single day of a young girl named Isis Watts, or Isie. The setting of a small town right outside of Orlando resembles Hurston’s own childhood in Eatonville. Published in 1924 by Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, “Drenched in Light” debuted early in Hurston’s career and includes some of her recurring themes dealing with race, gender, and identity. Hurston went on... Read Drenched in Light Summary

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“Ego Tripping,” also known as “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why),” is one of American poet Nikki Giovanni’s most well-known poems. Giovanni first published this poem in 1972, which is the year that also marks Giovanni’s first trip to Africa, three years after the birth of her son. As the title of the poem suggests, this poem is a fulsome celebration of the many facets of Giovanni’s identity as a Black woman. Written... Read Ego Tripping Summary

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Nigerian author Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief is a work of autofiction originally published in Nigeria in 2007 and published in the US in 2014. The novel unfolds in picaresque style from the first-person perspective, as a narrator who closely resembles the author returns to Nigeria after 15 years in the US to reckon with Nigerian national identity and his own legacy. Surprised to find that he feels less comfortable in his... Read Every Day Is for the Thief Summary

“Everyday Use” is a short story by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker. First published in Walker’s 1973 story collection In Love and Trouble, the story centers on a figure marginal to American literature at the time: a working-class black woman in the American South. The story’s interest in the way gender, race, and class intersect is characteristic of Walker’s work; in fact, it was Alice Walker who, later in her career, would coin the... Read Everyday Use Summary

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Fire Shut Up in My Bones by the American author Charles M. Blow was published in 2014. The book is a nonfiction memoir of his childhood and early adulthood in the American South. Blow is unflinchingly honest in the details of his own abuse and how he carried that abuse with him for years. Blow is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and an anchor for the Black News Channel. Fire Shut Up... Read Fire Shut Up in My Bones Summary

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“Flying Home” is the titular story of Ralph Ellison’s collection published in 1944. It tells the story of Todd, a Black Air Force candidate in flight training school in Macon County, Alabama, during World War II. As one of the first Black people accepted into the school, Todd is determined to prove that his capabilities are equal to those of his white counterparts. The story addresses themes of Fear of Judgment, Opportunities and the American... Read Flying Home Summary

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Written by African-American author James Baldwin in 1965, this short story tells of the racial violence and strife between black and white Americans in a rural Southern town during the American Civil Rights Movement. The story's main character, Jesse, is a white sheriff's deputy. The story begins on the evening after Jesse and other police officers have arrested and brutally tortured a young black man protesting outside the courthouse.Jesse lays in bed with his wife... Read Going To Meet The Man Summary

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Chimamanda Adichie’s second book, Half of a Yellow Sun, is set during the Nigerian Civil War that tragically occurred in her home country during the 1960s. The story masterfully revolves around an intricate web of shifting viewpoints, each of which centers around one of the novel’s five main characters: Ugwu, Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene, and Richard. All of these characters find themselves affiliated with the Biafran rebels of the war, and this affiliation eventually has consequences... Read Half of a Yellow Sun Summary

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Often called a prelude to Shakespeare’s Othello, Harlem Duet tells the story of Othello and his first wife, Billie—the woman he married before Desdemona. Their history is told through the lives of three couples, each named Othello and Billie, during eras of special significance in Black American history: 1860, before the Emancipation Proclamation; 1928, at the height of the historic Harlem Renaissance; and 1997, after the civil rights movement but before the 21st century.Written by... Read Harlem Duet Summary

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Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad is a 1955 biography by American author Ann Petry. This book takes the reader on a journey through Harriet Tubman’s life, from her birth to enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation to her death as a free woman in New York in 1913. Tubman is a well-known figure in American history and is best known for her heroic actions as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad. After escaping... Read Harriet Tubman Summary

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Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is a work of fiction written by Moroccan native Laila Lalami and published in 2005. The narrative is comprised of nine stories involving the lives of four major characters, all of whom attempt to emigrate illegally from Morocco to Spain in order to have better lives. Despite the fact that these stories are separate from one another, the book does not represent a short story collection in the classic sense;... Read Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits Summary

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I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond (2011) is a memoir written by NFL player Michael Oher and journalist Don Yaeger. It tells Oher’s story in his own words, describing his childhood and teen years up to his rookie season in the NFL. His story was first brought to the public’s attention in Michael Lewis’s book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, published in 2006. This book was made... Read I Beat the Odds Summary

If Beale Street Could Talk is a novel by James Baldwin (1924-1987), a critically acclaimed African American writer on matters of race and the African American experience. Originally published in 1974, the novel gained fresh attention with Barry Jenkins’ film adaptation in 2019. The novel is the love story of salesclerk Clementine “Tish” Rivers and budding sculptor Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt, African American natives of Harlem whose lives are derailed in the late 1960s to early... Read If Beale Street Could Talk Summary

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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical novel by Maya Angelou. Angelou discusses the struggles of growing up African American in the 1950s. The novel has themes of overcoming adversity and trauma, both used as a general metaphor for the struggle against racism. Angelou wrote the novel as a challenge to create literature out of an autobiography, and what emerged is a classic that is still revered today.The novel begins on a... Read I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Summary

Imperium in Imperio (1899) is a historical-fiction novel by social activist Sutton E. Griggs. Imperium in Imperio explores the idea of a Black utopia, wherein Black Americans form a shadow government to seize control of the state of Texas and form their own nation. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the novel was sold door-to-door in Black communities and was largely unknown to the white population, ultimately garnering little notoriety upon its original publication. However... Read Imperium in Imperio Summary

The memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is an account of the life of Harriet Ann Jacobs, who calls herself “Linda Brent” in the narrative. It is a key text in the slave narrative genre, which were first-person narratives written by formerly enslaved people that hoped to convert readers to the abolitionist cause. While most slave narratives were written by men, such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1791), Narrative of... Read Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Summary

Invisible Man is a novel written by African American author Ralph Ellison and published in 1952. An example of 20th-century realism, the novel combines psychological and social storylines to examine how racism affects its unnamed protagonist and his ability to rise above all obstacles to craft his own sense of self, considering themes like Race in 20th-Century America, the Journey Toward Self-Understanding and Adult Identity, and Alienation from a Sense of Place Through Involuntary Resettlement.A... Read Invisible Man Summary

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Jazz by Toni Morrison is the second installment of the Beloved trilogy. Morrison outlines the entirety of the plot in the first paragraph of the novel, allowing the rest of the text to explore the histories and emotional landscapes of the characters. Set in Harlem in the 1920s, Joe Trace has an affair with a young woman named Dorcas. When Dorcas later rejects Joe, he relentlessly searches for her. Joe sees Dorcas dancing with another... Read Jazz Summary

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Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is the third in a series of plays August Wilson wrote examining the African-American experience in the twentieth century. The play is set in Pittsburgh in 1911 against the historical backdrop of the “Great Migration” of African-Americans leaving the poverty and Jim Crow laws of the American South for employment and better lives in the manufacturing cities of the North. The play takes place in the boarding house run by... Read Joe Turner's Come and Gone Summary

Margaret Walker’s 1966 novel, Jubilee, is based on the story of Walker’s maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown. The historical fiction novel is sometimes described as a corollary to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind—the epic story of a strong Southern woman who lives during the antebellum period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction; though, the Southern woman in this story is black, and her strength comes from having endured the withering degradation of slavery.Plot SummaryJubilee... Read Jubilee Summary

Published in 1991, Jump and Other Stories is a collection of 16 short stories by Nadine Gordimer. Each story provides insight into how apartheid affected the people of South Africa. Featuring tales of tragedy, war, revolution, and love, the collection uses a diverse cast of characters to address systemic racism and offer hope for an inclusive future. Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature... Read Jump and Other Stories Summary

The 1979 novel Kindred was written by Octavia E. Butler, a Black author from California who wrote science fiction that challenged white hegemony. The novel tells the story of Edana “Dana” Franklin, a young Black woman in 1976 whose connection to a young white boy named Rufus Weylin allows her to time travel to 1800s Maryland. As she jumps between 1976 and the 1800s, she learns how she and Rufus are connected, and she must survive... Read Kindred Summary

August Wilson’s King Hedley II premiered in 1999 and opened on Broadway in 2001. It is the ninth installment in Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle (also known as the Century Cycle), a series of 10 plays that examine the experiences of Black Americans during the 20th century. It was nominated for multiple awards including a Tony and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wilson won two Pulitzer Prizes for other Pittsburgh Cycle plays, Fences in 1987... Read King Hedley II Summary

American author Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) wrote “King of the Bingo Game” in 1944. The short story was originally published in the New York literary journal Tomorrow in November 1944 and is widely considered a precursor to his classic novel Invisible Man (1953). Ellison was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and is considered one of the most important American authors of the 20th century. Invisible Man won a National Book Award in 1953, and... Read King of the Bingo Game Summary

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This guide is based on the revised version of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published as the fifth essay in Why We Can't Wait (1964).King's letter is a response to another open letter, "A Call for Unity," published in The Birmingham News and collectively authored by eight Alabama clergymen who argued that the protests were not an appropriate response to conditions in Birmingham.King opens the letter by explaining that he is responding... Read Letter From Birmingham Jail Summary

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“Like A Winding Sheet” is a short story by African American writer Ann Petry, originally published in 1945 and included in the 1946 collection of Best American Short Stories. Like many of Petry’s novels and short stories, “Like A Winding Sheet” examines how racism within American society impacts the personal lives of working-class African American people. In the story, Petry is especially interested in how racism is an inescapable part of life in New York... Read Like a Winding Sheet Summary

Gloria Naylor published Linden Hills in 1985, three years after the publication of her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place. While Naylor’s debut novel focuses on women living in an impoverished housing development, Linden Hills examines an affluent black community through the eyes of two young men: Lester, a Linden Hills resident, and Willie, an outsider living on Wayne Avenue.The Linden Hills neighborhood is the “place to be” (260) in Wayne County, with its... Read Linden Hills Summary

Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson’s 2003 novel in verse, follows the perspective of Lonnie Collins Motion, nicknamed Locomotion. After his parents die in a fire and his sister is adopted, Lonnie grieves and navigates life, first in a group home and then with Miss Edna, his foster mother. Through poetry, he slowly finds joy in life again, highlighting the themes of The Search for Identity and Belonging, The Healing Power of Writing, and The Enduring Support of... Read Locomotion Summary

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“Love Song for Alex, 1979” is a lyric sonnet that Margaret Walker wrote for her husband. The poem is frequently labeled a sonnet because of its 14 lines, though it doesn’t follow the strict rhyme scheme of a traditional sonnet. In the style of lyric poetry, the poem expresses Walker’s warm feelings for her husband. Though it doesn’t reveal a narrative, we can glean some details about the couple’s relationship from the poem.Poet BiographyMargaret Walker... Read Love Song for Alex, 1979 Summary

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In Maru (1971), author Bessie Head, also known for When Rain Clouds Gather (1968) and A Question of Power (1973), confronts deeply held prejudice toward the Masarwa people of Botswana. Considered sub-human by most citizens of Botswana, the Masarwa people pursue an untenable and desperate existence within Botswana society. Living off the land, the Masarwa wander from place to place in the bush, scavenging food and water in a subsistence lifestyle. The name “Masarwa” itself... Read Maru Summary

Maud Martha (1953) is a fictional narrative by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. The book is written in an experimental style combining poetic language and a nonlinear narrative. Each chapter is a vignette, a quick glimpse into an everyday scene in the life of the title character. Brooks’s only novel, Maud Martha was praised for its depiction of ordinary people and everyday life in Chicago. This guide is based upon the 1993 Third World Press... Read Maud Martha Summary

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Miracle’s Boys (2000) is a young adult novel by Jaqueline Woodson. The novel tells the story of three brothers, ages 21, 15, and 12, coping with the sudden death of their mother a year before. The middle brother, Charlie, recently returned home from a juvenile detention facility, where he was serving a two-year sentence for attempting to rob a candy store at gun point. Set in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York City, Miracle’s... Read Miracle's Boys Summary

Money Hungry is a 2001 middle-grade novel by American author Sharon G. Flake published by Little, Brown and Company. A Coretta Scott King Honor book, Money Hungry is the first book in Flake’s Raspberry Hill series. It explores 13-year-old Raspberry Hill’s hunger for money and the lengths to which she will go to acquire it. Stemming from a period of homelessness in her childhood, Raspberry will do almost anything to earn enough money to move... Read Money Hungry Summary

Moses, Man of the Mountain is an allegorical novel by African-American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. The novel reimagines the life of Moses and the biblical narrative of the Exodus from Egypt with several important changes, including the use of African American dialect, slang, and folklore. Throughout the novel, Hurston draws allegorical parallels between the enslavement of the Hebrew people in Egypt and the enslavement of people of African descent in the United States... Read Moses, Man of the Mountain Summary

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In writing Mother to Mother, Sindiwe Magona drew inspiration from a real event: the murder of a white American named Amy Biehl by young black men in 1990s South Africa. The crime caused shockwaves around the world, not least because Biehl herself had come to South Africa to combat apartheid—the system of segregation and discrimination that relegated black South Africans, as well as other people of color, to second-class citizenship.On the face of it, then... Read Mother to Mother Summary

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Mules and Men is a work of nonfiction published in 1935 by the American author Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston, a student of anthropology, used ethnographic research methods to collect and record Black folklore in the American South. Consisting of two parts, the work first details some folktales elicited directly from residents of rural folklore, and secondly describes several hoodoo practitioners in New Orleans. This book explores themes of establishing origins and the difference between honesty... Read Mules and Men Summary

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Richard’s Wright’s debut novel Native Son was an immediate success upon its publication in 1940, selling 250,000 copies in three weeks. Today, it is widely recognized as not only Wright’s greatest work, but as one of the most significant American novels of the twentieth century. In his essay “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” (1940), Wright explains that he based the protagonist of the novel on five young Black men he had known as a child. These... Read Native Son Summary

Nervous Conditions (1988) is a semi-autobiographical literary fiction novel written by Tsitsi Dangarembga, an international author, playwright, filmmaker, and director. The novel is the first in a three-part trilogy and is followed by The Book of Not (2006) and This Mournable Body (2017). Tambudzai, a young girl living with her family on a homestead in Rhodesia, narrates the novel and serves as the primary protagonist. Four other female protagonists—a deuteragonist, Nyasha, and three supporting protagonists... Read Nervous Conditions Summary

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New Kid by Jerry Craft is a 2019 graphic novel and winner of the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jim Callahan is responsible for the coloring. Craft is the creator of the 1990 comic strip Mama’s Boyz, as well as Class Act, the 2020 companion story to this book. New Kid focuses on an artistic middle school student who makes friends and builds confidence in himself as he navigates race and class... Read New Kid Summary

Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Ninth Ward is a realistic middle grade novel that follows 12-year-old Lanesha, a resident of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward neighborhood, in the days surrounding Hurricane Katrina, a devastating storm that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Lanesha must rely on her resourcefulness, resilience, and fortitude to survive the storm and subsequent flooding of the Ninth Ward. First published in 2010 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, the book earned a School... Read Ninth Ward Summary

No Longer At Ease (1960) is a novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The story takes place in the years prior to Nigeria’s independence from the British Empire and focuses on Obi Okonkwo. Obi is a young Nigerian man who returns home after studying English in Britain and finds a job in the civil service. He finds himself situated within the conflict between African and Western culture, raising questions about his identity and worldview. No... Read No Longer at Ease Summary

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Oil on Water is a 2010 novel by Helon Habila, who originally worked as a journalist and poet in Nigeria before becoming a professor of creative writing at George Mason. His writing has earned many accolades, including the Music Society of Nigeria national poetry award, the 2001 Caine Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize, the 2008 Emily Balch Prize, and the 2015 Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. Oil on Water is his third novel and foregrounds... Read Oil on Water Summary

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On the Come Up, published in 2019, is the second novel by acclaimed young adult author Angie Thomas. It takes place in the same neighborhood as Thomas’s first novel, The Hate U Give (2017), but aside from occasional references to the murder and riots in Garden Heights, On the Come Up features a new cast of characters. The book received numerous awards, including the American Library Association’s Top Ten Books for Young Adults, and it... Read On the Come Up Summary

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Our Sister Killjoy, or, Reflections from a Black-eyed Squint (1977) is a novel by Ata Ama Aidoo (1942-2023). It was Aidoo’s debut novel, with an experimental style that switches between prose and free verse poetry. Aidoo, a Ghanaian writer, tells the story of Sissie, or Our Sister Killjoy, a young Ghanaian woman who travels around Europe before eventually returning home. She spends most of the narrative in Germany, where she befriends a young German mother... Read Our Sister Killjoy Summary

Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise was published in 1997, just a few years after she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. According to Morrison, it is the last book of a trilogy that includes Beloved and Jazz. Morrison is an esteemed American novelist, having also received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1998) and the Coretta Scott King Award for Authors (2005), among other awards. She was educated at Howard University and Cornell University, and... Read Paradise Summary

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Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is a historical fiction novel that was first published in 1977. Ngũgĩ is a Kenyan author who has written novels, plays, short stories, and essays that typically center on Kenyan and African politics and the effects of colonialism and neocolonialism on the region. Petals of Blood explores the lives of Kenyans after the Mau Mau Rebellion and subsequent independence in the small village of Ilmorog, as well as its development... Read Petals of Blood Summary

Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral recounts the story of a young Black woman in the 1920s who decides to pass as white. Ostensibly a coming-of-age story, the novel features a complex treatment of racial barriers and gender inequalities. While the trajectory of the novel is straightforward and relatively typical for the bildungsroman—young woman leaves home, discovers herself through a series of obstacles she must overcome, and finally learns how to... Read Plum Bun Summary

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Paule Marshall’s 1983 Praisesong for the Widow follows an African American woman on a journey of spiritual discovery after the death of her husband. The novel is widely acclaimed and a receiver of the American Book Award. This study guide relies upon the 1983 Plume edition of the novel.Plot SummaryIn the late 1970s, Avey “Avatara” Johnson embarks on a cruise to the Caribbean with her two companions, Clarice and Thomasina. Avey is a 64-year-old woman... Read Praisesong For The Widow Summary

Winner of the Hearst-Wright Legacy Award in 2004 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize of 2005, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2003 novel Purple Hibiscus is set amidst the political turmoil of postcolonial Nigeria (the 1960s) prior to Nigeria's civil war. The novel is divided into four sections. Each section represents a specific moment in time and addresses a certain aspect of spirituality. Most of the story is told in flashback from the point-of-view of 15-year-old Kambili Achike... Read Purple Hibiscus Summary

Content Warning: Please note that this guide discusses topics in the book such as rape, sexual abuse, incest, slurs, profanity, drugs, and drug addiction.Sapphire is the pen name of author Ramona Lofton. She published her first novel, Push, in 1996; in 2009 it was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Precious. Sapphire continued the story with a 2011 sequel called The Kid, which focuses on Abdul, Precious’s son. Push is narrated by Precious, a Black... Read Push Summary

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Red River is a 2008 novel of historical fiction by Lalita Tademy, largely based on the history of her father’s family. Previously, Lalita Tademy wrote Cane River, which was selected for Oprah’s Book Club and is another historical fiction book, this one based on her maternal relatives. Red River takes place over almost 50 years, following four generations of the Tademy family. The central event in the book is the Colfax Massacre, a true to... Read Red River Summary