Michelle Alexander links this disparity to the war on drugs created to militarize police and fracture black communities, but also exposes its lasting effect as well as its ongoing nature. While representing just 13% of the nation’s population, black people make up 40% of the prison population. Mass incarceration has long plagued the black community. The Coldest Winter Ever, Simon & Schuster It effectively captures the allure of the game while serving its consequences as well. The cold, harsh reality of drug culture bleeds off these pages.
How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America, Harper Collins Graves Sr. His shoot-from-the-hip commentary on what it takes to be a great, black entrepreneur in a white world is just the prescription the black business world needs. This list would be remiss without this text from BLACK ENTERPRISE founder and publisher Earl G. How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: Straight Talk on Making It in America The Color Purple, Harcourt Brace Jovanovichġ3. The Pulitzer Prize-winning book made it to the big screen three years after its 1982 publishing date. If there has ever been a story told about black trauma, toxic masculinity, and survival, The Color Purple by Alice Walker will likely come up. This Nobel Prize-winning book traces the history of a black family and shows the nuance and complexity of black community rarely highlighted in mainstream literature-through Morrison’s remarkable storytelling and beautiful words. For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, Bantam Books These monologues are rooted in black feminism and speak specifically to the intersectionality of race and sexism black women experience. Ntozake Shange took the Black Arts movement by storm when her collection of choreopoems hit theaters. For colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf The text was integral to African Americans wanting to know their family roots, and sparking interest in genealogy.ġ0.
It tells the story of his matriarchal forefather’s journey from Africa, through the middle passage, and through chattel slavery and is carried on by his descendants. Dopefiend, Holloway HouseĪlex Haley’s family tree is the context for Roots. Donald Goines, a brilliant writer of street literature captures the pain of addiction perfectly.
Long before the crack era of the 1980s, heroine wreaked havoc on black communities. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ballantine Books The book posthumously was published in 1965. Alex Haley documented X’s life-changing story for two years prior to his assassination. We are blessed to have this book in the world. Go Tell It On The Mountain is an exploration of identity and migration. Baldwin puts the beauty and the problematic on the page by way of a young man attempting to negotiate being black, religious, unloved, and possibly gay. The Invisible Man, Random HouseĬhristianity has close ties to the black American experience, and in many instances it is inextricable. It is an allegory for the entire black race, which is mistreated, objectified, commodified, and cast aside in such a way that it may as well be invisible. This existential text told the story of a lone, nameless black man navigating a white world and, eventually, we find him so isolated from society to align and protect himself from the powers that be. She gathers and documents cultural information from her native Florida, and New Orleans, and brings forth the beauty of common folk their voice, their diction, their living, their way. Zora Neale Hurston flexes her anthropology chops in this book that published in 1935. The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man, Sherman, French & Co. Throughout the text, Johnson gives firsthand accounts and observations of occupying two racial spaces, fitting into neither, yet being forced to choose one. His loss of innocence comes as he is discriminated against by his teacher.
James Weldon Johnson, the creator of the black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” shares the story of being raised by a black mother, but also believing that he was as white as his school-age peers due to his biracial heritage. The Marrow of Tradition, Haughton, Mifflin, and Companyģ.
It focuses on racial politics, violence, and blackface during Reconstruction, and sadly, echoes events happening today. This historical text, published at the turn of the century, depicts the Wilmington Race Riots in 1898. Chesnutt was a prolific black writer who could very well pass for white but refused to.