African American Literature Fiction

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world.

Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.

Porsha, the ghetto princess; Sahara, the scandalous baby mama; Frankie, a.k.a. Francine, the con artist: these three girls live in one apartment and are into all kinds of hood foolishness while having fun—until the day they find an eviction notice taped to their door. Now they have 72 hours to come up with all the money they owe in months of back rent.

When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States’ first Black president. Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign.

In the future, nuclear war has destroyed nearly all humankind. An alien race intervenes, saving the small group of survivors from certain death. But their salvation comes at a cost. The Oankali are able to read and mutate genetic code, and they use these skills for their own survival, interbreeding with new species to constantly adapt and evolve. They value the intelligence they see in humankind but also know that the species—rigidly bound to destructive social hierarchies—is destined for failure.

Felicia Lyons, a stressed-out stay-at-home mom, struggles to sprint ahead of the demands of motherhood while her husband spends long days at the office. Felicia taps, utters mantras, and breathes her way through most situations, but on some days, like when the children won't stop screaming her name or arguing over toy trucks and pretzel sticks, she wonders what it would be like to get in her car and drive away.

A Charleston belle with slavery on her conscience. A slave with rebellion in her heart. In South Carolina in 1858, no friendship could be more dangerous.

Gutted, I was the day you left my side, but I understood it was no one's fault but mine. I pushed you away, wearing my pain on my sleeve while pursuing a passion that stemmed from that very pain. In the end, you decided to choose yourself, and I could never fault you for that. But it hurt, and still does 'til this day.

Kamille appears to have it all. As the owner of a successful business, her funds are unlimited. However, her professional life is the only thing that seems to be working in her favor. Aside from her Ari, best friend, Kamille's social life is nonexistent. As her family vacation nears, Kamille is excited until her cousins point out that she's going solo. Kamille doesn't have a problem with being single, but she gets tired of it being thrown in her face. Ari suggests Kamille uses an upscale escort service. Kamille isn't sold on the idea, but eventually takes her advice.

Edie is stumbling her way through her 20s—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She's also, secretly, haltingly, figuring her way into life as an artist. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren't hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and falling into Eric's family life, his home.

All Zarinah wanted was to fall in love. Growing up, she had kissed her fair share of frogs. When an unconventional situation leads her to Lawson, her wishes might become reality. Lawson is the new CEO of his family's hotel casino chain. He's tired of aimless dating and women just wanting his money. When he meets Zarinah, he instantly feels like she's the one.

With the end of Alistair Sorenson’s tyrannical reign, Dèmi has accepted Jonas’s proposal to rule as his Queen with hopes to finally free her people, the magical Oluso. Yet social prejudice, corrupt council members, and the continued distrust of the nonmagical Ajès throughout the kingdom prove seemingly implacable obstacles. To make matters worse, Dèmi struggles to control her newly awakened iron blood magic. As Ekwensi’s rebel army—led in part by Colin, her best friend and one-time lover—become more triumphant in their mission, war seems inevitable.

If you can count on one thing from "Madea" Mabel Simmons, star of Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion, it's that she's got something to say. She's the beloved, hilarious, sharp-witted, pistol-packing grandmother who's watching out and speaking her mind. Now Madea is telling her own story, dishing her memoirs and hard-won, hilarious wisdom in her own inimitable voice (with a little help from her friend Tyler Perry).

As the 20th century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, "King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom". Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre.

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James' Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy.

Mavis Miller is not a PTA mom. She has enough on her plate with her feisty seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, an exhausting job at a nonprofit, and the complexities of a multigenerational household. So no one is more surprised than Mavis when she caves to Trisha Holbrook, the long-reigning, slightly terrifying PTA president, and finds herself in charge of the school’s brand-new DEI committee. As one of the few Black parents at this California elementary school, Mavis tries to convince herself this is an opportunity for real change. But things go off the rails at the very first meeting.

In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale.

As a low-level enforcer in Los Angeles, Ken Swift knows danger, but nowhere does he feel it more than in his tangled romances. Divorced from one woman, in love with another, and wrestling with a strong desire to get to know a third, his life is far from perfect, and it becomes all the more complicated when his troubled daughter resurfaces on the same day as a major job.

While Dena Jones definitely has what it takes to succeed, she wants out. She's determined to make it out of "Crooklyn" by any means necessary and doesn't have a problem manipulating men to get what she wants.

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.