Black Literature Matters: Further Reading

The bibliography below is presented to help those who wish to learn more about the books and authors included in our exhibition Black Literature Matters. All books are in the Society Library collection and the vast majority are in our open, circulating stacks. Titles are linked to our catalog. Be sure to check the hyperlinked subject headings in each book's record if you wish to explore more. And when you go to the stacks to retrieve a book, be sure to look on the shelves around it. The book you didn't know you were looking for may be right there. 

In some cases, these resources will be useful to students and scholars looking to do a "deep dive," while others provide more general context to orient readers among the rich worlds represented in the exhibition. We have included works of criticism and literary history, biographies, letters, reference works, interviews, and more. Anthologies published across several decades are also included to stimulate discussion about canon formation, changes in taste and aesthetics, and to introduce readers to work by authors that may have been neglected over the years. 

Use the links to go directly to areas of interest:

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

• Anthologies | Criticism & History
• Slave Narratives
• The Harlem Renaissance: Criticism & History | Anthologies
• Featured Writers

WRITERS OF THE CARIBBEAN

• Criticism & History | Anthologies
• Featured Writers

WRITERS FROM THE AFRICAN CONTINENT

• Criticism & History | Anthologies
• Featured Writers

LIBRARIANS

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Anthologies  

• Anger, and beyond: the Negro writer in the United States (Herbert Hill, ed.) (Harper & Row, 1966) 820.9 H
• Anthology of American Negro literature (edited, with an introduction by V.F. Calverton) (Modern Library, 1929) 820.8 A
• Black fire: an anthology of Afro-American writing (LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, eds.) (Morrow, 1968) 820.8 B
• Black writers of America: a comprehensive anthology (Richard Barksdale, Keneth Kinnamon, eds.) (Prentice Hall, 1972) 820.8 B
• Brotherman: the Odyssey of black men in America (edited by Herb Boyd and Robert Allen) (One World, 1995) 820.8 B
• Children of the night: the best short stories by Black writers, 1967 to the present (Gloria Naylor, ed.) (Little, Brown, 1995) F C
• Early Negro writing, 1760-1837 (selected and introduced by Dorothy Porter) (Beacon Press, 1971) 820.8 E
• "Face Zion forward": first writers of the Black Atlantic, 1785-1798 (Joanna Brooks & John Saillant, eds.) (Northeastern University Press, 2002) 820.8 F
• Hokum: an anthology of African-American humor (Paul Beatty, ed.) (Bloomsbury, 2006) 827.08 H
• The Negro caravan (Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee , eds.) (Dryden, 1941) 820.8 B
• The Norton Anthology of African American literature (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. & Valerie Smith, general editors) (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014) (2 volumes) 820.8 N
• The portable nineteenth-century African American women writers (Hollis Robbins and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., general eds.) (Penguin Books, 2017) 820.8 P
• This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color (Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, eds.; foreword, Toni Cade Bambara) (Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1983) 820.81 T
• Soon, one morning; new writing by American Negroes, 1940-1962 (Herbert Hill, ed.) (Knopf, 1963) 820.8 H
• Unchained voices: an anthology of Black authors in the English-speaking world of the eighteenth century (Vincent Carretta, ed.) (The University Press of Kentucky, 1996) 820.8 U
• The unforgetting heart: an anthology of short stories by African American women, 1859-1993 (Asha Kanwar, ed.) (Aunt Lute Books, 1993) F U 

Criticism & History

• Baker, Houston A. - The journey back: issues in Black literature and criticism (University of Chicago Press, 1980) 820.9 B
• Black literature criticism: excerpts from criticism of the most significant works of Black authors over the past 200 years (James P. Draper, editor) (Gale Research, 1992) 809 B Oversize (3 volumes)
• Black women writers (1950-1980): a critical evaluation (Mari Evans, ed,) (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984) 820.9 B
• Bruce, Dickson D. - The origins of African American literature, 1680-1865 (University Press of Virginia, 2001) 820.9 B
• The Cambridge history of African American literature (Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011) 820.9 C
• Conjuring: black women, fiction, and literary tradition (edited by Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J. Spillers) (Indiana U. Press, 1985) 820.9 C
• Cooke, Michael G. - Afro-American literature in the twentieth century: the achievement of intimacy (Yale University Press, 1984) 820.9 C
• Dreaming out Loud: African American novelists at work (edited by Horace A. Porter) (University of Iowa Press, 2015) 823.09 D
• Fabre, Michel - From Harlem to Paris: Black American writers in France, 1840-1980 (University of Illinois Press, c1991) 820.9 F
• Gates, Henry Louis Jr. - The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reader (Basic Civitas Books, 2012) 820.9 G  
• Griffin, Farah Jasmine - Read until you understand: the profound wisdom of Black life and literature (W.W. Norton, 2021)
• Jackson, Lawrence Patrick - The indignant generation: a narrative history of African American writers and critics, 1934-1960 (Princeton University Press, 2011) 820.9 J
• Jackson, Blyden - A history of Afro-American literature,  v. 1: The long beginning, 1746-1895 (Louisiana State University Press, 1989)  820.9 J
• Jones, Gayl - Liberating voices: oral tradition in African American literature (Harvard University Press, 1991) 820.9 J
• Cloutier, Jean-Christophe - Shadow archives: the lifecycles of African American literature (Columbia U. Press, 2019) 820.9 C
• Smethurst, James Edward - The Black Arts Movement: literary nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s (University of North Carolina Press, 2005) 820.9 S
• Washington, Mary Helen - The other blacklist: the African American literary and cultural left of the 1950s (Columbia University Press, 2014) 820.9 W
• Within the circle: an anthology of African American literary criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the present (Angelyn Mitchell, ed.) (Duke University Press, 1994) 820.9 W

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Criticism & History

• Aberjhani - Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Checkmark Books, 2003) 820.9 A OVERSIZE
• Baker, Houston A. - Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 1987) 820.9 B
• The Cambridge companion to the Harlem Renaissance (George Hutchinson, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 820.9 C
• Carroll, Anne Elizabeth - Word, image, and the New Negro: representation and identity in the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana University Press, 2005) 820.9 C
• Christian, Shawn Anthony - The Harlem Renaissance: and the idea of a New Negro reader (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016) 028 C
• The Columbia history of American poetry (Jay Parini, editor) (Columbia University Press, 1993) 821.09 C (see “The Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance” by Arnold Rampersad)
• De Jongh, James - Vicious modernism: Black Harlem and the literary imagination (Cambridge University Press, 1990) 820.9 D
• Ferguson, Jeffrey B. - The sage of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance (Yale University Press, 2005) 92 S3976 F
• The Harlem Renaissance remembered (edited by Arna Bontemps) (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972)
• The Harlem Renaissance revisited: politics, arts, and letters (Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, ed.) (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010) 974.71 H
• Huggins, Nathan Irvin - Harlem renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1971) 917.471 H
• Hull, Akasha Gloria - Color, sex, & poetry: three women writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Indiana University Press, 1987) 821.09 H
• Hutchinson, George - The Harlem renaissance in black and white (Harvard University Press, 1995) 820.9 H
• Kaplan, Carla - Miss Anne in Harlem: the white women of the Black Renaissance (Harper, 2013) 974.71 K
• Mitchell, Verner D. - Literary sisters: Dorothy West and her circle: a biography of the Harlem Renaissance (Rutgers University Press, 2012) 823 W
• A Renaissance in Harlem: lost voices of an American community (Lionel C. Bascom, ed.) (Bard, 1999) (manuscripts from WPA Writers' Project Collection, 1936-1940) 808.89 R
• Scruggs, Charles - The sage in Harlem: H.L. Mencken and the black writers of the1920s (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) 828.09 M
• Turner, Joyce Moore - Caribbean crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance (University of Illinois Press, 2005) 820.9 T
• Wall, Cheryl A. - The Harlem Renaissance: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016) 974.71 W
• Wall, Cheryl A. - Women of the Harlem renaissance (Indiana University Press, 1995) 820.9 W              

Anthologies 

• Double-take: a revisionist Harlem Renaissance anthology (Venetria K. Patton and Maureen Honey, eds.) (Rutgers University Press, 2001) 820.8 D
• Ebony rising: short fiction of the greater Harlem Renaissance era (Craig Gable, ed.) (Indiana University Press, 2004) F E
• Harlem's glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 (Lorraine Elena Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, eds.) (Harvard University Press, 1996) 820.8 H
• Harlem Renaissance: five novels of the 1920s (Rafia Zafar, ed.) (Library of America, 2011) 808.83 H 
• Harlem Renaissance: four novels of the 1930s (Rafia Zafar, ed.) (Library of America, 2011) 808.83 H
• The Portable Harlem Renaissance reader (David L. Lewis, ed.) (Viking, 1994) 808.89 P
• Shadowed dreams: women's poetry of the Harlem Renaissance (Maureen Honey, ed.) (Rutgers University Press, 2006) 821.08 S
• Voices from the Harlem Renaissance (Nathan Irvin Huggins, ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1995) 820.8 V

SLAVE NARRATIVES

• Albert, Octavia V. Rogers - The house of bondage, or, Charlotte Brooks and other slaves (Oxford University Press, 1991) 326 A
• Andrews, William L. - To tell a free story: the first century of Afro-American autobiography, 1760-1865 (University of Illinois Press, 1986) 920 A258 A
• Blight, David W. - A slave no more: two men who escaped to freedom: including their own narratives of emancipation (Harcourt, 2007) 326 B
• The blind African slave, or, Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, nicknamed Jeffery Brace (Kari J. Winter, ed.) (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) Project MUSE e-book
• Brown, Henry Box - Narrative of the life of Henry Box Brown (introduction by Richard Newman; foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) (Oxford University Press, 2002) 92 B8782 B
• Craft, William & Ellen Craft - Running a thousand miles for freedom: the escape of William and Ellen Craft from slavery (University of Georgia Press, 1999) Project MUSE e-book
• Equiano, Olaudah - Sold as a slave (Penguin, 2007) 321 E
• Five Black lives: the autobiographies of Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, the Rev. G.W. Offley, James L. Smith (introduction by Arna Bontemps) (Wesleyan University Press, 1971) 326 F
• Frederick, Francis - Slave life in Virginia and Kentucky: a narrative (Louisiana State University Press, 2010) 92 F8522 F
• From bondage to belonging: the Worcester slave narratives (B. Eugene McCarthy and Thomas L. Doughton, eds.) (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) Project MUSE ebook
• Great slave narratives (selected and introduced by Arna Bontemps) (Beacon Press, 1969) 301.4 B
• Grimes, William - Life of William Grimes, the runaway slave (William L. Andrews and Regina E. Mason, eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2008) 92 G8625 G
• Jacobs, Harriet - Incidents in the life of a slave girl: written by herself (Harvard University Press, 1987) 92 J173 J
• The long walk to freedom: runaway slave narratives (Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise, eds.) (Beacon Press, 2012) 326 L
• Parker, John P. - His promised land: the autobiography of John P. Parker, former slave and conductor on the underground railroad (Stuart Seely Sprague, ed.) (W.W. Norton, 1996) 92 P2411 P
• Pickard, Kate E. R. - The kidnapped and the ransomed; being the personal recollections  of Peter Still and his wife Vina, after forty years of slavery (Hamilton, 1856) 92 S8573 P Closed Stacks 
• Puttin' on ole massa; the slave narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northup (Harper & Row, 1969) 326 O 
• Said, Omar ibn - A Muslim American slave: the life of Omar Ibn Said (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011) 326 S
• Sitiki  - The odyssey of an African slave (University Press of Florida, 2009) 92 S62334 S
• Six women's slave narratives (with an introduction by William L.  Andrews) (Oxford University Press, 1988) 920 S6256 S
• Slave narratives (Library of America, 2000) 326 S
• The Slave's narrative (edited by Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) ( Oxford University Press, 1985) 920 S6318 S
• Thompson, John - The life of John Thompson, a fugitive slave: containing his history of 25 years in bondage and his providential escape (William L. Andrews & Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds) (Penguin Books, 2011) 92 T4735 T
• Unchained memories: readings from the slave narratives (foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; introduction by Spencer Crew and Cynthia Goodman) (Bulfinch Press, 2002) 326 U
• Unsung: unheralded narratives of American slavery & abolition (The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; foreword by Kevin Young; Michelle D. Commander, ed.) (Penguin Books, 2021) 326 U
• also see Northup and Douglass sections below and interviews with former slaves documented in: River of Blood: The Story of American Slavery from the People Who Lived It: Interviews & Photographs of Formerly Enslaved African Americans (Cahan & Williams, 2020); Voices from slavery: 100 authentic slave narratives (Yetman, 2000); Unwritten history of slavery: autobiographical accounts of Negro ex-slaves (Settle Egypt, 1968)

FEATURED WRITERS

*click on author headings to see books written by featured authors

Zora Neale Hurston

• Boyd, Valerie - Wrapped in rainbows: the life of Zora Neale Hurston (Scribner, 2002) 92 H9667 B
• Croft, Robert W. - A Zora Neale Hurston companion (Greenwood Press, 2002) 823 H
• Hemenway, Robert E. - Zora Neale Hurston: a literary biography (with a foreword by Alice Walker) (University of Illinois Press, 1977) 92 H9667 H
• King, Charles - Gods of the upper air: how a circle of renegade anthropologists reinvented race, sex, and gender in the twentieth century (Doubleday, 2019) 301 K
• King, Lovalerie - The Cambridge introduction to Zora Neale Hurston (Cambridge University Press, 2008) 823 H
• Lillios, Anna - Crossing the creek: the literary friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (University Press of Florida, 2010) 823.08 L
• Plant, Deborah G. - Every tub must sit on its own bottom: the philosophy and politics of Zora Neale Hurston (University of Illinois Press, 1995) 828.09 H
• Taylor, Yuval - Zora and Langston: a story of friendship and betrayal (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019) 920 T2477 Z
• Wall, Cheryl A. - Women of the Harlem renaissance (Indiana University Press, 1995) 820.9 W
• Zora Neale Hurston: a life in letters (collected and edited by Carla Kaplan) (Doubleday, 2001) 92 H9667 H

Jean Toomer

• Kerman, Cynthia Earl - The lives of Jean Toomer: a hunger for wholeness (Louisiana State University Press, 1987) 92 T6724 K
• Guterl, Matthew Pratt - The color of race in America, 1900-1940 (Harvard University Press, 2001) 305.8 G
• Letters of Jean Toomer, 1919-1924 (Mark Whalan, ed.) (University of Tennessee Press, 2006)

See the following collections for their textual notes and introductions: 

• The wayward and the seeking: a collection of writings by Jean Toomer (edited with an introduction by Darwin T. Turner) (Howard University Press, 1980) 820.81 T Oversize
• The collected poems of Jean Toomer (edited by Robert B. Jones and Margery Toomer Latimer; with an introduction and textual notes by Robert B. Jones) (University of North Carolina Press, 1988) 821 T

Countee Cullen

• Cullen, Countee - My soul's high song: the collected writings of Countee Cullen, voice of the Harlem Renaissance (Gerald Early, editor) (Doubleday, 1991) 820.81 C (includes lengthy introduction by Gerard Early and James Baldwin’s interview with Cullen for his high school newspaper) 
• Molesworth, Charles - And bid him sing: a biography of Countée Cullen (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) 92 C96747 M  

Alain Locke

• Harris, Leonard - Alain L. Locke: biography of a philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008) 92 L8143 H 
• Stewart, Jeffrey C. - The new Negro: the life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press, 2018) 92 L8143 S
• The New Negro: an interpretation (New York: Boni, 1925) 325.26 L
• The New Negro: readings on race, representation, and African American culture, 1892-1938 (edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Gene Andrew Jarrett) (Princeton University Press, 2007) 325.26 N

Frederick Douglass

• Blight, David W. - Frederick Douglass: prophet of freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2018) 92 D7374 B 
• Blight, David W. - Frederick Douglass' Civil War: keeping faith in jubilee (Louisiana State University Press, 1991) 973.7 B 
• Dilbeck, D. H. - Frederick Douglass: America's prophet (The University of North Carolina Press, 2018) 92 D7374 D 
• Douglass in his own time: a biographical chronicle of his life, drawn from recollections, interviews, and memoirs by family, friends, and associates (edited by John Ernest) (University of Iowa Press, 2014) 92 D7374 D
• Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself: authoritative text,  contexts, criticism (edited by William L. Andrews and William S. McFeely) (Norton Critical Editon, 1997) 92 D7374 D
• Douglass, Frederick - Speeches & writings (Library of America, 2022) 820.81 D
• Du Bois, Shirley Graham - There was once a slave ... The heroic story of Frederick Douglass (J. Messner, inc., 1947) 92 D7374 G
• Fought, Leigh - Women in the world of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) 92 D7374 F
• Frederick Douglass: new literary and historical essays (Eric J. Sundquist, ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1990) 973.8 F
• Huggins, Nathan Irvin - Slave and citizen: the life of Frederick Douglass (Little, Brown, 1980) 92 D7374 H
• Levine, Robert S. - The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Harvard University Press, 2016) 92 D7374 L
• McFeely, William S. - Frederick Douglass (Norton, 1991) 92 D7374 M
• Martin, Waldo E. - The mind of Frederick Douglass (University of North Carolina Press, 1985) 92 D7374 M
• Oakes, James - The radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the triumph of antislavery politics (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007) 973.71 O
• Stauffer, John - The black hearts of men: radical abolitionists and the transformation of race (Harvard University Press, 2002) 973.7 S
• Wallace, Robert K. - Douglass & Melville: anchored together in neighborly style (Spinner Publications, 2005) 823.08 W
• Washington, Booker T. - Frederick Douglass (G.W. Jacobs & company, 1907) 92 D7374 W 

W.E.B. Du Bois

• Appiah, Anthony - Lines of descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the emergence of identity (Harvard University Press, 2014) 92 D8166 A
• Balaji, Murali - The professor and the pupil: the politics of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (Nation Books, 2007) 323.4 B
• Basevich, Elvira - W.E.B. Du Bois: the lost and the found (Polity, 2021) 92 D8166 B
• Blum, Edward J. - W.E.B. Du Bois, American prophet (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) 92 D8166 B 
• Du Bois, Shirley Graham - His day is marching on; a memoir of W. E. B. Du Bois (Lippincott 1971)
• Goodman, Susan - Republic of words: the Atlantic monthly and its writers, 1857-1925 (University Press of New England, 2011) (Chapter titled “Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois”) 050 G
• Lewis, David Levering - W.E.B. Du Bois: a biography (Henry Holt and Co., 2009) 92 D8166 L  
• Lure and loathing: essays on race, identity, and the ambivalence of assimilation (The Penguin Press, 1993) (includes essay "The last great battle of the west: W.E.B. Du Bois and the struggle for African America's soul” by Alton B. Pollard III) 305.8 L  
• Marable, Manning - W.E.B. Du Bois: Black radical democrat (Paradigm Publishers, 2005) 92 D8166 M
• West, Cornel (w/ Christa Buschendorf) - Black prophetic fire (Beacon Press, 2014) (see chapter titled “The Black Flame: W.E.B. Du Bois”) 363.2 W
• Wolff, Daniel J. - How Lincoln learned to read: twelve great Americans and the educations that made them (Bloomsbury, 2009) 920 W8558 H
• Writers under surveillance: the FBI files (The MIT Press, 2018) 363.2 W

Phillis Wheatley 

• Carretta, Vincent - Phillis Wheatley: biography of a genius in bondage (University of Georgia Press, 2011) 92 W5574 C
• Gates, Henry Louis Jr. - The trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's first Black poet and her encounters with the founding fathers (Basic Civitas Books, 2003)  92 W5574 G
• Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne - The age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) Lobby Poetry (a recent acclaimed cycle of poems based on Wheatley’s life)

These collections of Wheatley’s writings include significant supplementary text and scholarly annotations:

• The collected works of Phillis Wheatley (edited with an essay by John C. Shields) (Oxford University Press, 1988)821 W
• The writings of Phillis Wheatley (edited by Vincent Carretta) (Oxford University Press, 2019) 820.81 W

Claude McKay

• The Cambridge companion to the Harlem Renaissance (edited by George Hutchinson) (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (See chapter “Caribbean voices of Claude McKay and Eric Walrond”) 820.9 C
• Cooper, Wayne F. - Claude McKay: rebel sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance: a biography (Louisiana State University Press, 1987) 92 M153 C
• Dowling, Robert M. - Slumming in New York: from the waterfront to mythic Harlem (University of Illinois Press, 2007) 823.09 D 
• Heise, Thomas - Urban underworlds: a geography of twentieth-century American literature and culture (Rutgers University Press, 2011) 820.9 H
• Tillery, Tyrone - Claude McKay: a black poet's struggle for identity (University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) 92 M1531 T 
• Winston, James - Claude McKay: The making of a black bolshevik (Columbia University Press, 2021)

Solomon Northrup

• Cox, John D. - Traveling south: travel narratives and the construction of American identity (University of Georgia Press, 2005)  917.3 C
• Northrup, Solomon - Twelve years a slave (introduction by Ira Berlin; general editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) (Penguin Classics, 2012)  326 N

Langston Hughes

• Berry, Faith - Langston Hughes, before and beyond Harlem (Carol Pub. Group, 1992) 92 H8933 B
• Best, Wallace D. - Langston's salvation: American religion and the bard of Harlem (New York University Press, 2017) 820.9 H
• Bontemps, Arna - Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes letters, 1925-1967 (selected and edited by Charles H. Nichols) (Dodd, Mead, 1980) 826.08 B
• Harper, Donna Sullivan - Not so simple: the "Simple" stories by Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press, 1995) 823 H  
• A historical guide to Langston Hughes (edited by Steven C. Tracy) (Oxford University Press, 2004) 821.09 H
• Hughes, Langston - Letters from Langston: from the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and beyond (edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford and MaryLouise Patterson) (University of California Press, 2016) 92 H8933 H
• Hughes, Langston - Selected letters of Langston Hughes (edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel; with Christa Fratantoro) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) 92 H8933 H
• Rampersad, Arnold - The life of Langston Hughes, vols. 1-2 (Oxford University Press, 1986-1988) 92 H8933 R
• Shulman, Robert - The power of political art: the 1930s literary left reconsidered (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) (see chapter "The left poetry of Langston Hughes") 820.9 S 
• Taylor, Yuval - Zora and Langston: a story of friendship and betrayal (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019) 920 T2477 Z
• Vendler, Helen - The ocean, the bird, and the scholar: essays on poets and poetry (Harvard University Press, 2015) (includes essay on Hughes) 828 V

Marita Bonner 

• Bonner, Marita - Frye Street & environs: the collected works of Marita Bonner (edited and introduced by Joyce Flynn and Joyce Occomy Stricklin) (Beacon Press, 1987) (see "detailed and comprehensive" introduction) F B 
• Woolley, Lisa - American voices of the Chicago renaissance (Northern Illinois University Press, 2000) 820.9 W

Samuel Delany

The Library has no secondary biographical or critical works about Delany. See thse memoirs, letters, and interviews: 

• Delany, Samuel R. - About writing: seven essays, four letters, and five interviews (Wesleyan University Press, 2005) 808.3 D
• Delany, Samuel R. - Heavenly breakfast: an essay on the winter of love (Bamberger Books, 1997) 824 D (chronicles 1967-68, when he lived in a commune in the East Village)
• Delany, Samuel R. - The motion of light in water: sex and science fiction writing in the East Village, 1957-1965 (Arbor House/W. Morrow, 1988) 92 D3381 D
• Delany, Samuel R. - Of solids and surds (volume of lectures in Yale U. Press "Why I Write" series) (Yale University Press, 2021)

Lorraine Hansberry 

• Carter, Steven R. - Hansberry's drama: commitment amid complexity (University of Illinois Press, 1991) 822.09 H 
• Colbert, Soyica Diggs - Radical vision: a biography of Lorraine Hansberry (Yale University Press, 2021) 92 H2492 C
• Conversations with Lorraine Hansberry (edited by Mollie Godfrey) (University Press of Mississippi, 2021) 822.09 H
• Nemiroff, Robert - To be young, gifted, and black; Lorraine Hansberry in her own words (With original drawings and art by Miss Hansberry; introduction by James Baldwin) (Prentice-Hall, 1969) 822 N
• Perry, Imani - Looking for Lorraine: the radiant and radical life of Lorraine Hansberry (Beacon Press, 2018) 92 H2492 P

Gwendolyn Brooks

• Bishop, Elizabeth - Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) (see review of Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks) 828 B
• Brooks, Gwendolyn - Report from part one (Detroit, Broadside Press 1972) 92 B87342 B
• Brooks, Gwendolyn - Report from part two (Chicago: Third World Press, 1996) 92 B87342 B
• Erkkila, Betsy - The wicked sisters: women poets, literary history, and discord (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) (see chapter“Race, black women writing, and Gwendolyn Brooks”) Chase 821.09 E
• Melhem, D. H. - Gwendolyn Brooks: poetry & the heroic voice (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1987) Chase 821.09 B 
• Jackson, Angela - A surprised queenhood in the new Black sun: the life & legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017) 92 B87342 J
• Washington, Mary Helen - The other blacklist: the African American literary and cultural left of the 1950s (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014) (see chapter “When Gwendolyn Brooks wore red”) 820.9 W

Toni Morrison

• Bennett, Juda - The Toni Morrison book club (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) 920 B719 T
• Bigsby, C. W. E. – Writers in conversation (Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies, 2000-) (see volumes 1 & 4) 809 B  
• Blair, Sara - Harlem crossroads: Black writers and the photograph in the twentieth century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007) (see chapter "Toni Morrison and the Return to Plato’s Cave”) 820.9 B
• Bloom, Harold - The American canon: literary genius from Emerson to Pynchon (The Library of America, 2019) 820.9 B
• Byatt, A. S. - Imagining characters: conversations about women writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, and Toni Morrison (Vintage Books, 1997) 823.08 B
• The Cambridge companion to American fiction after 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2013) 823.09 C 
• Campbell, James - Syncopations: Beats, New Yorkers, and writers in the dark (University of California Press, 2008) (see chapter “Love Lost: Toni Morrison”) 820.9 C
• Conversations with Toni Morrison (University Press of Mississippi, 1994) 823 M
• Cultural institutions of the novel ( Duke University Press, 1996) (see chapter “The Rise of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison”) 809.3 C
• Ferguson, Robert A. - Alone in America: the stories that matter (Harvard University Press, 2013) (see chapter “William Faulkner and Toni Morrison Plot Racial Difference”) 823.09 F
• Literary landscapes: charting the worlds of classic literature (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2018) (see chapter “Toni Morrison, Ohio, USA”) Lobby – Nonfiction  
• Monda, Antonio - Do you believe?: conversations on God and religion (Vintage Books, 2007) (see chapter “Toni Morrison: the search is more important than the conclusion”) 211 M
• Pardes, Ilana - The song of songs: a biography (Princeton University Press, 2019) (see chapter “The Song of America: From Walt Whitman to Toni Morrison”) 223 P
• The Paris review: Interviews, vol. 2 (Picador, 2006-)  820.9 P 
• The Romare Bearden reader (Duke University Press, 2019) (includes essay “Circe in Black: Homer, Toni Morrison, Romare Bearden by Farah Jasmine Griffin) 823.09 C
• Roynon, Tessa - The Cambridge introduction to Toni Morrison (Cambridge University Press, 2013) 823 M
• Toni Morrison: critical and theoretical approaches (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) 823 M
• Toni Morrison: the last interview and other conversations (Brooklyn, New York: Melville House, 2020)  823 M
• Toni Morrison: critical perspectives past and present (Amistad, 1993) (edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah) 823 M
• Vanity fair's writers on writers (Penguin Books, 2016) (includes profile by John Leonard) 809 V
• Verdelle, A. J. - Miss Chloe: a memoir of a literary friendship with Toni Morrison (Amistad, 2022) 920 V483 V 
• Weinstein, Arnold L. - Recovering your story: Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Morrison (Random House, 2006) 809.3 W
• Women at work. Volume I: interviews from the Paris review (Paris Review Editions, 2017) 809 W
• Women writers at work: the Paris review interviews (George Plimpton, ed.; introduction by Margaret Atwood) (Modern Library, 1998) 809 W

Frank Yerby 

• The short stories of Frank Yerby (edited by Veronica T. Watson) (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) (see introduction) F Y
• Writing in America (Rutgers University Press, 2018) (contains the essay by Yerby “How and why I write the costume novel")  820.9 W

Paule Marshall

• Benedict, Helen - Portraits in print: a collection of profiles and the stories behind them (Columbia University Press, 1991) (see “Filling silences with strong voices, Paule Marshall”) 920 B4632 P
• Margolies, Edward - New York and the literary imagination: the city in twentieth century fiction and drama (McFarland & Co., 2008) (see chapter “Magic, the mystery, the miseries: Thomas Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dawn Powell, E.L. Doctorow, Paule Marshall”) 823.09 M
• Marshall, Paule - Triangular road: a memoir (BasicCivitas Books, 2009) 92 M3691 M
• Conversations with Paule Marshall (University Press of Mississippi, 2010)  92 M3691 M

James Baldwin

• Buccola, Nicholas - The fire is upon us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the debate over race in America (Princeton University Press, 2019) 305.88 B
• Boyd, Herb - Baldwin's Harlem: a biography of James Baldwin (Atria Books, 2008) 92 B1812 B
• Campbell, James - Talking at the gates: a life of James Baldwin (Viking, 1991) 92 B1812 C
• Campbell, James - Exiled in Paris: Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett and others on the Left Bank (Scribner, 1995) 820.4 C
• Conversations with James Baldwin (Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt, eds.) (University Press of Mississippi, 1989) 828.09 B
• Dyson, Michael Eric - What truth sounds like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and our unfinished conversation about race in America (St. Martin's Press, 2018) 305.88 D
• Eckman, Fern Marja – The furious passage of James Baldwin (M. Evans, 1966) 92 B1812 E
• Farber, Jules B. - James Baldwin: escape from America, exile in Provence (Pelican Publishing Company, 2016)  92 B1812 F                       
• Field, Douglas - All those strangers: the art and lives of James Baldwin (Oxford University Press, 2015) 828.09 B
• Glaude, Eddie S., Jr. - Begin again: James Baldwin's America and it's urgent lessons for our own (Crown, 2020) 305.8 G
• A historical guide to James Baldwin (edited by Douglas Field) (Oxford University Press, 2009) 828.09 B
• James Baldwin: the last interview and other conversations (Melville House, 2014) 828.09 B
• James Baldwin: the legacy (edited by Quincy Troupe) (Simon & Schuster, 1989) 92 B1812 J
• Leeming, David Adams - James Baldwin: a biography (Knopf, 1994) 92 B1812 L
• Mabanckou, Alain - Letter to Jimmy: on the twentieth anniversary of your death (translated from the French by Sara Meli Ansari) (Soft Skull Press, 2014) 828.09 B
• Macebuh, Stanley - James Baldwin; a critical study (Third Press, 1973) 828.09 B
• Mead, Margaret & James Baldwin - A rap on race (Lippincott, 1971) 301.4 M
• Mullen, Bill - James Baldwin: living in fire (Pluto Press, 2019) 92 B1812 M
• The Paris review: Interviews, volume 2 (Picador 2006) 820.9 P
• Tóibín, Colm - New ways to kill your mother: writers and their families (Scribner, 2012) 809 T 
• Tubbs, Anna Malaika - The three mothers: how the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation (Flatiron Books, 2021) Lobby Nonfiction 
• Writers under surveillance: the FBI files (edited by JPat Brown, et al. ) (The MIT Press, 2018) 363.2 W
• Zaborowska, Magdalena J. - James Baldwin's Turkish decade: erotics of exile (Duke University Press, 2009) 92 B1812 Z   

WRITERS OF THE CARIBBEAN

Criticism & History 

• The Cambridge history of African and Caribbean literature (edited by F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi) (Cambridge University Press, 2004) 809 C 
• Caribbean Women Writers (edited by Harold Bloom) (Chelsea House Publications, 1997) 820.9 C
• Cartey, Wilfred G. - Whispers from the Caribbean: I going away, I going home (Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1991) 823.09 C
• Fifty Caribbean writers: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook (edited by Daryl Cumber Dance (Greenwood Press, 1986) 016.8 F
• Jack, Belinda Elizabeth - Francophone literatures: an introductory survey (Oxford University Press, 1996) 840.9 J
• Paquet, Sandra Pouchet - Caribbean autobiography, cultural identity and self-representation (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002) Project MUSE e-book
• Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature (Alison Donnell, editor) (Routledge, 1996)
• Turner, Joyce Moore - Caribbean crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance (University of Illinois Press, 2005) 820.9 T
• Webb, Barbara J. - Myth and history in Caribbean fiction: Alejo Carpentier, Wilson Harris, and Edouard Glissant (University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) 809.3 W            

Anthologies

• The Oxford book of Caribbean short stories (edited by Stewart Brown and John Wickham) (Oxford University Press, 2001) F O
• The Oxford book of Caribbean verse (edited by Stewart Brown and Mark McWatt) (Oxford University Press, 2005) 821.08 O
• From the green Antilles; writings of the Caribbean 808.89 H
• If I could write this in fire: an anthology of literature from the Caribbean (edited by Pamela Maria Smorkaloff) (New Press, 1994) 808.89 I
• So many islands: stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans (edited by Nicholas Laughlin with Nailah Folami Imoja) (Peekash Press, 2018) F S

FEATURED WRITERS

Maryse Conde

• Condé, Maryse - The journey of a Caribbean writer (translated by Richard Philcox) (Seagull Books, 2014) 809 C
• Hewitt, Leah Dianne - Autobiographical tightropes: Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig, and Maryse Condé (University of Nebraska Press, 1990) 840.9 H

Derek Walcott

• Alvarez, A. - Risky business: people, pastimes, poker and books (Bloomsbury, 2007) (includes an essay on Derek Walcott) 824 A
• Bigsby, C. W. E. - Writers in conversation, volume 1 (Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies, 2000-) 809 B
• Birkerts, Sven - An artificial wilderness: essays on 20th-century literature (Morrow, 1987) (see chapter “V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott”) 809 B
• Cole, Teju - Known and strange things: essays (Random House, 2016) (see chapter “Derek Walcott”) 824 C
• King, Bruce Alvin - Derek Walcott: a Caribbean life (Oxford University Press, 2000) 92 W1564 K
• Kirsch, Adam - The modern element: essays on contemporary poetry (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008) (see chapter “Derek Walcott”) 809.1 K
• Logan, William - Our savage art: poetry and the civil tongue (Columbia University Press, 2009) (see chapter “The endless ocean of Derek Walcott“) 821.09 L
• Phillips, Caryl - A new world order: selected essays (Vintage, 2002) (Includes a selection of essays on Caribbean writers, including Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid) 824 P  
• Poetry in person: twenty-five years of conversation with America's poets (edited and with an introduction by Alexander Neubauer) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010) (includes an interview with Derek Walcott) 808.1 P 
• Walcott, Derek - Conversations with Derek Walcott (edited by William Baer) (University Press of Mississippi, 1996) 821.09 W

Eric Walrond

• The Cambridge companion to the Harlem Renaissance (edited by George Hutchinson) (Cambridge University Press, 2007) (See chapter “Caribbean voices of Claude McKay and Eric Walrond”) 820.9 C
• Davis, James - Eric Walrond: a life in the Harlem Renaissance and the transatlantic Caribbean (Columbia University Press, 2015) 92 W221 D
• Winds can wake up the dead: an Eric Walrond reader (edited by Louis J. Parascandola) (Wayne State University Press, 1998) (See the lengthy introduction and notes by the editor) 828 W

WRITERS FROM THE AFRICAN CONTINENT

Criticism & History

• African writers (C. Brian Cox, editor) (Simon & Schuster, 1997) Ref. 896 A (2 volumes)
• Booker, M. Keith - The African novel in English: an introduction ( J. Curry, 1998)  823.09 B
• The Cambridge history of African and Caribbean literature (edited by F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi) (Cambridge University Press, 2004) 809 C
• The Gong and the flute: African literary development and celebration (edited by Kalu Ogbaa) (Greenwood Press, 1994) 896 G
• A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures (Oyekan Owomoyela, ed.) (University of Nebraska Press, 1993) 896 H
• JanMohamed, Abdul R. - Manichean aesthetics: the politics of literature in colonial Africa (University of Massachusetts Press, 1983) 823.09 J
• Miller, Christopher L. - Blank darkness: Africanist discourse in French (University of Chicago Press, c1985) 840.9 M
• Schipper, Mineke - Beyond the boundaries: text and context in African literature  (I.R. Dee, 1990) 896.9 S
• Soyinka, Wole - The burden of memory, the muse of forgiveness (Oxford University Press, 1999) 960 S
• Soyinka, Wole - Myth, literature, and the African world (Cambridge University Press, 2000)  896 S

Anthologies 

• Daughters of Africa: an international anthology of words and writings by women of African descent from the ancient Egyptian to the present (edited and with an introduction by Margaret Busby)(Pantheon Books, 1992) 808.89 D
• Gods and soldiers: the Penguin anthology of contemporary African writing (edited by Rob Spillman) (Penguin Books, 2009) 808.8 G
• A Land apart: a contemporary South African reader (edited by André Brink and J.M. Coetzee Viking, 1987) 820
• New daughters of Africa: an international anthology of writing by women of African descent (edited by Margaret Busby) (Amistad, HarperCollins Publishers, 2019) 808.89 N
• Opening spaces: an anthology of contemporary African women's writing (edited by Yvonne Vera) (Heinemann, 1999)  896 O
• Voices from twentieth-century Africa: griots and towncriers (selected with an introduction by Chinweizu) (Faber and Faber, 1988) 808.89 V
• Women writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel (edited by Esi Sutherland-Addy and Aminata Diaw (Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005) 896 W
• Women writing Africa: the southern region (edited by M.J. Daymond, et al.) (Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2003) 896 W

FEATURED WRITERS

Chinua Achebe

• Conversations with Chinua Achebe (edited by Bernth Lindfors) (University Press of Mississippi, 1997) 828.09 A
• Ezenwa-Ohaeto - Chinua Achebe: a biography (Indiana University Press, 1997) 92 A1773 E
• Moses, Michael Valdez - The novel and the globalization of culture (Oxford University Press, 1995) 809.3 M
• The Paris review: Interviews, volume 3 (Picador, 2006-) 820.9 P
• Seigel, Jerrold - Between cultures: Europe and its others in five exemplary lives (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) (see chapter “Independence and ambivalence: Chinua Achebe and two African contemporaries”) 940.56 S

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• Always apprentices: the Believer magazine presents twenty-two conversations between writers (edited by Vendela Vida, et al.) (Believer Books, 2013) (includes interview with Adichie) 809 B

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

• Gikandi, Simon - Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Cambridge University Press, 2009) 896 G

LIBRARIANS

• Ardizzone, Heidi - An illuminated life: Belle da Costa Greene's journey from prejudice to privilege (W. W. Norton & Co., 2007) 92 G7989 A  
• Sims-Wood, Janet L. - Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University: building a legacy of Black history (The History Press, 2014) 026 S
• Early Negro writing, 1760-1837 (selected and introduced by Dorothy Porter [Wesley]) (Beacon Press, 1971) 820.8 E
• Studies in art and literature for Belle da Costa Greene (Princeton University Press, 1954) 704 M
• Whitmire, Ethelene - Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance librarian (University of Illinois Press, 2014) 92 A5687 W