African American Literature
Navigate the rich and diverse history of African American literature, from memoirs and poetry to science fiction. The titles in this study guide collection span a wide range of time periods, including the post-slavery era, the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Arts Movement, and the 21st century. Read on to discover insights and analysis on some of the most important works of African American literature, such as The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, and Kindred by Octavia E. Butler.
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
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
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
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. Focusing on an elderly Black couple who have endured a difficult life of share farming, “A Summer Tragedy” addresses the themes of Desperation and Hopelessness, The... 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
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
Toni Morrison’s Beloved was published in 1987. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Inspired by the real-life story of a runaway African American enslaved woman named Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter to prevent her capture and enslavement, Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a runaway enslaved woman who takes her daughter’s life in the same manner. This study guide, which addresses physical... Read Beloved Summary
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s nonfiction book Between the World and Me was published in 2015 by One World, an imprint of Random House. It was met with critical acclaim and won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in the Biography/Autobiography genre, and the 2016 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. It is a New York Times best-seller and was heralded by iconic literary figure Toni... Read Between the World and Me Summary
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
“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
“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
