Below are literary books by African American authors.
Some of these are obvious timeless classics . . .
Others will become classics in time . . .
The rest, you’ll find, are very good reading.
All of these books are available through the libraries of the CLEVNET Consortium — many are owned by the Cleveland Hts-University Hts. Public Library System.
Interested in one or more of these books? Click the mouse on the book title to read more about it and order it from your local CLEVNET library.
- Angelou, Maya
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Baldwin, James
- If Beale Street Could Talk: A Novel
- Butler, Octavia
- Kindred
- Carter, Stephen
- The Emperor of Ocean Park
- Cooper, J. California
- Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime
- Ellison, Ralph
- Invisible Man
- Everett, Percival
- Erasure: A Novel
- Gaines, Ernest
- A Lesson Before Dying
- Golden, Marita
- After: A Novel
- Haley, Alex
- Roots: The Saga of an American Family
- Hurston, Zora Neale
- Their Eyes were Watching God
- Iweala, Uzodinma
- Beasts of No Nation: A Novel
- Jones, Edward P.
- The Known World
- Kincaid, Jamaica
- Autobiography of my Mother
- Morrison, Toni
- Beloved: A Novel
- Naylor, Gloria
- The Women of Brewster Place
- Packer, Z.Z.
- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
- Parks, Gordon
- The Learning Tree
- Prewitt, J. Everett
- Snake Walkers
- Southgate, Martha
- The Fall of Rome: A Novel
- Tademy, Lalita
- Cane River
- Toomer, Jean
- Cane
- Walker, Alice
- The Color Purple
- Walker, Margarte
- Jubilee
- Whitehead, Colson
- John Henry Days: A Novel
- Wideman, John Edgar
- Sent for You Yesterday
- Wright, Richard
- Native Son
[…] more unusual. As I was researching the African American writer, Chester Himes, for inclusion in a Literary African American author list that we were compiling, I began reading a biographical Internet article […]