
The Ultimate Reading List
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Abrahams, Peter. Mine Boy. Heinemann Educational Books LTd; London, Ibadian, Nairobi, 1946.
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Heuneman Educational Publishers; Halley Court, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8EJ, 1958.
Aidoo, Ama Ata. “The African Woman Today,”
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Europe Upside Down: Fallacies of the New Afrocentrism.”
Asante, Molefi K. Malcolm X as Cultural Hero & Other Afrocentric Essays. New Jersey: Africa World Press, Inc., 1993
Azevedo, Mario. ed., 2nd edition. "Diaspora Africans and Slavery" In African Studies: A Survey of Africa and the Arican Diaspora. Carolina Academic Press; Durham, North Carolina, 1998.
Behrendt, Stephen. "Transatlantic Slave Trade."Berry, Mary Frances and John Blassingame. "Africa, Slavery, and the Shaping of Black Culture."
Baldwin, James. Notes Of A Native Son. Boston; Beacon Press, 1955.
Baldwin, James. This Fire Next Time. New York; Vintage International, 1993.
Baldwin, James. No Name In The Street. Vintage, 2007.
Baldwin, James. “A Talk to Teachers” In Historic Speeches of African Americans. New York: The African-American Experience, Franklin Watts, 1993. 112-113.
Beckett, Beckett. Waiting for Godot. Rev. ed. Faber and Faber Limited, 1965.
Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life In the Antebellum South. Oxford University Press; New York, 1979.
Boggs, James. The American Revolution: pages from a negro worker's Notebook. Monthly Review Press; New York, 1963
Boones-Jones, Margaret. To be Somebody: Portraits of Nineteen Beautiful Detroiters Vantage press; New York/ Washington/ Atlanta/ Hollywood, 1976.
Boyd, Herb. Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin. Atria; Reprint edition (December 30, 2008)
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. Scribner 2003
Brophy, Alfred L. Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921 Race, Reparation, and Reconstruction. Oxford University Press; New York, 2002.
Brown, Sterling A. Insight, Courage, and Craftsmanship. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Burgum, Edwin Berry. The Promise of Democracy and the Fiction of Richard Wright. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Burns, Tony and Ian Fraser, Eds. The Hegel-Marx Connection New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Capeci, Jr., Dominic J. and Martha Wilkerson. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943. 1991.
Campbell, James. Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin. University of California Press; 1 edition, 2002.
Capote, Truman. Other Voices, Other Rooms. Vintage. 1994.
Capote, Truman, Summer Crossing: A Novel. Modern Library, 2006
Chekhov, Anton. Three Sisters Trans. by Michael Frayn Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk, 1983.
Chopra, Deepak. The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life. Three Rivers Press, 2005.
Cohn, David L. The Negro Novel: Richard Wright. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Conrad, Joseph. The Heart of Darkness. Ed. by D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke. Broadside Press; Canada, 1995.
Cone, James H. Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1966-1998. Beacon Press; Boston, 1999.
Cose, Ellis. The Envy of the World: On Being a Black Man in America Washington Square Press, 2003.
Cose, Ellis. The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why are middle-class blacks angry? Why should America care? HarperPerennial, 1995.
Cowley, Malcolm. The Case of Bigger Thomas. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; New York, 1997.
Dangarembka, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. "Film as Historical Narraitive"
Davis, Natalie Zemon. "Witness of Trauma: Amistad and Beloved."
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom…By Frederick Douglass. New York, Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
Dubois, W. E. B. The Souls of Blacks Folk. Vintage Books; The Library of America, 1903.
Duster, Alfreda M., ed. Crusade For Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. The University of Chicago Press; Chicago and London, 1970.
Dyson, Michael Eric. I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King Jr. Simon & Schuster; New York, 2000.
Ellison, Ralph. Book Reviews: Native Son, by Richard Wright. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Eudell, Demetrius L. The Political Languages of Emancipation in the British Caribbean and the U. S. South. The University of North Carolna Press; Chapel Hill & London, 2002.
Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her Doctors, And the Collision Of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
Farrow, Mia. What Falls Away. Nan A. Talese; 1st edition. 1997.
Fine, Robert. Political investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt. London; New York: Routledge, 2001.
Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeosie. New York: The Free Press, 1957
Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Church in America. Schocken Books; New York, 1966.
Gates Jr., Henry Louis (Ed.) Bearing Witness: Selections From African-American Autobiography in The Twentieth Century. Pantheon Books; New York, 1991.
Georgakas, Dan and Marvin Surkin. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying. Updated Edition. South End Press Classics; Massachusetts, 1998.
Gibson, Donald B. Wright's Invisible Native Son. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Gold, Mike. Change The World: Dick Wright Gives America a Significant Picture in "Native Son". In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Hall, Gwendolyn-Midlo. Social Control in Slave Plantation Societies: A Comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba. Baltimore and London; The John Hopkins Press, 1971.
Harrison, Daphne Duval. “’Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues:’ Blues from the Black Woman’s Perspective.”
Herskovits, Melville J. “The Dilemma of Social Pattern.”
Holitz, Jon. (Ed.) Thinking through the past: A Critical Thinking Approach to U. S. History Volume II: Since 1865 Houghton Mifflin Company; Boston/New York, 2001.
hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Routledge: New York, 2004.
hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press; Boston, MA., 1992.
Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. The Assassination of the Black Male Image. Simon & Schuster; New York, 1996.
Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. “Let Your Motto Be Resistance“: The Life and Thought of Henry Highland Garnet. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.
Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings. Routledge, 2008.
Johanson, Donald and Maitland Edey. Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind. Simon & Schuster (September 15, 1981)
Johnson, J. R. {C. L. R. James}. Native Son and Revolution. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Johnson, F. Roy. The Nat Turner Slave Insurrection. Johnson Publishing Company; Murfreesboro, N. C., 1966.
Katz, William Loren (Ed.) Anti-Negro Riots in the North, 1863 Arno Press and The New York Times; New York, 1969.
Katzman, David M. Before The Ghetto (Blacks in the New World). University of Illinois Press (July 1, 1975)
King, Larry L. Confessions of a White Racist. The Viking Press; New York, 1969
King Jr., The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther. Why We Can’t Wait. Harper & Row; New York, 1963.
Koontz, Stephanie. The Way We really Are Basic Books, 1998.
Kunjufu, Jawanza. Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys. Chicago, Illinois: African American Images, 1995.
Latzman, Elaine Moon. Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of
Detroit’s African American Community, 1918-1967. 1994.
Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. University of Illinois Press/Urbana and Chicago, 1999.
Lee, Felicia. “Cosby Defends His Remarks About Poor Blacks' Values.” May 22, 2004 (New York Times).
Leeming, David. James Baldwin: A Biography. Knopf; 1st edition, 1994.
Lessing, Doris. The Real Thing. Harper Perennial, 1993.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity. Simon & Schuster; New York, 1958.
Locke, Alain. “The New Negro Takes His Place in American Art.”
Maher, Paul. Kerouac: The Definitive Biography. Taylor Trade Publishing; Rev Upd edition (May 25, 2007)
Malcolm X and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. Ballantine Books; New York, 1964, 1965.
Marable, Manning. Black Leadership. New York; Columbia University Press, 1998.
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform And Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction In Black America, 1945-1982. University Press of Mississippi; Jackson, 1984.
Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto. With an Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor. Great Britain; C. Nicholls & Company Ltd., 1967
Maultsby, Portia. "Africanisms in African American Music."
Maultsby, Portia K. "Soul Music: Its Sociological and Political Significance in American Popular Culture." In Dr. Daina Ramey-Berry and Dr. Isaac Kalumbu's Spring Semester-2003 coursepack reader.
McDougald, Elise Johnson. “The Task of Negro Womanhood.”
McLaurin, Melton A. Celia, A Slave: A True Story. Avon Books/Harper CollinsPublishers, 1999.
McWhorter, John. Authentically Black: Essays for The Silent Black Majority. Gotham, 2004.
McWhorter, John. Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. Perennial/An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers, 2001.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Married to Genius: A Fascinating Insight Into the Married Lives of Nine Modern Writers. Southbank Publishing, 2005.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. Cooper Square Press, 2000.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Hemingway: The Final Years. W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.
Miles, Barry. Jack Kerouac, King of the Beats: A Portrait. Barnes&Nobles Books (2004)
Moore, Peggy A. Paradise Valley Days: A Photo Album Poetry Book of Black Detroit, 1930’s to 1950’s. Detroit Black Writers Guild Inc. 1998.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Plume Books/Penguin Books; New York, 1970, 1993.
Neal, Larry. “The Black Arts Movement.”
Ousmane, Sembene. God’s Bits of Wood. DoubleDay & Company Inc.; New York, 1962.
Obama, Barack. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Vintage; Reprint edition, 2008.
Obama, Barack. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Three Rivers Press, 2004.
Pasternak, Martin B. Rise Now And Fly To Arms: The Life of Henry Highland Garnet. Garland Publishing, Inc.; New York & London, 1995.
Pierpont, Claudia Roth. "The Measure of America." In The New Yorker, Mar. 8, 2004
Plimpton, George. Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintences and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career. Anchor, 1998.
Powell, Timthy B. “Toni Morrison: The Struggle to Depict the Black Figure on the White Page.” Black American Literature Forum, Volume 24, Number 4 (Winter)
Rascoe, Burton. Negro Novel and White Reviewers. In Critical Essays on Richard Wright's Native Son. Ed. by Kenneth Kinnamon. G.K. Hall & Company. Simon & Schuster; NewYork, 1997.
Rath, Richard Cullen. "African Music in Seventeenth-Century Jamaica."
Rich, Wilbur C. Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker. Wayne State University Press; Detroit, 1989.
Richardson, David. "Shipboard Revolts, African Authority and the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Rodgers, J. A. From Superman to Man Amereon Limited, 1957.
Robertson, Claire. "Africa into the Americas?: Slavery and Women, the Family, and the Gender Division of Labor."
Robeson, Paul. w/Lloyd L. Brown Here I Stand. Beacon Press; Boston, 1958.
Robinson, Randall. The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe To Each Other. Dutton Books/Penguin Group; New York, 2002.
Rodney, Walter. "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade."
Rosenthal, John. The Myth of Dialectics: Reinterpreting the Marx-Hegel Relation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Samuels, David. “The Rap on Rap: The Black Music That Isn’t Either.” In Cities, Cultures, Conversations. Eds. Richard Marbach, Patrick Bruch, and Jill Eicher. Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
Sertima, Ivan Van. They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003.
Shakur, Assata. An Autobiography. Lawrence Hill Books; Chicago, 1987.
Shields, Charles J. Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee. Holt Paperbacks, 2007.
Simone, Nina. I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone. Da Capo Press, 2003.
Smith-Shomade, Beretta. Shaded Lives: African-American Women and Television. Rutgers University Press; New Brunswick, 2002.
Stevenson, Brenda. "Gender Convention Ideals and Identity Among Antebellum Slave Women."
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton University Press, 2005.
Taylor, Susie King. Reminiscences of My Life In Camp. Arno Press and the New York Times; New York, 1968.
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women In The Struggle For The Vote, 1850-1920. Indian University Press; Bloomington and Indianapolis,1998.
Thomas, Richard W. Life For Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915-1945. Indiana University Press, 1992.
Tillery, Carolyn Quick. Celebrating Our Equality Cookbook: A Cookbook with Recipes and Remembrances from Howard University
Trotter, Joe William. "Economic Emancipation, Land, and the Search for Industrial
Trotter, Joe William. “Freedom, Social Conditions, and the Rise of Jim Crow.”
Trotter, Joe William. “Emancipation, Jim Crow, and New forms of Community and Social Activism.”
Walker, David. David Walker's Appeal: TO THE COLOURED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, but in particularly, and very expressly, to those of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Introduction by Charles M. Wiltse. American Century Series; Hill and Wang; New York; A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965
West, Cornel. “On Afro-American Popular Music: From Bebop to Rap.” In The Cornel West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1982.
West, Cornel. “Race and Modernity” In C. West The Cornel West Reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. 55-86.
West, Cornel. “Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization.” In Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Future of the Race. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. 74-80.
West, Cornel. Kelvin Shawn Sealey (Ed.) Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America. Beacon Press, 1997.
West, Cornel. Race Matters. Second Vintage Books Edition; New York, 2001, 1994, 1993
West, Cornel and Michael Lerner. Jews and Blacks. Grossett/Putnam; New York, 1995.
White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves. W. W. Norton, 2000.
Whitmore, Terry. Memphis Nam Sweden. University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
Wideman, John Edgar. Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society. Vintage Books/A division of Random House, Inc.; New York, 1995.
Wilson, Sunnie and John Cohassey. Toast of The Town: The Life and Times of Sunnie Wilson. Wayne State University Press, 1998.
Winterson, Jeanette Oranges are not the only fruit. 1st American ed. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985.
Wolcott, Victoria W. Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit. The University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill and London, 2001
Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro. Hampton Virginia: U. B. & U. S Communications Systems, 1994.
Nicholson, Nigel. Virginia Woolf. 2000.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York, Harper & Row, 1966.