Black History Month reading list: 15 essential historical picks

by Lorraine Hansberry

🎧 Audiobook

“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

These are the words of famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes in his poem, Harlem, from his collection, Montage of a Dream Deferred. It’s from this poem that Lorraine Hansberry derived the name of her play. A Raisin in the Sun debuted in 1959 as the first play written and directed by a Black woman on Broadway. Following a Black family in the South Side of Chicago as they navigate trying to make a better a life for themselves through various ups and downs, Lorraine poetically expresses the constant struggle toward the American Dream. Nominated for four Tony Awards, this title is a classic read for Black History Month.

by Octavia Butler

🎧 Audiobook

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to wake up in a different time and what life would be like for you when you got there? Octavia Butler takes us through time with Dana Franklin, a 26-year-old African American and Los Angeles-based writer. Butler is also the author of the classic novel, Parable of the Sower, from Earthseed series, but Kindred is one of her earliest works that reached critical acclaim and was even adapted into a Hulu series in 2022. 

The year is 1976 and Dana has just celebrated her birthday when she’s hit with a dizziness that transports her to the Antebellum South of 1815 on a plantation outside of Easton, Maryland. It’s here she realizes that she has traveled through time, is meeting her ancestors, and also has a role to play in their story. 

Butler is the winner of the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and the first science-fiction author to receive the MacArthur Fellowship. She’s best known for her science fiction and speculative fiction that critiques racism, sexism, and classism.

by Jesmyn Ward

🎧 Audiobook

Published in 2011, Salvage the Bones is set in southern Mississippi during the devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Winning the National Book Award for Fiction, the novel follows 14-year-old Esch and the Batiste family as they navigate their lives in the South without their mother. Esch’s father is skeptical of a building hurricane, and her three brothers have other things on their minds. A major weather catastrophe is the last thing they need, but when the ultimate disaster happens, we see familial love take over. This book is filled with southern culture, a display of the power in community, and the reality of working-class African Americans. 

by Alice Walker

🎧 Audiobook

Alice Walker is a spectacular addition to this list. Walker is accredited as the founder of womanism, the feminist movement that highlights the struggle of Black women. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this book and was the first African American woman to receive this award. In addition, she won the National Book Award for her depiction of our main character. 

Celie has grown up impoverished in rural Georgia when she’s married off to an older suitor who turns out to be a harsh and brutal husband. As an escape from her unhappy marriage and life, she writes letters to God that record a remarkable journey of self-discovery and liberation. 

The Color Purple was adapted into a motion picture in 1985, three years after it was published, that was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Danny Glover, Laurence Fishburne, and Oprah Winfrey.

by James Baldwin

🎧 Audiobook

James Baldwin was a prolific writer and Civil Rights Activist in the 1950s/60s. Born in 1924 in New York City, Baldwin grew up in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance with his mother and stepfather. Baldwin’s debut novel pulls directly from his experience having a preacher for a stepfather and tells of a 14-year-old boy going through his own spiritual and sexual struggles in 1935 Harlem. 

Baldwin would go on to write Giovanni’s Room, The Fire Next Time, If Beale Street Could Talk, various essays, short stories, poetry, and more, effectively solidifying himself in the African American Literature canon. 

by Richard Wright

🎧 Audiobook

Set in the 1930s, Native Son recounts the life of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old young man living in deep poverty who shares a room with his brother, sister, and their mother in the South Side of Chicago. Bigger finally lands a job to help support his family with the Dalton’s when an evening of chauffeuring Mary Dalton, Mr. Dalton’s daughter, goes horribly awry. The novel provokes the readers’ thoughts mostly through the main character’s reactions to his environment and the depiction of a victim of racism who goes on to become the victimizer.

First published in 1940, Native Son was an immediate success, earned Wright the title, “father of Black American literature,” and made him the wealthiest Black writer of his time. His work has been examined by many scholars including James Baldwin and Percival Everett (also featured in this list). 

by Percival Everett

🎧 Audiobook

Winner of the 2024 Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The novel shares the classic story from the perspective of Jim, Huckleberry’s travel companion and fugitive slave, instead of being narrated by Huck as it was in Twain’s original. Jim, a slave hoping to escape being sold far away from his family to a man in New Orleans, and Huck, hoping to escape his father, embark on their treacherous yet transformative journey down the Mississippi River. 

The rights have already been obtained to turn this reimagining into a feature film being produced by Steve Spielberg.

by Colson Whitehead

🎧 Audiobook

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Kirkus Prize winner, Orwell Prize winner, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winner, and National Book Award Winner. This author’s resume is brimming with accolades for his work on The Intuitionist, Zone One, The Underground Railroad (that earned Whitehead his first Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), phenomenally followed by The Nickel Boys (that earned Whitehead his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), and Harlem Shuffle. 

Based on a real reform school that operated for 111 years, Dozier School for Boys, The Nickel Boys follows the fictionalized story of Elwood Curtis. Elwood finds himself unjustly sentenced to Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory school, where he becomes witness to inescapable horrors. Elwood finds an unlikely ally in Turner, another young man at Nickel Academy, when they’re forced to make a choice. Read this book to find out if they can save each other.

by Toni Morrison

🎧 Audiobook

Beloved is possibly Toni Morrison’s most famous literary work. Morrison is a groundbreaking powerhouse who has created masterpiece after masterpiece. With her breathtaking portfolio, she’s won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and was the first Black woman of any nationality to win the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. She’s also a Northeast Ohio native, which is the setting for most of her stories. 

Beloved was published in 1987 and set in a post-Civil War America. It follows the formerly enslaved Sethe as she and her only remaining daughter, Denver, live in a haunted house in Cincinnati. Sethe believes the malevolent spirit is her eldest daughter haunting them. Derived from the life of Margaret Garner, Morrison uses her beautiful writing and creative narration to explore topics of motherhood, lingering pain, the psychological effects of slavery, and familial relationships.

by Zora Neale Hurston

🎧 Audiobook

Another classic of the Harlem Renaissance, this enduring title follows Janie Crawford, an African-American woman, as she recounts the story of her resilience as she finds herself unlucky with love after love. Janie catches her friend, Pheoby, up on her life after some time away from Eatonville, Florida and describes her sexual awakenings. With a Southern love story that’s fraught with ups and downs, Hurston brings an interesting character to the reader with much wit.

by Nella Larsen

🎧 Audiobook

Known for being one of the earliest portrayals of code-switching, Passing takes the reader on a journey between two friends who follow different paths and try to find their way back to each other. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two African-American women of mixed race, grew up together in New York City’s Harlem. Clare moved away when her father died but has since returned and wishes to reconnect with Irene. Irene learns that Clare is passing for white and the pair quickly become fascinated with each other’s new lives. Larsen, who was a nurse and librarian, first published the novel in 1929, which at the time, boldly discussed topics of identity, racism, and racial passing.

by Ann Petry

🎧 Audiobook

Ann Petry introduces the reader to Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, in her debut novel. Lutie is living in poverty during the late 1940s while trying to raise her son amidst the violence and sexism at her new apartment on 116th Street in Harlem. With a sexually-obsessed super and manipulative neighbors, Lutie tries her best to follow the philosophies of Benjamin Franklin. She believes that if she just works hard and saves wisely, she can provide a good life for herself and her son. But sometimes, there are other forces at work. 

This was the first novel written by an African American woman to sell more than a million copies and it’s still studied in many American Literature classes to this day.  

by Ralph Ellison

🎧 Audiobook

Another debut novel, Invisible Man was Ralph Ellison’s first novel published in 1947. Ellison won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953 for this book and was the first African American writer to do so. The novel has been widely debated to be part of either the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Arts Movement. 

With many twists and turns, Invisible Man follows our narrator on a journey to his all-black college, to a job in a paint factory going through unionizing efforts, a mental hospital, and a group called the Brotherhood. Our hero goes on a journey of self-discovery through a series of adventures and unlikely bonds that he forms along the way.

by Marie Benedict

🎧 Audiobook

This novel, written by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, is about Belle da Costa Green, the personal Librarian for J. P. Morgan in the early 1900s and the first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. She spent her career passing for white despite both of her parents being of African descent. This fictionalized account of her life follows Belle as she establishes herself in high society while disguising her true identity as a person of color. Benedict and Murray show the reader some introspection with their Belle as we see the internal struggle with keeping this kind of secret.

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

🎧 Audiobook

Published in 2019, Coates debuted with a strong story from the perspective of Hiram Walker set in Antebellum South on a plantation in Virginia. Coates is also the National Book Award Winning author for Between the World and Me. 

Hiram is the son of a plantation owner who sold his mother away when Hiram was just a boy. Hiram has a photographic memory except for one image, his mother’s. When he almost drowns in a river, Hiram discovers he has a special gift triggered by an intense memory of his mother and sets out to use it for good. So begins Hiram’s adventure to the North to assist with The Underground Railroad. 

With a compelling narrative that blends magical realism with historical fiction, Coates provides us with the powerful stories of women, men, and children whose families were being torn apart by slavery.