Research Guides: African American Studies: Literature

50 Black Writers Whose Impact Went Beyond the Page

Literature for African American Studies

10 Black Authors to Read
What follows is a list (with accompanying videos) of prominent Black authors who have left a mark on the literary world forever. They are poets, playwrights, novelists and scholars, and together they helped capture the voice of a nation. They have fearlessly explored racism, abuse and violence as well as love, beauty and music. They have been the voices of their generations and helped inspire the generations that followed them.
African American Authors
From James Baldwin and Maya Angelou to Toni Morrison and Ta-Nehisi Coates, this audio collection includes a host of America's most celebrated black authors speaking candidly about how race and racism inform their writing.
African American Literature: A timeline
From 1852 to 2016, a list of notable events in African American literary history. By Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II: "While we provide more than 340 entries, we still view this project as a partial timeline. We realize, for instance, that African American literary history precedes 1852, and we have not included each and every writer who's ever published. Like always, this is an ongoing project."
Black Authors Discuss Being Black in America
Conversations with "Some of our favorite interviews about inequality, white supremacy, and celebrating Blackness."
Black Literature
From: Wilson, Charles Reagan, and William Ferris, eds., Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Used by permission of the publisher.
World of Tales - African folktales
The people from Africa included unique characteristics in their folklore, showing their way of life and the animals and plants that surround them. African stories sometimes include trickster animals and spirits. The collection of folktales from Africa consists of four books with 88 stories: 28 South African folktales, 40 Nigerian folktales and 10 Tanzanian folktales.

Black Literature Criticism
Call Number: eBook 2008
Readers will find a wealth of background information on Black Literature's leading figures, as well as full-text criticism for each author. Includes biographical sketches, critical reception of works, explanatory notes and further readings, with approximately 75 entries, averaging 12,000 words in length.
Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940
Call Number: PS628.B53 L67 1996 - Sprague Library 2nd Floor
This compilation of sixteen plays written during the Harlem Renaissance brings together the works of Langston Hughes, George S. Schuyler, Francis Hall Johnson, Shirley Graham, and others. In the introduction, Hatch sets the plays in a historical context as he describes the challenges presented to artists by the political and social climate of the time. Individual introductions to each play provide essential biographical background on the playwrights.
Shadow archives : the lifecycles of African American literature
Call Number: eBook 2019
Shadow Archives brings to life a slew of newly discovered texts to tell the stories of black special collections and their struggle for institutional recognition. Jean-Christophe Cloutier offers revelatory readings of major African American writers and provides a nuanced view of how archives shape literary history.
Thinking through crisis : depression-era Black literature, theory, and politics
Call Number: eBook 2020
Thinking through Crisis turns to 1930s African American literature to offer a critical response to Trauma Theory, addressing the injustices of racism as they are linked to class conflict. This book offers a materialist theory of trauma that develops concepts for identifying the agency that Black life produces amid social breakdown.