African American History Month 2024 Reading List: By Author (A-B)

Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture challenges traditional assumptions about therelationship between art and architecture. From 2008 through 2010, David Adjaye, along with Marc McQuade, taught three studios at the Princeton School of Architecture. Each studio focused on a collaboration with three distinguished artists―Matthew Ritchie, Teresita Fernández, and Jorge Pardo―on interventions in three vastly different sites: the state of New Jersey, the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and the city of Mérida in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Through an exploratory process of questioning, developing, and testing, each architect and artist reexamines the expectations traditionally associated with the conventions of architectural design and representation

The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelou's words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning”Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer's remarkable life. Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume—from her reflections on African American life and hardship in the compilation Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water'fore I Diiie (“Though there's one thing that I cry for / I believe enough to die for / That is every man's responsibility to man”) to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in the poem “Still I Rise” (“Out of the huts of history's shame / I rise / Up from a past that's rooted in pain / I rise”) to her “On the Pulse of Morning” tribute at President William Jefferson Clinton's inauguration (“Lift up your eyes upon / The day breaking for you. / Give birth again / To the dream.”). Maya Angelou:

Despite the declaration that we are living in a “post-racial America,” multiple recent events in which Black lives were prematurely ended have sparked a racial reckoning within the United States. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are institutions with a long history of addressing racial disparities and injustices whose relevance is being recognized in light of these recent events. It is essential to give voice to those who represent the ongoing challenges, aspirations, and impact of HBCUs in the 21st century in upholding their collective mission to educate students of color who were historically excluded from institutions of higher education. Contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 21st Century focuses on the role of HBCUs in contemporary American society as diverse and inclusive environments that continue to positively impact historically excluded student

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movementin the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. • "The finest essay I’ve ever read.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates

At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism.

A collection of early, emerging works from some of today's most celebrated African American female writersWhen it was first published in 1970, The Black Woman introduced readers to an astonishing new wave of voices that demanded to be heard. In this groundbreaking volume of original essays, poems, and stories, a chorus of outspoken women -- many who would become leaders in their fields: bestselling novelist Alice Walker, poets Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni, writer Paule Marshall, activist Grace Lee Boggs, and musician Abbey Lincoln among them -- tackled issues surrounding race and sex, body image, the economy, politics, labor, and much more. Their words still resonate with truth, relevance, and insight today.

(Piano Solo Personality). Matching folio to the major label solo debut from the bandleader of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert featuring vocal arrangments with piano accompaniment of all ten jazzy tracks: Chopinesque * Don't Stop * Is It Over * Kenner Boogie * Mr. Buddy * Nocturne No. 1 in D Minor * St. James Infirmary Blues * Smile * The Very Thought of You * What a Wonderful World.

Edited by the author of The Sellout, winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hokum is a liberating, eccentric, savagely comic anthology of the funniest writing by black Americans. This book is less a comprehensive collection than it is a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted friend-a sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed with the blues, hip-hop, political speeches, and the world's funniest radio sermon. The subtle musings of Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, and Harryette Mullen are bracketed by the profane and often loud ruminations of Langston Hughes, Darius James, Wanda Coleman, Tish Benson, Steve Cannon, and Hattie Gossett.

Black Culture and Experience: Contemporary Issues offers a holistic look at Black culture in the twenty-first century. It is a collection of work that creates a synergy among authors and leads to a valuable resource on contemporary issues. Part One examines institutional, societal, and political issues like identity politics; the Rooney Rule; prosperity gospel; inequality in the criminal justice system; the American dream; the future of Black and Africana studies; and President Obama's double consciousness. Part Two investigates social, cultural, and community issues such as the Affordable Care Act; Black women and obesity; Black men's experience in marriage and relationships; sexual decision making; interracial relationships; and cultural racism. Part Three explores media, pop culture, and technology.

Winner of the 2022 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, awarded by the Council of Graduate Schools. --Selected as a finalist for the 2021 Religion and the Arts Book Award, presented by the American Academy of Religion
Explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1920s, the Jazz Age propelled Black swing artists into national celebrity. Many took on the role of race representatives, and were able to leverage their popularity toward achieving social progress for other African Americans.

'If you wanted a poem,'wrote Gwendolyn Brooks,'you only had to look out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing.'From the life of Chicago's South Side she made a forceful and passionate poetry that fused Modernist aesthetics with African-American cultural tradition, a poetry that registered the life of the streets and the upheavals of the 20th century. Starting with A Street in Bronzeville (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts.'Her formal range,'writes editor Elizabeth Alexander,'is most impressive, as she experiments with sonnets, ballads, spirituals, blues, full and off-rhymes. She is nothing short of a technical virtuoso.'That technical virtuosity was matched by a restless curiosity about the life around her in all its explosive variety. By turns compassionate, angry, satiric, and psychologically penetrating,

The visionary author's masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

Fresh and electrifying—stories, poems, and essays by African and diaspora writers, edited by author Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond.

Relations punctures the human illusion of separation. New and established storytellers reshape the narratives that divide and subjugate, revealing the truth of our shared humanity despite differences in language, identity, class, gender, and beyond.