We read to broaden our minds, and nowhere does this seem more vital right now than for white America to read black America. Following is a list of books that have challenged, enlightened, and inspired me.
Have read and heartily recommend
Nonfiction
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
- White Girls, Hilton Als
- Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”, Beverly Daniel Tatum
Fiction
- Go Tell It on a Mountain, James Baldwin
- Another Country, James Baldwin
- The Sellout, Paul Beatty
- The Chaneysville Incident, David Bradley
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
- Passing, Nella Larsen
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
- A Mercy, Toni Morrison
- Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
- Sula, Toni Morrison
- Cane, Jean Toomer
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- Native Son, Richard Wright
Memoir/Autobiography
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
- Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley
Poetry
- Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, Robin Coste Lewis
- Selected Poems, Rita Dove
- Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove
- Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney
- Against Which, Ross Gay
- Totem, Gregory Pardlo
- Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith
- Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey
And I still have a good many books that I want to read, including the following.
On my reading list
- Collected Essays, James Baldwin
- The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
- Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
- Going to Meet the Man, James Baldwin
- Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin
- Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, James Baldwin
- Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball
- Blacks, Gwendolyn Brooks
- The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. du Bois
- The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed
- Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, bell hooks
- Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, Peniel E. Joseph
- Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Audre Lorde
- Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde
- Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, Diane McWhorter
- Freshwater Road, Denise Nicholas
- The Street, Ann Petry
- Citizen, Claudia Rankine
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
- Black Boy, Richard Wright
What would you add to either of these lists?
Little Stories 
The black color has a wonderful attraction and I am sure has a special place in the heart of God.Thank God for making me black.
Great list, Abby. Thanks for sharing these. I would add Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson and Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward.
Thank you for compiling this list. I’m looking forward to getting some of these from the library. From a faith-perspective, I recommend The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Cone) and The Color of Christ (Blum, Harvey). Just Mercy (Stevenson) and Picking Cotton (Thompson-Cannino, Cotton) are also two solid memoirs focused on racial bias and the criminal justice system. And I’m really excited to read Counting Descent by Clint Smith when it’s released in a few months.
[…] have been thinking about this quote so much this week. I read African-American writers all summer but had been lulled into this sense that I was somehow removed from the ongoing struggle […]