ou should always celebrate Black voices (not just during Black history month), and literature is one of the best ways to honor some of the community’s most illuminating stories. Thanks to the work of African American authors, the world can better understand both the struggles and triumphs of Black people in America. From wise artists like Maya Angelou to newer voices like Oprah’s Book Club pick Leila Mottley and trailblazer Ann Petry, we’ve gathered some of the all-time best books by Black authors to add to your reading list.
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1
The Street, by Ann Petry
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Published in 1946 and the first book by a Black women to sell over a million copies, Petry’s work is a classic. Set in Harlem on 116th Street, it follows Lutie Johnson’s struggles to survive as a divorced mother with a young son amid racism and sexism. With few choices in a city where the Black population lives in decrepit apartments and poverty is a constant companion, Lutie endures despite it all.
2
Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler
In what is considered a literary masterpiece and Butler’s most popular novel, Kindred follows a young Black woman named Dana. Though she lives in 1976 L.A., she’s suddenly transported to a Civil War–era plantation in Maryland. Soon, the more frequently Dana travels back in time, the longer she stays, as she faces dangers that threaten her life in the future.
3
Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley
Mottley began her astonishing debut novel—an Oprah’s Book Club pick—when she was just 16. It has received raves from such luminaries as Dave Eggers, Kiese Laymon, and this one from James McBride: “Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller.”
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4
Somebody’s Daughter, by Ashley C. Ford
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This New York Times bestseller from writer and podcaster Ashley C. Ford centers on her coming-of-age story in Indiana and her difficulty of growing up with a father in prison, though it takes many years before she discovers why he is there.
5
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
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In this National Book Award–winning memoir, renowned journalist and author of the Oprah’s Book Club pick The Water Dancer pens a profound letter to his son about what it means to be Black in America in the 21st century—a place in which you struggle to overcome the historical trauma of your people while trying to find your own purpose in the world.
6
We Should All Be Feminists, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Adapted from her TEDx Talk of the same name, Adichie uses personal experiences and understanding of sexual politics to define what feminism means in the 21st century.
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7
Finding Me, by Viola Davis
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In her powerful and empowering memoir, the EGOT-winning entertainer details her rise from poverty and other trauma to emerge as an iconic American artist. Through revisiting her childhood and all its pain, she was able to finally answer the question that had long haunted her: How did I claw my way out? About the Book Club pick, Oprah had this to say: “There are so many lessons to be learned from this breathtaking memoir about triumphing over adversity and trauma. Viola Davis leaves it all on the page—from her beginnings in South Carolina as the fifth of six children born in a sharecropper’s shack to acclaim as an actor, producer, and philanthropist. I was so moved by this book that I just had to share it with our entire OBC audience.”
8
That Bird Has My Wings, by Jarvis Jay Masters
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Masters has been incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison for the past 41 years. Oprah read the book shortly after it was first published by HarperOne, in 2009, and it left a strong impression: “His story, of a young boy victimized by addiction, poverty, violence, the foster care system, and later the justice system, profoundly touched me then, and still does today,” she said. HarperOne has reissued the book, which contains a foreword by spiritual teacher Pema Chödrön, who has long championed Masters’s cause.
9
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Originally published in 1937 and set in Southern Florida, this story follows main character Janie Crawford on her quest to find independence throughout three different marriages.
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10
Recitatif, by Toni Morrison
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First published in 1983, the Nobel laureate’s only short story is a formal experiment that both stokes and defies our expectations, a chess game she’s destined to win. As 8-year-olds, Twyla and Roberta are “dumped” for four months into a home for runaway and orphan girls; as Twyla notes, “my mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” Within St. Bonaventure, they’re hapless pawns near the bottom of the social pecking order, just above Maggie, the mute, disabled kitchen aide. But the literary queen has a gambit up her sleeve: One girl is white and the other Black, and Morrison jumbles their racial identities through a series of moves that undermine historical hierarchies and simple binaries. When the girls reunite as women, they seek out the truth about what, exactly, went down so many years earlier. Zadie Smith offers an incisive, surprising introduction, limning the burdens the author placed on herself and us all, stepping out of her comfort zone while tirelessly advocating for “the African American culture out of which and toward which Morrison writes.”
11
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Adapted into a Steven Spielberg–directed film that earned Oprah an Oscar nomination and, of course, the 2023 musical film adaptation that Oprah executive produced, The Color Purple tells the tale of Celie, a young woman growing up in poverty in segregated Georgia. Despite suffering hardship, Celie finds her way back to the ones she loves in a time-tested story.
12
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Now thought of as essential reading in American literature, this novel won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. The Invisible Man is narrated by a nameless main character who details growing up in a Black Southern community. He’s eventually expelled from college and then becomes a leader of a Black nationalist group.
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13
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
This powerful intergenerational debut novel and Oprah’s Book Club pick explores the story and history of Black and Indigenous people in the South through the eyes of Ailey Pearl Garfield, the product of a small Georgia town and family lineage that tells the expansive, far-reaching story of Black America’s striving for dignity, respect, and freedom.
14
The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson‘s second book, Caste, has rightfully earned its space in the spotlight; it was selected as an Oprah’s Book Club pick in 2020 and adapted into the acclaimed 2023 film Origin, directed by Ava DuVernay. But her Pulitzer Prize–winning debut is likewise required reading for anyone who wants to understand race in America. this magisterial work charts the mass exodus of African Americans in the early 20th century from the Jim Crow South into Northern and Western cities, where they built successful lives amid racism etched in softer shades. With consummate skill, Wilkerson braids the stirring stories of her three guides—a pugilistic Floridian turned Harlem activist, a Mississippi sharecropper later rooted in Chicago, and Ray Charles’s personal physician from Louisiana—into a classic of narrative nonfiction, destined to influence writers for generations to come.
15
A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
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A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the lives of a South Side Chicago family as they dream of life’s possibilities after their matriarch, Lena, gets a substantial insurance check. The dramatic play originally opened on Broadway in 1959, with a revival in 2014 starring Denzel Washington.
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16
The 1619 Project, by Nikole Hannah-Jones
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This is an expanded and largely reimagined version of the August 18, 2019, special issue of The New York Times Magazine memorializing the year—four centuries ago—when more than 20 enslaved Africans first arrived on the shores of England’s American colonies. With new original material, contributors, and rebuttals to some of the controversy the issue engendered, this work offers a definitive account of how racism and Black resistance have shaped the U.S. to the present day.
17
Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama
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And now, the second Obama on this list. In his own bestselling memoir, number 44 unloads the difficulties of being a biracial American, emphasized by the estranged relationship he had with his late father.
18
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
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Written by a legendary writer, civil rights activist, and one of Oprah’s greatest friends, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a poetic memoir that captures Angelou’s childhood struggles and the freedoms of her adulthood, which allowed her to find strength amid despair.
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19
Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
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As one of our country’s great Black writers, Baldwin published a slew of books, short stories, and essays in his lifetime. In his first book, Go Tell It on the Mountain, he penned a semi-autobiographical story of a teen growing up in 1930s Harlem who struggles with self-identity as the stepson of a strict Pentecostal minister. Similarly, Baldwin was raised by a stepfather who served as a Baptist pastor.
20
The Sweetness of Water, by Nathan Harris
The Civil War is winding down and President Lincoln has issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which means enslaved brothers Landry and Prentiss can at last leave the plantation on which they’ve spent their lives. And yet danger lurks everywhere around them in Confederate Georgia, even after they are given shelter and employment by an eccentric white couple from the North. This stunning debut novel (and Oprah’s Book Club pick!) probes the limits of freedom in a society where ingrained prejudice and inequality remain the law of the land.
