Several of the novels you'll be reading for this course have been placed on Course Reserves in the RBD Library. You can access these materials by visiting the Circulation Desk on the 1st floor of the library, where you'll be able to check these titles out for use in the library for a 3-hour period.
Joe Turner's Come and Gone by
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences comes Joe Turner's Come and Gone--Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. "The glow accompanying August Wilson's place in contemporary American theater is fixed."--Toni Morrison When Harold Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh boardinghouse after seven years' impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain gang, he is a free man--in body. But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of inescapable alienation oppress his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable rooming house seethes with tension and distrust in the presence of this tormented stranger. Loomis is looking for the wife he left behind, believing that she can help him reclaim his old identity. But through his encounters with the other residents he begins to realize that what he really seeks is his rightful place in a new world--and it will take more than the skill of the local "People Finder" to discover it. This jazz-influenced drama is a moving narrative of African-American experience in the 20th century.
The Women of Brewster Place by
Once the home of poor Irish and Italian immigrants, Brewster Place, a rotting tenement on a dead-end street, now shelters black families. This novel portrays the courage, the fear, and the anguish of some of the women there who hold their families together, trying to make a home. Among them are: Mattie Michael, the matriarch who loses her son to prison; Etta Mae Johnson who tries to trade the 'high life' for marriage with a local preacher; Kiswana Browne who leaves her middle-class family to organize a tenant's union.
Beloved by
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, a spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. "A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can't imagine American literature without it." --John Leonard, Los Angeles Times
Brothers and Keepers by 
Platitudes by
"Trey Ellis's debut novel, Platitudes, first published in 1988, takes on conflicts within the African American literary community. Dewayne Wellington, a failing black experimental novelist, and Isshee Ayam, a radical feminist author, collaborate on Dewayne's latest sexist comedy. Alternately telling the story about the coming of age of Earle and Dorothy - two black middle-class teenagers, sex-starved in New York City - the battling writers sneak ever, and dangerously, closer to reconciling their literary disputes." "This edition of Platitudes also includes "The New Black Aesthetic," a groundbreaking essay by Ellis that appeared in the journal Callaloo."--BOOK JACKET.
Disappearing Acts by
The national bestseller that the New York Times Book Review called "a love story waiting to explode". Terry McMillan has created a tale so eloquently rich in characterization and so deeply moving that it defies any reader to put it down.
Thomas and Beulah by 
The Chaneysville Incident by 
But Some of Us Are Brave by
Originally published in 1982, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies is the first comprehensive collection of black feminist scholarship. Featuring contributions from Alice Walker and the Combahee River Collective, this book is vital to today's conversation on race and gender in America. With an afterword from Salon columnist Brittney Cooper. Coeditors Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith are authors and former women's studies professors. Brittney Cooper is an assistant professor of women and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University and a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective.
Seed to Harvest: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster by
The complete Patternist series--the acclaimed science fiction epic of a world transformed by a secret race of telepaths and their devastating rise to power. In the late seventeenth century, two immortals meet in an African forest. Anyanwu is a healer, a three-hundred-year-old woman who uses her wisdom to help those around her. The other is Doro, a malevolent despot who has mastered the power of stealing the bodies of others when his wears out. Together they will change the world. Over the next three centuries, Doro mounts a colossal selective breeding project, attempting to create a master race of telepaths. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, splitting the human race down the middle and establishing a new world order dominated by the most manipulative minds on Earth. In these four novels, award-winning author Octavia E. Butler tells the classic story that began her legendary career: a mythic tale of the transformation of civilization. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author's estate.
Black Women Writers at Work by
"Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard." --Claudia Tate, from the introduction Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art. Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.
Post-Soul Nation by
One of the foremost chroniclers of the contemporary black experience offers an honest perspective on the 1980s. Here are crack, AIDS and the Reagan rollback of the major advances of the civil rights movement. Also highlighted are the black performers, athletes and activists who made increasing inroads into the mainstream. This fast-paced, chronological retrospective profiles personalities from Bill Cosby to Louis Farrakhan and explores such flashpoints as the first rap single and the infamous Willie Horton ad campaign.
