Classic African American Fiction

At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly two thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible Man. Five years later, Random House...

"We'd had to be cut free of our mother's womb. Abby and I were fused, you see. But here's the real kicker; Abby had the magic, I didn't." Now adults, Makeda and Abby still share their childhood home. The surgery to separate the two girls left Makeda with what feels like an even worse deformity: no mojo. The daughters of a celestial demigod and a human woman, Makeda and Abby were raised by their magical father. Today, Makeda has decided it's high time to move out and make her own life.

From the author of bestselling Invisible Man—the classic novel of African-American experience—this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master. "Tell me what...

An extraordinary new novel about family, legacy, and an inherited curse, from National Book Award–nominated author LaToya Watkins Set across Texas and spanning four generations, The Book of Chuck is a gimlet-eyed investigation into birthright and belonging through the story of one family in...

Published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiographical account of the author's experiences as a slave in 19th-century North Carolina, from her relatively happy childhood to the brutality she experienced as a teenager and young woman to her eventual escape to the North.

What elevates teaching my mother how to give birth, what gives the poems their disturbing brilliance, is Warsan Shire's ability to give simple, beautiful eloquence to the veiled world where sensuality lives in the dominant narrative of Islam; reclaiming the more nuanced truths of earlier times -...

"The Heroic Slave" is the only work of fiction by the eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The narrative was inspired by Madison Washington, a slave on the Creole who led a rebellion on the ship in November 1841, and had it sail to Nassau in the Bahamas instead of New Orleans. The short story appeared in the collection Autographs for Freedom (1852).

At the heart of Harriet E. Wilson’s autobiographical novel is Frado, the young daughter of a mixed-race couple, who is exploited first by a middle-class New England white family and then by an opportunistic husband on the abolitionist lecture circuit. In adopting the nineteenth-century conventions of both the sentimental novel and the narratives of enslaved people, Wilson delivered a scathing and ironic indictment of the racism of the antebellum North.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was the greatest writer ever to come from Brazil and one of the masters of nineteenth-century fiction. Susan Sontag calls him "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America", surpassing even Borges. Harold Bloom says that Machado is "the supreme black literary artist to date". And Allen Ginsburg calls him "another Kafka". And The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is his masterpiece, a dazzling, tragic, and profound novel that belongs next to the greatest works of his contemporaries Melville and Dostoevsky.

First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets.

In this rambunctious satire, Wallace Thurman, one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance, takes his fellow artists and critics to task. The setting is a buzzing apartment building in 1930s Harlem, where avatars for the likes of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and Thurman himself come together to push past old boundaries and test out new ideas. But the heat of this collective energy soon threatens to consume them all, as wild parties, jealous rages, and intellectual conflicts turn the literary circle into an out-of-control hothouse of personal drama.

From acclaimed author Terah Shelton Harris comes a poignant story of survival and redemption that questions what it means to stop existing and start living. Leigh is the last of the Wildes. She knows this because she watched them all die. Grief never truly fades and even as the tragedy haunts...

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and two-time Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead, an exuberantly entertaining novel that brings to life 1980s New York in the magnificent final volume of his Harlem Trilogy 1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline...

There Is Confusion written by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) in 1924, is her first of four novels where she examines the experience of being black and middle-class while contending with the challenges of American racism in a non-stereotypical way. The novel, set in Philadelphia and New York City in the early 20th century, follows the interwoven lives of three friends, Joanna, Maggie, and Peter as they pursue their dreams, navigate love and grapple with the struggles of their time.

A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian. Eunice Carter...

The distinguished American civil rights leader, W. E. B. DuBois first published these fiery essays, sketches, and poems individually in 1920 in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development, and other periodicals. Reflecting the author's ideas as a politician, historian, and artist, this volume has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reform. It is essential reading for all students of African American history.

Can't get enough of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? Wondering if you missed something important in one of the chapters? Dive a little deeper into her world, discover hidden treasures, and hang out with Jem and Scout just a little longer with this sidekick.

Eric Walrond was a singular voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and Tropic Death is his most famous work - a collection that highlights his particular strength as a writer of short fiction. Over the course of these ten stories, Walrond vividly details the punishing realities of life and labor across the Caribbean, and yet the overall effect is far from grim. These are unsentimental yet startlingly beautiful portraits of the migrant experience, full of distinctive voices striving for an audience in a seemingly implacable world.

A quietly influential force in African American literature and art, Clarence Major makes his Penguin Classics debut with the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Dirty Bird Blues The PRH Audio book of Dirty Bird Blues by Clarence Major won a 2022 EARPHONE AWARD. Narrated by Dion Graham. A...

A fine, exclusive edition of one of literature’s most beloved stories. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a thirteen-year-old boy, Huck, is in search of adventure on the beautiful shores of the Mississippi River before the Civil War in the American south. When Huck escapes kidnapping...