Stride Toward Freedom
Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott. More
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Major nineteenth-century English novel that challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. More
Rita Williams-Garcia
My childhood reading helped to build me from the inside. More
Collected Poems 1947–1997
Poetry from a chief figure of the Beats that helped catalyze a revolution in contemporary culture. More
The Golden Notebook
A feminist landmark and the best-known work by Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing. More
Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More
Their Eyes Were Watching God
One of the most widely read and acclaimed novels in the canon of African-American literature. More
The Known World
The Pulitzer Prize–winning novel that examines the troubling complexities of slavery. More
1949: Harper & Brothers publishes the Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks…
Harper & Brothers publishes Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and makes Brooks the first African American writer to receive the award. More
1938: Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection…
Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. More
Ariel
Plath’s landmark poetry collection; includes “Ariel,” “Daddy,” and “Lady Lazarus.” More
The Book of Negroes
A milestone in Canada’s understanding of black history and one of the bestselling books in Canadian publishing history. More
Lawrence Hill
Writing is the one pursuit I have always pursued, and always known I was compelled to pursue. More
Native Son
Wright’s unsparing reflection on what it means to be black in America. More
1937: Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God is published…
J. B. Lippincott publishes Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. More
Karthika Nair
Books that influenced me: Haroun and the Sea of Stories. More
Social Change: African American Identity in the U.S.
HarperCollins has published a number of books that explore the racial identity of African Americans during periods of great social conflict. More
Original proposal for Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes
Lawrence Hill’s agent, Janet Turnbull Irving, submitted this one-page summary for his as yet unwritten novel Migration to HarperCollins Canada Editor-in-Chief Iris Tupholme in 1998. More
Geronimo Johnson
I write to unread what has been written about me in error and with malice. More
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece, and winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction. More