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This classic collection of essays by American writer and activist James Baldwin still retains its immediacy over 65 years after it was originally published. In it, he explores growing up in Harlem, the pioneering movie Carmen Jones (which gave African American actors Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte unprecedented fame and acclaim), the function of the protest novel, an intimate glimpse of the black expatriate community in Paris, and, most profoundly, a contemplation of black identity in white America. In the New York Times Book Review, Langston Hughes called Baldwin a “straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity.”

In this internationally acclaimed modern classic, American poet Maya Angelou recalls the joy and pain of her adolescence, first living with her grandmother in a small, bigoted Arkansas town, and then back to live with her mother in the slums of St. Louis where, at the age of eight, she was sexually assaulted. Angelou details the effect this traumatic attack had on her life, which for a long time kept her spirit imprisoned in a cage constructed from shame and horror. Then, in San Francisco, her spirit slowly began to grow stronger as she found herself freed by self-love, the kindness of others, and great literature.

In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks was the first ever African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen, which is collected here with other selections from her most notable work. In her poetry Brooks always tended to focus on the harsh sociopolitical realities faced by African Americans in twentieth-century America, covering topics as diverse as the urban poor, the early Civil Rights Movement, the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, and the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. In 1995 she was awarded with the National Medal of Arts for her major contributions to American literature.

In a letter to his young son, Ta-Nehisi Coates tries to answer the complicated racial questions that have plagued America since its foundation on “race,” which he exposes as a damaging falsehood that has led to the slavery, segregation, incarceration, and murder of black women and men. This includes an exploration of the difficulty inherent in inhabiting a black body, and how to reckon with America’s dark past in a way that might free us from its continued burden. Through answering these questions, Coates offers a framework that can help Americans to understand their history and the current civil rights crisis being faced by its black citizens in the twenty-first-century.

This major work of African American history, published at the dawn of the new millennium, explores the major cultural contributions of African Americans during the twentieth-century. Through profiles of the most revered black musicians, writers, scientists, politicians, sportspersons, and activists of the previous century, the authors decisively demonstrate that there is no American culture without black Americans, from W.E.B. DuBois to Oprah Winfrey. During the African American century and up to today, all of America was and is shaped by the African American experience.

In the two years before his assassination in 1965, activist and leader of the Black Muslim movement Malcolm X sat down with journalist Alex Haley to tell his life story. As he details exactly what led to his radical views, he exposes the American Dream as a racist lie limited only to its white citizens. He offers a perspective that is wholly different from his contemporary, Martin Luther King, Jr. Former President Barack Obama has said of the work, “[Malcolm X’s] repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promising a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will.”

In the Deep South of the early twentieth-century, a free-spirited black woman named Janie Starks suffers through a dull marriage of convenience and then an abusive second marriage before she finally finds financial and personal independence. That’s when she meets “Tea Cake,” a kind and handsome younger man whom she falls deeply in love with. This novel is often considered to be the best work of Zora Neale Hurston, who was vastly underappreciated during her lifetime.

This collection includes three psychologically complex short stories and Nella Larsen’s two major novels, Passing and Quicksand. In them, the author examines the struggle of the new African American middle class to find a place in their country, and how lonely and alienating that struggle is. In Passing, the mixed-race protagonist has managed to pass for white, and marries a racially bigoted white husband. Just when it seems like she has turned her back on her cultural heritage once and for all, she finds herself drawn dangerously back to it by her childhood friend. In Quicksand, Helga Crane is also of mixed race, and finds that she is lonely no matter what she does. It doesn’t matter where or with whom she lives—she can’t seem to escape her conflicted sense of self-identity.

At the end of the seventeenth-century, Jasper Merian has just been freed from slavery in Virginia, and decides to migrate with his wife to the then-wild Carolinas in order to establish a utopian community. He has two sons—one enslaved, one free—to provide for, and begins by building a home that he can leave to them. This becomes “Stonehouses,” a thriving farm estate that is eventually passed down through three generations. He also must bind a local spirit known as “Ould Lowe,” who haunts the grounds. At the end of the eighteenth-century, Jasper’s grandson Caleum is discharged from the colonial army after fighting in the Revolutionary War, and decides to linger in New Amsterdam with the woman he loves. While he is away, Ould Lowe is free to haunt the grounds again, and eventually Caleum is called back to face the demon once and for all.

In Southern California, 17-year-old Nadia Turner must face her last months of high school while mourning for her mother, who has recently committed suicide. At this time she meets a 21-year-old former football hero named Luke Sheppard, who engages in a love triangle with Nadia and her best friend Aubrey. When Nadia discovers she is pregnant by Luke, she decides to keep it a secret from everyone, including her best friend. As the three grow into older adults, they find that they are imprisoned by the decisions they made when they were young, and are continually haunted by “what-ifs.” What author Brit Bennett asks in her debut novel is, does it really have to be that way?

This autobiographical novel tells the story of a young heroin addict who is released from prison in 1967 and returns to his home in Harlem. Culturally, politically, and racially, that year was incredibly significant for America, but the novel narrows its focus to the angry desperation of the protagonist, as he goes back to life on the margins of society. This includes run-ins with other junkies and a variety of hustlers as he navigates his increasingly destructive drug habit. Even though things are looking grim for him, there still seems to be a strange joy in his life, and an unconquerable determination to survive.

In this drama by the late and great playwright August Wilson, a city’s renovation project threatens to wipe out an entire community. Yet, the characters which make up its spirit ensure that the community will never truly die. This includes an ex-con and devotee of Malcolm X; a bookie; a quietly dignified waitress; a philosopher; and a 322-year-old prophetess. Together they fight against the proposed renovation, a fight which mirrors their struggle as blacks in America.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter thinks she has found an uneasy balance between the poor neighborhood she lives in and the wealthy prep school she attends when she witnesses her best friend Khalil being shot to death by a police officer. His death makes national headlines, and vicious rumors circulate about him being a thug, drug dealer, and gangbanger. However, no one really knows what happened that night except Starr. While protestors stage demonstrations in the name of Khalil, Starr and her family find themselves threatened by several cops and a local drug lord to stay silent. She must decide whether going to the media or not with her story is worth the endangerment of her life.

The seventh novel of the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison focuses on Ruby, Oklahoma—a tiny, all-black town that can trace its origins to a community of ex-slaves. Until the 1970s, it prided itself on having a degree of independence from the modern world. But the effects of the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the counterculture, and a new sense of generational conflict could not fail to touch even a town like Ruby. As the convictions of the townspeople slowly give way to anger and conflict, they look for a scapegoat—and find one in a convent on the outskirts of town. The five women that live there become associated with evil, and the tension between the two communities culminates in a horrifying act of violence.

During the late nineteenth-century and into the early twentieth-century the boxing ring was one of the few places an African American man could gain fame. It was there that he could assert a degree of power and independence that was virtually unheard of in a white-dominated society. Typically, the black prizefighter came from the working class, and those in the emerging African American middle class found this line of work to be disreputable rather than respectable, even though prizefighters tended to conform to the middle class masculine ideal. In this fascinating work, Moore shows how the myth of “black inferiority” was shattered in the ring, transcending attempts by the white population to defend what it perceived to be its waning privilege.

The author of this guide to the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City is a longtime resident who is able take readers along on a walking tour of not just the major tourist attractions, but to its little-known secrets as well. This means that not only are historical sites like the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church covered, but so are long-forgotten speakeasies from the Jazz Age and other locales that have held great importance to the artistic community of Harlem. In its exploration of over ninety-one places in the neighborhood, the rich cultural, artistic, religious, and political heritage of Harlem is brought vibrantly to life.

From 1914 through the 1940s, African American creative and intellectual expression found one of its most significant periods to date in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem—the Harlem Renaissance. It was one of the first times that black artists were able to reject oppressive stereotypes and afford themselves a chance at achieving the American Dream. This work focuses on the women of the Harlem Renaissance, who have not gained as much scholarly attention as male artists. Profiles of women like Nella Larsen, Josephine Baker, and Zora Neale Hurston realize the depth and breadth of the accomplishment of black woman artists, including their contributions to American culture as a whole.

Within the United States and other parts of the African Diaspora, black artists and intellectuals often found themselves drawn to radical political, social, and artistic movements during the twentieth-century. This included a hope for equality through communism, an embracing of Surrealist mindscapes, radical feminism, and advocacy for reparations in relation to the evils of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The author offers a thought-provoking exploration of the radical imagination, and the profound ways in which it can lead to the transformation of society at large.

The African American artistic group at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater tied itself closely to the Civil Rights struggle of the late 1960s, and made significant contributions to African American culture overall. Ailey was an artist and activist who established an African American presence in dance, utilizing in particular African dance motifs from Broadway, blues, and jazz as inspiration for his choreography. Author Thomas F. DeFrantz explores the company’s rise as a cultural force, addressing its sources and impact, as well as the relationship between Ailey’s dances and the growing Civil Rights Movement.

Over 200 years ago, Frederick Douglass was born a slave on a Maryland plantation, and served a family that was increasingly cruel to him over the years, forcing him to live in brutal conditions. Douglass eventually managed to escape, and found freedom in New York City, where he began his powerful public speaking career as an anti-slavery activist, denouncing the immoral institution through his speeches and writings. In his famous 1845 autobiography, Douglass gives a direct account of the horrors of American slavery, which exerted a great influence on the Abolitionist Movement.

In this immortal collection of essays, intellectual W.E.B. DuBois discusses the black culture of the early twentieth-century, and the racism experienced by the African American population as a whole. It traces the history of race relations in America since the Emancipation Proclamation, and the conflicted development of black identity from that time. DuBois went on to help found the NAACP, and was extremely influential in the development of the later Civil Rights Movement. The Souls of Black Folk in particular was a foundational text for the civil rights debate in America.

The career of author, activist, orator, sociologist, and educator Anna J. Cooper was an absolutely remarkable one. After being born into slavery in 1858, she was able to begin her education ten years later at a school for freed slaves. She went on to earn her B.S. in 1882 and M.S. in 1888, and in 1925, at the age of 67, she became one of the first black women to earn a doctorate degree. Over the course of her long life, Cooper was a fierce activist for civil rights and the education of black women. A Voice from the South, first published in 1892, is considered to be the first statement of black feminism, with a focus on women’s rights and racial progress. Cooper discusses issues like women’s education, African American economic roles, and black representation in literature, doing so in an urgent and witty way.

Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Black Nationalist Movement, which he started in his native Jamaica, and then took to America in 1916 when he failed to find support there. In the United States—particularly in Harlem—Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association took hold and gained a large following, as its founder established a sense of black pride amongst his adherents. Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey offers a collection of Garvey’s most famous essays and speeches on freedom, justice, and equality. His most important idea was that black people must free themselves from any psychological bondage to racial inferiority, so that they could reach a state of strength and independence.

James Weldon Johnson inhabited many high profile roles during the course of his career, including writer and musician of the Harlem Renaissance; public intellectual; diplomat to Venezuela and Nicaragua during the Theodore Roosevelt presidency; and civil rights activist through his tenure as the first executive secretary of the NAACP. His Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a confessional novel that details the life of a mixed-race piano prodigy who is able to pass as a white man. It provides a powerful examination of African American identity formation, particularly American notions of self-invention. The influence of this masterpiece has been far-reaching, inspiring important figures like Ralph Ellison and Barack Obama.

In what is considered to be one of the most significant novels of the Harlem Renaissance, Toomer uses a series of vignettes written in poetry, prose, and dialogue form to tell the story of African Americans living under the yoke of Jim Crow Laws in the rural South and urban North. Upon its release in 1923, the book was critically acclaimed, but not very popular with the wider readership. Langston Hughes felt this was because Cane gave a completely honest and human portrait of African Americans, rather than fitting them into the usual stereotypical mold. Toomer’s accurate characterization and depiction of African American condition had an immense influence on subsequent literature that addressed the same themes.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African American poets to gain true literary renown in the United States. This collection communicates the poet’s observational abilities, written in a smooth, flowing, and profound style. He tended to write in regional dialects, recording the slang of white and black Americans at the time. Dunbar was able to make a living selling his poetry to popular magazines, and by the time of his premature death in 1906 at the age of thirty-three, his reputation as an American original was firmly established.

In Rachel, the sheltered titular character slowly comes to understand the racism that affects the African American population. She learns that members of her own family were lynched by an angry white mob just ten years before, and descends into an acute depression over the condition of black people in America. She decides that because of pervasive American racism, she cannot possibly bring any children of her own into the world. The play’s author Angelina Weld Grimké submitted the play to the drama committee of the NAACP in the 1916, with the intention of exposing the plight of the African American population. Descended from prominent abolitionists, her writings were quite influential on the Harlem Renaissance that flourished in the 1920s.

Over the course of her tragically short career, Flannery O’Connor garnered high acclaim, and is considered to be one of the greatest writers this country has ever produced. A Georgia native, her work is frequently set in the “Christ-haunted” South, where O’Connor saw a grotesquely comic incongruity developing in the shadow of the Old Testament. She often explored the human obsession with the banal, as well as the issues of familial and racial tension, which often lead to senseless violence. In addition to her novels and short stories, O’Connor’s essays and letters are also collected here, which reveal her abundantly witty spirit.

In the late Victorian period, romantic fiction did not tend to portray the realities of married life in the honest way that Kate Chopin did. The Awakening details the life of a woman who is trapped in an unloving and desolate marriage, and out of desperation decides to pursue a secret affair with another man. This beautifully written novel is unusually frank in its portrayal of physical passion and marital infidelity, in a way that literary critic Edmund Wilson felt anticipated D.H. Lawrence. It offers up a stunning psychological portrait of the protagonist that has both scandalized and captivated readers since its publication in 1899.

This comic play features Larry Larkin as its protagonist, an immensely egotistical cartoonist. He is currently engaged to his young secretary Dunreath Henry, who worships her fiancé almost as much as he worships himself. Unfortunately for the both of them, not everyone feels so positively about Larry. In 1961, the playwright Jean Kerr was honored with a Tony Award for King of Hearts. A few years before that, the play had been made into a 1954 movie called That Certain Feeling, starring Bob Hope, Eva Marie Saint, and George Sanders.

Louise Bogan was an accomplished Irish-American poet who published in all of the major literary periodicals of the day, and was the first woman to be appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1945. In this volume, she explores the state of American poetry in 1900, and then systematically explores its growth, through the “American Renaissance” (1912-1917), the avant-garde movement, and interwar and ideological poetry, before arriving at the mid-century mark. The poems of a fairly comprehensive selection of American poets from Stephen Crane to W.H. Auden cap off the volume, though the twenty-first-century reader will see a noticeable absence of writers from the Harlem Renaissance. Today, writers like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay would most certainly be included in an anthology of this time period.

This Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel tells the epic love story of Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara and the gentleman rake Rhett Butler. Their passion is complicated immensely by the outbreak of the Civil War. Amongst the hope, loss, and tensions of battle, can their love possibly survive? Over the eight decades since its release, Gone with the Wind has become controversial for its romanticizing of the Antebellum South and its slave economy. Yet it remains important as a monument of classic American storytelling—one that has inflamed countless readers and influenced many writers since its release. It is probably most notable today as the source material for the Academy Award-winning film adaptation starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

In this strange play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mary Chase, a little girl attempts to play with the little boy over the garden wall, only to be sent away as “trash” by his mother. Unfortunately for Mrs. Howard V. Larue III, the little girl’s mother is an accomplished witch. She revenges the slight on her daughter by giving Mrs. Larue the idealized version of her son she has always longed for, while sending her real son off on a life of crime in a pool hall. It’s not long before Mrs. Larue becomes suspicious of her son’s perfection, and discovers the truth. But it won’t be so easy for her to get her real son back….

The landscape of the Pacific Northwest permeates the poems of this collection, with its tall green trees growing up from the drenched soil. These were the trees Gallgher’s family felled as loggers, with which the children built cabins in the woods. All of the poems here are in narrative format, combining autobiographical storytelling with a distinctive lyricism that warmly invites the reader in from the rain. Gallagher is known for associations with fellow poet Theodore Roethke and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has won numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

This complex work by the master experimental poet Susan Howe defies categorization. Its four long sequences—divided into two sections entitled “Turning” and “Conversion,” respectively—focus on the history of poetic language, taking the reader through various eras of poetic history. This includes the Puritan poets, who were known as religious nonconformists. Similarly, the section titles are nonconforming counterparts to T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Techniques like collage and mirror-imaging are used throughout, and visual meditations serve to express the inexpressible.

In this poetry collection by Alice Fulton—winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award—a postmodern poetics is created. Drawing from feminist theory, popular culture, science, myth, and autobiography, careful attention is paid to ingenuity in syntax, perception, and language, with electrifying results. Sensual Math is probably Fulton’s most acclaimed work, and with good reason—her poetical approach is filled with power and daring, tending to enchant and exhilarate the reader.

By the second half of the twentieth-century, Irish ancestry could be found in many Americans of European descent—the result of numerous waves of migrations. By 1990, 44 million people living in America had Irish American ancestry; New York City alone had over half-a-million people claiming this descent, making it one of the most Irish cities in the country. This has had a marked effect on our culture, from the first Irish migrations in the 1840s and 50s due to the Great Famine, to the “New Irish” of the 1980s. The author of this work discusses how the Irish American identity has evolved over time, and how both the United States and Ireland have shaped it.

Though it may seem like a distant memory, Ireland ever remains the culturally rich ancestral homeland of Irish Americans. In this collection of tales from Northern Ireland—specifically Ulster—through stories, songs, and essays, the Irish people discuss the folk history of the Emerald Isle, which includes both historical and legendary events. War, the coming of Christianity, and the nature of country life are all discussed here, alternating between laughter and anger. Whether you are Irish American or not, you will read with delight the story of a small Irish community that is at the same time the story of Ireland as a whole.

The Great Famine, brought on by many years of potato blight, remains one of the most devastating events in Irish history. The decade between 1845 and 1855, saw a mass exodus of Irish people to the shores of America, seeking something like a better life. This group of immigrants formed the core of the most vibrant Irish diaspora community extant, from which many Irish-Americans are descended today. This scholarly collection of essays discusses the Irish experience in America, and the new challenges and discrimination they faced in this country.

The sheer size of the Irish immigrant community in America guaranteed that it would have a great influence on ethnic and working class politics as it gradually established itself in the country. Political machines like Tammany Hall (led by William Tweed) had a powerful influence over politics, exchanging patronage for desired votes, and often allowing Irish immigrants to rise up in society. This work examines six different political machines that flourished in various American cities up through the corrupt Gilded Age, to as late as the mid-1980s. It concludes with a discussion of the continued significance of machine politics for the urban minorities of today.