African-American Authors:
Award-Winning Authors
Books by prize-winning writers.
There are 14 items | Showing 1 to 14
Fire in Beulah by Askew, Rilla
Notes: Two women's lives are turned upside down in events leading up to the burning of a Black middle class neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1920s.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0670888435
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2001
Callnumber: Fiction
Parable of the Talents by Butler, Octavia
Notes: In this sequel to Parable of the Sower, the setting is early twenty-first century California. Lauren Oya Olamina continues her spiritual quest after founding the new religion, Earthseed.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 1888363819
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 1998
Callnumber: Fiction
I Wish I Had a Red Dress by Cleage, Pearl
Notes: Joyce Mitchell begins a relationship with a new man, and despite all the troubles surrounding her, she has hope of getting to wear that "red dress".
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0380977338
Publisher: Morrow
Published: 2001
Callnumber: Fiction
The Farming of Bones by Danticat, Edwidge
Notes: The heartbreaking mass murder of thousands of people in 1937 in the Dominican Republic is told with great literary skill.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 1569471266
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 1998
Callnumber: Fiction
Gabriel's Story by Durham, David Anthony
Notes: Fifteen-year-old Gabriel Lynch is not pleased to be moving to Kansas in 1871. He and another young man decide to run away and head farther west, in search of adventure.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0385498144
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2001
Callnumber: Fiction
A Lesson Before Dying by Gaines, Ernest
Notes: Jefferson, a wrongly accused youth, has been sentenced to death in late 1940's Louisiana. In the time leading up to his execution in the electric chair, he is led on a journey of self discovery by Grant, the teacher of the plantation school.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0679741666
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1993
Callnumber: Fiction
Middle Passage by Johnson, Charles
Notes: Rutherford Calhoun has unknowingly stowed away on an illegal slave trading ship in 1830. The happenings on board have parallels in modern day society.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0689119682
Publisher: Atheneum
Published: 1990
Callnumber: Fiction
The Fisher King by Marshall, Paule
Notes: Past and present, New York and Paris, a man remembers the life of his brother, a jazz pianist.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0684872838
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2000
Callnumber: Fiction
Song of Solomon by Morrison, Toni
Notes: With lyricism and eloquence, Morrison relates the saga of a large family over several generations.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0394497848
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1977
Callnumber: Fiction
RL's Dream by Mosley, Walter
Notes: Intriguing people and places enliven this story of an elderly man ill with cancer and the woman who cares for him.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0393038025
Publisher: Norton
Published: 1995
Callnumber: Fiction
The Fall of Rome by Southgate, Martha
Notes: Jerome, the Latin teacher, and Rashid, the freshman from the inner city are two of the very few African Americans at a Northeastern prep school.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0684865009
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2002
Callnumber: Fiction
Omeros by Walcott, Derek
Notes: This Caribbean tale, loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, encompasses all aspects of the island culture.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0374523509
Publisher: Farrar
Published: 1990
Callnumber: 811 W142o
The Intuitionist by Whitehead, Colson
Notes: Echoing back to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Whitehead expounds on race and society.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0385492995
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1999
Callnumber: Fiction
Philadelphia Fire by Wideman, John Edgar
Notes: Although MOVE is at the heart of this novel, the author touches on all aspects of the human experience.
Reading Level: Adult
ISBN: 0679736506
Publisher: Holt
Published: 1990
Callnumber: Fiction