June 11, 2025
Titles & covers of each book listed in detail below.
The HPU community has curated a selection of 16 outstanding works of Black literature that are perfect for adding to your reading list. From crime fiction to plays, these recommendations come from librarians, English professors and your peers, showcasing the diverse voices and stories within the Black literary tradition.
As professor Matthew Carlson prepares to teach a detective fiction class next semester, he recommends the “Harlem Detective” series by Chester Himes.
“His ground-breaking ‘Harlem Detective’ series follows a duo of NYPD detectives—Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson—and brings the Harlem of the 1950s and ’60s to vivid life,” Carlson said.
Carlson also recommends “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead. Whitehead offers an engaging story of Harlem from the late 1950s to the early ’60s.
“Whitehead channels Himes and puts his own spin on the heist novel,” Carlson said. “All of these books are important reads because they offer thought-provoking social commentary and deep insights into the black experience in America while also delivering exciting plots and memorable characters.”
The appreciation of Whitehead is one that doesn’t go unnoticed. Pulitzer Prize winning book “The Nickel Boys” is one that librarian supervisor Melinda Pennington recommends.
“It is a fictional account of a real story of a boy's reform school in Florida that existed for over a hundred years,” Pennington said. “Many boys died at the hands of the cruel caretakers, and it went unnoticed for decades when people began to question a lot of unmarked graves. It is a remarkable but horrifying story.”
Nathan Hedman, a professor of English and the honor scholars director, recommends Adrienne Kennedy’s "Funnyhouse of a Negro.” This play was created in 1964 following the birth of the Black Arts Movement. Kennedy’s play follows a Black woman named Sarah and her journey living in New York City, offering insight on what it means to be a Black woman in America.
“[It] captures the fractured reality Black women are compelled to live in America,” Hedman said. “It was really my first introduction to how fraught that reality can be, but also something that, through performance, could get worked out in revealing, even healthy, ways.”
If you are looking for a dystopian fiction with deep character exploration or books with strong political themes, senior Elijah Foggie recommended Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “Chain-Gang All-Stars.” Utilizing political and social commentary, this book follows the lives of incarcerated people facing either execution or longer imprisonment.
“‘Chain-Gang All-Stars’ is a well-written and powerful book with strong prose and deep character work,” Foggie said. “One of the things I really liked was how the story spreads out its focus, giving a good amount of time to multiple characters. You don’t just follow the main protagonists–you get to see their backstories, struggles and what led them to where they are. It makes their experiences feel real.”
Professor Charmaine Cadeau is currently reading the poet Audre Lorde's book of essays and speeches, “Sister Outsider.”
“Lorde's book shows her deep commitment to justice, liberation and unwavering belief that our collective strength comes from celebrating our differences.” Cadeau said. “One of the most moving passages is ‘What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language. And, of course, I am afraid—you can hear it in my voice—because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation…’ As a poet myself, her work offers up a beautiful argument for the power and purpose of using words to build a world we see ourselves in.”
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Following Cadeau’s recommendation of Lorde, director of HPU’s writing center Justin Cook recommends a couple of black authors and their literary work, including: Lorde’s “The Cancer Journals" and "Zami;” James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” and “If Beale Street Could Talk;” Langston Hughes’ “Not Without Laughter” and “I, Too, Am America;” and Octavia Butler’s “Kindred & Parable of the Sower.”
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“Words make meaning,” Cook said. “They carry culture and consciousness in them. Words are how we construct and deconstruct the people, places and things in our world. We have to cherish them and learn from them or else all is lost.”
Professor Joshua Bartlett teaches American and African American literature, and with his expertise in the two, he recommends the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” and Randall Horton’s “Hook: A Memoir.”
“I've read and taught ‘Narrative’ many times in my life, and it never loses its significance,” Bartlett said. “It's a text that asks us to think about the true meanings and responsibilities of freedom, that emphasizes the transformative power of language, literacy and education, that demands we consider our own complicity with injustice, and that calls us to transform our beliefs and convictions into meaningful action. It does all this amidst the context of Douglass' own remarkable, yet representative, life story and a relentless critique and dismantling of the logics of oppression used to support the institutions of American slavery.”
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Horton’s memoir, “Hook,” is a modern-day rags-to-riches story that acts as a social critique of the prison system and race.
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“Horton's late 20th century path from college to prison, from prison to poetry and from poetry to being,” Bartlett said. “It's also a memoir that's stylistically innovative, politically and philosophically engaged and really thought-provoking about some of the big ‘American Dream’ questions that come up quite frequently in day-to-day discourse.”
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The recommendations shared by faculty and students are a starting point. Black history is human history, and these stories offer a unique perspective of the Black experience in America that ought to be recognized.