African American Fiction

From Uncle Tom's Cabin to Parting the Waters, from Waiting To Exhale to Linden Hills, we can help you find the african american fiction books you are looking for. As the world's largest independent marketplace for new, used and rare books, you always get the best in service and value when you buy from Biblio.com.au, and all of your purchases are backed by our return guarantee.

Top Sellers in African American Fiction

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriett Beecher Stowe, the title character Uncle Tom is a long-suffering slave, loyal to both his faith and his master. Presented with an opportunity to escape, he instead chooses to remain in slavery to avoid embarrassing his master. After being sold to a slave trader, Tom suffers brutal treatment and is eventually beaten to death for his refusal to betray his friends — made to represent an ideal of true Christianity. Enormously popular (it was the best-selling novel of the... Read more about this item
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston wrote the novel in a reported seven weeks while visited Haiti. Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel garnered attention and controversy at the time of its publication but fell out of print for a number of years. Its popularity was resurrected in the 1970s by an article in Ms. Magazine by Alice Walker "Looking for Zora." Their Eyes Were Watching... Read more about this item
Song Of Solomon

Song Of Solomon

by Toni Morrison

Song of Solomon is Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison's third novel, published in 1977 by Alfred A. Knopf. It tells the story of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, a young African-American living in an unnamed mid-western city in the mid-nineteenth century as he seeks to discover his own identity and relationship to the world he lives in and uncovers his family's history. Winner of the National Book Critics Award, it has faced numerous school bans and challenges since publication. Former U.S. President Barack Obama... Read more about this item
Beloved

Beloved

by Toni Morrison

Beloved (1987) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison. Morrison was inspired to write the story after finding a newspaper article about the legal case of Margaret Garner. Garner escaped slavery in Kentucky to the free State of Ohio when U.S. Marshals captured her. To spare her children from being returned to slavery, she killed her two-year-old daughter and attempted to kill her other children. Morrison's novel is set after the Civil War in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sethe was born a slave... Read more about this item
Roots

Roots

by Alex Haley

Tracing his ancestry through six generations - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects - back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the New World, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past. Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1976.
The Color Purple

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

The Color Purple is an acclaimed epistolary novel by
American author Alice Walker. Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, this
collection of letters weaves an intricate mosaic of women joined by their love
for each other, the men who abuse them, and the children they care for. In
this, The Color Purple focuses on black female life in the American South
during the 1930s, addressing the numerous issues including their exceedingly
low position in American social culture. The novel received the 1983 Pulitzer... Read more about this item
Invisible Man

Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

Even
though Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man
is sometimes featured on banned books lists, it remains a consistent
staple on many high school reading curriculums. In the novel,
Ellison laments the feeling of hopelessness and invisibility that
many Black men experience in the United States, and it elegantly
explores the themes of racism and bigotry in ways that are both
unsettling and accessible.


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

Titled after a stanza from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem
“Sympathy,” I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of a series of seven autobiographical
novels by African-American poet and writer Maya Angelou. Personally deeply
involved and affected by the civil rights movement, the volume explores racism
and identity in her early life.
 
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was nominated for the National
Book Award in 1970. However, due to its depiction of controversial subjects
such as sexuality,... Read more about this item
Paradise

Paradise

by Toni Morrison

"Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons. Two brothers shot each other on New Year's Day. Trips to Demby for VD shots common. And what went on at the Oven these days was not to be believed . . . The proof they had been collecting since the... Read more about this item
Native Son

Native Son

by Richard Wright

Richard Wright’s Native Son tells the story of 20-year-old
Bigger Thomas, a black American youth living in utter poverty in Chicago's
South Side during the 1930s. When Bigger unintentionally murders a white woman,
he is put on trial and eventually convicted, and sentenced to the electric
chair. Often recognized as a protest novel, Native Son stresses systemic racial
issues, prompting the reader to feel both sympathy and empathy for Bigger. In
this, the novel is one of the earliest successful attempts... Read more about this item
The Intuitionist

The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead was born in New York City in 1969. His journalism has appeared in Vibe, Spin, Newsday, and The Village Voice, where he was a television columnist. A graduate of Harvard College, he currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Go Tell It On the Mountain

Go Tell It On the Mountain

by James Baldwin

Written over a span of ten years, Go Tell It on
the Mountain is James Baldwin’s first completed novel. The story follows John
Grimes, a bright teen living in Harlem in the 1930s, as he explores
relationships with his family and his church. On a basic level, Go Tell It on
the Mountain is a coming of age story, yet the novel gains complexity as the
omniscient narrator interweaves John’s story with the stories of his mother,
father, and aunt.In addition to the Grimes family, a main focus
of the text is... Read more about this item
Giovanni's Room

Giovanni's Room

by James Baldwin

Giovanni’s Room was the first published novel by James Baldwin, who hit literary acclaim in 1953 with his semi-autobiographical work Go Tell it on the Mountain. Giovanni’s Room is about a young bisexual American man and his affair with an Italian in Paris. It is one of Baldwin’s only works not to deal with race, focusing instead on the characters’ romantic relationships. 
Jazz

Jazz

by Toni Morrison

In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

by James Baldwin

The Fire Next Time is a book by James Baldwin. It contains two essays: "My Dungeon Shook - Letter to my Nephew on the One-Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation", and "Down At The Cross - Letter from a Region of My Mind". The first of these is written as a letter to Baldwin's 14-year-old nephew, discussing the central role of race in American history. The second essay deals with the relations between race and religion, focusing in particular on Baldwin's experiences with the Christian church as a youth,... Read more about this item
Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now

Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now

by Maya Angelou

Poet, writer, performer, teacher and director Maya Angelou was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then went to San Francisco. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has also written five poetry collections, including I Shall Not Be Moved and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, as well as the celebrated poem "On the Pulse of Morning," which she read at the inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton.
The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye

by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It is Morrison's first novel, written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University and was raising her two sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio named Pecola Breedlove. It takes place against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression. Brutal in its depictions of racism, incest, and child molestation, The Bluest Eye... Read more about this item
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

by Maya Angelou

"Thoroughly enjoyable . . . an important document drawing more much-needed attention to the hidden history of a people both African and American."--Los Angeles Times Book Review.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Parting the Waters

Parting the Waters

by Taylor Branch

African American Fiction Books & Ephemera

Waiting To Exhale

Waiting To Exhale

by McMillan, Terry

The classic novel of triumph, revenge, and friendship-now in a premium edition From the critically-acclaimed author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back comes this wise, down-to-earth story of a friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale"-waiting for that man who will take their breath away.
Just Above My Head

Just Above My Head

by Baldwin, James

Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth novel, first published in 1979.
Getting Mother\'s Body

Getting Mother's Body

by Parks, Suzan-Lori

Suzan-Lori Parks is a novelist, playwright, songwriter, and screenwriter. She was the recipient of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/ Underdog, as well as a 2001 MacArthur “genius grant.” Her other plays include Fucking A, In the Blood, The America Play, Venus, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. Her first feature film, Girl 6, was directed by Spike Lee. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she studied with James Baldwin, she has taught... Read more about this item
Possessing the Secret Of Joy

Possessing the Secret Of Joy

by Walker, Alice

In Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy, we meet Tashi Johnson again (she first appeared in The Color Purple). The young tribal African woman is now living in North America. As a young woman, she submitted to the customs of her people led her to submit to the tribal initiation rite of passage, which involves genital mutilation. Now severely traumatized, she spends the rest of her life trying to reconcile her heritage with her experience as a modern woman in America.
The Wedding

The Wedding

by West, Dorothy

Dorothy West founded the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Challenge in 1934, and New Challenge in 1937, with Richard Wright as her associate editor.  She was a welfare investigator and WPA relief worker in Harlem during the Depression.  Her first novel, The Living Is Easy, appeared in 1948 and remains in print.  Her second novel, The Wedding, was a national bestseller and literary landmark when published in the winter of 1995.  A collection of her stories and autobiographical... Read more about this item
Brothers and Sisters

Brothers and Sisters

by Campbell, Bebe Moore

"This book is about succeeding—and surviving—even being happy, in a society where every card seems stacked against you. If this is a fair world, Bebe Moore Campbell will be remembered as the most important African-American novelist of this century—except for, maybe, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin."—Carolyn See, Washington Post Book Review
Dessa Rose

Dessa Rose

by Williams, Sherley Anne

This acclaimed historical novel is based on two actual incidents: In 1829 in Kentucky, a pregnant black woman helped lead an uprising of a group of slaves headed to the market for sale. She was sentenced to death, but her hanging was delayed until after the birth of her baby. In North Carolina in 1830, a white woman living on an isolated farm was reported to have given sanctuary to runaway slaves. In Dessa Rose, the author asks the question: "What if these two women met?"From there the story unfolds: two... Read more about this item
Going To Meet the Man

Going To Meet the Man

by Baldwin, James

Going to Meet the Man, published in 1965, is a short-story collection by American writer James Baldwin. It is concerned with racism in American society. The eight stories collected in the book are: "The Rockpile" "The Outing" "The Man Child" "Previous Condition" "Sonny's Blues" "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon" "Come Out the Wilderness" "Going to Meet the Man"
A Different Kind Of Christmas

A Different Kind Of Christmas

by Haley, Alex

ALEX HALEY was the author of ROOTS: The Saga of An American Family, now available as a Modern Classic from Gramercy Books. Haley became a journalist while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard, and first gained national attention as the collaborator  of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He died  in 1992.
Mama Day

Mama Day

by Naylor, Gloria

Mama day is about many things. It's the story of Ophelia and George two black American's and how they fall in love in try to reconcile their differences of upbringing and culture. It's about the dying culture of Gullah on the Georgia sea islands and it is even a reworking of Shakespeare's Tempest.
Just Plain Folks

Just Plain Folks

by Johnson-Coleman, Lorraine

Rl\'s Dream

Rl's Dream

by Mosley, Walter

A Rap On Race

A Rap On Race

by Mead, Margaret and Baldwin, James

Coffee Will Make You Black

Coffee Will Make You Black

by Sinclair, April

The White Boy Shuffle

The White Boy Shuffle

by Beatty, Paul

Such Was the Season

Such Was the Season

by Major, Clarence

Bailey\'s Cafe

Bailey's Cafe

by Naylor, Gloria

Linden Hills

Linden Hills

by Naylor, Gloria