From the earliest days of American literature, Black women have made invaluable contributions—although their work was often discounted, criticized, or ignored. To counter this history, the online publication Zora (named for author Zora Neale Hurston) created The Zora Canon, a collection of the 100 most prominent books written by African American women. Even better, most of these books are available to check out for free on the Internet Archive!
“To our knowledge,” write the editors of Zora, “no one has ever compiled a comprehensive list specifically featuring the finest literary works produced by African American women authors. We decided to undertake that effort both to honor that still underappreciated group of writers and to provide [readers] with a handy reference guide to their work. ”
The books were compiled in consultation with a panel of academics, critics, authors, editors, and authorities on African American women’s literature, who each added to the final list. The result was 100 works spanning more than a century and a half in a huge variety of genres and styles, including novels, plays, poetry, memoirs, anthologies, and scholarly works. “Taken together,” write the editors, “the works don’t just make up a novel canon; they form a revealing mosaic of the Black American experience during the time period. They’re also just great reads. ”
As part of our commitment to offering Universal Access to All Knowledge, the Internet Archive works to share literature from diverse perspectives—which is why we were pleased to discover that most of the books in the Zora Canon are already available in our collections. Many of them are available for checkout—all you have to do is sign up for a digital library card—while a few are in the public domain, allowing anybody to download them without limitation. Some of the books that aren’t yet available can be added through our Book Sponsorship program, so that future readers can discover and enjoy them.
If you’d like to read some of the books on the list, check out the links below! If you want to expand your reading further, you can also browse our #1000 Black Girl Books Collection (which features a range of books with Black girls and women as the protagonists) or our full list of works by Zora Neale Hurston. Happy reading!
The Zora Canon
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
A Voice From the South: By a Black Woman of the South by Anna Julia Cooper
African American Music: An Introduction by Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby
Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 by Martha S. Jones
All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Assata by Assata Shakur
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women by Brittney C. Cooper
Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman by Michele Wallace
Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class by Mary Pattillo-McCoy
Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories by and About Black Women edited by Mary Helen Washington
Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks
Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith
Blue-Chip Black by Karyn R. Lacy
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody
Corregidora by Gayl Jones
Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne
Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan edited by Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby
Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones
Fish Tales by Nettie Jones
Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis, edited by Frank Barat
Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy
Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara
Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology edited by Barbara Smith
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems by Sonia Sanchez
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory by Michele Wallace
Iola Leroy by Frances Harper
Jubilee by Margaret Walker
Killing the Black Body by Dorothy E. Roberts
Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor
Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks
Meridian by Alice Walker
Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey
Oreo by Fran Ross
Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Passing by Nella Larsen
Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School by Monique W. Morris
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
81. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
Radiance From the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art by Sylvia Ardyn Boone
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Sula by Toni Morrison
Sweat by Lynn Nottage
Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston
The Black Christ by Kelly Brown Douglas
The Black Woman: An Anthology by Toni Cade Bambara
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction Into Ethnic Factions by Vilna Bashi Treitler
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
The Flagellants by Carlene Hatcher Polite
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The Red Record by Ida B. Wells
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1995 by Nikki Giovanni
The Street by Ann Petry
The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
There Is Confusion by Jessie Fauset
Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, and Love Affairs by Pearl Cleage
Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove
To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words by Lorraine Hansberry
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks
Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa
Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice by Carla Shedd
Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
We a BaddDDD People by Sonia Sanchez
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Paula Giddings
Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
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thank for information
its so helpful for me
amazing post, I love the african american history
I enjoy your beautiful site, thank you very much for your good feelings towards the great users.
Hi Jenica! Great post! Thank you for taking the time to list these books and provide links. Also, thank you for contributing to the diversity of America! Best, Jacqueline
Wonderful list!
I like you to find me a book of a war war 1 and war war 2.
Very good list
I would like to study!
TNX Jenica
Thanks for your sharing, I have new books collection
I like you to find me a book of a war war 1 and war war 2.
amazing post, I love the african american history
Thanks, Wonderful list!
All Books Are great many of theme I have already read,
Outstanding literature can be for the commonality of nations throughout the world
The history of Africans is very interesting
And I think this article is worth reading
This is such an eye opening post.
Thank you for taking the time to list these books and provide links. Also, thank you for contributing to the diversity of America! Best, Jacqueline
Since we’ve been mostly home this period, I’ve been doing some reading on Black American experience during the medieval periods. It’s been entertaining and horror at the same time. I’d give some of your recommendations a try. I have a feeling “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry would offer some depths and perspectives. Also, I read “The Heart of a Woman” by Maya Angelou a while back and I must say Maya never disappoints.