The Sellout is a novel by Paul Beatty that was published in 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux and in 2016 by Oneworld Publications in the United Kingdom. The novel is set in and around Los Angeles, California, and reflects on the current state of racial relations in the United States. It won the Man Booker Prize in October 2016, making Beatty the first American writer to do so.

Paul Beatty introduces readers to Me, a young Black watermelon and weed grower, in The Sellout. When Me's father is killed by police and his hometown Dickens is wiped off the map, he decides to confront one injustice by burying it beneath another. In one of the novel's many absurdist twists, Me hires a Black slave as his footstool and petitions America's highest court to reinstate segregation. This caustic but heartfelt satirical novel, powered by a wicked wit, turns themes of racism and slavery inside out in service of a devastatingly clever message.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22237161

N. K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season is a 2015 science fantasy novel. In 2016, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. It is the first book in the Broken Earth series, which includes The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky.

The Broken Earth trilogy, written by N.K. Jemisin is set in the Stillness, a world in which society is built around surviving nuclear winters. The Orogenes, who wield earth's power, are the reason for life's survival; however, society shuns and exploits them. A red rift tears through the land in The Fifth Season, spewing enough ash to darken the sky for years. Without the resources needed to get through the long, dark night, war will erupt across the Stillness, and Essun will be forced to track down her missing daughter through this deadly, dying land.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19161852

Yellow Wife tells the story of an enslaved woman, Pheby Brown, who lives in one of Virginia's most dreadful slave jails. Though she was promised freedom at the age of 18, she quickly discovers that promises are not kept when you are a slave. This book, which details her fight for freedom, incorporates elements from the true story of Robert Lumpkin, one of the South's most brutal slave traders. It has already drawn comparisons to Solomon Northup's 12 Years a Slave and Dolen Perkins-Wench, Valdez's making it a must-read that could become one of America's favorite novels.

NPR and the Christian Science Monitor named it a Best Book of 2021. "A fully immersive, intricately crafted story inspired by historical events". Sadeqa Johnson has created a woman in Pheby whose struggle to survive and protect those she cares about will have readers turning the pages as fast as their fingers can fly. "It's simply enthralling". —Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours, #1 New York Times bestselling author This harrowing story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in Virginia's most infamous slave jail, which New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Grissom calls "wholly engrossing".

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54304031

Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was published in 1937. It is regarded as a Harlem Renaissance classic and Hurston's most well-known work. Janie Crawford's "ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny" is the focus of the novel.

Because of its readers' initial rejection of its strong, Black, female protagonist, Their Eyes Were Watching God was out of print for nearly 30 years. Janie Crawford is sixteen years old when her grandmother discovers her kissing a shiftless boy and marries her off to an old man who owns sixty acres. Janie's quest for independence leads her through three marriages and a journey back to her roots. When Hurston's classic was reissued in 1978, it became one of the most highly acclaimed and widely read novels in African American literature. It was rigorous, dazzling, and emotionally satisfying.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37415

Marlon James's third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, is set in Jamaica. Riverhead Books published it in 2014. The novel spans several decades, beginning with Bob Marley's attempted assassination in Jamaica in 1976 and continuing through the crack wars in New York City in the 1980s and a changed Jamaica in the 1990s.

On December 3rd, 1976, seven gunmen stormed Bob Marley's house with machine guns drawn. The gunmen were never apprehended, despite the fact that the reggae star survived. A Brief History of Seven Killings is James' fictional exploration of the event's bloody aftermath, as well as of Jamaica during one of its most volatile and violently defining periods. This ambitious and mesmerizing novel secures James' place among the great literary talents of his generation — and, more importantly, on this list of must-reads by Black authors, spanning decades, leaping continents, and crowded with unforgettable voices.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20893314

Marlon James, a Jamaican writer, published Black Leopard, Red Wolf in 2019. It is the first installment of a planned trilogy. The novel incorporates African history and mythology into the landscapes of the North and South Kingdoms, as well as the political tensions between these two warring states and the various city-states and tribes in the surrounding landscape. Michael B. Jordan purchased the rights to make a film adaptation prior to the book's release in February 2019.

Tracker, renowned for his ability to track people, is followed by Black Leopard and Red Wolf. Tracker, along with a motley crew of supernatural mercenaries, is hired to find a missing boy and uncovers a conspiracy in the process. This epic, the first in a planned trilogy, has been dubbed the "African Game of Thrones" because it honors African mythology with the same sense of adventure and mystery as Game of Thrones. Not to mention that it's extremely violent. However, James' hallucinatory and perplexing prose transforms the fantasy plotline. It's already been optioned for film rights, so read it before it hits the big screen!

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50608676

Americanah is a novel published in 2013 by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which she received the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, immigrates to the United States to attend university in Americanah. Ifemelu's life in both countries is traced in the novel, which is woven together by her love story with high school classmate Obinze. It was Adichie's third novel, published by Alfred A. Knopf on May 14, 2013. Lupita Nyong'o starred in and produced a television miniseries for HBO Max, but it was later canceled.

Ifemelu and Obinze, two Nigerian characters in love who drift apart when Ifemelu moves to America, are the focus of Americanah. This novel wears its politics on its sleeve, acutely describing how it feels to try to navigate multiple cultures — a feeling that is inherent in being an immigrant — and openly debating the lived experiences of Black people, American or not. This debate is most visible in Ifemelu's blog posts, which are scattered throughout the novel. The overt nature of politics, however, does not come at the expense of plot or characterization, and Adichie writes with astute wit.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15796700

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that was published in 1982 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983. It was later adapted into a film and musical with the same title.

Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple, unapologetically incorporates Southern Black women into world literature. Celie, a young African-American woman growing up in poverty in segregated Georgia, is the protagonist. Celie is separated from her children and her beloved sister Nettie after being raped by the man she refers to as "father", and she is trapped in an abusive marriage. Then she meets Shug, a singer, and magician who teaches her about the power of her own spirit. Walker's novel does not soften its blows, but it is brave enough to believe in forgiveness and hope.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52892857-the-color-purple

Octavia E. Butler's science fiction novel Parable of the Sower was published in 1993. It is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that addresses climate change and social inequality. Lauren Olamina's quest for freedom is followed in the novel. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn about Earthseed, a religion she has created. Believers in this religion believe that their destiny is to inhabit other planets. Parable of the Sower won numerous awards, including the New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1994, and has been adapted into a concert and a graphic novel. The Parable of the Sower has influenced music and social justice essays.

The year is 2025, and the world is on the verge of anarchy. In America, violence reigns supreme, and only the wealthy are safe. However, one woman has the ability to change everything. Lauren's life is forever changed when a fire destroys her home and kills her family. She is forced to travel north with a small group of refugees, and while there, she comes up with a revolutionary idea that could save humanity. Nothing is scarier than a dystopian novel that is already becoming a reality, and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower's exploration of climate change, inequality, and racism is frighteningly prescient.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52397

Sing, Unburied, Sing is Jesmyn Ward's third novel, which was published in 2017 by Scribner. It is set in the fictional town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and follows a family. The novel received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and The New York Times named it one of the top ten books of 2017.

Jesmyn Ward's tense novel is a portrait of a broken Mississippi family, with a young mother (Leonie) addicted to drugs and a husband serving a prison sentence. When Leonie learns that he is about to be released, she takes her two children and her friend Misty on a road trip to meet him. Ward transplants the road novel into twenty-first-century America, imbuing it with ancestral voices, mythical tropes, and hypnotic lyricism, in this amusingly banal odyssey full of gas station lethargy and dodgy drug deals. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a harrowing and majestic work by a remarkable author.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32920226

Salvage the Bones is Jesmyn Ward's second novel, and it was published by Bloomsbury in 2011. The novel follows a working-class African-American family in Mississippi as they prepare for Hurricane Katrina and then through the storm's aftermath.

As Hurricane Katrina approaches, Salvage the Bones tells the story of a desperately poor family in the Mississippi backwoods. Esch, 14, and her three mischievous brothers, as well as their alcoholic father, race against the clock to prepare their rotting junkyard of land and stockpile food. With Esch pregnant and her brother snatching scraps for his pit-litter, bull's these motherless children must protect and nurture one another in order to survive.

Soon afterward, Hurricane Katrina hits. The family is forced into the attic and eventually onto the roof as water begins to flood into their home. As the water continues to rise, they make a desperate bid to swim to another house on a hill, but in the maelstrom, China and her puppies are lost. After the end of the storm, the entire town has been leveled, Manny refuses to take responsibility for Esch's baby, and Skeetah still holds out hope that he will find China.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10846336

Yaa Gyasi, a Ghanaian-American author, published her first historical fiction novel, Homegoing, in 2016. Each chapter of the novel follows a different descendant of an Asante woman named Maame, beginning with her two half-sister daughters, Effia and Esi, who are separated by circumstance: Effia marries James Collins, the British governor in charge of Cape Coast Castle, while her half-sister Esi is imprisoned in the dungeons below. Following chapters follow their children and subsequent generations.

Effia and Esi are half-sisters born in Ghana in the 18th century. Their paths diverge when one is sold into slavery and the other marries a slaver. Homegoing follows their descendants through eight generations, from the Gold Coast to Mississippi plantations, from Ghanaian missionary schools to Jazz Age Harlem. Gyasi shares Morrison's ability to crystallize the ramifications of slavery, but she is unique in her ability to connect it to the present day, demonstrating how racism has become institutionalized. Homegoing is a searing historical fiction debut from a masterful new Black author, epic in scope but intimate in portraiture.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27071490

Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man was published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues that African Americans faced in the early twentieth century, such as black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and Booker T. Washington's reformist racial policies, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.

Invisible Man was immediately hailed as a seminal work of American fiction. Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that contrasts sharply with others, from the Deep South to the streets of Harlem; expulsion from college to lightning success as the leader of a communist organization. As he travels across the racial divide, he realizes that he is an "invisible man": people see only a reflection of their preconceived notions, deny his individuality, and, eventually, do not see him at all. Ellison's theme illuminates incomparable truths about the nature and consequences of bigotry.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16981

Colson Whitehead's novel The Nickel Boys was published in 2019. It is based on the true story of the Dozier School, a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years before a university investigation revealed its history. TIME named it one of the best books of the decade. It's the sequel to Whitehead's 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017.

Whitehead's brilliant novel is based on the true story of a reform school that operated for 111 years, committed atrocities against black boys, and ruined the lives of thousands of children. In The Nickel Boys, Elwood Curtis, a Black boy growing up in Jim Crow-era Florida, finds himself in this situation. Turner, a fellow 'delinquent' who challenges Elwood's ideas about how the world should work, is his only hope at the perilous Academy. Rising tension between the two friends leads to a decision with far-reaching consequences.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42270835

The Underground Railroad is a historical fiction novel written by American author Colson Whitehead that was published in 2016 by Doubleday. The novel was a critical and commercial success, topping bestseller lists and earning several literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award for Fiction, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Barry Jenkins wrote and directed a TV miniseries adaptation, which was released in May 2021.

Cora is a slave on a Georgia plantation. She is an outcast among her fellow Africans, and she is on the verge of becoming a woman, and she is desperate for freedom. So, when Caesar tells her about an underground railroad, they decide to flee north, only to be pursued by a slave-master who is relentless in his pursuit. The novel by Colson Whitehead is a pulsating story about a woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage. It's also a powerful meditation on history, from the brutal importation of Africans to today's unfulfilled promises. The Underground Railroad, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is a literary triumph.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30555488

James Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain was published in 1953. Go Tell It on the Mountain was ranked 39th on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century in 1998. Time Magazine named the novel one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

Baldwin, considered one of the greatest Black authors of all time, wrote a slew of novels, biographies, and essays during his lifetime. However, there is no better place to begin than with his first book, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Baldwin tells the story of Johnny Grimes growing up in 1930s Harlem, grappling with his religion, sexuality, and his abusive minister father, drawing on his own childhood. Though this novel has a lot to say about race, religion, class, and sexuality, it does so in a way that respects the complexities of the human experience. This novel is a blazing, enduring hymn.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17143

Swing Time is a novel written by British author Zadie Smith that was published in November 2016. The story is set in London, New York, and West Africa, and it centers on two girls who can tap dance, alluding to Smith's childhood love of tap dancing.

Swing Time, a "best friend bildungsroman" in the Elena Ferrante mold, tells the story of two brown girls from London's neighboring housing estates who both want to be dancers. It's a close but complicated friendship that comes to an abrupt end in their twenties, never to be rekindled but never completely forgotten. Underneath the virtuosic plot is a sharp social commentary on progress: Smith questions whether the ability to change is truly a form of power. With changing identities, the narrator seeks, above all, a sense of belonging. Could that location be your best friend?

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28390369

Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winner, has broken the mold several times with novels such as Song of Solomon, Sula, and The Bluest Eye, all of which are well worth reading. Her most well-known work, however, is her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved.

Toni Morrison's novel Beloved was published in 1987. Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is based on a true story about Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman from Kentucky who escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856. She was subject to capture under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; when U.S. marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, she was attempting to kill her children and had already killed her two-year-old daughter, in order to keep them from being returned to slavery.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6149

Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada is about both writing and history. It depicts a lot of history through the eyes of a slave in a funny and witty way. Flight to Canada is a satirical novel written by American poet and writer Ishmael Reed in 1976. Ishmael Reed established himself as a powerful voice in the black literary canon with his magical realist novel Mumbo Jumbo. Flight to Canada, with its parodic take on the traditional slave narrative, is yet another game-changer.

The story is set in a different Civil War era, just as a disease infects slaves with the desire to flee their owners. Ravallen Quickskill is one such slave who will accept nothing less than Canada. His journey is marked by a quirky mix of historical fact and twentieth-century modernities—Abe Lincoln and Xerox machines, for example—that provides a unique but insightful view of slavery in America.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/166335

Unexpected Stories is an unexpected gift by any standard. This slim but powerful collection contains two stories by one of the most important figures in modern science fiction, Octavia E. Butler, that have recently been unearthed and have never been published before. "A Necessary Being" transports us to the heart of an alien culture with a strict hierarchical system based on caste and skin color. With the arrival of visitors from a distant mountain tribe, the Rohkohn society is confronted with the sudden prospect of profound social change.

The title character in the second story, "Childfinder", is a woman who uses her psychic abilities to find children with similar nascent abilities and protect them from the abuses of a predatory society. These are early stories, but they are clear reflections of a powerful and unique talent, and their publication is a significant literary event. One of those surprises is Unexpected Stories. It's a book that many of Butler's fans have been waiting for, whether they knew it or not. Unexpected Stories will be published for the first time in print by Subterranean Press, with a newly commissioned introduction by Nisi Shawl and an afterword by Butler's longtime agent and literary executor, Merrilee Heifetz.

Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22023917-unexpected-stories