Research Guides: Black History Month: Literature and Resources: Black Literature Resources

Black Literature and Scholarship at Atkins

Atkins Library offers a large collection of Black literature, scholarship, and archival material. Showcased below are some highlights of our collection and potential reading options for those interested in participating in our annual Black Read event.

Challenged and Banned Black Literature

Over the past few years, there has been a marked increase in the number of books challenged and banned from public schools and libraries. The books most frequently challenged have a few commonalities. Many are books having to do with race and racism, that center on protagonists of color, or are authored by people of color. Of the top 10 challenged books of 2020, half were written by Black or African American authors.

Below are a few of the most frequently challenged books that share black stories and history.

All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
Call Number: Popular Reading--1st Floor ; HQ76.27.A37 J644 2020
ISBN: 9780374312718
Publication Date: 2020-04-28
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving ; E184.A1 K344 2019
ISBN: 9780525509288
Publication Date: 2019-08-13
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving ; PS3563.O8749 B55 1993
ISBN: 9780679433736
Publication Date: 1993-12-28
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds; Brendan Kiely
Call Number: Juvenile Literature--2nd Floor ; LU PZ7.R33593 Al 2015
ISBN: 9781481463331
Publication Date: 2015-09-29
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving ; PR9387.9.A34354 A44 2013
ISBN: 9780307271082
Publication Date: 2013-05-14
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving ; PS3573.A425 C6 1982b
ISBN: 9780671458539
Publication Date: 1983-01-01
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas; Amandla Stenberg (Foreword by)
Call Number: Special Display--2nd Floor ; LU PZ7.1.T448 Hat 2017
ISBN: 9780062498533
Publication Date: 2017-02-28
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Call Number: New Books--2nd Floor ; E441 .A15 2021
ISBN: 9780593230572
Publication Date: 2021-11-16
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Call Number: Special Display--2nd Floor ; PS3563.O8749 B4 1998b
ISBN: 9780525659273
Publication Date: 2019-10-22
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez
Call Number: Juvenile Literature--2nd Floor ; LU PZ7.P4255 Ou 2015
ISBN: 9781467742023
Publication Date: 2015-09-01

Special Collections and University Archives Materials

A Letter from Birmingham City Jail
Rare Books--10th Floor ; E185.61 .K534 1963
Stokley Carmichael Speech
What We Want by Stokley Carmichael
Rare Books--10th Floor ; E185.615 .C37 1966a
The Trumpet of Conscience by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Rare Books--10th Floor ; E185.97 .K5 1968
Letters from Dr. King to Harry Golden papers
Who am I: Memoirs of a transformative Black studies program
Rare Books--10th Floor ; LD3950 .W46 2020
Ten Demands from the Black Student Union
Black Student Union Papers and Documents
Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley : a native African and a slave
Rare Books--10th Floor ; PS866.W5 Z46 1834
The Black Student Unrest Fils (1968)

Audre Lorde

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving PS3562.O75 Z23 1982b
ISBN: 9780895941220
Publication Date: 1982
"ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page."--Off Our Backs
The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving PS3562.O75 B55 1995b
ISBN: 9780393312379
Publication Date: 1995
"Refusing to be circumscribed by any simple identity, Audre Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity. Her rhythms and accents have the timelessness of a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America, beyond the North American earth, to Abomey and the Dahomeyan Amazons. These are poems nourished in an oral tradition, which also blaze and pulse on the page, beneath the reader's eye."
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde; Cheryl Clarke (Foreword by)
Call Number: New Books--2nd Floor PS3562.O75 S5 2007
ISBN: 9781580911863
Publication Date: 2007
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to "never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . "

bell hooks

Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving E185.86 .H68 1982
ISBN: 9780861043798
Publication Date: 1987
In this classic study, cultural critic bell hooks examines how black women, from the seventeenth century to the present day, were and are oppressed by both white men and black men and by white women. Illustrating her analysis with moving personal accounts, Ain't I a Woman is deeply critical of the racism inherent in the thought of many middle-class white feminists who have failed to address issues of race and class. While acknowledging the conflict of loyalty to race or sex is still a dilemma, hooks challenges the view that race and gender are two separate phenomena, insisting that the struggles to end racism and sexism are inextricably intertwined.
Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life by bell hooks; Cornel West
Call Number: Ground Floor Compact Shelving E185.86 .H735 1991b
ISBN: 9780921284567
Publication Date: 1991
In this provocative and captivating dialogue, hooks and West grapple with the dilemmas, contradictions, and joys of Black intellectual life. Creating a spiritual, progressive, feminist, and ultimately organic definition of Black intellectuality, they passionately discuss issues ranging in subject matter from theology and the Left, to contemporary music, film, and fashion.