The Best Books: Black Identity

A LOT of you liked my list of postcolonial theory books last week, so I thought I would continue with other recommended reads.  I am a bibliophile and have read thousands of books in my life so far, so I have many thoughts on many books.

I can pump out booklists for days!

But for now, here is a booklist about black identity.  All of these books have had a profound effect on how I understand myself as a black person in America.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Native Son by Richard Wright

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Soul on Ice by Elderidge Cleaver

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston

Unbought and Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth 

The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Goodwin Woodson

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader by Ida B Wells

Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Letters from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Black Power: Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen! by Richard Wright

Black Jacobins by CLR James