• To gain a deeper understanding of Malcolm X’s
life, read The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965).
This was written in collaboration with Alex
Haley and fills in more details and truth in this
charismatic and controversial man’s life.

• James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962) is set
in New York’s Greenwich Village, Harlem, and
France. It is a searing tale that captures the
emotions and the sensuality of relationships
stripped of definitions of gender and race during
the 1970s.

• Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) is Baldwin’s
first and most popular book of fiction. The story
follows one day in the life of a fourteen-year-old
boy, who recounts the harsh realities of his past.

• Baldwin wrote two successful plays. The Amen
Corner: A Play (1968) is a play about family.
Margaret Alexander must face her estranged
husband, a jazz musician, when he suddenly
returns home because he is dying. Margaret must
not only bridge the gap between herself and her
husband, but between her son and his father. She
must also bridge the different roles she plays
between her home and her church. This is an
emotional and inspiring work. Baldwin’s other
play, Blues for Mr. Charlie (1964), takes place in
a small Southern town and opens with the murder
of a black man. Unflinchingly, Baldwin
portrays the agonizing pain and fear that most
African Americans had to face in growing up in
the South, especially in the 1950s.

• Baldwin’s second book, Giovanni’s Room (1956),
was very controversial for its time. It tells the
story of a young man David, struggling with his
sexuality, torn between his love for his fiancé
and a male Italian bartender. The setting is Paris
during the 1950s. When David’s fiancé returns
from Spain to find out that he has had an affair
with a man, his life spins out of control.

• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
(2001) was edited by Clayborne Carson, a noted
historian, who researched all of King’s essays,
notes, letters, speeches, and sermons to write this
book. By reading about King’s life, one gains not
only a fuller understanding of the times and
struggles that faced the nation during the 1960s
but also a more balanced look at the Civil Rights
Movement. King and Malcolm X were contemporaries,
but they were often on opposite sides.

• For a feminine point of view of what it’s like to
be black in America, read Ntozake Shange’s for
colored girls who have considered suicide when
the rainbow is enuf (1977), which was produced
as a play on Broadway and won the Obie award.
The play is really a long poem, written in dialogue
form in which spirituality, rage, fear, love,
female sexuality, and cultural roots are discussed.