...but back to the list and why it was created in the first place. You know the saying'' If you want to hide something from a black man put it in a book'' that never sat well with me so I took it upon myself to do something. The number of readers I come across are almost 98.3% black females and that's troubling on a few levels. So as someone who is geared towards promoting literacy among my generation, With the help of two of my fraternity brothers Searius Add + Nelson McCoy, I have compiled a list of books ranging in topics from incarceration to feminism to sexuality to pop culture to social consciousness with the intent to foster a bit of the same love I have for reading, among my fellow brothers. While I am extremely well-read, I must admit that some of the books listed are titles I have not read, however they sounded interesting enough (to me..)
While this list pertains to subject matter mainly for African American males, I do encourage women as well to read them because there's never a wrong time to crack open a book, right?
That's my spiel. Here's the real reason I wrote the whole blog:
1.
The Pact
by George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Sampson Davis and Lisa Frazier Page
2.
Black
Men: Obselete, Single, Dangerous: The Afrikan-American Family in Transition
by Haki Madhubu
3.
The Black
Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell
4.
Autobiography
of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
5.
Soledad
Brother by George Jackson
6.
Seize The
Time by Bobby Seale
7.
Souls of
My Brothers: Black Men Break Their Silence, Tell Their Truths and Heal Their
Spirits edited by Candace Sandy and Dawn Marie Daniels
8.
Manchild
in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
9.
Dreams of
My Father by Barack Obama
10.
Bloods:
Black Veterans of the Vietnam War
by Wallace Terry
11.
Native
Son by Richard Wright
12.
Black Boy
by Richard Wright
13.
White Boy
Shuffle: A Novel by Paul Beatty
14.
Invisible
Man by Ralph Ellison
15.
Men Cry
in the Dark: A Novel by Michael Baisden
16.
Thirteen
Ways of Looking at a Black Man by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
17.
Hung: A
Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America by Scott Poulson-Bryant
18.
Race
Matters by Cornel West
19.
Reaching
up for Manhood by Geoffrey Canada,
20.
Wild At
Heart by John Eldredge,
21.
Fatherhood
by Bill Cosby
22. The Bible
23. Websters
Dictionary
24.
The Isis
Papers by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
25.
Egyptian
Yoga by Musta Ashby
26.
From
Niggas To Gods by Akil
27.
How To
Hustle And Win by Supreme Understanding
28.
One Day
It’ll All Make Sense by Common
29.
Brother
West: Loving and Living Out Loud by Dr. Cornel West
30.
The
Conversation by Hill Harper
31.
Letters
to a Young Brother by Hill Harper
32.
The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
33.
The Black
Male Handbook by Kevin Powell
34.
Take Back
Your Family by Rev. Run
35.
How To
Love A Black Woman by Dr. Ronn Elmore
36.
Finding
Fish: A Memoir by Antwone Q. Fisher
37.
The
Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
38.
The Wealth
Of My Mother's Wisdom by Terrence J
39.
Disappearing
Acts by Terry McMillian
40.
Suspicion
Nation: The Inside Story of the Trayvon Martin Injustice and Why We Continue to
Repeat It by Lisa Bloom
41.
Roots by
Alex Haley
42.
Doing The
Best I Can: Fatherhood In The Inner City by Katheryn Edin and Timothy
Nelson
43.
This Is
How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz
44.
If Beale
Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
45.
Souls of
Black Folk by WEB Dubois
46.
Who's
Afraid of Post Blackness by Toure
47.
Sister
Citizen by Melissa Harris Perry
48.
The New
Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
49.
Jesus
Hopped The Train by Stephen Ady Guirgis and Phillip Seymour Hoffman
50.
7 Guitars
by August Wilson
51.
The
Brother/Sister Plays by Tarell Alvin McCraney
52.
The Rose
That Grew From The Concrete by Tupac Shakur
53.
The
Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner
54. I The Selected Poetry of Langston Hughes
55.
I Write
What I Like by Steve Biko
56. Conversations With Myself by Nelson Mandela
57. Gather Together In My Name by Maya Angelou
58. The Selected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
59. The Collected Complete Poems of Maya
Angelou
60.
One Day I
Saw a Black King by JD Mason
61.
Disappearing
Acts by Terry McMillian
62.
Milk In
My Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey
63.
A Lesson
Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
64.
The Assassination
of the Black Male Image by Earl Ofari Hutchinson
65.
The
Extinction Coefficient: The Systematic Feminization of African American Men
by Raymon Davies
66.
Makes Me
Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall
67.
Voices of
the Talented Tenth: Values of Young Black Males by Odell Horne
68.
African
American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision by Tamara
L. Brown
69.
The
Divine Nine by Lawerence Ross
70. Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac
Shakur by Michael Eric Dyson
71.
Know What
I mean: Reflections on Hip Hop by Michael Eric dyson
72.
Growing
Up X by Ilyasah Shabazz
73.
Growing
Up King by Dexter Scott King
74.
Reflecting
Black: A Cultural Criticism by Michael Eric Dyson
75.
The
Cornel West Reader by Dr. Cornel West
76.
Breaking
Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life by Dr. Cornel West & Bell
Hooks
77.
Angela
Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis
78.
Are
Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
79.
The Will
to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
80.
Ain't I a
Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
81.
Nigger:
The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy
82.
Nigger:
An Autobiography by Dick Gregory
83.
The
Un-Civil War: Blacks vs Niggers: Confronting the Subculture Within the
African-American Community by Talaab Starkes
84.
Gil
Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man by Marcus Baram
85.
The Last
Holiday by Gil Scot Heron
86.
On A
Mission: Selected Poems and a History of the Last Poets by Abiodun Oyewole
and Umar Bin Hassan
87.
Up From
Slavery by Booker T Washington
88.
The Mis-Education
of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
89.
The Negro
by WEB Dubois
90.
Heroes In
Black Skin by Booker T Washington
91.
Malcolm X
Speaks Selected Speeches and Statements by George Breitman
92.
Narratives of the life of Fredrick Douglass:
An American Slave by Fredrick Douglass
93.
Naked:
Black Bare All About Their Skin, Lips, Hips and Other Parts by Ayana Byrd
94.
A Hair
Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America by Ayana Byrd
95.
The N
Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why by Jabari Asim
96.
Book of
Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley
97.
Decoded
by Jay-Z
98.
Hip Hop
America by Nelson George
99.
The Anthology of Rap by Adam Bradley
and Andrew Dubois
100. Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap by Jeffery O.G.
Ogbar
