Established by Dr. James Fraser in the late 1980's, the Black Literature Collection at the Florham Library in the Monninger Center contains first editions of books written by Black authors. The Collection contains 491 titles with materials dating back to 1888.
Access to this collection, as well as other non-circulating collections at the Libraries, is by appointment only. To view titles included in the Black Literature Collection, please view the document below:
The FDU Libraries' Black Literature Collection encompasses literary works in various genres dating back to the 18th century. This literature reflects topics such as racism, social inequality, slavery, and the fight for freedom.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by
"This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has 'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other great works The Odyssey for the way his heroine's travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn for the clarity of her voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story in it all." -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek. "Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner's Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld, Life
Black Betty by
Easy Rawlins is on the verge of losing everything--until he gets an offer from the FBI that he has no choice but to accept. For most Black Americans, the 1960s were times of hope. For former P.I. Easy Rawlins, Los Angeles's mean streets were never meaner--or more deadly. Racial tensions are high--Black folks avoid even stepping foot in white neighborhoods. Despite the ongoing civil rights movement, racism still rules the streets and police officers are no exception. So when a white man approaches Easy with a wad of cash to find a missing person, Easy would is tempted to simply throw the money back in his sleazy face. But he personally knows the woman the white man wants to find--the notorious Black Betty, an ebony siren whose talent for all things rich and male took her from Houston's Fifth Ward to Beverly Hills. Short on money and pulled by the strong desire to see Black Betty again, he accepts the job. But why exactly this white man wants to find her isn't clear. Easy's questions aren't being answers and he realizes the case might be more complex than he thought. Easy won't stop at anything to find Black Betty. Even as the obstacles grow higher and the bodies begin to pile up.
Gone Fishin' by
"The setting: Houston, 1939. Easy and Mouse are young men just setting out in life. Easy has yet to develop his skill for unraveling the secrets of others, and Mouse has yet to kill his first man. All will soon change." "Easy and Mouse come of age in Gone Fishin' as they are compelled to examine their friendship and other relationships that have shaped their lives. Both young men take a closer look at their love and memories of their mothers and are forced to deal with the fathers in their lives - Easy yearning for the one he hardly knew, Mouse vengeful over the one he was left. Out of these memories and interactions, each must somehow forge his own sense of manhood."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Hill We Climb by
The instant #1 New York Times bestseller and #1 USA Today bestseller Amanda Gorman's electrifying and historic poem "The Hill We Climb," read at President Joe Biden's inauguration, is now available as a collectible gift edition. "Stunning." --CNN "Dynamic." --NPR "Deeply rousing and uplifting." --Vogue On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe with her call for unity and healing. Her poem "The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country" can now be cherished in this special gift edition, perfect for any reader looking for some inspiration. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this remarkable keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.
In My Father's House by
A compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past... In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin--a respected minister and civil rights leader--comes face to face with the sins of his youth in the person of Robert X, a young, unkempt stranger who arrives in town for a mysterious "meeting" with the Reverend. In the confrontation between the two, the young man's secret burden explodes into the open, and Phillip Martin begins a long-neglected journey into his youth to discover how destructive his former life was, for himself and for those around him. "...on every page there's an authentic moment, or a dead-right knot of conversation, or a truer-than-true turn of phrase..."--Kirkus Reviews
Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales by
Los Angeles is the setting for 13 stories in this collection from writer and poet Wanda Coleman. Many of the characters in these stories lead lonely lives full of longing and potential stifled by racism, poverty, and absurd accidents of fate. And yet, even though they are trapped by the present moment, their inner lives are glowing, a mirror of the city of angels in which they live, a metropolis, "always simmering," as Coleman writes in the final story, "ever waiting to be borne on that balmy promised crescendo." Coleman applies a poet's economy of words to her fiction, setting a scene with lightning-quick strokes, letting a detail, a dialogue, or the brisk vernacular speak for itself. Or, alternatively, she will step in and take center stage, an omniscient voice seeing beyond the impending and inevitable tragedy, but powerless to change either narrative or outcome. Powerless, that is, only within the bounds of the story, for Coleman is an author devoted to change, personal and political, writing to affect the balance of power in America.
Out There by
With this appreciation of three very different black writers, novelist Darryl Pinckney reminds us that marginal or neglected literary figures have a lot to tell us about the history of a people who are always "outsiders." Born in Jamaica in 1883, J. A. Rogers was an early member of the Harlem Renaissance -- a newspaper columnist, historian of Negro achievement, polemicist against white supremacy, and amateur sociologist of interracial sex as evidenced in his massive three-volume work Sex and Race. Vincent O. Carter, who came of age in 1920's Kansas City, wrote The Bern Book, an exploration of being black in a Swiss rather than an American setting. Caryl Phillips, a son of the generation of black Caribbeans who returned to Great Britain after the Second World War, has explored the psychology of migration in fiction and nonfiction that include The Final Passage, Higher Ground, and The Nature of Blood. Pinckney's essays on these writers, drawn from his Alain Locke Lectures at Harvard University, give us a rich understanding of what it has meant to be "children of the diaspora" over the past century.
