18 books like A Raisin in the Sun

What to read after A Raisin in the Sun — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1920 · ★ 3.9 · 431p · ≈ 14h · Challenging Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to… Shares: Drama

Roots Alex Haley · 1861 · ★ 4.4 · 476p · ≈ 15h · Challenging Roots is a novel written by Alex Haley and published in 1976. It portrays the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his alleged descendants in the U.S. down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans, History

River, Cross My Heart Breena Clarke · 1999 · ★ 3.5 · 256p · ≈ 8h · Moderate The impact of a child's drowning on a black family in 1925 Washington, especially on the 12-year-old sister who was baby-sitting the girl. Told against the background of the lot of African Americans at the time. Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans

The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois · 1903 · ★ 4.3 · 232p · ≈ 7h · Challenging Du Bois' 1903 collection of essays is a thoughtful, articulate exploration of the moral and intellectual issues surrounding the perception of blacks within American society. Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans, History

Mama Day Gloria Naylor · 1988 · ★ 4.2 · 312p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Mama day is about many things. It's the story of Ophelia and George two black American's and how they fall in love in try to reconcile their differences of upbringing and culture. It's about the dying culture of Gullah on the Georgia sea islands and it is even a reworking of Shakespeare's Tempest. Shares: Afro-Americans, 20th Century, African Americans

Autobiography and Black identity politics Kenneth Mostern · 1999 · 287p · ≈ 9h · Moderate "Why has autobiography been central to African-American political speech throughout the twentieth century? What is it about the racialization process that persistently places African-Americans in the position of speaking from personal experience? In Autobiography and Black Identity Politics: Racialization in Twentieth-Century America Kenneth Mostern illustrates the relationship between narrative… Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans

Once an Eagle Anton Myrer · 1968 · ★ 4.5 · 1312p · ≈ 43h · Challenging Required reading for West Point cadets, Once An Eagle is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self-interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of… Shares: 20th Century, American, History

Going to Meet the Man James Baldwin · 1965 · ★ 4.4 · 226p · ≈ 7h · Moderate African-American fiction Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans

Giovanni's Room James Baldwin · 1956 · ★ 4.3 · 185p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Considered an 'audacious' second novel, GIOVANNI'S ROOM is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity. Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans

Song of Solomon Toni Morrison · 1634 · ★ 4.4 · 353p · ≈ 11h · Demanding Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans

Intruder in the Dust William Faulkner · 1948 · 247p · ≈ 8h · Challenging Using his preferred stream-of-consciousness style the author tells a story of a black farmer in Mississippi accused of murdering a white man. Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans

The fire next time James Baldwin · 1962 · ★ 4.5 · 120p · ≈ 4h · Moderate From Amazon.com: A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, The Fire Next Time galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of two… Shares: Afro-Americans, Race Relations, African Americans, History

Paradise Toni Morrison · 1997 · ★ 4.4 · 336p · ≈ 11h · Moderate "Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked down the stairs by her cold-eyed daughter. Four damaged infants were born in one family. Daughters refused to get out of bed. Brides disappeared on their honeymoons. Two brothers shot each other on New Year's Day. Trips to Demby for VD shots common. And what… Shares: African American families, Afro-Americans, African Americans

Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington · 1900 · ★ 4.1 · 168p · ≈ 5h · Challenging Booker T. Washington, the most recognized national leader, orator and educator, emerged from slavery in the deep south, to work for the betterment of African Americans in the post Reconstruction period. "Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he… Shares: Afro-Americans, African Americans, History

And this too shall pass E. Lynn Harris · 1996 · ★ 4.3 · 347p · ≈ 11h · Moderate A stellar quarterback, an ambitious sportscaster. What happens when rising stars collide?In And This Too Shall Pass, Harris takes us into the locker rooms and newsrooms of Chicago, where four lives are about to intersect in romance and scandal. At the heart of the novel is the celibate Zurich, a rookie quarterback for the Chicago Cougars whose trajectory for superstardom is interrupted by a… Shares: African American families, African Americans

Leaving Atlanta Tayari Jones · 2002 · ★ 4.1 · 272p · ≈ 9h · Moderate "It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine would be murdered by the end of 1981. Like all kids across the city, fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison were discovering that back-to-school now meant special safety lessons, indoor recess, and being thrown into a world… Shares: African American families, African Americans

Dirty Jersey Phillip Thomas Duck · 2008 · 253p · ≈ 8h · Moderate A chance encounter with Fiasco, one of the hottest rappers around, gives Eric Posey entry into a world where he is suddenly cool and has access to anything he's ever wanted, for the price of his sister, Kenya. Shares: African American families, African Americans

Sing, Unburied, Sing Jesmyn Ward · 2017 · ★ 4.0 · 304p · ≈ 10h · Moderate A SEARING AND PROFOUND SOUTHERN ODYSSEY BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER JESMYN WARD In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through… Shares: African American families, African Americans

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