Past Reading

2011 Book Selections

  • Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
  • Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
  • Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young
  • The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
  • A Taste of Honey by Jabari Asim
  • Perfect Peace by Daniel Black
  • Live Again by L. R. Giles
  • Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
  • Forest Gate by Peter Akinti
  • The Chinaberry Tree by Jessie Fauset
  • Black Noir: Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Stories by African American Writers by Otto Penzler, ed.
  • The Other Wes Moore: The Story of One Name and Two Fates by Wes Moore

Key: Author of the Year | New Author of the Year

2010 Book Selections

  • Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey
  • Outliers:The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
  • Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
  • Sag Harbor: A Novel by Colson Whitehead
  • Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
  • Daughters of the Stone by Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa*
  • Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo
  • The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow
  • Tricked by Cynthia A. Minor
  • Corregidora by Gayl Jones
  • Best African American Fiction 2010 Edition by Gerald Early and Nikki Giovani, eds.
  • Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Cafe Society to Hollywood to HUAC by Karen Chilton

* Also New Author of the Year 2010

2009 Book Selections

  • Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Sweet Release: The Last Step to Black Freedom by Dr. James Davison, Jr.
  • The Demise of Luleta Jones by Mark Allen Boone
  • Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
  • I Got Somebody in Staunton by William Henry Lewis
  • Let the Lion Eat Straw by Ellease Sutherland
  • Best African American Fiction 2009 Editors E. Lynn Harris & Gerald Early
  • Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey
  • A Mercy by Toni Morrison
  • The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir by Jennifer Baszile
  • If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes
  • Wounded: A Love Story by Claudia Mair Burney

2008 Book Selections

  • Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard
  • Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel by Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes
  • If the Creek Don't Rise by Rita Williams
  • That Mean Old Yesterday by Stacey Patton
  • Daughters of Men: Portraits of African-American Women and Their Fathers by Rachel Vassel
  • Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns by J. California Cooper
  • New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson
  • Measuring Time by Helon Habila
  • Orange Mint and Honey by Carleen Brice
  • Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph by C. Vivian Stringer
  • Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
  • Other People's Skin: Four Novellas by Tracy Price-Thompson and TaRessa Stovall

2007 Book Selections

  • Ghosts of Saint-Michel by Jake Lamar
  • The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner
  • Jump at the Sun: A Novel by Kim McLarin
  • All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones
  • The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty by Lawrence Otis Graham
  • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from the Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
  • The Other Brother by Brandon Massey
  • Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna
  • The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in 18th Century New York by Mat Johnson
  • The Importance of Being Dangerous by David Dante Troutt
  • Iola Leroy (Black Women Writers Series) by Frances E.W. Harper
  • You Only Get Better by Connie Brisoe, Lolita Files, Anita Bunkley

2006 Book Selections

  • Babylon Sisters by Pearl Cleage
  • The Promise: How One Woman Made Good on Her Extraordinary Pact to Send a Classroom of 1st Graders to College by Oral Lee Brown
  • On Beauty by Zadie Smith
  • Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? by Michael Eric Dyson
  • Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
  • Freshwater Road by Denise Nicholas
  • Fledgling: A Novel by Octavia Butler
  • Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagzia with Steve Erwin
  • Joplin's Ghost: A Novel by Tananarive Due
  • They Tell Me of a Home by Daniel Black
  • Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin by John Hope Franklin
  • Covenant with Black America edited by Tavis Smiley

2005 Book Selections

  • Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley
  • Success Never Smelled So Sweet: How I Followed My Nose and Found My Passion by Lisa Price, Hilary Beard
  • The Second Life of Samuel Tyne by Esi Edugyan
  • Passing Through by Colin Channer
  • The Full Matilda : A Novel by David Haynes
  • Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America by Charisse Jones, Kumea Shorter-Gooden
  • Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? by Maryse Conde
  • Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Leaving Cecil Street by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
  • The Professor's Daughter by Emily Raboteau
  • Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen
  • Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors edited by Eleanor Taylor Bland

2004 Book Selections

  • The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
  • Book of African American Women: 150 Crusaders by Tonya Bolden Rhodes
  • Getting Mother's Body : A Novel by Suzan-Lori Parks
  • The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart by Alice Walker
  • Hottentot Venus: A Novel by Barbara Chase-Riboud
  • Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey by Marita Golden
  • American Desert:A Novel by Percival Everett
  • The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
  • Bling: A Novel by Erica Kennedy
  • Shifting Through Neutral by Bridgett M. Davis
  • The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
  • Shaking the Tree: A Collection of Fiction and Memoir by Black Women by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah (Editor)

2003 Book Selections

  • Dancing on the Edge of the Roof by Sheila Williams
  • Douglass' Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes
  • The Condemnation of Little B by Elaine Brown
  • Color of Justice by Gary Hardwick
  • Waiting for an Angel by Helon Habila
  • The Portable Promised Land by Toure
  • Sittin' in the Front Pew by Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown
  • My Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Merriwether
  • Zora Neale Hurston: Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd
  • Never Forget The Bridge That Crossed You Over by Adriene Pickett
  • Mojo: Conjure Stories edited by Nalo Hopkinson Lion's Blood by Steven Barnes

2002 Book Selections

  • The Debt by Randall Robinson
  • Ev'ry Tongue Gotta Confess by Dawn Knight
  • The Future Has a Past by J California Cooper
  • The Fall of Rome by Martha Southgate
  • The Justus Girls by Evelyn Slim Lambright
  • Destined To Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany by Hans Massaquoi
  • Black No More by George Schuyler
  • Finding Fish by Antwone Quenton Fisher
  • Shades of Jade by Gloria Mallette
  • Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature edited by Charles Henry Rowell, Carl Phillips
  • Harlem Redux by Persia Walker
  • All I Need by Jacquie Bamberg Moore

2001 Book Selections

  • The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley
  • Kismet by Dawn Knight
  • Iron Shadows by Steven Barnes
  • On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles
  • Dark Matters by Sheree Thomas
  • The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman
  • Church Folk by Michelle A. Bowen
  • Bruised Hibiscus by Elizabeth Nunez
  • Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl by Josetta Rose Barras
  • Sin in Soul's Kitchen by Andrew Oyefesobi
  • Cane River by Lalita Tademy
  • Chocolate Thoughts by S. James Guitard

Key: Author of the Year | New Author of the Year

2000 Book Selections

  • No Time to Die by Grace F. Edwards
  • Mis Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson
  • Slapboxing with Jesus by Victor D. Lavelle
  • The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah
  • Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class by Mary Patillo-McCoy
  • The True History of Paradise by Margaret Cezair Thompson
  • Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden
  • Jubilee by Margaret Walker
  • Men Cry in the Dark by Michael Baisden
  • Black Eyed Peas for the Soul: Tales to Strengthen the African-American Spirit & Encourage the Heart by Donna Marie Williams
  • Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
  • Kinship: A Family's Journey in Africa and America by Phillip Wamban

1999 Book Selections

    li class="winningauthor">The Spook Who Sat by The Door by Sam Greenlee
  • The Lady, Her Lover and Her Lord by TD Jakes
  • Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams
  • Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
  • The Harris Men by RM Johnson
  • Blue Light Corner edited by Rosemarie Robothum
  • With Ossie & Ruby In This Life Together by Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee
  • On Air by Tavis Smiley
  • The Silent Cradle by Margaret Cuthbert
  • Grand Central Winter by Lee Stringer
  • The Black Panther Party Reconsidered by Charles Johnsonn
  • What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage

1998 Book Selections

  • Straight No Chaser by Jill Nelson
  • Seasons of Beento Blackbird by Akosua Busia
  • The Best of Simple by Langston Hughes
  • Between Each Line of Pain and Glory by Gladys Knight
  • Keep Still by Eleanor Taylor Bland
  • A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black  Women in American by Clark Hine & Kathleen Thompson
  • Honey Hush: An Anthology of African American Women's Humor by Daryl Cummer Dance
  • Caucasia by Danzy Senna
  • Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  • In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant
  • My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due
  • Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography by Donald Bogle

1997 Book Selections

  • Big Girls Don't Cry by Connie Briscoe
  • Nappy by Ailona Gibson
  • Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice by April Sinclair
  • Don't Block the Blessings by Patti LaBelle
  • The Wedding by Dorothy West
  • Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime by J. California Cooper
  • Tumbling by Diane McKinney-Whetstone
  • Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosley
  • The Hand I Fan With by Tina McElroy Ansa
  • He Say, She Say by Yolanda Joe
  • Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven by Dawn Turner Trice
  • Tryin' to Sleep in the Bed You Make by Virginia DeBerry

1996 Book Selections

  • The Good Negress by A.J. Verdell
  • Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun by Reginald Lewis
  • And This Too Shall Pass by E. Lynn Harris 
  • How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan
  • A Little Yellow Dog by Walter Mosley
  • Knowing by Rosalyn McMillan
  • Black Lies, White Lies by Tony Brown
  • Good Hair by Benilde Little
  • Where Evil Sleeps by Valerie Wilson Wesley

1995 Book Selections

  • The Serpent's Gift  by Helen E. Lee
  • Sisters and Lovers by Connie Briscoe
  • Chesapeake Song by Brenda Lane Richardson
  • Brothers and Sisters  by Bebe Moore Campbell
  • Laughing in the Dark by Patrice Gaines
  • Black Empire  by George Schuyler
  • Saving Our Sons by Marita Golden
  • Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America edited by Herb Boyd
  • I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
  • When Death Comes Stealing by Valerie Wilson Wesley
  • Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase-Riboud
  • In the Company of My Sisters by Julia Boyd

1994 Book Selections

  • Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa
  • Urban Romance by Nelson George
  • Coffee Will Make You Black by April Sinclair
  • The Sweeter the Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
  • Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years by Bessie and Sadie Delany with Amy Hearth
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
  • The Rage of the Privileged Class by Ellis Cose
  • Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall
  • The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois
  • Falling Leaves of Ivy by Yolanda Joe
  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
  • Volunteer Slavery by Jill Nelson

1993 Book Selections

  • Yearnings by bell hooks
  • Your Blues Ain't Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell
  • And Do Remember Me by Marita Golden
  • One Dark Body by Charlotte Watson Sherman
  • Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
  • Joy by Marsha Hunt
  • Buppies, B-boys, Baps and Bohos by Nelson George
  • Nouvelle Soul by Barbara Summers
  • Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo by Ntozake Shange
  • Kindred by Octavia Butler
  • A Taste of Power by Elaine Brown
  • A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines

1992 Book Selections

  • The Street by Ann Petry
  • Bailey's Cafe by Gloria Naylor
  • Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely
  • Jazz by Toni Morrison
  • High Cotton by Darryl Pinckney
  • 1959 by Thulani Davis
  • Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers and Daughters edited by Mary Helen Washington
  • Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers edited by Bell Scott, et al
  • Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
  • Invisibility Blues by Michele Wallace
  • Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
  • The Autobiography of Jim Brown by Jim Brown

1991 Book Selections

  • Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
  • Breaking Ice edited by Terry McMillan
  • Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
  • The Isis Papers by Frances Cress Welsing
  • Black Ice by Lorene Cary
  • Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou
  • Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
  • The Matter is Life by J. California Cooper
  • The Content of Our Character by Shelby Steele
  • The Measure of Time by Rosa Guy
  • Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa

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