A way out of no way : writing about growing up Black in America

Edge books

Edge books (Series)

A lesson before dying / If Beale Street could talk / The friends / Gorilla, my love / Latin / Big bowls of cereal / Annie John / Betsey Brown / Ought to be a woman / Passing / Look in the mirror / Sula / A visitation of spirits / If we must die / Legacies / Maud Martha / I remember, I believe

The Crisis reader : stories, poetry, and essays from the N.A.A.C.P.'s Crisis magazine

Modern Library Harlem renaissance

Crisis (New York, N.Y.)

Modern Library Harlem renaissance.

Introduction / Editing The crisis / To usward / Hope ; Dirge / Scintilla / The freedom of the free / After the storm / The road to the bow / Shakespeare's sonnet / Dad ; Bread and wine ; Sonnet to her / Gospel for those who must / Again it is September ; Rencontre ; Courage! he said / The teacher ; Vision of a lyncher / Letters found near a suicide ; Harlem / The Negro speaks of rivers ; The south ; Being old / Negro soldiers / Old things ; True wealth / My love / Prejudice ; Motherhood ; Decay ; Courier / Father, Father Abraham ; Brothers ; Helene ; The river ; Moods ; A passing melody / The international spirit / Sonnet ; The proletariat speaks / Exodus ; Bluebird ; The little page / Dunbar ; White things / Song of the son ; Banking coal / The servant / Emmy / A man they didn't know / The doll ; Mr. Taylor's funeral ; The marked tree / A tale of the North Carolina woods / High yaller / The death game / Unfinished masterpieces / Nothing new ; Drab rambles / The man who wanted to be red / On the fields of France / The broken banjo / Exit, an illusion / Twilight, an impression / All God's chillun got eyes / On being young, a woman, and colored ; The young blood hungers / College / Countee Cullen to his friends / An autobiography / New literature on the Negro ; The symbolism of Bert Williams / Plácido ; Negro authors and white publishers / Steps toward the Negro theatre / The National Association of Negro Musicians / Soviet Russia and the Negro / The younger literary movement / Antar, Negro poet of Arabia / The Negro in literature / Criteria of Negro art / Our Negro "Intellectuals" / A musical invasion of Europe / Negro authors' week, an experiment / The work of a mob / Documents of the war ; Marcus Garvey / The faith of the American Negro / Coöperation and the Negro / John Brown Day / Temperament / Three achievements and their significance / The present South / Africa--our challenge

One-hundred-and-one African-American read-aloud stories

101 African-American read-aloud stories

African-American read-aloud stories

Myths and fables: Discovery of fire -- Anansi gets what he deserves -- Why the chameleon shakes his head -- Two creation myths -- Nine wild dogs and one lion -- A home for sun and moon -- The sheep -- The suspect -- The spirit tree -- A quarrel between earth and sky -- Why people fight -- Why elephants are as intelligent as people -- Moses in Pharaoh's court -- Hunger, rice and cassava -- Indaji, the reckless hunter -- The moon king -- A quarrel between friends -- Some African proverbs -- The greedy woman becomes a woodpecker. -- Fairy tales: Baboon skins / Battle between the birds and beasts / Who can break a bad habit? / Two ways to count to ten / The fairy frog / Pemba and the python and the friendly rat / The three little eggs / The magic bones -- Timba, the dissatisfied bird.

Folk tales: Don't blame it on Adam -- The bravest of all men -- Why Brer Wasp never laughs -- Dividing the cheese -- Why the hippopotamus lives in the water -- The hyena's dinner -- Kimwaki and the weaver birds -- The 'nsasak and the odudu -- Two riddle stories : Who shall marry the chief's daughter ; Three sons of a chief -- Rooster in a huff -- How the skunk became feared -- How tortoise grew a tail -- Why worms live underground -- Wiley and the Hairy Man. -- Friends and helpers: Anansi saves antelope -- The ant and the pigeon -- Badger and otter are friends -- Help from lightning -- Lion, hare, and hyena -- The man and the bird -- The four friends. -- Hawk and chicken tales: Why hawks kill chickens -- Hawk's gift from the king -- The missing ring -- Why the hawk catches chickens / Joel Chandler Harris.

Rabbit stories: Who ate the butter? -- Why the rabbit has a short tail and long ears -- The hare, the hippo, and the elephant -- Granny, cutta the cord -- Meeting trouble -- Rabbit's horse -- Wanting a long tail -- The favorite Uncle Remus [tales] : The wonderful tar baby ; The briar patch ; The money mint ; The fate of Mr. Jack Sparrow -- How Sandy got his meat. -- Liar, fool, and tall tales: The champion liar -- Fertile land and pumpkins, potatoes, and corn : Pumpkins and potatoes ; Salt the puddin' -- The splendid liar -- Lucky shot. -- Biography: Alvin Ailey / Arthur Ashe / Ray Charles / Daniel "Chappie" James / Martin Luther King, Jr. / Rosa Parks / Colin Powell / Arthur Schomberg / Sojourner Truth

History: Black heroes of the American Revolution : William Lee ; George Latchom ; Austin Dabney ; Prince Whipple ; James Forten / African-American inventors / Stealing the planter / Mary Lincoln's dressmaker / Slavery: Incidents in the life of a slave girl / Up from slavery / Booker T. Washington -- The slave dancer / Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave -- My name is not Angelica / Growing up: Fast Sam, cool Clyde, and stuff / For the life of Laetitia / Sounder / The cay

Songs and poetry: The sweet and sour animal book / African-American songs: He's got the whole world in his hands ; Swing low, sweet chariot ; Amazing grace ; Down by the riverside ; Get on board, little children ; This little light of mine ; Kum ba ya ; Over my head ; Take this hammer ; Miss Mary Mack Mack ; Hambone.

The Norton anthology of African American literature

Were you there when they crucified my Lord? ; City called heaven ; God's a-gonna trouble the water ; Walk together children ; I know moon-rise ; I'm a-rollin' ; I been rebuked and I been scorned ; Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? ; Soon I will be done ; No more auction block ; Swing low, sweet chariot ; Steal away to Jesus ; Go down, Moses ; Been in the storm so long ; Oh, freedom! -- This little light of mine ; Down by the riverside ; Freedom in the air ; Take my hand, precious Lord ; Peace be still ; Stand by me -- Yellow dog blues ; St. Louis blues ; Beale Street blues ; Down-hearted blues ; See, see rider ; Prove it on me blues ; Gulf Coast blues ; Trouble in mind ; Backwater blues ; In the house blues ; How long blues ; Hellhound on my trail ; It's a low down dirty shame ; Good morning, blues ; Sent for you yesterday ; Going to Chicago blues ; Fine and mellow ; Hoochie coochie ; Sunnyland.

We raise de wheat ; Me and my captain ; Promises of freedom ; Jack and Dinah want freedom ; Run, nigger, run ; Learn to count ; Another man done gone ; You may go but this will bring you back -- Poor Lazarus ; The signifying monkey ; Wild Negro Bill ; John Henry ; Frankie and Johnny ; Railroad Bill ; Stackolee ; Sinking of the Titanic ; Shine and the Titanic -- Pick a bale of cotton ; Go down, old Hannah ; Can't you line it?

(What did I do to be so) black and blue / It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing) / Parker's mood

The revolution will not be televised / The message / Don't believe the hype / The evil that men do

God -- The Eagle stirreth her nest / Faith hasn't got no eyes / I have a dream ; I've been to the mountaintop / The ballot or the bullet

All God's chillen had wings ; Big talk ; Deer hunting story ; How to write a letter ; "'Member youse a nigger" ; "Ah'll beatcher makin' money" ; Why the sister in black works hardest ; Why women always take advantage of men ; "De reason niggers is working so hard" ; The ventriloquist ; You talk too much, anyhow ; The king buzzard ; A flying fool ; Bur Rabbit in Red Hill churchyard ; Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Fox again ; The wonderful tar-baby story ; How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox ; The awful fate of Mr. Wolf ; What the rabbit learned.

Bars fight / The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself. Volume 1. Chapter I ; Chapter II ; from Chapter III ; from Chapter IV / Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. Preface ; Letter sent by the author's master to the publisher ; To the publick / To Mæcenas ; To the University of Cambridge, in New-England ; On being brought from Africa to America ; On the death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770 ; To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth ; On imagination ; To S.M., a young African painter, on seeing his works ; To Samson Occom ; To his excellency General Washington / David Walker's appeal in four articles; together with a preamble, to the coloured citizens of the world. Preamble ; Article I : our wretchedness in consequence of slavery / The lover's farewell ; On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the poet's freedom ; Division of an estate ; The creditor to his proud debtor ; George Moses Horton, myself

Ar'n't I a woman? speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 ; from The Anti-slavery bugle, June 21, 1851 ; from The narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878 / Religion and the pure principles of morality, the sure foundation on which we must build. Introduction / Lecture delivered at the Franklin Hall / Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Preface ; Childhood ; The new master and mistress ; The trials of girlhood ; A perilous passage in the slave girl's life ; Another link to life ; The flight ; The loophole of retreat ; Preparations for escape ; The confession ; The Fugitive Slave Law ; Free at last / Narrative of William W. Brown, a fugitive slave. Chapter V ; from Chapter VI / Clotel, or, The president's daughter. The Negro sale ; Going to the South ; The quadroon's home ; To-day a mistress, tomorrow a slave ; Escape of Clotel / Lines suggested on reading "An appeal to Christian women of the South, " by A.E. Grimke / An address to the slaves of the United States of America / The mulatto / Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself / My bondage and my freedom. Introduced to the abolitionists ; Twenty-one months in Great Brittain

from What to the slave is the Fourth of July? : an address delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852 / Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Second part. Weighed in the balance / Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Third part. Later life / America ; Yes! strike again that sounding string ; Self-reliance / Ethiopia ; Eliza Harris ; The slave mother ; Vashti ; Bury me in a free land ; Aunt Chloe's politics ; Learning to read ; A double standard ; Songs for the people ; An appeal to my country women ; The two offers ; Our greatest want / Fancy etchings. Enthusiasm and lofty aspirations ; Dangerous economies / Woman's political future / Our nig, or, sketches from the life of a free black, in a two-story white house, north. Preface ; Mag Smith, my mother ; My father's death ; A new home for me ; Visitor and departure ; Perplexities, another death ; The winding up of the matter

A parting hymn / Journals. from Journal one ; from Journal three / Up from slavery. A slave among slaves ; Boyhood days ; The struggle for an education ; The Atlanta Exposition address / The goopherd grapevine ; The passing of Grandison ; The wife of his youth / Womanhood a vital element in the regeneration and progress of a race / Contending forces. The sewing-circle ; Will Smith's defense of his race / Famous men of the Negro race. Booker T. Washington / Famous women of the Negro race. Literary workers : Frances E.W. Harper / Letter from Cordelia A. Condict and Pauline Hopkins's reply : March 1903 / A red record. The case stated ; The remedy / A litany of Atlanta ; The song of the smoke ; The souls of black folk ; The damnation of women ; Criteria of Negro art ; Two novels

The snapping of the bow ; Me 'n' Dunbar ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; At the closed gate of justice ; An indignation dinner / Sence you went away ; Lift ev'ry voice and sing ; O black and unknown bards ; Fifty years ; Brothers ; The creation ; My city ; The autobiography of an ex-colored man / The book of American Negro poetry. Preface / Ode to Ethiopia ; Worn out ; A Negro love song ; The colored soldiers ; An ante-bellum sermon ; Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes ; Not they who soar ; When Malindy sings ; We wear the mask ; Little brown baby ; Her thought and his ; A cabin tale ; Sympathy ; Dinah kneading dough ; The haunted oak ; Douglass ; Philosophy ; Black Samson of Brandywine ; The poet ; The Fourth of July and race outrages / The hindered hand, or, The reign of the repressionist. The fugitives flee again ; The blaze / Violets ; I sit and sew ; April is on the way ; Violets / The watchers ; The house of falling leaves ; Sic vita ; Turn me to my yellow leaves ; Quiet has a hidden sound / Singing hallelujia ; Song of the whirlwind ; My God in heaven said to me ; The lonely mother ; Tired ; The scarlet woman

The Negro digs up his past / A winter twilight ; The black finger ; For the candle light ; When the green lies over the earth ; Tenebris / Before the feast of Shushan ; Dunbar ; At the carnival ; Lady, lady ; Letter to my sister ; The wife-woman / Plum bun : a novel without a moral. from Home. Black Philadelphia ; Sundays / The new Negro / The heart of a woman ; Youth ; My little dreams ; Lost illusions ; I want to die while you love me / Africa for the Africans ; The future as I see it / Harlem shadows ; If we must die ; To the white fiends ; Africa ; America ; My mother ; Enslaved ; The White House ; Outcast ; St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd / Home to Harlem. He also loved / Harlem runs wild / Sweat ; How it feels to be colored me ; The gilded six-bits ; Characteristics of Negro expression / Mules and men. Negro folklore / Their eyes were watching God. The return ; Pear tree / Dust tracks on a road. Research / Quicksand. To Denmark ; New life ; Talk of marriage ; Proposal ; Good-bye / Cane / The Negro-art hokum / The city of refuge ; The Caucasian storms Harlem

The wharf rats / On being young, a woman, and colored / Odyssey of Big Boy ; Long gone ; Southern road ; Strong men ; Memphis blues ; Slim Greer ; Tin roof blues ; Ma Rainey ; Cabaret ; Sporting Beasley ; Sam Smiley / Heritage ; To a dark girl ; Sonnet, 2 ; Hatred / Infants of the spring. Harlem salon / Golgotha is a mountain ; A black man talks of reaping ; Nocturne at Bethesda ; Southern mansion ; Miracles ; A summer tragedy / The Negro speaks of rivers ; Mother to son ; Danse africaine ; Jazzonia ; When Sue wears red ; Dream variations ; The weary blues ; I too ; A house in Taos ; Homesick blues ; Po' boy blues ; Gypsy man ; Lament over love ; Red silk stockings ; Bad man ; Song for a dark girl ; Gal's cry for a dying lover ; Hard daddy ; Sylvester's dying bed ; Ballad of the landlord ; Juke box love song ; Dream boogie ; Harlem ; Motto ; The Negro artist and the racial mountain ; The blues I'm playing / The big sea. When the Negro was in vogue ; Harlem literati ; Downtown / The best of Simple. Feet live their own life ; A toast to Harlem ; Jealousy / Yet do I marvel ; Tableau ; Incident ; Saturday's child ; The shroud of color ; Heritage ; To John Keats, poet at spring time ; From the dark tower / Poem ; Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem ; Remember not ; Invocation

An ex-judge at the bar ; Dark symphony ; A legend of Versailles ; Libretto for the Republic of Liberia ; The birth of John Henry ; Satchmo / The living is easy. Cleo ; Cleo's high jinks ; Cleo goes north / Blueprint for Negro writing ; The ethics of living Jim Crow, an autobiographical sketch ; Long black song ; The man who lived underground / Black boy. Booklist ; Chicago / Salute to the passing / Like a winding sheet / The street. The apartment / The diver ; Homage to the empress of the blues ; Middle passage ; O Daedalus, fly away home ; Runagate runagate ; Frederick Douglass ; A ballad of remembrance ; Mourning poem for the Queen of Sunday ; Soledad ; El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz ; A letter from Phillis Wheatley / Invisible man. Battle royal ; Epilogue / Change the joke and slip the yoke ; The world and the jug

For my people ; Poppa chicken ; For Malcolm X ; Prophets for a new day / Kitchenette building ; The mother ; A song in the front yard ; Sadie and Maud ; The vacant lot ; The preacher : ruminates behind the sermon ; The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith ; Maxie Allen ; The rites for Cousin Vit ; The children of the poor ; The lovers of the poor ; We real cool ; The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock ; A lovely love ; Malcolm X ; Two dedications ; Riot ; The third sermon on the Warpland ; Young heroes ; When you have forgotten Sunday : the love story ; Maud Martha / Everybody's protest novel ; Many thousands gone ; Stranger in the village ; Notes of a native son ; Sonny's blues / Walking Parker home ; Grandfather was queer, too ; Jail poems ; Unanimity has been achieved, not a dot less for its accidentalness ; War memoir : jazz, don't listen to it at your own risk / A raisin in the sun

Status symbol ; I am a black woman / Towards a black aesthetic / The autobiography of Malcolm X. Saved / The man who cried I am. In an outdoor cafe ; Memories, Margrit, and morphine ; Picture of the writer / Letter from Birmingham jail / The idea of ancestry ; Hard rock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminal insane ; For black poets who think of suicide / The black aesthetic. Introduction / Preface to a twenty volume suicide note ; In memory of radio ; A poem for black hearts ; I don't love you ; Three movements and a coda ; SOS ; Black art ; The invention of comics ; Dutchman ; The revolutionary theatre

Homecoming ; Poem at thirty ; For our lady ; Summer words of a sistuh addict / A blues book for blue black magical women. Part three. Present / Goin' a buffalo : a tragifantasy / Soul on ice. The primeval mitosis / Did John's music kill him? / How long has Trane been gone / The black arts movement / Black art : mute matter given force and function / Back again, home ; Introduction : to Think black ; The long reality ; Malcolm spoke/who listened? ; A poem to complement other poems / For Saundra ; Beautiful black men ; Nikki-Rosa / A solo song : for Doc / In Texas grass ; Conversation overheard ; Impressions/of Chicago, for Howlin' Wolf / Jesus was crucified ; It is deep ; For sistuhs wearin' straight hair

Train whistle guitar. History lessons / Still I rise ; My Arkansas / I know why the caged bird sings. Mrs. Flowers ; "Mam" / Reena ; To Da-duh, in memoriam ; The making of a writier : from the poets in the kitchen / A movie star has to star in black and white / Sula / The sky is gray / Father Son and Holy Ghost ; The winds of Orisha ; Coal ; Now that I am forever with child ; A litany for survival ; The evening news ; Poetry is not a luxury / Pike Street bus ; The Griots who know Brer Fox ; Tapestries ; Caledonia / The bodies broken on ; The lost baby poem ; Prayer ; Malcolm ; Kali ; If mama/could see ; Homage to my hips ; What spells raccoon to me ; 1. At Jonestown ; A woman who loves ; Wishes for sons ; Move / In memoriam : Martin Luther King Jr. ; I must become a menace to my enemies ; Poem about my rights ; Poem for Guatemala ; The female and the silence of a man ; Intifada ; A new politics of sexuality / Swallow the lake ; Round midnight ; On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly ; Chicago heat

There is a tree more ancient than Eden. The epistle of Sweetie Reed / Dear John, dear Coltrane ; Deathwatch ; Here where Coltrane is ; Br'er Sterling and the rocker ; Grandfather ; "Goin' to the territory" ; In Hayden's collage ; The ghost of soul-making / I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra ; Railroad Bill, a conjure man ; Dualism : in Ralph Elliison's Invisible man ; Chattanooga ; Oakland blues ; Neo-HooDoo manifesto / Mumbo jumbo. Chapters 1-2 / Raymond's run / A dance for Ma Rainey ; Conjugal visits / The seduction of light. Ben Franklin ; Secondhand business / Brothers and keepers. Robby's version / Damballah / Atlantis : model 1924 (d) / The peacock poems : 1 ; I want Aretha to set this to music ; Tell Martha not to moan / Women ; Outcast ; On stripping bark from myself ; "Good night, Willie Lee, I'll see you in the morning" ; In search of our mothers' gardens ; Everyday use ; Advancing Luna, and Ida B. Wells / The color purple. God love all them feelings / Fences / Within the veil ; Columba

Emmett Till ; Today I am a homicide in the north of the city ; Be quiet, go away ; At the record hop ; American sonnet (10) ; Bedtime story ; Mastectomy / Bloodchild / February in Sydney ; Facing it ; Sunday afternoons ; Banking potatoes ; Birds on a powerline / Falso brilhante ; Song of the Andoumboulou : 8 / Djbot Baghostu's run. 26.IX.81 / The education of Mingo / from For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf ; Nappy edges ; Bocas : a daughter's geography / Annie John. The circling hand / The Chaneysville incident. Old Jack / The women of Brewster Place. The two / Quilting on the rebound / David Walker (1785-1830) ; Parsley ; Receiving the stigmata ; from Thomas and Beulah ; The event ; Motherhood ; Daystar ; The Oriental ballerina ; Pastoral ; from Mother love ; Persephone abducted ; Statistic : the witness ; Mother love ; Demeter mourning ; History ; Demeter's prayer to Hades / Devil in a blue dress. DeWitt Albright ; Joppy ; Daphne Monet / Conditions. XXI ; XXII ; XXIV