• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Love by Toni Morrison
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
• Native Son by Richard Wright
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

NON-FICTION Top 10 picks

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
• Roots by Alex Haley
• An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America by Andrew Young
• They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America by Ivan Van Sertima
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton
• Gifted Hands by Ben Carson
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Boi

Recent books written by University of Houston professors

FICTION

• The Institutionist
• John Henry Days
• The Colossus of New York: A City in 13 Parts
  All by Colson Whitehead, visiting professor of English

NON-FICTION

• Afrocentricity and the Academy: Essays on Theory and Practice
  by James L. Conyers Jr., director of African American Studies Program and professor of African American Studies
• The African American Male, Writing, and Difference: A Polycentric Approach to African American Literature, Criticism, and History
  by Lawrence Hogue, professor of English and African American Studies
• Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British
  by Gerald Horne, John and Rebecca Moores Chair of African American Studies and History