Fiction
- Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man 1912 James Weldon Johnson
- Winesburg Ohio 1919 Sherwood Anderson
- The Great Gatsby 1925 Scott Fitzgerald
- The Sound and the Fury 1929 William Faulkner
- Passing 1929 Nella Larsen
- Mules and Men 1935 Zora Neale Hurston
- Absalom, Absalom! 1936 William Faulkner
- Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937 Zora Neale Hurston
- Of Mice and Men 1937 John Steinbeck
- The 42nd Parallel 1938 John Dos Passos
- Native Son 1940 Richard Wright
- Invisible Man 1952 Ralph Ellison
- Fahrenheit 451 1953 Ray Bradbury
- Go Tell It On The Mountain 1953 James Baldwin
- The Lost Steps 1953 Alejo Carpentier
- The Man in High Castle 1962 Phillip K. Dick
- One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967 Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Sula 1973 Toni Morrison
- Song of Solomon 1977 Toni Morrison
- Wild Seed 1980 Octavia Butler
- The Color Purple 1982 Alice Walker
- Deadeye Dick 1982 Kurt Vonnegut
- The Terrible Twos 1982 Ishmael Reed
- The Things They Carried 1990 Tim O’Brien
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 2007 Junot Diaz
- The Sympathizer 2015 Viet Thanh Nguyen
- The Underground Railroad 2016 Colson Whitehead
- Future Home of the Living God: A Novel 2017 Louise Eldrich
Poetry
- Collected Poetry Maya Angelou
- The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Langston Hughes
(Vintage Classics) - One Big Self D. Wright
- “The Book of the Dead” Muriel Rukeyser
- “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” S. Eliot
- Cane Jean Toomer
- Selections from “A”: 1, 2, 3, Louis Zukofsky
6, 7, 8, 11, 12 - “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” Amiri Baraka
“Legacy” - Thrall Natasha Tretheway
- Citizen Claudia Rankine
NonFiction
- The Big Sea Langston Hughes
- I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou
- The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois
- Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin
- Silent Spring Rachel Carson
- The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test Tom Wolfe
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X
- Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates
Drama
- Fences August Wilson
- The Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller
- A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams
- Angels in America Tony Kushner
- A Raisin In The Sun Lorraine Hansbury
- Topdog/Underdog Suzan-Lori Parks
Short Stories
- “Hills Like White Elephants” Ernest Hemingway
- “The Lottery” Shirley Jackson
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Connor
- “Judgement Day” Flannery O’Connor
- “Sonny’s Blues” James Baldwin
- “Everyday Use” Alice Walker
- “A&P” John Updike
- “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Joyce Carol Oates
- “Two Kinds” Amy Tan
- “Eyes of Zapata” Sandra Cisneros
- “Barn Burning” William Faulkner
- “Girl” Jamaica Kincaid
- “How To Tame a Wild Tongue” Gloria Anzaldúa
Criticism and Theory
- Poetry and the Age Randall Jarrell
- The American Novel and Its Tradition Richard Chase
- Selections from A New Literary Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors
History of America
“The problem of the color line”
“The invention of the blues”
“‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’”
“A modernist moment”
“Mamie Smith’s ‘Crazy Blues’”
“Jean Toomer”
“T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence”
“The Great Gatsby”
“John Dos Passos”
“Arthur Miller”
“Gone with the Wind and Absalom, Absalom!”
“Jelly Roll Morton speaks”
“Billie Holiday, ‘Strange Fruit’”
“Up from invisibility”
“Tennessee Williams”
“‘The Birth of the Cool’”
“The Autobiography of Malcolm X”
“Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker”
“Toni Morrison”
4. The American Short Story 1900-1945: A Critical History Philip Stevick
5. The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)
6. Selections from Columbia Literary History of the United States Emory Elliott
Part 4: 1910 – 1945
Part 5: 1945 to the Present
Chelsea June Adams 