Classics for Black History Month
February is Black History Month. Read these classic Black authors this month (and all year long) to learn about and celebrate the achievements of Black Americans.
To celebrate Black History Month, we’re sharing works by classic authors every week on our social pages (@campbellkylib), but you can also learn more about them here!
Toni Morrison
Born in Ohio, Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 and is recognized as one of the greatest contemporary American novelists.
Having made her start as a textbook editor at Random House, Morrison went on to publish classics like Sula, Beloved and The Bluest Eye.
If you want to learn more about Morrison’s life and work, the 2019 documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is a great place to start. The documentary takes viewers through her childhood to 1970s book tours with Muhammad Ali—she edited his autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story—and being on the frontlines with Angela Davis.
Octavia E. Butler
A Pen Lifetime Achievement and MacArthur Award-winning writer, Octavia E. Butler is considered the “mother of afro-futurism.” Her body of work explored themes of Black injustice, climate change, women’s rights and more.
She won both Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as becoming the first sci-fi writer to receive the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant.
Her novels include Kindred, which follows Dana, a young Black woman celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband. She is then transported back in time to the antebellum South. Released in 1993, Parable of the Sower was set in the then-future of 2024. With the world falling into chaos, one woman—Lauren Olamina—strives toward a better future.
James Baldwin
Born in Harlem, James Baldwin was one of the most important literary voices of 20th century America. His novels, essays and plays often explore the complexity of identity, queerness and racial unrest in America and abroad.
We have several Baldwin novels and essay collections, including The Fire Next Time. Released in 1963, the essay collection became a powerful voice amid the emerging civil rights movement. Personal and provocative, it contains two letters written on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Pictured above, his novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted into a film by Barry Jenkins in 2018. A love story set in Harlem, the book follows Tish and Fonny, childhood friends who grow up, fall in love and get married.
Ralph Ellison
Born in 1914 in Oklahoma, Ralph Ellison is best known for his 1953 National Book Award-winning bildungsroman Invisible Man, the only book published in his lifetime.
Following his death in 1994, a posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published in a shorter form using notes left by Ellison.
Ellison moved to New York City in 1936 after three years of studying music at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. In NYC, he met Richard Wright, a fellow writer who encouraged Ellison to try writing himself. By 1937, Ellison began contributing short stories, reviews and essays to various publications. Invisible Man was penned following Ellison’s service in World War II.
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Today we recognize International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Check out these books & others to remember the six million Jewish people, and millions of others, that were victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution.
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