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Zora Canon

Description: The 100 greatest books ever written by African American Women

Rank Title Author Added

1

A Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry

6,394 members

87 reviews

3.8

6 Members: aprille, hipdeep, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda, steller0707, unicornangel

2

by Toni Morrison

26,428 members

447 reviews

3.9

5 Members: aprille, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda, steller0707, unicornangel

3

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

22,516 members

369 reviews

4.1

4 Members: aprille, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda, steller0707

4

Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

22,210 members

384 reviews

4

4 Members: aprille, hipdeep, ahef1963, steller0707

5

The Fifth Season

by N. K. Jemisin

10,918 members

444 reviews

4.2

4 Members: aprille, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda, steller0707

6

Song of Solomon

by Toni Morrison

12,525 members

137 reviews

4

3 Members: aprille, hipdeep, steller0707

7

Parable of the Sower

by Octavia E. Butler

11,440 members

316 reviews

4.1

3 Members: aprille, ManWithAnAgenda, steller0707

8

An American Marriage

by Tayari Jones

4,929 members

283 reviews

3.9

3 Members: aprille, ahef1963, steller0707

9

by Nella Larsen

3,540 members

133 reviews

3.8

3 Members: aprille, ahef1963, steller0707

10

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

2,225 members

29 reviews

½ 4.3

3 Members: aprille, steller0707, unicornangel

11

The House of Dies Drear

by Virginia Hamilton

1,750 members

18 reviews

½ 3.4

3 Members: aprille, ManWithAnAgenda, unicornangel

12

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

17,480 members

258 reviews

4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

13

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

by Mildred D. Taylor

13,961 members

395 reviews

4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

14

by Toni Morrison

8,909 members

117 reviews

3.9

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

15

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander

6,839 members

150 reviews

½ 4.4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

16

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

by Isabel Wilkerson

6,611 members

207 reviews

½ 4.5

2 Members: aprille, ahef1963

17

Brown Girl Dreaming

by Jacqueline Woodson

5,467 members

416 reviews

½ 4.4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

18

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

by Harriet A. Jacobs

5,028 members

87 reviews

4

2 Members: aprille, hipdeep

19

Sing, Unburied, Sing

4,967 members

212 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

20

Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

4,836 members

125 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, ManWithAnAgenda

21

by Toni Morrison

4,010 members

143 reviews

½ 3.7

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

22

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

3,321 members

33 reviews

½ 4.4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

23

The Heart of a Woman

by Maya Angelou

2,838 members

17 reviews

3.9

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

24

for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf

by Ntozake Shange

2,098 members

28 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

25

The Women of Brewster Place

by Gloria Naylor

1,992 members

27 reviews

4

2 Members: aprille, ahef1963

26

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

1,531 members

15 reviews

½ 4.3

2 Members: aprille, ahef1963

27

by Alice Walker

1,430 members

15 reviews

½ 3.6

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

28

1,426 members

29 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

29

by Margaret Walker

926 members

18 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, unicornangel

30

Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

636 members

6 reviews

4.1

2 Members: aprille, unicornangel

31

The Salt Eaters

by Toni Cade Bambara

554 members

7 reviews

½ 3.6

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

32

Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

548 members

3 reviews

4

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

33

Gorilla, My Love

by Toni Cade Bambara

458 members

3 reviews

3.9

2 Members: aprille, steller0707

34

The Black Woman: An Anthology

by Toni Cade Bambara

267 members

1 review

½ 4.5

2 Members: aprille, unicornangel

35

Salvage the Bones

3,574 members

179 reviews

3.9

2 Members: aprille, steller0707,ahef1963

36

by Octavia E. Butler

3,525 members

164 reviews

3.8

Member: aprille

37

Women, Race, and Class

by Angela Y. Davis

2,738 members

24 reviews

½ 4.4

Member: aprille

38

Coming of Age in Mississippi

1,827 members

32 reviews

4

Member: aprille

39

Waiting to Exhale

by Terry McMillan

1,826 members

21 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

40

Assata: An Autobiography

by Assata Shakur

1,723 members

22 reviews

½ 4.5

Member: aprille

41

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

by Angela Y. Davis

1,722 members

21 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

42

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

by Carol Anderson

1,630 members

37 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

43

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

by Alice Walker

1,592 members

13 reviews

4.2

Member: aprille

44

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

by Zora Neale Hurston

909 members

13 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

45

by Gwendolyn Brooks

885 members

8 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

46

The Third Life of Grange Copeland

by Alice Walker

821 members

11 reviews

3.9

Member: aprille

47

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals

by Saidiya Hartman

779 members

7 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

48

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty

by Dorothy E. Roberts

778 members

9 reviews

4

Member: aprille

49

Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black

by Harriet E. Wilson

754 members

7 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

50

730 members

28 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: aprille

51

by Nella Larsen

725 members

24 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: aprille

52

Brown Girl, Brownstones

by Paule Marshall

693 members

5 reviews

3.9

Member: aprille

53

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

662 members

3 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

54

by Gloria Naylor

639 members

9 reviews

3.8

Member: aprille

55

Where We Stand: Class Matters

631 members

6 reviews

4

Member: aprille

56

631 members

20 reviews

3.8

Member: aprille

57

Native Guard: Poems

by Natasha Trethewey

612 members

20 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

58

When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

by Paula J. Giddings

557 members

3 reviews

4.2

Member: aprille

59

Topdog/Underdog

by Suzan-Lori Parks

523 members

4 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: aprille

60

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools

by Monique W. Morris

489 members

5 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

61

by Gwendolyn Brooks

454 members

15 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

62

Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted

by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

445 members

5 reviews

½ 3.4

Member: aprille

63

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Stories

by Kathleen Collins

422 members

12 reviews

½ 3.7

Member: aprille

64

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

by Lorraine Hansberry

399 members

1 review

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

65

But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies

by Gloria T. Hull

399 members

2 reviews

4

Member: aprille

66

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

by Ruha Benjamin

381 members

3 reviews

4

Member: aprille

67

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

by Barbara Ransby

325 members

2 reviews

4.1

Member: aprille

68

Thomas and Beulah

306 members

4 reviews

4

Member: aprille

69

Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology

by Barbara Smith

304 members

½ 4.4

Member: aprille

70

Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (Feminist Classics)

by Michele Wallace

290 members

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

71

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1995

by Nikki Giovanni

265 members

½ 4.4

Member: aprille

72

by Tina McElroy Ansa

254 members

2 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: aprille

73

Sweat (TCG Edition)

by Lynn Nottage

237 members

7 reviews

4

Member: aprille

74

by Morgan Parker

236 members

10 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

75

by Gwendolyn Brooks

194 members

2 reviews

½ 4.5

Member: aprille

76

Blood Dazzler: Poems

by Patricia Smith

186 members

6 reviews

½ 4.6

Member: aprille

77

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness

by Simone Browne

185 members

½ 4.4

Member: aprille

78

178 members

3 reviews

½ 3.6

Member: aprille

79

A Voice from the South

by Anna Julia Cooper

173 members

1 review

4

Member: aprille

80

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

by Lucille Clifton

162 members

2 reviews

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

81

The Black Christ (Bishop Henry McNeal Turner/Sojourner Truth Series in Black Religion)

by Kelly Brown Douglas

159 members

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

82

There Is Confusion

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

152 members

2 reviews

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

83

Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan

150 members

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

84

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

by Mary Pattillo-McCoy

134 members

1 review

½ 3.7

Member: aprille

85

Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory

by Michele Wallace

131 members

½ 4.5

Member: aprille

86

The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

115 members

2 reviews

3.9

Member: aprille

87

Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories by and about Black Women

by Mary Helen Washington

114 members

4.2

Member: aprille

88

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women

by Brittney C. Cooper

99 members

1 review

5

Member: aprille

89

Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs

by Pearl Cleage

79 members

3 reviews

½ 4.5

Member: aprille

90

I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems

by Sonia Sanchez

52 members

4.9

Member: aprille

91

Funnyhouse of a Negro

by Adrienne Kennedy

51 members

2 reviews

3.8

Member: aprille

92

by Nettie Jones

50 members

½ 2.5

Member: aprille

93

Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class

by Karyn R. Lacy

43 members

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

94

The Flagellants

by Carlene Hatcher Polite

38 members

1 review

½ 3.5

Member: aprille

95

African American Music: An Introduction

by Mellonee V. Burnim

38 members

Member: aprille

96

All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900

by Martha S. Jones

34 members

5

Member: aprille

97

Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice

33 members

Member: aprille

98

We a BaddDDD People

by Sonia Sanchez

32 members

½ 4.3

Member: aprille

99

Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art

by Sylvia Ardyn Boone

29 members

4

Member: aprille

100

The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions (Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity)

by Vilna Bashi Treitler

19 members

1 review

4

Member: aprille

About This List

Started: aprille
January 2020
Type: Unnumbered, Adding restricted

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20th century (1,542) African American (5,937) American (1,405) American literature (2,052) autobiography (1,672) classic (1,238) classics (1,751) fantasy (1,515) feminism (2,035) fiction (16,874) historical fiction (2,589) history (2,000) literature (2,027) memoir (1,862) non-fiction (4,214) novel (2,818) poetry (1,782) race (2,691) racism (2,328) read (2,333) science fiction (2,786) slavery (1,904) to-read (17,743) USA (1,345) women (1,565)

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