The Ultimate BIPOC Banned Books List

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Abridged

By: Zora Neale Hurston
Narrated by: Ruby Dee
Length: TBA

“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” —Zadie SmithOne of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love... Read more

To Kill a Mockingbird

By: Harper Lee
Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
Length: 12 hours 17 minutes

Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025.Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American ReadHarper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the... Read more

Hidden Figures

The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

By: Margot Lee Shetterly
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 10 hours 47 minutes

“Every so often I find myself blindsided by history, in this case by a wealth of information lurking unseen below the surface about the African-American female mathematicians working at NASA from its very inception being just the tip of the iceberg. What I found when I delved into Shetterly’s well researched and lovingly written homage to the... Read more

The Hate U Give

By: Angie Thomas
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 11 hours 50 minutes

“This bestselling, powerful young adult novel about social justice and one teen girl's effort to fight for what is right, will leave you breathless. The narration by Bahni Turpin is hands down the best I've ever heard. This is such an important book it should be required reading for life in general. Or listening. Definitely listening. Read more

Song of Solomon

A Novel

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 15 hours 27 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An official Oprah Winfrey’s “The Books That Help Me Through” selection • The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner transfigures the coming-of-age story with this brilliantly imagined novel. Includes a new foreword by the author.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Milkman Dead was born shortly after... Read more

Between the World and Me

By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Length: 3 hours 35 minutes

“In this short and powerful book, Coates writes to his 15-year old son about his experience of being a black man in America. Cannot recommend enough! Read more

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

By: Maya Angelou
Narrated by: Maya Angelou
Length: 10 hours 10 minutes

“A lot can be said about this autobiography - it is one of the best I have ever read. The stories are personal and well accounted for, and the reader has no choice but to regard her life and strength through hardship so inspiring. Before reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I had a good idea of Angelou through her poetry and lectures. Her... Read more

Invisible Man

By: Ralph Ellison
Narrated by: Joe Morton
Length: 18 hours 36 minutes

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with... Read more

The Bluest Eye - Abridged

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison & Ruby Dee
Length: 2 hours 59 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace.
 
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America... Read more

Homegoing

A novel

By: Yaa Gyasi
Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 13 hours 10 minutes

“Homegoing is an epic narrative that is sure to become a treasured staple. Two sisters in Ghana are marked by fiery tragedy: one is married off to an English slave trader, and the other is sold to be a slave in America. The story follows their descendants generation by generation. Homegoing will break your heart over and over, impress you with... Read more

Pet

By: Akwaeke Emezi
Narrated by: Christopher Myers
Length: 5 hours 32 minutes

“Wunderbarer Roman über eine nachrevolutionäre Welt, in der trans*-Sein und Familienvielfalt normalisiert werden, ohne Hauptthemen zu sein. - Wonderful novel about a post-revolutionary world in which being trans* and family diversity are normalized without being major themes. Read more

The Grief Keeper

By: Alexandra Villasante
Narrated by: Ana Osorio
Length: 9 hours 49 minutes

This stunning YA debut is a timely and heartfelt speculative narrative about healing, faith, and freedom.

Seventeen-year-old Marisol has always dreamed of being American, learning what Americans and the US are like from television and Mrs. Rosen, an elderly expat who had employed Marisol's mother as a maid. When she pictured an American life for... Read more

Brown Girl Dreaming

By: Jacqueline Woodson
Narrated by: Jacqueline Woodson
Length: 3 hours 54 minutes

A New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner

Jacqueline Woodson, the acclaimed author of Another Brooklyn, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. 
 
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African... Read more

Out of Darkness

By: Ashley Hope Pérez
Narrated by: Benita Robledo & Lincoln Hoppe
Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

“Wow! Reminded me a bit of Winter's Bone . This is a beautifully written story of heartbreaking events and tortured characters with simple, lovely, happy dreams. Read more

Beloved

Pulitzer Prize Winner

By: Toni Morrison
Narrated by: Toni Morrison
Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author. 

This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

Sethe... Read more

An Ember in the Ashes

An Ember in the Ashes: Book #1

By: Sabaa Tahir
Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham & Steve West
Length: 15 hours 22 minutes

Set in a terrifyingly brutal Rome-like world, An Ember in the Ashes is an epic fantasy debut about an orphan fighting for her family and a soldier fighting for his freedom. It’s a story that’s literally burning to be told.

LAIA is a Scholar living under the iron-fisted rule of the Martial Empire. When her brother is arrested for treason, Laia... Read more

All Boys Aren't Blue

A Memoir-Manifesto

By: George M. Johnson
Narrated by: George M. Johnson
Length: 5 hours 11 minutes

“After listening to this book, I was outraged to learn how widely banned it is across the country - This story needs to be told and shared. Read more

Black Girl Unlimited

The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard

By: Echo Brown
Narrated by: Echo Brown
Length: 8 hours 29 minutes

This program is read by the author

"Just brilliant."—Kirkus Reviews

Heavily autobiographical and infused with magical realism, Black Girl Unlimited fearlessly explores the intersections of poverty, sexual violence, depression, racism, and sexism—all through the arc of a transcendent coming-of-age story for fans of Renee Watson's Piecing Me... Read more

Ace of Spades

By: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
Narrated by: Jeanette Illidge & Tapiwa Mugweni
Length: 13 hours 48 minutes

“I thoroughly enjoyed this 'Gossip Girl meets Get Out' social justice horror novel with its elite high school drama and an anonymous texter (that blasts the whole school) taking the popular and academically ambitious down a notch EXCEPT this tipster appears to be targeting a select few with far more nefarious intentions than GG ever had. Fans of... Read more

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (10th Anniversary Edition)

By: Sherman Alexie
Narrated by: Sherman Alexie
Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Heartbreaking, funny, and... Read more