AP African-American Studies Reading List

Race Rebels

Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

By: Robin DG Kelley
Narrated by: L. Malaika Cooper
Length: 10 hours 29 minutes

Many black strategies of daily resistance have been obscured—until now. Race rebels, argues Kelley, have created strategies of resistance, movements, and entire subcultures. Here, for the first time, everyday race rebels are given the historiographical attention they deserve, from the Jim Crow era to the present. 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

The New Jim Crow

Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition

By: Michelle Alexander
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 16 hours 56 minutes

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.
Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been
adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of
the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the
winner of... Read more

A Black Theology of Liberation

50th Anniversary Edition

By: James H. Cone
Narrated by: Amir Abdullah
Length: 6 hours 59 minutes

With the publication of his two early works, Black Theology & Black Power (1969) and A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), James Cone emerged as one of the most creative and provocative theological voices in North America. His books offered a searing indictment of white theology and society and introduced a radical presentation of the... Read more

Racecraft

The Soul of Inequality in American Life

By: Karen E. Fields & Barbara J. Fields
Narrated by: Karen Chilton
Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Tackling the myth of a post-racial societyMost people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And... Read more

Racism without Racists

Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America

By: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Narrated by: Sean Crisden
Length: 11 hours 52 minutes

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's acclaimed Racism without Racists documents how, beneath our contemporary conversation about race, there lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for—and ultimately justify—racial inequalities. The fifth edition of this provocative book makes clear that color blind racism is... Read more

Malcolm X

A Life of Reinvention (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

By: Manning Marable
Narrated by: G. Valmont Thomas
Length: 21 hours 59 minutes

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist.

Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a... Read more

Nikki Giovanni: Love Poems & A Good Cry

What We Learn From Tears and Laughter

By: Nikki Giovanni
Narrated by: Nikki Giovanni
Length: 2 hours 42 minutes

Hear Nikki Giovanni read two extraordinary collections of her own work! A singular listening experience! The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a firebrand, a radical, a healer, and a sage; a wise and courageous voice who has touched our national consciousness.Love Poems:... Read more

Mama Day

By: Gloria Naylor
Narrated by: narrator
Length: 11 hours 52 minutes

Miranda Day, known as Mama Day, is the elderly matriarch of Willow Springs, a small sea island off the southeast coast of the United States. Mama Day finds herself pitted in mortal combat with dark forces that threaten the body and soul of her beloved great-niece, Cocoa, who has gone "mainside" and married an urban northerner. Mama Day will... Read more

Ain't I a Woman

Black Women and Feminism 2nd Edition

By: Bell Hooks
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must–read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, Hooks attempts to... Read more

Black Feminist Thought

Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

Routledge Classics

By: Patricia Hill Collins
Narrated by: Kaliswa Brewster
Length: 17 hours 29 minutes

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy... Read more

Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart

A Novel

By: Alice Walker
Narrated by: Alfre Woodard
Length: 6 hours 20 minutes

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar now gives us a beautiful new novel that is at once a deeply moving personal story and a powerful spiritual journey.

In Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, Alice Walker has created a work that ranks among her finest ... Read more

Sister Outsider

Essays and Speeches

Crossing Press Feminist

By: Audre Lorde
Narrated by: Robin Eller
Length: 7 hours 31 minutes

Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action... Read more

Soldier

A Poet's Childhood

By: June Jordan
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

With Soldier, world-renowned poet June Jordan presents a deeply personal memoir of her formative years in post-World War II Harlem, where she was raised the daughter of dirt-poor West Indian immigrants. June's first 12 years were at turns peaceful and tumultuous, sowing all the seeds of her later poetry. Read more