Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition is a 1901 historical novel based on the events of an 1898 white supremacist riot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Chesnutt’s novel takes place in the fictional town of Wellington and focuses on the intertwined fates of two couples: Major and Mrs. Olivia Carteret, and Dr. William and Mrs. Janet Miller. Olivia and Janet are half sisters; while they share the same white father, Samuel Merkell, Janet’s mother was... Read The Marrow of Tradition Summary

Published in 1998, The Men of Brewster Place is a companion to Gloria Naylor’s acclaimed 1982 novel, The Women of Brewster Place. Written as a series of vignettes, the novel tells the intertwining stories of seven Black men living in Brewster Place, a degrading apartment block in an unnamed American city. Each must fight to define his identity as a man while existing within the confines of a racist, sexist society. With themes of pain... Read The Men of Brewster Place Summary

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The Mothers (2016) is the debut literary fiction novel by American author Brit Bennett. Set within a contemporary Black church community in Southern California, the story follows Nadia Turner, a grieving teenager whose decision to terminate a pregnancy creates ripples effects for her, the baby’s father, and her best friend for years to come. The narrative, framed by the collective voice of the church’s elderly women, explores themes including The Corrosive Power of Secrets, Motherhood... Read The Mothers Summary

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In Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” the writer presents his argument regarding the creative limitations Black Americans face. Initially published in 1926, the essay traces a short, powerful argument that relies both on Hughes’s own identity as an artist as well as his critical observations of US society. As a Black author writing in the early 20th century, Hughes uses the terms “Negro” and “black” interchangeably; this study guide exclusively uses... Read The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain Summary

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a nonfiction book published in 2010 by American author and legal scholar Michelle Alexander. The book argues that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration operate as tools of racialized social control and oppression, not unlike the system in place during the Jim Crow era in the American South. The winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction, The New Jim Crow continues... Read The New Jim Crow Summary

Like his 2016 bestseller, The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (2019) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Whitehead is only the fourth writer in history to win two Pulitzers). The Nickel Boys describes life in a reform school from the point of view of young Black teenager. Whitehead based Nickel Academy on the real life Dozier School, a Florida facility that ran for over a century, until a university investigation publicized its racist... Read The Nickel Boys Summary

“The Passing of Grandison” is a short story by Charles W. Chesnutt published in his 1899 collection The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. This study guide refers to the free, open-access ebook published by Full Text Archive.Content Warning: The source text depicts slavery in the pre-Civil War South and contains outdated and offensive terms for Black Americans. This guide will obscure the author’s use of the n-word.The story takes... Read The Passing of Grandison Summary

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IntroductionAugust Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson premiered in 1987 at Yale Repertory Theatre starring a young, unknown Samuel L. Jackson as Boy Willie. The play opened on Broadway in 1990 with Charles S. Dutton (Boy Willie), S. Epatha Merkerson (Berniece), and Jackson in his Broadway debut as Dutton’s understudy; it earned five Tony nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play award. It also won the... Read The Piano Lesson Summary

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The River Between is Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s second novel and was published in 1965 after his debut title, Weep Not, Child. While The River Between is widely interpreted as an anticolonial work, its denouncement of colonial institutions is subtler than that of Ngugi’s later, more critical works on colonialism. His later novels were originally written in the Gikuyu language rather than in English; discourse surrounding the modern-day role of African literature is ongoing... Read The River Between Summary

The Road to Mecca is a play by South African playwright Athol Fugard. It was first performed in 1984, won a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1988, and was adapted into a film in 1991. Based on the real-life story of Helen Martins, a South African woman whose home, “The Owl House,” is still open to the public, Fugard’s play explores themes of freedom versus oppression, trust, and the conflict between the self... Read The Road to Mecca Summary

“The Rockpile” is a short story by the novelist, essayist, and civil rights activist James Baldwin. Although it was originally published in Baldwin’s only short story collection, 1965’s Going to Meet the Man, it was likely written much earlier, as it uses characters that appear in his 1953 semi-autobiographical debut novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain. This guide refers to the 1995 First Vintage International edition of Going to Meet the Man.“The Rockpile” takes... Read The Rockpile Summary

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The Salt Eaters (1980) by Toni Cade Bambara is set in the fictional town of Claybourne, Georgia, in the late 1970s. The style of the novel is experimental and nonlinear. It follows stories and characters linked by themes more than plot. It moves between the past, present, and future in the minds and actions of different characters. The novel centers on the spiritual healing Velma receives from Minnie after a mental health crisis and spirals... Read The Salt Eaters Summary

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