2015

A brief history of seven killings

by James, Marlon

2013

The luminaries : a novel

by Catton, Eleanor

2012

Bring up the bodies

by Hilary Mantel

2010

The Finkler question

by Jacobson, Howard

2009

Wolf Hall : a novel

by Mantel, Hilary

2007

White tiger

by Adiga, Aravind

2005

The sea

by Banville, John

2004

The line of beauty

by Hollinghurst, Alan

2003

Vernon God Little

by D. B. C. Pierre

2000

The blind assassin

by Atwood, Margaret

1999

Disgrace

by Coetzee, J. M.

1998

Amsterdam

by Ian McEwan

1997

The god of small things

by Roy, Arundhati

1996

Last orders

by Graham Swift

1995

The ghost road

by Barker, Pat

1993

Paddy Clarke ha, ha, ha

by Doyle, Roddy

1992

The English Patient

by Ondaatje, Michael

1992

Sacred hunger

by Barry Unsworth

1991

The famished road

by Okri, Ben

1990

Possession

by A. S. Byatt

1989

The remains of the day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

1987

Moon tiger

by Lively, Penelope

1986

The old devils

by Kingsley Amis

1985

The bone people

by Keri Hulme

1984

Hotel du Lac

by Brookner, Anita

1983

Life & times of Michael K

by Coetzee, J. M.

1982

Schindler’s ark

by Keneally, Thomas

1981

Midnight’s children

by Salman Rushdie

1979

Offshore

by Fitzgerald, Penelope

1978

The sea, the sea

by Murdoch, Iris

1977

Staying on

by Scott, Paul

1976

Saville

by Storey, David

1975

Heat and dust

by Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer

1974

The conservationist

by Gordimer, Nadine

1973

The siege of Krishnapur

by Farrell, J. G. (James Gordon)

1971

In a free state

by V. S. Naipaul

1970

The elected member

by Rubens, Bernice

More information on this subject can be read through this post by ALA. You may also be interested in our Banned Books collection.

Some of these challenged books are available on the archive and have been curated for you :

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin        

Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for “its effect on any young people who would read it,” and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood        

Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity and for “vulgarity and sexual overtones”

And Tango Makes Three written by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and illustrated by Henry Cole

Reason: Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

Skippyjon Jones series written and illustrated by Judy Schachner        

Reason: challenged for depicting stereotypes of Mexican culture

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini        

This critically acclaimed, multigenerational novel was challenged and banned because it includes sexual violence and was thought to “lead to terrorism” and “promote Islam.”

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon        

Reasons: offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”)

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel        

Reasons: violence and other (“graphic images”)

Habibi, by Craig Thompson        

Reasons: nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group

Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter        

Reasons: religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi        

Reasons: gambling, offensive language, political viewpoint. Additional reasons: “politically, racially, and socially offensive,” “graphic depictions”

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison        

Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “contains controversial issues”

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky        

Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: “date rape and masturbation”

A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard        

Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group

A Bad Boy Can Be Good for A Girl, by Tanya Lee Stone        

Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit

Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya        

Reasons: occult/Satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit

Bone (series), by Jeff Smith        

Reason: political viewpoint, racism, violence

Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz        

Reasons: unsuited for age group, violence

The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls        

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit

ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle

Reasons: offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa        

Reasons: nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins        

Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, insensitivity, offensive language, occult/satanic, violence

My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler

Reasons: nudity, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley        

Reasons: insensitivity, nudity, racism, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit

Crank, by Ellen Hopkins        

Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer        

Reasons: religious viewpoint, violence
Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor        

Reasons: offensive language and sexually explicit

It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, by Robie H. Harris

Reasons: abortion, homosexuality, nudity, religious viewpoint, sex education, unsuited to age group

The Holy Bible        

Reasons: religious viewpoint

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich        

Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint

Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie        

Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit

Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar        

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones        

Reasons: sexual content, being unsuited to age group

“To our knowledge,” write the editors of Zora, “no one has ever compiled a comprehensive list specifically featuring the finest literary works produced by African American women authors. We decided to undertake that effort both to honor that still underappreciated group of writers and to provide [readers] with a handy reference guide to their work. ”

The books were compiled in consultation with a panel of academics, critics, authors, editors, and authorities on African American women’s literature, who each added to the final list. The result was 100 works spanning more than a century and a half in a huge variety of genres and styles, including novels, plays, poetry, memoirs, anthologies, and scholarly works. “Taken together,” write the editors, “the works don’t just make up a novel canon; they form a revealing mosaic of the Black American experience during the time period. They’re also just great reads. ”

As part of our commitment to offering Universal Access to All Knowledge, the Internet Archive works to share literature from diverse perspectives—which is why we were pleased to discover that most of the books in the Zora Canon are already available in our collections. Many of them are available for checkout—all you have to do is sign up for a digital library card—while a few are in the public domain, allowing anybody to download them without limitation. Some of the books that aren’t yet available can be added through our Book Sponsorship program, so that future readers can discover and enjoy them. 

If you’d like to read some of the books on the list, check out the links below! If you want to expand your reading further, you can also browse our #1000 Black Girl Books Collection (which features a range of books with Black girls and women as the protagonists) or our full list of works by Zora Neale Hurston. Happy reading!

The Zora Canon

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

A Voice From the South: By a Black Woman of the South by Anna Julia Cooper

African American Music: An Introduction by Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby

Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830–1900 by Martha S. Jones

All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Assata by Assata Shakur

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women by Brittney C. Cooper

Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman by Michele Wallace

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class by Mary Pattillo-McCoy

Black-Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds: Stories by and About Black Women edited by Mary Helen Washington

Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Blue-Chip Black by Karyn R. Lacy

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Corregidora by Gayl Jones

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne

Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan edited by Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles

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

Eva’s Man by Gayl Jones

Fish Tales by Nettie Jones

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis, edited by Frank Barat

Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy

Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara

Homegirls: A Black Feminist Anthology edited by Barbara Smith

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo

I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems by Sonia Sanchez

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose by Alice Walker

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory by Michele Wallace

Iola Leroy by Frances Harper

Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Killing the Black Body by Dorothy E. Roberts

Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks

Meridian by Alice Walker

Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston

Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey

Oreo by Fran Ross

Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Passing by Nella Larsen

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in School by Monique W. Morris

Quicksand by Nella Larsen

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin

Radiance From the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art by Sylvia Ardyn Boone

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo by Ntozake Shange

Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Sula by Toni Morrison

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston

The Black Christ by Kelly Brown Douglas

The Black Woman: An Anthology by Toni Cade Bambara

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction Into Ethnic Factions by Vilna Bashi Treitler

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

The Flagellants by Carlene Hatcher Polite

The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou

The House of Dies Drear by Virginia Hamilton

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The Red Record by Ida B. Wells

The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1995 by Nikki Giovanni

The Street by Ann Petry

The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

There Is Confusion by Jessie Fauset

Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, and Love Affairs by Pearl Cleage

Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove

To Be Young, Gifted, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words by Lorraine Hansberry

Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa

Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice by Carla Shedd

Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

We a BaddDDD People by Sonia Sanchez

Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? by Kathleen Collins

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

Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

This guide combines recommendations from several published reading lists (detailed at end of article). We included all of the books from these lists that we have available to borrow. 

We also have a separate list of racial equality books for kids as well as a list of books by black women authors.

• A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature by Jacqueline Goldsby
• A Taste of Power by Elaine Brown
• Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. 
• Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
• Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X By Malcolm X and Alex Haley
• Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of  Obama by Tim Wise
• Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins
• The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
• Bone To Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge by Ellis Cose
• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady
• But Some of Us Are Brave edited by Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, & Barbara Smith
• Can We Talk About Race? and Other  Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation by Beverly Tatum and Theresa Perry
• Cesar Chavez: A Triumph of Spirit by Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Garcia
• The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority by Ellen D. Wu
• Colorblind: The Rise of Post‐Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial  Equity by Tim Wise
• A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
• Everyday Antiracism: Getting Real About Race in School by Mica Pollock
• Experiencing Race, Class, and Gender in the United States by Roberta Fiske‐Rusciano
• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
• Hate Hurts:  How Children Learn and Unlearn Prejudice – Caryl Stern LaRosaand Ellen Hofheimer Bettmann
• Hatred, Bigotry and Prejudice – Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosembaum
• The Hidden Cost of Being African American by Thomas Shapiro
• How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to  the Obama Phenomenon by David R. Roediger
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Angelou, Maya
• Inheriting the Trade by Thomas Norman DeWolf
• The Miner’s Canary by Lani Guiner and Gerald Torres
• The Nature of Prejudice – Gordon w. Allport
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 by Leon F. Litwack
• The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception  Across the Color Line by Martha A. Sandweiss
• Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives by Martin N. Marger
• Race, Class, & Gender: An Anthology by Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins
• Race in North America: Origin and Evolution  of a Worldview by Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley
• Racial and Ethnic Groups by Richard T. Schaefer
• Racism Without Racists: Color‐Blind Racism and the  Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla‐Silva
• The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle‐class Blacks Angry? Why  should America Care? by by Ellis Cose
• Readings for Diversity and Social Justice by Maurianne Adams
• Recitatif by Toni Morrison (published in “Confirmation, an anthology of AfricanAmerican women”)
• Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner
• Rethinking the Color Line: Readings in Race and Ethnicity by Charles A. Gallagher
• Roots by Alex Haley
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Slavery By Another Name: Enslavement of Black Americans  from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
• Strangers to These Shores: Race and Ethnic Relations in the  United States by Vincent N. Parrillo
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• This Bridge Called My Back edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa
• The Trouble With Black Boys: And Other Reflections on Race, Equity,  and the Future of Public Education by Pedro Noguera
• Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America By Peniel E. Joseph
• Waking Up White by Debby Irving
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
• When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Paula Giddings
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

The following reading lists were used to compile this guide, and contain more resources than are listed here:

• The Anti-Racist Reading List by Elle Magazine
• An Antiracist Reading List by Ibram X. Kendi in the New York Times
• A Detailed List of Anti-Racism Resources by Katie Couric
• Equality and Anti-Racism Book List by The Advocates for Human Rights
• 10 Books About Race To Read Instead Of Asking A Person Of Color To Explain Things To You by Sadie Trombetta for Bustle
• Antiracist Reading List by Monroe County Public Library (Indiana)
• Anti-Racism Resource List (collaborative Google Doc)

General

African

Altaic

Austronesian

Confucianism

Christianity

Shinto

Taoism

Islam

Jainism

Judaism

Rastafari