The Norton anthology of African American literature
(Book - Regular Print)

The vernacular tradition. Spirituals. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? ; City called heaven ; God's a-gonna trouble the water ; Walk together children ; I know moon-rise ; I'm a-rollin' ; I been rebuked and I been scorned ; Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? ; Soon I will be done ; No more auction block ; Swing low, sweet chariot ; Steal away to Jesus ; Go down, Moses ; Been in the storm so long ; Oh, freedom! --

Gospel. This little light of mine ; Down by the riverside ; Freedom in the air ; Take my hand, precious Lord ; Peace be still ; Stand by me --

The blues. Yellow dog blues ; St. Louis blues ; Beale Street blues ; Down-hearted blues ; See, see rider ; Prove it on me blues ; Gulf Coast blues ; Trouble in mind ; Backwater blues ; In the house blues ; How long blues ; Hellhound on my trail ; It's a low down dirty shame ; Good morning, blues ; Sent for you yesterday ; Going to Chicago blues ; Fine and mellow ; Hoochie coochie ; Sunnyland.

The vernacular tradition. Secular rhymes and songs, ballads, and work songs. Secular rhymes and songs. We raise de wheat ; Me and my captain ; Promises of freedom ; Jack and Dinah want freedom ; Run, nigger, run ; Learn to count ; Another man done gone ; You may go but this will bring you back --

Ballads. Poor Lazarus ; Signifying monkey ; Wild Negro Bill ; John Henry ; Frankie and Johnny ; Railroad Bill ; Stackolee ; Sinking of the Titanic ; Shine and the Titanic --

Work songs. Pick a bale of cotton ; Go down, old Hannah ; Can't you line it?

The vernacular tradition. Jazz. (What did I do to be so) black and blue / Andy Razaf --

It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing) / Duke Ellington --

Parker's mood / King Pleasure.

The vernacular tradition. Rap. Revolution will not be televised / Gil Scott-Heron --

Message / Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five --

Don't believe the hype / Public Enemy --

Evil that men do / Queen Latifah.

The vernacular tradition. Sermons. God --

Eagle stirreth her nest / C.L. Franklin --

Faith hasn't got no eyes / Zora Neale Hurston --

I have a dream ; I've been to the mountaintop / Martin Luther King --

Ballot or the bullet / Malcolm X.

The vernacular tradition. Folktales. All God's chillen had wings ; Big talk ; Deer hunting story ; How to write a letter ; "'Member youse a nigger" ; "Ah'll beatcher makin' money" ; Why the sister in black works hardest ; Why women always take advantage of men ; "De reason niggers is working so hard" ; Ventriloquist ; You talk too much, anyhow ; King buzzard ; A flying fool ; Bur Rabbit in Red Hill churchyard ; Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Fox again ; Wonderful tar-baby story ; How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox ; Awful fate of Mr. Wolf ; What the rabbit learned.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. Bars fight / Lucy Terry --

Interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself. Volume 1. Chapter I ; Chapter II ; from Chapter III ; from Chapter IV / Olaudah Equiano --

Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. Preface ; Letter sent by the author's master to the publisher ; To the publick / Phillis Wheatley --

To Mæcenas ; To the University of Cambridge, in New-England ; On being brought from Africa to America ; On the death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770 ; To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth ; On imagination ; To S.M., a young African painter, on seeing his works ; To Samson Occom ; To his excellency General Washington / Phillis Wheatley --

David Walker's appeal in four articles; together with a preamble, to the coloured citizens of the world. Preamble ; Article I : our wretchedness in consequence of slavery / David Walker --

Lover's farewell ; On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the poet's freedom ; Division of an estate ; Creditor to his proud debtor ; George Moses Horton, myself / George Moses Horton.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. Ar'n't I a woman? speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 ; from The Anti-slavery bugle, June 21, 1851 ; from The narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878 / Sojourner Truth --

Religion and the pure principles of morality, the sure foundation on which we must build. Introduction / Maria W. Stewart --

Lecture delivered at the Franklin Hall / Maria W. Stewart --

Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Preface ; Childhood ; New master and mistress ; Trials of girlhood ; A perilous passage in the slave girl's life ; Another link to life ; Flight ; Loophole of retreat ; Preparations for escape ; Confession ; Fugitive Slave Law ; Free at last / Harriet Jacobs --

Narrative of William W. Brown, a fugitive slave. Chapter V ; from Chapter VI / William Wells Brown --

Clotel, or, The president's daughter. Negro sale ; Going to the South ; Quadroon's home ; To-day a mistress, tomorrow a slave ; Escape of Clotel / William Wells Brown --

Lines suggested on reading "An appeal to Christian women of the South," by A.E. Grimke / Ada (Sarah L. Forten) --

An address to the slaves of the United States of America / Henry Highland Garnet --

Mulatto / Victor Séjour --

Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself / Frederick Douglass --

My bondage and my freedom. Introduced to the abolitionists ; Twenty-one months in Great Brittain / Frederick Douglass.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. from What to the slave is the Fourth of July? : an address delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852 / Frederick Douglass --

Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Second part. from Chapter XV : Weighed in the balance / Frederick Douglass --

Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Third part. Later life / Frederick Douglass --

America ; Yes! strike again that sounding string ; Self-reliance / James M. Whitfield --

Ethiopia ; Eliza Harris ; Slave mother ; Vashti ; Bury me in a free land ; Aunt Chloe's politics ; Learning to read ; A double standard ; Songs for the people ; An appeal to my country women ; Two offers ; Our greatest want / Frances E.W. Harper --

Fancy etchings. Enthusiasm and lofty aspirations ; Dangerous economies / Frances E.W. Harper --

Woman's political future / Frances E.W. Harper --

Our nig, or, sketches from the life of a free black, in a two-story white house, north. Preface ; Mag Smith, my mother ; My father's death ; A new home for me ; from Chapter VIII : Visitor and departure ; Perplexities, another death ; Winding up of the matter / Harriet E. Wilson.

Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance : 1865-1919. A parting hymn / Charlotte Forten Grimké --

Journals. from Journal one ; from Journal three / Charlotte Forten Grimké --

Up from slavery. A slave among slaves ; Boyhood days ; Struggle for an education ; Atlanta Exposition address / Booker T. Washington --

Goopherd grapevine ; Passing of Grandison ; Wife of his youth / Charles W. Chesnutt --

Womanhood a vital element in the regeneration and progress of a race / Anna Julia Cooper --

Contending forces. Sewing-circle ; Will Smith's defense of his race / Pauline E. Hopkins --

Famous men of the Negro race. Booker T. Washington / Pauline E. Hopkins --

Famous women of the Negro race. Literary workers : Frances E.W. Harper / Pauline E. Hopkins --

Letter from Cordelia A. Condict and Pauline Hopkins's reply : March 1903 / Pauline E. Hopkins --

A red record. Case stated ; Remedy / Ida B. Wells-Barnett --

A litany of Atlanta ; Song of the smoke ; Souls of black folk ; Damnation of women ; Criteria of Negro art ; Two novels / W.E.B. Du Bois.

Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance : 1865-1919. Snapping of the bow ; Me 'n' Dunbar ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; At the closed gate of justice ; An indignation dinner / James D. Corrothers --

Sence you went away ; Lift ev'ry voice and sing ; O black and unknown bards ; Fifty years ; Brothers ; Creation ; My city ; Autobiography of an ex-colored man / James Weldon Johnson --

Book of American Negro poetry. Preface / James Weldon Johnson --

Ode to Ethiopia ; Worn out ; A Negro love song ; Colored soldiers ; An ante-bellum sermon ; Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes ; Not they who soar ; When Malindy sings ; We wear the mask ; Little brown baby ; Her thought and his ; A cabin tale ; Sympathy ; Dinah kneading dough ; Haunted oak ; Douglass ; Philosophy ; Black Samson of Brandywine ; Poet ; Fourth of July and race outrages / Paul Laurence Dunbar --

Hindered hand, or, The reign of the repressionist. Fugitives flee again ; Blaze / Sutton E. Griggs --

Violets ; I sit and sew ; April is on the way ; Violets / Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson --

Watchers ; House of falling leaves ; Sic vita ; Turn me to my yellow leaves ; Quiet has a hidden sound / William Stanley Braithwaite --

Singing hallelujia ; Song of the whirlwind ; My God in heaven said to me ; Lonely mother ; Tired ; Scarlet woman / Fenton Johnson.

Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940. Negro digs up his past / Arthur A. Schomburg --

A winter twilight ; Black finger ; For the candle light ; When the green lies over the earth ; Tenebris / Angelina Weld Grimké --

Before the feast of Shushan ; Dunbar ; At the carnival ; Lady, lady ; Letter to my sister ; Wife-woman / Anne Spencer --

Plum bun : a novel without a moral. from Home. Black Philadelphia ; Sundays / Jessie Redmon Fauset --

New Negro / Alain Locke --

Heart of a woman ; Youth ; My little dreams ; Lost illusions ; I want to die while you love me / Georgia Douglas Johnson --

Africa for the Africans ; Future as I see it / Marcus Garvey --

Harlem shadows ; If we must die ; To the white fiends ; Africa ; America ; My mother ; Enslaved ; White House ; Outcast ; St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd / Claude McKay --

Home to Harlem. He also loved / Claude McKay --

Harlem runs wild / Claude McKay --

Sweat ; How it feels to be colored me ; Gilded six-bits ; Characteristics of Negro expression / Zora Neale Hurston --

Mules and men. Negro folklore / Zora Neale Hurston --

Their eyes were watching God. Return ; Pear tree / Zora Neale Hurston --

Dust tracks on a road. Research / Zora Neale Hurston --

Quicksand. To Denmark ; New life ; Talk of marriage ; Proposal ; Good-bye / Nella Larsen --

Cane / Jean Toomer --

Negro-art hokum / George Samuel Schuyler --

City of refuge ; Caucasian storms Harlem / Rudolph Fisher.

Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940. Wharf rats / Eric Walrond --

On being young, a woman, and colored / Marita Bonner --

Odyssey of Big Boy ; Long gone ; Southern road ; Strong men ; Memphis blues ; Slim Greer ; Tin roof blues ; Ma Rainey ; Cabaret ; Sporting Beasley ; Sam Smiley / Sterling A. Brown --

Heritage ; To a dark girl ; Sonnet, 2 ; Hatred / Gwendolyn B. Bennett --

Infants of the spring. Harlem salon / Wallace Thurman --

Golgotha is a mountain ; A black man talks of reaping ; Nocturne at Bethesda ; Southern mansion ; Miracles ; A summer tragedy / Arna Bontemps --

Negro speaks of rivers ; Mother to son ; Danse africaine ; Jazzonia ; When Sue wears red ; Dream variations ; Weary blues ; I too ; A house in Taos ; Homesick blues ; Po' boy blues ; Gypsy man ; Lament over love ; Red silk stockings ; Bad man ; Song for a dark girl ; Gal's cry for a dying lover ; Hard daddy ; Sylvester's dying bed ; Ballad of the landlord ; Juke box love song ; Dream boogie ; Harlem ; Motto ; Negro artist and the racial mountain ; Blues I'm playing / Langston Hughes --

Big sea. When the Negro was in vogue ; Harlem literati ; Downtown / Langston Hughes --

Best of Simple. Feet live their own life ; A toast to Harlem ; Jealousy / Langston Hughes --

Yet do I marvel ; Tableau ; Incident ; Saturday's child ; Shroud of color ; Heritage ; To John Keats, poet at spring time ; From the dark tower / Countee Cullen --

Poem ; Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem ; Remember not ; Invocation / Helene Johnson.

Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960. An ex-judge at the bar ; Dark symphony ; A legend of Versailles ; Libretto for the Republic of Liberia ; Birth of John Henry ; Satchmo / Melvin B. Tolson --

Living is easy. Cleo ; Cleo's high jinks ; Cleo goes north / Dorothy West --

Blueprint for Negro writing ; Ethics of living Jim Crow, an autobiographical sketch ; Long black song ; Man who lived underground / Richard Wright --

Black boy. Booklist ; Chicago / Richard Wright --

Salute to the passing / Chester B. Himes --

Like a winding sheet / Ann Petry --

Street. Apartment / Ann Petry --

Diver ; Homage to the empress of the blues ; Middle passage ; O Daedalus, fly away home ; Runagate runagate ; Frederick Douglass ; A ballad of remembrance ; Mourning poem for the Queen of Sunday ; Soledad ; El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz ; A letter from Phillis Wheatley / Robert Hayden --

Invisible man. Prologue ; Battle royal ; Epilogue / Ralph Ellison --

Change the joke and slip the yoke ; World and the jug / Ralph Ellison.

Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960. For my people ; Poppa chicken ; For Malcolm X ; Prophets for a new day / Margaret Walker --

Kitchenette building ; Mother ; A song in the front yard ; Sadie and Maud ; Vacant lot ; Preacher : ruminates behind the sermon ; Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith ; Maxie Allen ; Rites for Cousin Vit ; Children of the poor ; Lovers of the poor ; We real cool ; Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock ; A lovely love ; Malcolm X ; Two dedications ; Riot ; Third sermon on the Warpland ; Young heroes ; When you have forgotten Sunday : the love story ; Maud Martha / Gwendolyn Brooks --

Everybody's protest novel ; Many thousands gone ; Stranger in the village ; Notes of a native son ; Sonny's blues / James Baldwin --

Walking Parker home ; Grandfather was queer, too ; Jail poems ; Unanimity has been achieved, not a dot less for its accidentalness ; War memoir : jazz, don't listen to it at your own risk / Bob Kaufman --

A raisin in the sun / Lorraine Hansberry.

The black arts movement : 1960-1970. Status symbol ; I am a black woman / Mari Evans --

Towards a black aesthetic / Hoyt Fuller --

Autobiography of Malcolm X. Saved / Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) --

Man who cried I am. In an outdoor cafe ; Memories, Margrit, and morphine ; Picture of the writer / John Alfred Williams --

Letter from Birmingham jail / Martin Luther King Jr. --

Idea of ancestry ; Hard rock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminal insane ; For black poets who think of suicide / Etheridge Knight --

Black aesthetic. Introduction / Addison Gayle Jr. --

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note ; In memory of radio ; A poem for black hearts ; I don't love you ; Three movements and a coda ; SOS ; Black art ; Invention of comics ; Dutchman ; Revolutionary theatre / Amiri Baraka.

The black arts movement : 1960-1970. Homecoming ; Poem at thirty ; For our lady ; Summer words of a sistuh addict / Sonia Sanchez --

A blues book for blue black magical women. Part three. Present / Sonia Sanchez --

Goin' a buffalo : a tragifantasy / Ed Bullins --

Soul on ice. Primeval mitosis / Eldridge Cleaver --

Did John's music kill him? / A.B. Spellman --

How long has Trane been gone / Jayne Cortez --

Black arts movement / Larry Neal --

Black art : mute matter given force and function / Maulana Karenga --

Back again, home ; Introduction : to Think black ; Long reality ; Malcolm spoke/who listened? ; A poem to complement other poems / Haki R. Madhubuti --

For Saundra ; Beautiful black men ; Nikki-Rosa / Nikki Giovanni --

A solo song : for Doc / James Alan McPherson --

In Texas grass ; Conversation overheard ; Impressions/of Chicago, for Howlin' Wolf / Quincy Troupe --

Jesus was crucified ; It is deep ; For sistuhs wearin' straight hair / Carolyn M. Rodgers.

Literature since 1970. Train whistle guitar. History lessons / Albert Murray --

Still I rise ; My Arkansas / Maya Angelou --

I know why the caged bird sings. Mrs. Flowers ; "Mam" / Maya Angelou --

Reena ; To Da-duh, in memoriam ; Making of a writier : from the poets in the kitchen / Paule Marshall --

A movie star has to star in black and white / Adrienne Kennedy --

Sula / Toni Morrison --

Sky is gray / Ernest J. Gaines --

Father Son and Holy Ghost ; Winds of Orisha ; Coal ; Now that I am forever with child ; A litany for survival ; Evening news ; Poetry is not a luxury / Audre Lorde --

Pike Street bus ; Griots who know Brer Fox ; Tapestries ; Caledonia / Colleen McElroy --

Bodies broken on ; Lost baby poem ; Prayer ; Malcolm ; Kali ; If mama/could see ; Homage to my hips ; What spells raccoon to me ; 1. At Jonestown ; A woman who loves ; Wishes for sons ; Move / Lucille Clifton --

In memoriam : Martin Luther King Jr. ; I must become a menace to my enemies ; Poem about my rights ; Poem for Guatemala ; Female and the silence of a man ; Intifada ; A new politics of sexuality / June Jordan --

Swallow the lake ; Round midnight ; On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly ; Chicago heat / Clarence Major.

Literature since 1970. There is a tree more ancient than Eden. Epistle of Sweetie Reed / Leon Forrest --

Dear John, dear Coltrane ; Deathwatch ; Here where Coltrane is ; Br'er Sterling and the rocker ; Grandfather ; "Goin' to the territory" ; In Hayden's collage ; Ghost of soul-making / Michael S. Harper --

I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra ; Railroad Bill, a conjure man ; Dualism : in Ralph Elliison's Invisible man ; Chattanooga ; Oakland blues ; Neo-HooDoo manifesto / Ishmael Reed --

Mumbo jumbo. Chapters 1-2 / Ishmael Reed --

Raymond's run / Toni Cade Bambara --

A dance for Ma Rainey ; Conjugal visits / Al Young --

Seduction of light. Ben Franklin ; Secondhand business / Al Young --

Brothers and keepers. Robby's version / John Edgar Wideman --

Damballah / John Edgar Wideman --

Atlantis : model 1924 (d) / Samuel R. Delany --

Peacock poems : 1 ; I want Aretha to set this to music ; Tell Martha not to moan / Sherley Anne Williams --

Women ; Outcast ; On stripping bark from myself ; "Good night, Willie Lee, I'll see you in the morning" ; In search of our mothers' gardens ; Everyday use ; Advancing Luna, and Ida B. Wells / Alice Walker --

Color purple. God love all them feelings / Alice Walker --

Fences / August Wilson --

Within the veil ; Columba / Michelle Cliff.

Literature since 1970. Emmett Till ; Today I am a homicide in the north of the city ; Be quiet, go away ; At the record hop ; American sonnet (10) ; Bedtime story ; Mastectomy / Wanda Coleman --

Bloodchild / Octavia Butler --

February in Sydney ; Facing it ; Sunday afternoons ; Banking potatoes ; Birds on a powerline / Yusef Komunyakaa --

Falso brilhante ; Song of the Andoumboulou : 8 / Nathaniel Mackey --

Djbot Baghostu's run. 26. IX. 81 / Nathaniel Mackey --

Education of Mingo / Charles Johnson --

from For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf ; Nappy edges ; Bocas : a daughter's geography / Ntozake Shange --

Annie John. Circling hand / Jamaica Kincaid --

Chaneysville incident. Old Jack / David Bradley --

Women of Brewster Place. Two / Gloria Naylor --

Quilting on the rebound / Terry McMillan --

David Walker (1785-1830) ; Parsley ; Receiving the stigmata ; from Thomas and Beulah ; Event ; Motherhood ; Daystar ; Oriental ballerina ; Pastoral ; from Mother love ; Persephone abducted ; Statistic : the witness ; Mother love ; Demeter mourning ; History ; Demeter's prayer to Hades / Rita Dove --

Devil in a blue dress. DeWitt Albright ; Joppy ; Daphne Monet / Walter Mosley --

Conditions. XXI ; XXII ; XXIV / Essex Hemphill.