Not that these authors should be read only in February, but this is a great opportunity to sample authors you might not have read before. Choose any of the authors/books listed below and you can’t go wrong!

MAYA ANGELOU: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (autobiography—first of seven), Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie (poetry)

JAMES BALDWIN: Go Tell It On The Mountain (novel), Giovanni’s Room (a novel dealing with race and homosexuality), and three collections of essays,  Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time

OCTAVIA BUTLER: Kindred and many others (science fiction). She’s won two Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and was the first sci-fi writer to win a MacArthur fellowship.

RITA DOVE: Thomas and Beulah, Sonata Mulattica, Mother Love Poems, and others. Poet Laureate, her poems and essays are everywhere.

W. E. B. DU BOIS: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America is still an authoritative work on the subject, The Emerging Thought of  W. E. B. Du Bois: Essays and Editorials from “The Crisis” (essays)

RALPH (WALDO) ELLISON: Shadow and Act (essays), Invisible Man (fiction)

LANGSTON HUGHES: The Weary Blues (poetry), Not Without Laughter (novel). He’s also written plays, short stories, and several other books.

ALEX HALEY: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Roots: The Saga of an American Family.

ZORA NEALE HURSTON: Their Eyes Were Watching God, but also more than 50 published novels, short stories, plays, and essays.

TONI MORRISON: The Bluest Eye, Sula, The Song of Solomon. She’s a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.

ALICE WALKER:The Color Purple (novel)—she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Native Son and Black Boy (novels), Uncle Tom’s Children (short stories)

THIS IS ONLY A SAMPLE! Explore and read, read, read.