Race relations book series in reading order

by Malcolm X

by James Lee Burke

James Baldwin

40 books• 4 series

James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 - December 1, 1987), born James Arthur Jones, was an American writer and civil rights activist whose essays, novels, plays and poems drew wide acclaim. Time magazine ranked Go Tell It on the Mountain among the top 100 English-language novels. The essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955) established Baldwin as a voice for human equality, and a 1965 debate with William Buckley became a landmark on race in the United States. Catalogued works include Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962) and The Fire Next Time (1963), with race relations and African American life as recurring subjects.

Michael Eric Dyson writes on race relations, racism and African American intellectual life, with rap music, popular culture, African American arts and the civil rights movement among the catalogued subjects. The 28 books run from Reflecting Black (1993) to Represent: The Unfinished Fight for the Vote (2024). Making Malcolm (1995), Between God and Gangsta Rap (1996), Race Rules (1996) and I May Not Get There With You (2000) sit in the earlier part of the list. The 2000s are the busiest decade, the median book is 294 pages, and Dyson remains actively publishing.

Mildred DeLois Taylor, born September 13, 1943, is an American young adult novelist whose Logan family books portray family life and the racism African Americans faced in the Deep South. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry won the 1977 Newbery Medal. Taylor received the first NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature in 2003, the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2020 and the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2021. The 11 catalogued books include Let the Circle Be Unbroken (1981), The Road to Memphis (1992) and All the Days Past, All the Days to Come (2020).

Thomas Sowell writes non-fiction on economics, race relations and public policy. Black Education: Myths and Tragedies and Classical Economics Reconsidered both appeared in 1974, followed by Ethnic America, Race and Economics, Knowledge and Decisions and the Cultures series. Forty-nine books reach Social Justice Fallacies in 2023.

Michael R. Phillips writes Christian historical fiction. The Stonewycke books opened the catalogue in 1985 with The Heather Hills of Stonewycke, and the Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister follow a teenage girl in California. Later series include The Russians, Secret of the Rose, Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall, Shenandoah Sisters and Carolina Cousins. Reconstruction, plantation life, race relations and orphans sit among the subjects. The catalogue holds 89 books through Praying with David (2026), at a median of 367 pages.

Malcolm X is the name on 11 catalogued books published between 1964 and 2012, and the subject headings date Malcolm X to 1925-1965. The Ballot or the Bullet (1964) is the earliest title, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements date from 1965. Later titles include By Any Means Necessary (1970), Malcolm X: The Last Speeches (1989) and Malcolm X: Speeches at Harvard (1991). Subject headings cover African Americans, civil rights, Black Muslims and race relations.

Alan Paton

20 books

South African writer and educator Alan Paton (11 January 1903 - 12 April 1988) opposed apartheid in both writing and activism. Paton's novels include Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) and Too Late the Phalarope (1953), and the short story The Waste Land also appears among the works. The Order of Ikhamanga in Gold was awarded to Paton after his death for literary service to the anti-apartheid cause. The catalogue lists 20 books, including Tales From a Troubled Land (1961), Hofmeyr (1962) and The Hero of Currie Road (2008).

Walter Mosley

71 books• 6 series

Easy Rawlins, a Black private investigator in Los Angeles, is the figure Walter Mosley returns to most. Devil in a Blue Dress (1990) opens the catalogue, which holds 71 books and reaches Ghalen (2026). Leonid McGill heads a second detective sequence, and Fearless Jones, Socrates Fortlow, King Oliver and the Crosstown to Oblivion science fiction books make up further lines. Los Angeles and New York are the recurring settings.

Joyce Carol Oates

180 books• 8 series

Joyce Carol Oates, born June 16, 1938, is an American writer of novels, short stories, poetry, plays and nonfiction. The catalogue holds 180 books, beginning with By the North Gate (1963) and reaching The Frenzy: Stories (2026). Oates took the National Book Award for the novel Them (1969), and later honours include two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal and the Jerusalem Prize in 2019. Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde and the collection Lovely, Dark, Deep were each finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Oates taught at Princeton University from 1978 to 2014.

Chester Himes

23 books• 2 series

Chester Himes (July 29, 1909 - November 12, 1984) was an American writer, several of whose works were filmed. If He Hollers Let Him Go appeared in 1945. Himes is best known for the Harlem Detective novels, set in the 1950s and early 1960s, whose leads are two black policemen, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. France awarded Himes the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1958. The catalogue lists 23 books, including Lonely Crusade (1947), For Love of Imabelle / A Rage in Harlem (1957), The Real Cool Killers (1958) and All Shot Up (1960).

Ta-Nehisi Coates

19 books• 5 series

Ta-Nehisi Coates, born September 30, 1975, is an American author, journalist and activist. As national correspondent at The Atlantic, Coates wrote about cultural, social and political questions, particularly African Americans and white supremacy. Four nonfiction books carry the name: The Beautiful Struggle (2008), Between the World and Me (2015), winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017) and The Message (2024). The listing also carries Black Panther graphic novel collections. Subjects include race relations, memoir, and fathers and sons.

Carole Boston Weatherford

67 books• 1 series

Carole Boston Weatherford, born Carole Michele Boston on February 13, 1956, is an American author, poet and critic. More than 50 of Weatherford's children's books have been published, mostly non-fiction and poetry. Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre won the 2022 Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Weatherford received the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2025. African American history, civil rights and slavery appear among the subjects. The catalogue lists 67 books from Juneteenth Jamboree (1995) to Kin: Rooted in Hope (2023).

Julius Lester

48 books• 2 series

To Be a Slave (1968) opens the catalogue of Julius Lester, an American writer for both children and adults who was also a civil rights activist, a photographer and a musician with two recorded albums of folk music and original songs. Lester taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003. The 48 listed titles run to The Girl Who Saved Yesterday (2016) and return to African American history, slavery, folktales and race relations. Lester lived from 1939 to 2018.

Ernest J. Gaines (1933-2019) was an American novelist and short story writer. Gaines was born in Louisiana and spent his early years on the Riverlake Plantation before moving to California and serving in the United States Army. Race, family, community and humanity run through the work. The catalogue holds 13 books dated between 1964 and 2019, from Catherine Carmier (1964) to Three W's (2019), taking in Of Love and Dust (1968), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), A Gathering of Old Men (1983) and A Lesson Before Dying (1993), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Four of Gaines's works were adapted as television movies. Recorded subjects include African Americans, race relations, Louisiana, plantation life and fathers and sons.

Ibram X. Kendi

10 books

Ibram X. Kendi, born Ibram Henry Rogers on August 13, 1982, is an American author, professor, anti-racism activist and historian of race and discriminatory policy in the United States. Kendi founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University in July 2020 and directed it until 2025. Time named Kendi among its 100 Most Influential People of 2020. The catalogue holds 10 books from The Black Campus Movement (2012) to Chain of Ideas (2026), including Stamped from the Beginning (2016), How to Be an Antiracist (2019) and Antiracist Baby (2020).

Colson Whitehead

12 books• 1 series

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist, born November 6, 1969, and one of four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice. The Underground Railroad (2016) won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer, and The Nickel Boys took the Pulitzer again in 2020. Whitehead has written ten novels and two nonfiction books, and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002. The catalogue lists 12 books from The Intuitionist (1999) to Cool Machine (2026), including John Henry Days, Sag Harbor, Zone One and Harlem Shuffle. Ray Carney / Harlem Trilogy is the one series on file.

Henning Mankell

35 books• 9 series

Kurt Wallander, a police detective in Sweden, is the figure Henning Mankell is known for. Mankell's catalogue holds 35 books, from A Bridge to the Stars (1990) to The Rock Blaster (2020), and takes in the Joel Gustafsson and Linda Wallander sequences, the Fredrik Welin novels, the Sofia Alface books, children's fiction and non-fiction. Faceless Killers (1991) and The Dogs of Riga (1992) are among the early titles.

Jacqueline Woodson

42 books• 7 series

Jacqueline Woodson, born February 12, 1963, is an American writer of books for children and young adolescents. Miracle's Boys is Woodson's best-known book, and Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers and Show Way each earned a Newbery Honor. Woodson was Young People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017 and National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2018 to 2019. Another Brooklyn reached the 2016 National Book Award shortlist for fiction. Honors include the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2018), the Hans Christian Andersen Award (2020) and a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship. The catalogue lists 42 books from Last Summer with Maizon (1990) to Remember Us (2023), with subjects such as African Americans, friendship, family life, race relations and grief.

Chinua Achebe

30 books• 1 series

Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 - 21 March 2013), born Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, was a Nigerian novelist, poet and critic and a central figure of modern African literature. Things Fall Apart (1958) is Achebe's first novel and the most widely studied, translated and read African novel; together with No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) it completes the African Trilogy. A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) followed among the later novels. Readers commonly call Achebe the father of modern African literature, a description Achebe rejected. The catalogue holds 30 books, closing with There Was a Country (2012).

Deborah Wiles is a children's book author, born May 5, 1953, in Mobile, Alabama. Each Little Bird That Sings, the second Wiles novel, was a 2005 National Book Award finalist, and the documentary novel Revolution reached the same shortlist in 2014. Wiles holds the 2004 PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship and the 2005 E.B. White Read-Aloud Award. The catalogue lists 14 books from Freedom Summer (2001) to Bobby: A Story of Robert F. Kennedy (2022), including the Aurora County and Sixties Trilogy series.

Ralph Ellison

12 books• 1 series

Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American writer, scholar and literary critic who died on April 16, 1994. Ellison's novel Invisible Man (1952) received the National Book Award in 1953 and is the work Ellison is best known for. Shadow and Act (1964) gathers essays on political, social and critical subjects, and Going to the Territory followed in 1986. Juneteenth (1999) was published posthumously, assembled from the extensive notes left at Ellison's death. The catalogue spans 1938 to 2019, from A Party Down at the Square to The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison.

Claudia Rankine

8 books

Claudia Rankine, born in 1963, is a Jamaican-American poet, essayist and playwright who has also edited anthologies. Eight catalogued books run from Nothing in Nature Is Private (1994) to Triage (2026), by way of Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric (2004), Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), The White Card: A Play (2018) and Just Us (2020). Race relations, African American authors, American poetry and United States politics of 2001 to 2009 recur in the subjects. Rankine is still publishing.

James Patterson

510 books• 73 series

James Patterson, born on March 22, 1947, is an American writer whose catalogue here holds 514 books published from 1976 to 2027. The run opens with The Thomas Berryman Number (1976), and Along Came a Spider (1992) and Kiss the Girls (1995) follow later. Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, NYPD Red, Private, Middle School and the Women's Murder Club are among the Patterson series, alongside standalone thrillers, non-fiction and romance. Marshall Karp shares the credit on 5 of the books. Patterson's sales exceed 425 million copies, and Patterson was the first person to sell one million e-books. Forbes ranked Patterson the highest-paid author in 2016, for a third year running, and the National Book Foundation gave Patterson the Literarian Award in November 2015. 27 Stars is scheduled for 2027.

Greg Iles

19 books• 4 series

Suspense set largely in Mississippi is Greg Iles's territory, above all in the Penn Cage novels, which take a lawyer through buried family secrets and murder. Iles's 19 catalogued books open with Spandau Phoenix (1993) and close with Cemetery Road (2019), taking in the Penn Cage and Mississippi sequences and a set of standalone thrillers. The catalogue is listed as likely complete.