Collection: Topdog/Underdog Reading List

I Am Nobody’s Slave tells the story of one Black family's pursuit of the American Dream through the impacts of systemic racism and racial violence. This...

  Here are Lorraine Hansberry's last three plays--Les Blancs, The Drinking Gourd, and What Use Are Flowers?--representing the capstone of her achievement. Includes a new...

'To explore a history of Black communities across centuries of art is a love letter to the practice, a gift of knowledge and an ode...

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks latest riff on the...

Poet, writer, and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted...

  "Laci Mosley is a hilarious and wise rule breaker and Scam Goddess reminds you there are many ways to 'live your dream.'" --Amy Poehler A delightfully...

From regarded mental health expert Nicole Russell-Wharton, a guide to disrupt unhealthy patterns and heal from inherited trauma so you can finally break the cycle...

"Black Boys Like Me ignited parts of me I honestly didn't believe any book could ever know." --Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy Startlingly honest, bracing personal essays...

  In the powerful follow up to her critically acclaimed debut collection, poet and activist Fariha Róisín is writing, praying, clawing, and scratching her way...

A riveting look at the perpetrators, victims, and whistleblowers behind financial crimes, from forensic accounting expert and documentarian Kelly Richmond Pope. Have you ever wondered...

Library of America presents the definitive edition of an essential figure in Black and American theater, spanning from the 1960s to the 2010s and including...

Instant New York Times Bestseller  From the bestselling author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace, a road map for understanding and moving past family struggles--and living your...

  Beloved wellness author and teacher Alexandra Elle shares this practical and empowering guide to self-healing. In How We Heal, bestselling author Alexandra Elle offers a life-changing...

From Kiese Laymon, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is...

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and...

"Superb. . . . A great American writer speaks with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives." —New...

A revised collection with thirteen essays, including six new to this edition and seven from the original edition, by the “star in the American literary firmament, with...

“Danielle Evans demonstrates, once again, that she is the finest short story writer working today.” — Roxane Gay, New York Times-bestselling author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist"Danielle Evans...

Winner of the National Book AwardJesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family...

A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and a New York Times bestseller, this majestic, stirring, and widely praised novel from...

  “A vibrant memoir of race, violence, family, and manhood…a virtuosic wail of a book” (The Boston Globe), Survival Math calculates how award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson survived...

  FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed...

This groundbreaking play starred Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeill, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands in the Broadway production which opened in 1959. Set on Chicago's South...

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. The body...