Favorite 100 Titles of the 20th Century
In 2001 we completed the voting for “Our Own List” of our favorite 50 African American authors and our 100 favorite African
American novels of the 20th century. 3,861 total votes were cast.
Needless to say this list is purely subjective, but it is based upon the opinions of thousands of visitors to the AALBC, who filled out an online form or send in a vote
via email. We think you’ll find the results interesting and useful
for identifying excellent writers and writers and novels. There is something for
everyone to enjoy!
…There were a number of reasons for the list being conceived, executed and compiled. The first was our outrage at the lack of our presence on the Modern Library’s Best Books of the Century list. Second, it gave me, a non-academic, an opportunity for my voice to be heard.” — Thumper
Also check out Thumper’s personal list of his top novel and authors of the 20th Century.
#1 – The Color Purple
by Alice Walker (9780143135692) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Dec 10, 2019)
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#2 – Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston (9780061120060) HarperCollins (May 30, 2006)
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#3 – Beloved
by Toni Morrison (9781400033416) Penguin Random House (Jun 08, 2004)
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#4 – And This Too Shall Pass: A Novel
by E. Lynn Harris (9780385480314) Penguin Random House (Feb 17, 1997)
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#5 – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou (9780375507892) Penguin Random House (Mar 05, 2002)
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#6 – Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime: Stories
by J. California Cooper (9780385467889) Penguin Random House (Sep 01, 1996)
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#7 – Disappearing Acts
by Terry McMillan (9780451205636) Penguin Random House (Apr 01, 2002)
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#8 – Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison (9780679732761) Penguin Random House (Mar 14, 1995)
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#9 – Song of Solomon
by Toni Morrison (9781400033423) Penguin Random House (Jun 08, 2004)
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#10 – Native Son
by Richard Wright (9780060837563) HarperCollins (Aug 02, 2005)
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#11 – 2nd Time Around (A B-Boy Blues Novel #2)
by James Earl Hardy (9781555833725) Alyson Books (Oct 01, 1996)
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#12 – A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansberry (9780679755333) Penguin Random House (Nov 29, 2004)
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#13 – Homemade Love
by J. California Cooper (9780312194659) Macmillan Publishers (Oct 28, 1998)
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#14 – Sister, Sister
by Eric Jerome Dickey (9780451188021) Penguin Random House (Dec 01, 1997)
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#15 – Kindred
by Octavia Butler (9780807083697) Beacon Press (Feb 01, 2004)
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#16 – A Lesson Before Dying
by Ernest Gaines (9780375702709) Penguin Random House (Sep 01, 1994)
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#17 – Flyy Girl
by Omar Tyree (9780743218573) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Aug 07, 2001)
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#18 – Friends and Lovers
by Eric Jerome Dickey (9780451188038) Penguin Random House (Sep 01, 1998)
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#19 – Tumbling: A Novel
by Diane McKinney-Whetstone (9780061792120) HarperCollins (Jun 29, 2010)
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#20 – Blessings: A Novel
by Sheneska Jackson (9780684853123) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Jun 09, 1999)
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#21 – Waiting To Exhale
by Terry McMillan (9780670839803) Penguin Random House (May 28, 1992)
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#22 – For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf
by Ntozake Shange (9780684843261) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Sep 01, 1997)
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#23 – A Little Yellow Dog
by Walter Mosley (9780743451802) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Nov 01, 2002)
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#24 – The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
by Malcolm X, Alex Haley and Attallah Shabazz (9780345376718) Penguin Random House (Jan 15, 1992)
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#25 – Invisible Life: A Novel
by E. Lynn Harris (9780385469685) Penguin Random House (Feb 15, 1994)
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#26 – Possessing the Secret of Joy: A Novel
by Alice Walker (9781595583642) The New Press (May 06, 2008)
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#27 – Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man In America
by Nathan McCall (9780679740704) Penguin Random House (Jan 31, 1994)
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#28 – Just As I Am: A Novel
by E. Lynn Harris (9780385469708) Penguin Random House (Feb 15, 1995)
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#29 – Mama Day
by Gloria Naylor (9780679721819) Penguin Random House (Apr 23, 1989)
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#30 – The Wedding: A Novel
by Dorothy West (9780385471442) Penguin Random House (Jan 01, 1996)
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#31 – Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe (9780385474542) Penguin Random House (Sep 01, 1994)
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#32 – Breath, Eyes, Memory
by Edwidge Danticat (9781616955021) Soho Press (Feb 24, 2015)
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#33 – Li’l Mama’s Rules
by Sheneska Jackson (9780684846132) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (May 06, 1998)
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#34 – One Better
by Rosalyn McMillan (9780446605991) Hachette Book Group (Oct 01, 1998)
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#35 – Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine: A Novel
by Bebe Moore Campbell (9780345401120) Penguin Random House (Jun 27, 1995)
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#36 – Devil In a Blue Dress (1st in the Easy Rawlins Mysteries)
by Walter Mosley (9780743451796) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Sep 17, 2002)
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#37 – Sula
by Toni Morrison (9781400033430) Penguin Random House (Jun 08, 2004)
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#38 – The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison (9780307278449) Penguin Random House (May 08, 2007)
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#39 – A Gathering of Old Men
by Ernest Gaines (9780679738909) Penguin Random House (Jun 30, 1992)
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#40 – My Soul to Keep
by Tananarive Due (9780061053665) HarperCollins (Apr 28, 1998)
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#41 – Roots: The Saga of an American Family
by Alex Haley (9780306824852) Penguin Random House (May 03, 2016)
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#42 – The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1995
by Nikki Giovanni (9780688140472) HarperCollins (Jan 11, 1996)
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#43 – The Street: A Novel
by Ann Petry (9780395901496) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mar 28, 1999)
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#44 – Cane
by Jean Toomer (9780871402103) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (Jun 13, 2011)
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#45 – How Stella Got Her Groove Back
by Terry McMillan (9780451209146) NAL (Jan 06, 2004)
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#46 – Tar Baby
by Toni Morrison (9781400033447) Penguin Random House (Jun 08, 2004)
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#47 – The Souls of Black Folk: Includes “The Talented Tenth” and ”The Souls of White Folk”
by W.E.B. Du Bois (9780140189988) Penguin Random House (Apr 01, 1996)
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#48 – Ugly Ways
by Tina McElroy Ansa (9780156000772) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Jan 17, 1995)
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#49 – Another Country
by James Baldwin (9780679744719) Penguin Random House (Dec 01, 1992)
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#50 – Black Gold
by Anita Bunkley (9780451179739) Penguin Random House (Feb 01, 1995)
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#51 – Caught Up in the Rapture: A Novel
by Sheneska Jackson (9780684831534) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Jun 04, 1997)
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#52 – Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven
by Dawn Turner Trice (9780385491235) Penguin Random House (Feb 28, 1998)
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#53 – The Heart of a Woman
by Maya Angelou (9780812980325) Penguin Random House (Apr 21, 2009)
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#54 – A Do Right Man
by Omar Tyree (9780684848037) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Oct 19, 1998)
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#55 – Go Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin (9780375701870) Penguin Random House (Sep 12, 2013)
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#56 – The Between
by Tananarive Due (9780063157675) HarperCollins (Oct 05, 2021)
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#57 – The Hand I Fan With
by Tina McElroy Ansa (9780385476010) Penguin Random House (Dec 29, 1997)
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#58 – The Piano Lesson (1930s Century Cycle)
by August Wilson (9780452265349) Penguin Random House (Dec 01, 1990)
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#59 – The Spook Who Sat by the Door
by Sam Greenlee (9780814322468) Wayne State University Press (May 01, 1989)
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#60 – Big Girls Don’t Cry
by Connie Briscoe (9780345413628) Penguin Random House (Jul 01, 1997)
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#61 – Knowing
by Rosalyn McMillan (9780446518666) Hachette Book Group (Jan 22, 1996)
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#62 – Paradise
by Toni Morrison (9780804169882) Penguin Random House (Mar 11, 2014)
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#63 – The Best of Simple
by Langston Hughes (9780374521332) Macmillan Publishers (Sep 28, 1990)
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#64 – The Third Life of Grange Copeland
by Alice Walker (9780156028363) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 26, 2003)
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#65 – Tryin’ To Sleep In The Bed You Made
by Virginia Deberry and Donna Grant (9780312383725) Macmillan Publishers (Jan 08, 2008)
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#66 – Bailey’s Cafe
by Gloria Naylor (9780679748212) Penguin Random House (Aug 31, 1993)
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#67 – In Search of Satisfaction
by J. California Cooper (9780385467865) Penguin Random House (Sep 01, 1995)
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#68 – Just Above My Head
by James Baldwin (9780385334563) Delta (Jun 13, 2000)
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#69 – Parable of the Sower
by Octavia Butler (9781538732182) Hachette Book Group (Apr 16, 2019)
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#70 – Tempest Rising: A Novel
by Diane McKinney-Whetstone (9780688166403) HarperCollins (Jan 20, 1999)
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#71 – The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin (9780679744726) Penguin Random House (Dec 01, 1992)
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#72 – The ISIS Papers: The Keys to the Colors
by Frances Cress Welsing (9781602819597) Afrikan World Books (Dec 28, 2004)
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#73 – Mama Black Widow
by Iceberg Slim (9781936399192) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (May 07, 2013)
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#74 – Miss Ophelia
by Mary Burnett Smith (9780688163570) HarperCollins (Sep 16, 1998)
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#75 – The Wake of the Wind: A Novel
by J. California Cooper (9780385487054) Penguin Random House (Dec 28, 1999)
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#76 – Baby of the Family
by Tina McElroy Ansa (9780156101509) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 31, 1991)
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#77 – Billy
by Albert French (9780140179088) Penguin Random House (Feb 01, 1995)
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#78 – Black Betty (Mask Noir)
by Walter Mosley (9781852423803) Serpent’s Tail (Nov 15, 1994)
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#79 – Manchild In The Promised Land
by Claude Brown (9781451631579) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Dec 27, 2011)
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#80 – Zora Neale Hurston : Novels and Stories
by Zora Neale Hurston (9780940450837) Library of America (Feb 01, 1995)
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#81 – The Women of Brewster Place
by Gloria Naylor (9780140066906) Penguin Random House (Jun 30, 1983)
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#82 – Bessie: Revised and Expanded Edition
by Chris Albertson (9780300107562) Yale University Press (Jun 10, 2005)
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#83 – Black Boy
by Richard Wright (9780062964137) HarperCollins (Feb 18, 2020)
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#84 – Magic City: A Novel
by Jewell Parker Rhodes (9780063073227) HarperCollins (May 04, 2021)
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#85 – Scenes from a Sistah
by Lolita Files (9780446674423) Hachette Book Group (Jul 01, 1998)
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#86 – The Color of Love
by Sandra Kitt (9780451184276) Penguin Random House (Mar 01, 1995)
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#87 – What A Woman’s Gotta Do
by Evelyn Coleman (9781982153076) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Jan 04, 2020)
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#88 – B-Boy Blues
by James Earl Hardy (9781555832681) Alyson Books (Jul 01, 1994)
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#89 – Belly Song and Other Poems
by Etheridge Knight (9780910296885) Broadside Press (Jun 01, 1973)
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#90 – The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, 10th Anniversary Edition
by James McBride (9781594481925) Penguin Random House (Feb 07, 2006)
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#91 – Corregidora
by Gayl Jones (9780807061091) Beacon Press (Jan 29, 2019)
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#92 – Giovanni’s Room
by James Baldwin (9780345806567) Penguin Random House (Sep 12, 2013)
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#93 – I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots: A Novel
by Susan Straight (9781497679986) Open Road Integrated Media (Oct 21, 2014)
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#94 – In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose
by Alice Walker (9780156028646) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (May 19, 2003)
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#95 – Jazz
by Toni Morrison (9781400076215) Penguin Random House (Jun 08, 2004)
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#96 – Middle Passage
by Charles Johnson (9780684855882) Simon & Schuster, Inc. (Jul 01, 1998)
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#97 – Playing In The Dark: Whiteness And The Literary Imagination
by Toni Morrison (9780679745426) Penguin Random House (Jul 27, 1993)
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#98 – Push: A Novel
by Sapphire (9780679766759) Penguin Random House (Apr 29, 1997)
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#99 – The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
by James Weldon Johnson (9780486285122) Dover Publications (May 10, 1995)
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#100 – Sounder
by William H. Armstrong (9780064400206) HarperCollins (Dec 30, 2019)
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