And Still I Rise...

If You Come Softly. Woodson, Jaqueline.

Woodson, author of Hush and Locomotion, handles delicate, even explosive subject matter with exceptional clarity, surety and depth. In this contemporary story about an interracial romance, she seems to slip effortlessly into the skins of both her main characters, Ellie, an upper-middle-class white girl who has just transferred to Percy, an elite New York City prep school, and Jeremiah, one of her few African American classmates, whose parents (a movie producer and a famous writer) have just separated.

Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. Angelou, Maya.

Morality, manners, friendships, and love are a sampling of the subjects covered by renowned playwright and poet. Take time to contemplate the art of the essay as well as the wisdom of the woman in these pithy, candid pieces that are taken from her own experiences. Funny, sad, or poignant, they all make a plea for tolerance and understanding.

The Wedding. West, Dorothy.

On the island of Martha's Vineyard, a very special community has flourished since the turn of the century, an exclusive summer colony of affluent black vacationers. The Wedding contains some of the most unforgettable flesh-and-blood characters you will ever meet, including Shelby Coles, the daughter of a loveless marriage, whose engagement to a white jazz musician threatens to tear her family apart; Lute McNeil, a social-climbing Boston businessman who sees in Shelby and her family everything he could ever want for his three motherless daughters, and who sells his soul to try to win her; and Gram, the daughter of a plantation owner, whose own daughter broke her heart long ago by marrying an ex-slave, and who is kept alive only by bitterness.

Money Hungry. Flake, Sharon G.

With her brassy voice and saucy attitude, 13-year-old Raspberry Hill emerges as a vivacious heroine. She knows first-hand that living in the housing project is better than being out on the streets, but she and her mother are equally determined to move to a safer neighborhood. That's why Raspberry is so "money hungry," hoarding her savings and doing almost anything to earn a few extra dollars. Her stinginess causes as many problems as solutions. When her money issues begin interfering with her friendships, Raspberry is forced to reexamine her priorities and values. Flake candidly expresses the difficulty in breaking the cycle of poverty and leaves it up to readers to judge Raspberry's acts.
(Also check out Flake's award-winning collection of short stories, Who Am I Without Him?)

Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. Hamilton, Virginia.

Fourteen-year-old Tree, resentful of her working mother who leaves her in charge of a retarded brother, encounters the ghost of her dead uncle. Why has he come to her, with his dark secrets from a long-ago past? What is the purpose of their strange, haunting journeys back into her own childhood? Is it to help Dab, her retarded older brother, wracked with mysterious pain who sometimes takes more care and love than Tree has to give? Is it for her mother, Vy, who loves them the best she knows how, but isn't home enough to ease the terrible longing? Whatever secrets his whispered message hold, Tree know she must follow Brother Rush through the magic mirror, and find out the truth.

Black Ice. Cary, Lorene

A streetwise kid from West Philly, Cary was the first African-American female to attend St. Paul's, a prestigious New England prep school. With tremendous drive, she set out to achieve self-imposed academic, athletic, and social goals. Although she believed she owed it to the school that accepted her on scholarship, to her family who encouraged and sacrificed, and to those who will come after, she found that the price was great. The emotional distance from her family widened with the geographic separation, and their deep love and pride could not make up for their blindness to her discomfort.

A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry, Lorraine.

When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A fiercely moving portrait of people whose hopes and dreams are constantly deferred, A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of a family living and struggling on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s. The play opens as the Younger family anxiously awaits the arrival of a life insurance check for $10,000, made payable to Lena (Mama) Younger, the matriarch of the family, because of the death of her husband. However, the way in which this money will be used becomes a point of contention among the characters.

Song of Solomon. Morrison, Toni.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this novel, Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.

Through the Ivory Gate. Dove, Rita.

Virginia King, a talented young black woman, returns to her hometown of Akron, Ohio, as artist-in-residence to teach puppetry at an elementary school. As her puppets win the hearts of her students, memories of her own childhood surface, triggering a chain of recollections — from grade school, with its subtle and not-so-subtle bigotries, to college where, as a cellist, she became involved with a brilliant and enigmatic fellow musician. But what startles her most is a visit to an elderly aunt, whose revelations about Virginia's family threaten to shatter the healing these memories bring.