Reading is vital to the intellectual development of young people. The following list of books and authors below should help to begin the process of uptapping their full academic potential and supporting healthy habits that will enhance their reading comprehension, writing skills,  and their character development both in and outside of the classroom. 

We encourage the development of reading groups, as early as  4th grade,  to develop a culture of learning and academic preparedness for young boys.  Parents should consider having their young men read to or with them throughout the school year and summer. Moreover, parents should read the books that their children are reading so they are able to quiz them on a weekly basis either through an oral exam, actual test written test, or by assigned book reports.   

Below you will find a list of  books, that are divided by subject matter and content, which  we highly recommend. The selected books range from American and International Classics, African American/Latino genre, and various other works that may be of interest to both young men, school counselors, teachers, mentors and parents.

The Pact; Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dram

By Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Ramec Hunt

By Dennis Kimbro

By Michelle Singletary

By Ralph Waldo Ellison

 

 

 

 

By Zora Neal Hurston

 

 

 

 

By Toni Morrison

 

 

 

 

 

By Maya Angelou

 

 

 

 

 

By Jame Baldwin

 

 

 

 

 Go tell it on the Mountain 1953

 By James Baldwin 

 

 

 

 

By Alice Walker

 

 

By Langston Hughes

 

 

 

African American History/ Civil Rights Movement

 

 

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (Paperback)

by John Lewis (Author), Michael D'Orso (Author)

 

 

 

 

 

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Paperback)

by Martin Luther King Jr. (Author), Clayborne Carson (Author)

 

 

Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth (Paperback)

by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi (Author)

 

 

 

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela : With Connections (HRW Library) (Hardcover)

by Nelson Mandela (Author)

 

 

 

 

No Future Without Forgiveness (Paperback)

by Desmond Tutu (Author)

 

 

The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (Mass Market Paperback)

by Malcolm X (Primary Contributor), Alex Haley (Interviewer), Attallah Shabazz (Foreword)

 

Soul on Ice (Paperback)

by Eldridge Cleaver (Author)

 

 

 By Michael Newton

 

Author Booker Taliaferro Washington

 

 

 

THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO by Carter G. Woodson - Paperback (1990) by Dr. Carter Goodwin Woodson

 

 

 

 

The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. DuBois

 

 

 

Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Paperback)

by Genna Rae McNeil (Author), A. Leon Higginbotham (Foreword)

 

 

 

Thurgood Marshall: An American Revoluntionary

By Juan Williams 

 

 

 

King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Paperback)

by Wil Haygood (Author)

 

 

By Gary Pomerantz

 

 

By David Henry Anthony III

 

Latin American Literature

 

 

Ficciones (English Translation) (Paperback)

by Jorge Luis Borges (Author), Anthony Kerrigan (Editor), Anthony Bonner (Translator)

 

 

 

Cien Años de Soledad (Paperback)

by Gabriel García Márquez (Author)

 

 

 

 

Escalante: The Best Teacher in Ameroca

by Jay Mathews (Author)

 

 

 

The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement (Paperback)

by Susan Ferriss (Author), Ricardo Sandoval (Author)

 

 

 

History/ Society and Culture/ Politics 

 

 

By Howard Zinn

 

 

 

By Doris Kearns Goodwin 

 

 

 

 

Author Dr. Michael Eric Dyson 

 

 

By Dr. Cornel West

 

 

 

By John McWhorter

 

 

 

By Taylor Branch

 

 

 

By William C. Rhoden

 

 

 

By Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

 

 

By Atty. Derrick Bell 

 

 

 

By Dr. Michael Eric Dyson 

 

 

 

By Dr. Michael Eric Dyson 

 

 

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

 

 

By Dr. Cornell West

 

 

By Paualo Freire

 

The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald, F. Scott

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Kesey, Ken

To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee, Harper

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway, Ernest

The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger, J.D.

The Jungle -  Sinclair, Upton

The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck, John

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Stowe, Harriet Beecher

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain, Mark

Moby-Dick - Melville, Herman

Jane Eyre  - Bronte, Charlotte

Pride and Prejudice - Austen, Jane

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  - Carroll, Lewis 

Don Quixote - Cervantes, Miguel de 

The Death of Artemio Cruz  - Fuentes, Carlos 

One Hundred Years of Solitude -  Garcia Marquez, Gabriel  

Great Expectations - Dickens, Charles 

The Joy Luck Club-  Tan, Amy  

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy, Leo  

Night - Weisel, Elie  

Invisible Men: Life in Baseball's Negro Leagues  - Rogosin, Donn

Walden  - Thoreau, Henry David

The Communist Manifesto  - Marx, Karl

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-65  - Williams, Juan

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in Urban America  - Kotlowitz, Alex

Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools  - Kozol, Jonathan

The Diary of a Young Girl  - Frank, Anne

Gulliver's Travels

Cry, the Beloved Country  - Paton, Alan

Ivanhoe

Frankenstein  - Shelley, Mary W.

Profiles in Courage  - Kennedy, John F.

This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer  - Mills, Kay

The Republic - Plato

 And Still I Rise  - Angelou, Maya

 Selected Poems  - Brooks, Gwendolyn

 Complete Poems, 1904-1962 - Cummings, E.E.

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson  - Dickinson, Emily

The Complete Poetry of John Donne  -Donne, John

The Waste Land  - Eliot, T.S.

The Poetry of Robert Frost  - Frost, Robert

Howl and Other Poems  - Ginsberg, Allen

My House  - Giovanni, Nikki

Selected Poems  - Hughes, Langston