Black Lives Matter!: Books
Some of Our Print Books
Some of Our eBooks
Classics in Literature
Go Tell It on the Mountain by
James Baldwin's stunning first novel is now an American classic. With startling realism that brings Harlem and the black experience vividly to life, this is a work that touches the heart with emotion while it stimulates the mind with its narrative style, symbolism, and excoriating vision of racism in America. Moving through time from the rural South to the northern ghetto, starkly contrasting the attitudes of two generations of an embattles family, Go Tell It On The Mountain is an unsurpassed portrayal of human beings caught up in a dramatic struggle and of a society confronting inevitable change. "The most important novel written about the American Negro," says Commentary. "It is written with poetic intensity and great narrative skill," writes Harper's. Saturday Review praises it as "masterful," and the San Francisco Chronicle declares that this important American novel is "brutal, objective and compassionate."
Call Number: AC PS 3552 .A45 Also in ESL collection.ISBN: 9780440330073Publication Date: 1985-11-10
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age--and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors ("I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare") will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity."--James Baldwin
Call Number: CM, ML PS3551.R464 Z466 2015ISBN: 9780345514400Publication Date: 2009-04-21
Gather Together in My Name by
In this second volume of her poignant autobiographical series, Maya Angelou powerfully captures the struggles and triumphs of her passionate life with dignity, wisdom, humor, and humanity. "A curiously heartening story in which decency, honor, truth, love do exist, imperfectly, fractionally and flickeringly, not in some Platonic realm of the ideal, but in the flawed lives of real men and women." --The Washington Post Gather Together in My Name continues Maya Angelou's personal story, begun so unforgettably in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The time is the end of World War II and there is a sense of optimism everywhere. Maya Angelou, still in her teens, has given birth to a son. But the next few years are difficult ones as she tries to find a place in the world for herself and her child. She goes from job to job-and from man to man. She tries to return home-back to Stamps, Arkansas-but discovers that she is no longer part of that world. Then Maya's life takes a dramatic turn, and she faces new challenges and temptations.
Call Number: AC ESL PS3551.N464 Z464 2009ISBN: 9780812980301Publication Date: 2009-04-21
Native Son by
With an introduction by Arnold Rampersad "The Library of America has insured that most of Wright's major texts are now available as he wanted them to be read." --Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny: by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America. "This new edition gives us a Native Son in which the key line in the key scene is restored to the great good fortune of American letters. The scene as we now have it is central both to an ongoing conversation among African-American writers and critics and to the consciousness among all American readers of what it means to live in a multi-racial society in which power splits among racial lines." --Jack Miles, Los Angeles Times
Call Number: ML, AC ESL PS3545.R815 N25 2005ISBN: 9780060929800Publication Date: 2004-07-01
Black Boy (American Hunger) by
With an introduction by Jerry W. Ward, Jr. Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright' s journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man' s coming off age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America. Superb...The Library of America has insured that most of Wright' s major texts are now available as he wanted them to be tread...Most important of all is the opportunity we now have to hear a great American writer speak with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives. --Alfred Kazin, New York Time Book Review The publication of this new edition is not just an editorial innovation, it is a major event in American literary history. --Andrew Delbanco, New Republic
Call Number: ML, AC ESL PS3545.R815 Z96ISBN: 9780060929787Publication Date: 1998-08-05
A Raisin in the Sun by
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 pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever."--The New York Times.
Call Number: ML, AC ESL PS3515.A515 R3ISBN: 9780679755333Publication Date: 2004-11-29
Beloved by
New York Times Bestseller Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. "You can't go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else -- they're transcendent, all of them. You'll be glad you read them."--Barack Obama
Call Number: AC, ML PS3563.O8749 B4 2004ISBN: 9781400033416Publication Date: 2004-06-08
Invisible Man by
A milestone in American literature--a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
Call Number: AC PS3555.L625 I5 1995ISBN: 9780679732761Publication Date: 1995-03-14
A Choice of Weapons by
Gordon Parks (1912-2006)--the groundbreaking photographer, writer, composer, activist, and filmmaker-- was only sixteen in 1928 when he moved from Kansas to St. Paul, Minnesota, after his mother's death. There, homeless and hungry, he began his fight to survive, to educate himself, and to fulfill his potential dream. This compelling autobiography, first published in 1966, now back in print by popular demand and with a new foreword by Wing Young Huie, tells how Parks managed to escape the poverty and bigotry around him and to launch his distinguished career by choosing the weapons given him by "a mother who placed love, dignity, and hard work over hatred." Parks, the first African American to work at Life magazine and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film, told an interviewer in 1999, "I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera." "A perceptive narrative of one man's struggle to realize the values (defined as democratic and especially American) he has been taught to respect." --New York Times Book Review "A lean, well-written memoir." --Time Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a groundbreaking photographer, writer, composer, activist, and film director. He may be best known for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft. Wing Young Huie is an acclaimed photographer and the author of several books including Frogtown and Looking for Asian America.
Call Number: CM, ML TR140.P35 A3 2010ISBN: 9780873517690Publication Date: 2010-01-15
Sister Outsider by Call Number: cm, ml PS3562.O75 S5 2007ISBN: 9781580911863Publication Date: 2007-08-01
The Blacker the Berry by Call Number: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)ISBN: 9780486120126Publication Date: 2012-03-06
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Where's the Book? How Do I Get It?
If the location is Atlantic Cape Community College, the book lives in Spangler Library, on the Mays Landing campus.
If the location is Cape May Campus, the book lives in the library on the CM campus.
If the location is Worthington Center, the book lives in the library on the Atlantic City campus.
All other locations refer to the Atlantic County public and school libraries.
To find where in the library you should look for the book, check the Status column first. This will tell you in which section of the library the book is shelved; if the book is checked out to someone else, you will also see that information.
Next, look at the Call Number column. Here, you'll find the book's address on the shelf.
The call number of a book tells you where on the shelves the book can be found. It's like a street address. When looking in the catalog at the record for an item, look in the next-to-last column.
- The call numbers used by the Atlantic Cape Libraries are based on the Library of Congress Classification System.You'll notice that they look different from the Dewey Decimal numbers used by the public libraries.
- Letters represent the main subject of the book.
- The remainder of the call number narrows the subject and adds information specific to the book, which aids placement on the shelf.
- There are guides posted around the library to help find a book.
Please ask a librarian if you need help to navigate the book shelves.
To borrow books, use reserve books, laptop computers or equipment in the library you will need to activate your library account. Bring your College ID card to the Circulation Desk at any campus library to activate your account. Your College ID becomes your library card, along with a PIN code that you will choose. You'll use these numbers to get access to your library account, renew books, and request delivery from other libraries in our system.
You can use your College ID to apply for a Community Account to borrow materials from Richard Stockton University, a library card from the Atlantic City Free Public Library, the Atlantic County Library System and Cape May County libraries.
Reading Lists
- Black Lives Matter Comics Reading ListsFrom BCALA and the ALA Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table.
- Anti-Racist EducationBooks from Teacher's College Press.
- Resources for Black Folks Curated by Dr. Laila McCloud & Mika Karikari, Western Illinois University.
- An Antiracist Reading List Ibram X. Kendi on books to help America transcend its racist heritage.
Subject headings
Discrimination in criminal justice administration
Race discrimination -- United States
Segregation -- United States -- History
Inner cities -- United States
Prisons and race relations
Blacks -- Segregation.-- History -- 20th century.
African Americans -- Crimes against
African American prisoners -- Social conditions.
Slavery -- United States -- History.
Lynching
Whites -- United States -- Attitudes -- History.
African Americans -- Social conditions
Credits
This guide was developed by Leslie Murtha, Atlantic Cape Community College Libraries.
Published February 2021.