*indicates book is in the Eiche Library at Penn State Altoona
Note: this is a work in process and not a comprehensive list, but for starters, here’s a sampling of the many works that fit this year’s theme!
Novels
David Bradley, The Chaneysville Incident
*Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
*Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents
Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust
*Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
N.K. Jemison, Broken Earth Trilogy
Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were
*Toni Morrison, Beloved, Sula, Song of Solomon
*Barbara Neely, Blanche Cleans Up
*Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Salvage the Bones
Short fiction
Toni Cade Bambara, various short stories, including “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird”
Charles Chesnutt, Conjure Tales
*Zora Neale Hurston, “John Redding Goes to Sea”
N.K. Jemison, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still”
Jamaica Kinkaid, “At the Bottom of the River”
Alice Walker, “The Flowers”
YA Fiction
Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone
Tochi Onyebuchi, War Girls
Sherri L. Smith, Sparrow
Renée Watson, Piecing Me Together
Children’s Books
*Ashley Bryan, Beautiful Blackbird
Nathan Bryon, illustrated by Dapo Adeola, Rocket Says Clean Up!
Donald Crews, Cloudy Day Sunny Day
Christopher Paul Curtis, The Madman of Piney Woods
Julie Fogliano (illustrated by Christian Robinson), Just in Case You Want to Fly
Ruth Forman (illustrated by Talia Skyles), Bloom
Nikki Grimes (illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon), Off to See the Sea
Nikki Grimes (illustrated by Jerry Pinkney and Brian Pinkney), A Walk in the Woods
Tony Hillery, Illustrated by Jessie Hartland, Harlem Grown: How One Big Idea Transformed a Neighborhood
Langston Hughes, An Earth Song
Margo Humphrey, The River That Gave Gifts: an Afro American Story
Julius Lester (illustrated by Joe Cepeda), What A Truly Cool World
*Melinda Mangai, Jayden’s Impossible Garden (featured picture book selection for 2024)
Melinda Mengai, Jayden’s Secret Ingredient
*Faith Ringold, Tar Beach
Jacqueline Woodson (illustrated by Rafael López), The Year We Learned to Fly
Kevin Young (illustrated by Chioma Ebinama), Emile and the Field
Drama
*August Wilson, Seven Guitars
Poetry
Samaa Abdurraqib, ed., From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast
Will Alexander, The Stratospheric Canticles
Wanda Coleman, “Requiem for a Nest,” “Beaches, Why I Don’t Like Them”
*Tyree Daye, many poems in River Hymns and Cardinal
Rita Dove, “Daystar,” “Parsley”
*Camille T. Dungy, ed., Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
Camille T. Dungy, Trophic Cascade
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “The Haunted Oak”
Nikki Giovanni, “For Saundra,” “The Yellowjacket”
Langston Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
*Yusef Komunyakaa, Selected poems in Magic City and Pleasure Dome
Clarence Major, many poems, including “On Watching a Caterpillar Become a Butterfly”
Naomi Shihab Nye, Cast Away: Poems for Our Time
Richard Wright, “Between the World and Me”
Non-Fiction & Memoir
Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself
Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself
*Camille T. Dungy, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden
Carolyn Finney, “Hiking While Black”
John Francis, Planet Walker
*Eddy Harris, Mississippi Solo
*Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature
Derick Lugo, The Unlikely Thru-Hiker: An Appalachian Trail Journey
*Wangari Muta Maarthai, Unbowed: A Memoir
Norris McDonald, Diary of an Environmentalist
Rue Mapp, ed, Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors
James Edward Mills, The Adventure Gap
John C. Robinson, Birding for Everyone: Encouraging People of Color to Become Birdwatchers
*Lauret E. Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape
Sharkey, Erin, ed. A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars
*Alice Walker, “Am I Blue,” Alice Walker: Banned
Evelyn C. White, “Black Women and the Wilderness,” The Stories that Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West
Scholarship
*Natalie Baszle, ed., We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie
Robert Bullard, “Race and Environmental Justice in the United States,” Yale Journal of International Law, vol 18, 1993, 319-35.
Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright: Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright, The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How Government Response to Disasters Endangers African-American Communities
Majora Carter, Sustainable South Bronx A Model for Environmental Justice
Sarah Jane Cervenak, Black Gathering: Art, Ecology, Ungiven Life
Stefani Dunning, Black To Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture
Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors
Dianne D. Glave, Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Environmental Heritage
Diane D. Glave and Mark Stoll, To Love the Wind and the Rain: African Americans and Environmental History
Nathan Hare “Black Ecology” (The Black Scholar, vol.1, issue 6, April 1970)
Tatiana C. Height, et al, “Call for Environmental Justice Amplification Among Ecology Scholars and Practitioners: A Black Ecology Perspective” Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, vol. 104, iss. 1, Jan. 2023, pp. 1-14 .
*bell hooks, “Touching the Earth” in At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, ed. by David Landis Barnhill
*bell hooks, “Earthbound” in The Colors of Nature, 2011
Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World
LeiLani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams, Racial Ecologies
Leah Penniman, Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists
Leah Penniman, Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land
J.T. Roan and Justin Hosbey, “Mapping Black Ecologies” (in Current Research in Digital History, vol. 2, 2019)
Kimberly N. Ruffin, Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions
South End Press Collective, eds., What Lies Beneath: Katrina, Race, and the State of the Nation
*Alison H. Deming and Lauret E. Savoy, The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World, rev. ed. 2011 (1st edition was 2002).
Dorceta Taylor, The Environment and the People in American Cities: 1600-1900s: Disorder, Inequality, and Social Change
Dorceta Taylor, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection
Dorceta Taylor, Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility
Wright, Willie Jamaal, “As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism”
*Harriett A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind