Baldwin, James
Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)
A teenager in Harlem struggles with his religious identity.

Burgess, Barbara H.
The Fred Field (1994)
Oren searches for his best friend's killer.

Butler, Octavia
Kindred (1979)
A contemporary African American woman finds herself transported to a pre-Civil War plantation.

Campbell, Bebe Moore
Your Blues Ain't Like Mine (1992)
Set in rural Mississippi, beginning in the 1950's

Cary, Lorene
Price of a Child (1995)
In 1855, Ginnie, a Virginia slave, becomes free woman Mercer Gray. But to do so, she must abandon her youngest child.

Clair, Maxine
Rattlebone (1995)
In this set of interconnected short stories, readers follow Rennie's growth from childhood to adulthood.

Curtis, Christopher
Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 (1995)
An African American family from Flint, Michigan, visit Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights struggle.

Gaines, Ernest
A Gathering of Old Men (1983)
Louisiana in the 1950's is the scene for this story of murder and defense.

Himes, Chester
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965)
Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones pursue a crooked preacher.

Johnson, Charles
Middle Passage (1985)
In 1830, a free man finds himself on a slave ship bound for Africa.

Lattany, Kristin H.
Kinfolks (1997)
Everybody wants to find Professor Green: both women who bore his children and the children who have only recently learned they are brother and sister.

Marshall, Paule
Brownstones, Brown Girl (1959)
A family from Barbados moves to Brooklyn during the Great Depression.

Morrison, Toni
The Bluest Eye (1969)
The first novel by the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mosley, Walter
Gone Fishin' (1997)
Easy Rawlings' younger days. For older readers.

Mowry, Jess
Babylon Boyz (1997)
On the grimy streets of "Babylon," Pook and Dante are faced with a difficult decision.

Myers, Walter Dean
Fallen Angels (1989)
Private Richie Perry does a tour in Vietnam.

Myers, Walter Dean
Slam (1997)
Sixteen year old "Slam" Harris thinks his basketball talent will get him out of the inner city, but his coach sees things differently.

Petry, Ann
The Street (1946)
In Harlem in the 1940's, a mother struggles to raise her son alone.

Sanders, Dori
Clover (1990)
Ten year old Clover winds up with a white stepmother she barely knows.

Sinclair, April
Coffee Will Make You Black (1994)
The story of Stevie, who comes of age in Chicago during the late sixties.

Williams-Garcia, Rita
Like Sisters on the Homefront (1995)
After an abortion, a 14 year old girl is sent south to stay with her country cousin.

Woodson, Jacqueline (editor)
A Way Out of No Way (1997)
This collection of stories and poems about coming of age includes work by Anna Deavere Smith, Randall Kenan, June Jordan, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Nikki Giovanni, and Jamaica Kincaid.

Prepared by the Berkeley Public Library Teen Services staff. Revised February 1998