Editor’s Note: This list of resources was originally attached to ABUSUA’s Letter to the Administration and Board of Trustees. 

This following selection of works (written, visual and aural texts) have been combined by the faculty and affiliate faculty of Oberlin College’s Department of Africana Studies, to provide for its major, minor and interested students a list of what members of the department see as foundational works in the field of Africana Studies. The interdisciplinary nature of the field and the multi-disciplinary range of the contributors to this collection provides a broad, deep, and complex interpretation of works fundamental to the description, study, and creative expression of Africana peoples (continental and diasporan).

1. DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880

2. Walker, David. David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to those of the United States of America

3. Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South

4. Robinson, Cedric. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition

5. DuBois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk

6. Stuckey, Sterling. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America

7. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

8. Diop, Cheikh Anta. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality?

9. James, George G.M. Stolen Legacy

10. Wynter, Sylvia. “No Humans Involved”: An Open Letter to My Colleagues

11. Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar

12. Public Enemy. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

13. James, C. L. R. Beyond a Boundary

14. Mbiti, John S. African Religions & Philosophy 

15. Armstrong, Louis. The Hot Five and Hot Seven Sessions

16. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks

17. James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

18. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy

19. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

20. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African

21. Mintz, Sidney and Price, Richard. The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective

22. Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

23. Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past

24. Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study

25. Baquaqua, Mahommah. Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua

26. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

27. Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

28. Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition

29. Senna, Danzy. Caucasia

30. Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism

31. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason

32. Mudimbe, V. Y. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge

33. Delpit, Lisa. Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom

34. Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-Education of the Negro

35. Gates Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism

36. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart

37. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God

38. Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

39. Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

40. Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography

41. Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America

42. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed

43. Tutuola, Amos. The Palm-Wine Drinkard

44. Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions

45. Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power

46. Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker

47. Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

48. Henderson, Mae and Johnson, E. Patrick. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology

49. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time

50. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Theory: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment

51. Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

52. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History

53. Trouillot, Évelyne. The Infamous Rosalie

54. Ulysse, Gina Athena. Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle

55. Giddings, Paula. Works, especially about Ida B. Wells

56. Washington, Margaret. Sojourner Truth’s America

57. White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South

58. Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

59. Hunter, Tera W. To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War

60. Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and the Revolution, 1868-1898

61. Chisholm, Shirley. The Good Fight

62. Chisholm, Shirley. Unbought and Unbossed 

63. Bâ, Mariama. So Long a Letter 

64. Alexis, Jacques Stephen. All works including In the Flicker of an Eyelid

65. Roumain, Jacques. All works including Masters of the Dew