Picture book
Firebird
Misty Copeland
A young dancer imagines what practice and encouragement might make possible.
Collection
Art, Culture & Creative Expression
Explore the work of dancers, playwrights, artists, and the communities that make their art possible.
The shelves
Books in this collection
Poetry
Affrilachia
Frank X Walker
Walker’s poems insist on the visibility of Black lives in the language and geography of Appalachia.
Music history
Blues People
Amiri Baraka
Baraka reads changes in Black music alongside changes in work, migration, and social life.
Biography
Black Ballerinas
Misty Copeland
Illustrated profiles introduce dancers whose careers expanded possibilities for Black ballet artists.
Poetry
Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride
Frank X Walker
A poetry sequence approaches the life of the celebrated Black jockey through imagined voices.
Drama
The Piano Lesson
August Wilson
A carved piano forces siblings to decide what they owe their family’s history and their futures.
Memoir
Taking Flight
Michaela DePrince, Elaine DePrince
DePrince recalls her path from Sierra Leone to ballet training and professional performance.
Picture book
Alvin Ailey
Andrea Davis Pinkney
A picture-book biography introduces Ailey’s childhood and the movement language he brought to the stage.
Drama
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
August Wilson
A recording session brings musicians and industry power into collision as Ma Rainey insists on her terms.
Folklore
Mules and Men
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston collects folktales and practices from Florida and New Orleans, listening to the people who keep them alive.
Essays
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
Alice Walker
Walker locates artistic inheritance in the everyday work and imagination of Black women.
Poetry
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
An expansive collection follows Hughes across vernacular forms, music, and political imagination.
Memoir
Nina Simone's Gum
Warren Ellis
A small object saved after a Nina Simone performance becomes a meditation on musical memory.
Essays
Music Is History
Questlove
Questlove uses records and listening memories to consider how music registers public change.
Memoir
Life in Motion
Misty Copeland
Copeland recounts discovering ballet and finding her way through its demanding institutions.
Biography
Katherine Dunham
Joyce Aschenbrenner
Dunham’s work in anthropology and choreography illuminates a major exchange between research and performance.
History
Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970
Lynne Fauley Emery
A historical survey traces Black dance across social, theatrical, and professional settings.
Literary criticism
Free Within Ourselves
Rudine Sims Bishop
A study of Black children’s literature follows its publishing history, creators, and evolving traditions.
Picture book
The Undefeated
Kwame Alexander
A poem and illustrations honor Black achievement, endurance, and lives that public memory can overlook.
History
Heart and Soul
Kadir Nelson
A family-story voice and paintings guide readers through major chapters in African American history.
History
We Are the Ship
Kadir Nelson
Paintings and narrative bring the travel, teamwork, and resourcefulness of Negro League baseball into view.
Picture book
Tar Beach
Faith Ringgold
A child flying above a Harlem rooftop turns the city into a map of wishes for her family.
Folklore
The People Could Fly
Virginia Hamilton
A collection of African American folktales includes animal stories, tales of magic, and stories of escape.
Picture book
Amazing Grace
Mary Hoffman
A child determined to play Peter Pan challenges the limits others place on her imagination.
Poetry
Buffalo Dance
Frank X Walker
A sequence of poems imagines the perspective of York, the enslaved participant in the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Poetry
Turn Me Loose
Frank X Walker
Poems use distinct voices to consider the killing of Medgar Evers and the persistence of public memory.
Poetry
Perfect Black
Crystal Wilkinson
Poems consider color, family, girlhood, and the landscapes that shaped Wilkinson’s sense of home.
Poetry
Head Off & Split
Nikky Finney
Finney’s poems move between family, public history, and the language that mediates what people see.
Poetry
Rice
Nikky Finney
Rice ties family stories and foodways to Black Southern histories of labor and survival.
Essays
South to America
Imani Perry
Perry travels across the South to consider how the region’s places and contradictions shape the nation.
Biography
Looking for Lorraine
Imani Perry
Perry connects Hansberry’s theatre work with her political thought, private life, and artistic networks.
Drama
A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry
A Chicago family debates how to use an inheritance and faces resistance to moving into a new home.
Drama
Fences
August Wilson
A Pittsburgh family negotiates the consequences of one man’s disappointments, decisions, and obligations.
Essays
The Ground on Which I Stand
August Wilson
Wilson considers artistic control and the institutional conditions Black theatre needs to flourish.
History
The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era
Jonathan Shandell
A history of Harlem’s American Negro Theatre traces artists, audiences, and a new space for Black theatre.
History
The Black Arts Movement
James Edward Smethurst
A study of the Black Arts Movement examines regional networks and the connection between artistic practice and political action.
Picture book
My People
Langston Hughes
Hughes’s short poem becomes the basis of a photographic celebration of Black faces and lives.