Books like Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Alice Walker's 1982 novel, The Color Purple, won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, exploring the lives of black women in the South and their experiences of abuse and struggle for independence.

Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer‑winning work follows Sethe, an escaped slave living in post‑Civil War Ohio, as she confronts the traumatic past that rises again in the form of a mysterious child named Beloved.

Maya Angelou's autobiography, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', tells the story of her life and the challenges she faced growing up in Arkansas, including racism, abuse, and the loss of her father. The book is a powerful and moving portrayal of the African American experience during the 1930s and 1940s.

Zora Neale Hurston’s Pulitzer‑winning novel follows Janie Crawford’s journey of self‑discovery and empowerment, mapping her search for love, independence, and identity against the backdrop of the African‑American South during the early 20th century.

A Black man's journey through racism, identity and activism in 1940s Harlem, culminating in a revelatory escape from the streets to self-knowledge.

Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old black youth in poverty on Chicago's South Side, becomes embroiled in a brutal murder and must face the consequences of his violent actions in Richard Wright's novel 'Native Son' (1940).

James Weldon Johnson’s autobiographical novel traces the life of a mixed‑race narrator who, able to pass as white, struggles with identity and injustice in early 20th‑century America.

A study of racial, gender, and class tensions in post‑Reconstruction North Carolina, illustrated with primary sources and contemporary commentary.

29, 311 p. 24 cm

A profoundly unsettling story of a plantation slave's desperate escape into a rainforest beyond human control, with his master and a ferocious dog on his heels. This flight to freedom takes them on a journey that will transform them all, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest and its dense primeval wilderness reshapes reality and time itself. In the darkness, the old man grapples with the spirits of all those who have gone before him; the knowledge that the past is always with us, and the injustice that can cry out from beyond the grave. From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the "heir of Joyce and Kafka," The Old Slave and the Mastiff fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs - a wise, loving tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique, and a vividly told journey into the heart of Caribbean history and human endurance.

A gripping tale of ten-year-old Billy Lee Turner's murder conviction and execution in 1937, set against the backdrop of racial injustice in 1930s Mississippi.

An intergenerational saga tracing an African‑Canadian‑American family's journey from the 19th‑century slave trade in Virginia through the Underground Railroad to modern Oakville, Ontario, as its youngest son seeks identity by uncovering his ancestors’ stories.

After the murder of his Ashanti chief father, Kofi is sold into slavery and shipped to Massachusetts, where he encounters Paul Cuffe, an African‑American shipbuilder determined to send captives back to Africa.

A former slave, burdened by debt in New Orleans, stows away on a slave ship bound for Africa, embarking on a perilous journey that tests his resolve and the limits of freedom.