D'Youville Library Blog

The D’Youville Library commemorates Black History Month this year by highlighting important works by Black authors. These selections from the library collection are currently on display in the D’Youville Cultural Enrichment Center and cover a several genres – including award winning poetry, folklore, social issues and more.

Between the world and me/ by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me takes the form of a book-length letter, divided into three parts, from the author to his son, adopting the structure of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; the latter is directed, in part, towards Baldwin’s nephew, while the former addresses Coates’s 15-year-old son. Coates contemplates the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States

The complete collected poems/ by Maya Angelou

From her earliest collection of poetry (Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, LJ 10/15/71) to her latest (On the Pulse of Morning, delivered at the inauguration of President Clinton on January 20, 1993), Angelou’s work never fails to grip the imagination. In this anthology, she comments on love, traveling, and aging.

The annotated African American folktales/ edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr and Maria Tatar

Acclaimed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar assemble a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that revitalizes a vibrant African American past to produce the most comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history.

The Cornel West Reader/ by Cornel West

This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West’s work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West’s extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America’s social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics.

Go tell it on the mountain/ by James Baldwin

On the Modern Library list of the 100 best Novels- With lyrical precision, psychological directness, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles one day in the life of a fourteen-year-old boy. Baldwin’s rendering of his protagonist’s spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. “Mountain,” Baldwin said, “is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else.”

This is just a small selection of the collection curated by the Cultural Enrichment Center and the D’Youville Library. Visit the CEC to see these and other excellent titles in the collection. Bring your ID to check books out directly from the CEC.