Recommendations
Books Like Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
For readers of the posthumous Ellison novel
If you loved Juneteenth — Reverend Hickman's vigil at the bedside of the white senator he raised as a Black child, the meditation on identity and passing and betrayal, and Ellison's extraordinary posthumous voice — these books share the same formal ambition, the same engagement with African American identity, and the same interest in what we become and what we betray.
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Buy on AmazonInvisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Ellison's masterpiece and the essential companion — the National Book Award-winning novel that established the vision Juneteenth extends.
- 2
Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in African American literary fiction about the most ambitious engagement with American racial history.
- 3
Buy on AmazonPassing
by Nella Larsen
Larsen's Harlem Renaissance novel — the companion in African American fiction about racial passing; Bliss/Sunraider's passage from Black to white identity is the companion to Irene and Clare's.
- 4
Buy on AmazonGo Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin
Baldwin's debut novel — the companion in African American fiction about the Black church and the preacher as father figure; Gabriel Grimes and Reverend Hickman are companion portraits.
- 5
Buy on AmazonThe Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
by James Weldon Johnson
Johnson's pioneering novel — the predecessor in American fiction about racial passing; the narrator's decision to live as white is the early 20th-century predecessor to Bliss/Sunraider's.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Known World
by Edward P. Jones
Jones's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in contemporary African American fiction about the complexity of racial identity and the way race is constructed and performed.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThree Days Before the Shooting
by Ralph Ellison
The complete posthumous manuscripts — the scholarly edition presenting the full scope of what Ellison worked on for forty years; for readers who want everything Juneteenth compressed.
- 8
Buy on AmazonSong of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel — the companion in African American fiction about a man discovering his identity and heritage through a journey back to his origins.
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