Recommendations
Books Like Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Milkman's quest for gold becomes a quest for his ancestors
If the flying African legend, the multilayered naming, and the anatomy of African-American community life drew you in, here are eight books that extend these concerns across the Black American literary tradition.
- 1
Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winner — slavery's trauma haunting the living in Cincinnati, Ohio; the companion that extends Song of Solomon's inquiry into the slavery past in a more concentrated and harrowing mode.
- 2
Buy on AmazonSula
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's preceding novel — female friendship and community in the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio; the companion in Morrison's anatomy of African-American community life and the question of what a woman's life is for.
- 3
Buy on AmazonInvisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Ellison's 1952 masterpiece — the Black American protagonist's search for identity in an America that refuses to see him; the formal predecessor to Milkman's quest, equally encyclopedic about Black American social life.
- 4
Buy on AmazonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's Harlem Renaissance novel — Janie's self-discovery through voice and desire; the female counterpart to Milkman's quest and the African-American dialect tradition that Morrison draws on.
- 5
Buy on AmazonGo Tell It on the Mountain
by James Baldwin
Baldwin's autobiographical first novel — African-American religious and family life in 1930s Harlem; the essential companion in the Black American literary tradition that Song of Solomon belongs to.
- 6
Buy on AmazonHomegoing
by Yaa Gyasi
Gyasi's multigenerational novel — the contemporary companion to Song of Solomon's historical reach; the flying African legend's origin traced from the Ghanaian side across seven generations.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's debut — a Black girl's desire for blue eyes in 1940s Ohio; the earliest expression of the concerns Song of Solomon develops, the beginning of Morrison's Ohio African-American community project.
- 8
Buy on AmazonJazz
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's 1992 novel — the Great Migration's Harlem in 1926, narrated by a voice as close to jazz improvisation as prose can get; the companion to Song of Solomon's engagement with African-American music and community.
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