"Spanning 250 years, this carefully-curated collection of 25 essays features the earliest Black authors who wrote as means of resistance in a time when their literacy was illegal and the brilliant writers who have continued their legacy--utilizing the power of the written word to create change, insert a diversity of experience into the "mainstream," and make a profound impact on our communities and the world"-- Provided by publishers

Suspected of having a book /Frederick Douglass -- Nine years deprived of a sheet of paper / Solomon Northup -- A whole race begins to read / Booker T. Washington -- The Negro in literature and art / W.E.B. Du Bois -- Books and things / Zora Neale Hurston -- Poetry is practical / Langston Hughes -- The business of the writer / James Baldwin -- Turning point / Malcolm X -- Lessons in living / Maya Angelou -- Morehouse College / Martin Luther King, Jr. -- The site of memory / Toni Morrison -- Where are the people of color in children's books? / Walter Dean Myers -- Reading for revolution / Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] -- Twenty-one / Alice Walker -- A temporary library in a small place / Jamaica Kincaid -- What is an African American Classic? / Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- New black scribe / Terry McMillan -- MFA vs. POC / Junot Diaz -- Create dangerously / Edwidge Danticat -- How to write / Colson Whitehead -- From Jamaica to Minnesota to myself / Marlon James -- I once was Miss America / Roxane Gay -- The Mecca / Ta-Nehisi Coates -- The danger of the single story / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- What books mean to me / President Barack Obama, an interview with Michiko Kakutani.