As we commemorate Juneteenth, delve into a selection of profound and enlightening reads that capture the essence of freedom and resilience. From compelling narratives of emancipation and empowerment to powerful reflections on the ongoing fight for equality, these titles offer invaluable insights into the African American experience.
Remember Juneteenth by immersing yourself in stories that honor the past, illuminate the present, and inspire a future grounded in justice and hope.
Fairview by
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
At the Frasier household, preparations for Grandma’s birthday party are underway. Beverly is holding on to her sanity by a thread to make sure this party is perfect, but her sister can’t be bothered to help, her husband doesn’t seem to listen, her brother is MIA, her daughter is a teenager, and maybe nothing is what it seems in the first place…! FAIRVIEW is a searing examination of families, drama, family dramas, and the insidiousness of white supremacy.
Home by
The action begins on the small farm in South Carolina that Cephus Miles, an orphan, has inherited from his family. Young and strong, he is content to work the land—until his childhood sweetheart rejects him and goes off to college. Not believing in the Vietnam war, Cephus is imprisoned as a draft evader for refusing to serve. By the time he is released, Cephus has lost his land to the tax collector so he heads north to build a new life. With a good job and a slinky new girlfriend, he finds the big city exciting and rewarding. But soon after, the dream begins to fade—Cephus loses his job and becomes involved in drugs and prostitution. Pulling himself together, he returns to South Carolina and settles back on the land with his old sweetheart. Despite all, he has never lost his joyous goodwill, his indomitable spirit and the conviction that one day his quest for fulfillment will be rewarded.
Wine in the Wilderness by
As described in the Boston Herald Traveler: “The drama was woven around a young girl, played by Abbey Lincoln, befriended by an artist looking for a model of a grass-roots woman, ignorant and unattractive, for his triptych. It opens amidst Negro riots that have burned the girl out of her apartment and Abbey gets off a few cracks that hit home when the artist and his friends haul out the Afro-American bit by crying, ‘The Afro-Americans burnt down my home. They holler ‘Whitey’ but who did they burn down—me!’ There were many poignant moments as the two were magnetically drawn together and pushed apart. Abbey’s fear of falling in love with the artist, his desire to hold her there only long enough to paint her for his triptych, her disillusionment when she finds out, from Old Timer, one of the neighborhood’s characters, that he wants a woman who’s ugly and ignorant for his model. What WINE IN THE WILDERNESS captured was the turmoil the blacks feel, the pretenses they assume—like wearing straight-haired wigs—the looting of their own people in a riot—something Old Timer rationalized in a humorous manner.” But something which, like the other deeply felt revelations in the play, goes directly and surely to the heart of the racial dilemma.
Included in Broadway Book Club’s Black Voices Specialty Collection
The Hot Wing King by
Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Ready, set, fry! It’s time for the annual “Hot Wang Festival” in Memphis, Tennessee, and Cordell Crutchfield knows he has the wings that’ll make him king. Supported by his beau Dwayne and their culinary clique, The New Wing Order, Cordell is marinating and firing up his frying pan in a bid to reclaim the crispy crown. When Dwayne takes in his troubled nephew however, it becomes a recipe for disaster. Suddenly, a first place trophy isn’t the only thing Cordell risks losing.
Topdog/Underdog by
Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks’ latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.
Included in Broadway Book Club’s Women’s Voices Specialty Collection
Flex by
The pressure is on for the 1998 Lady Train high school basketball team—on top of a battle to bring home the championship trophy, it is also college scouting season. But the team’s performance on the court is tested as it ruptures under the weight of its own infighting, and the once-tight players begin to focus on their individual futures. What does it mean to be a Black girl on the brink of freedom and womanhood in a small town in the South? Does honoring your own wants mean sacrificing your friends, family, and team? This funny and frank play about getting a full-court press from life will have audiences cheering.
Exception to the Rule by
How do you make it through detention? In the worst high school in the city, six Black students are stuck in Room 111. They flirt. They fight. They tease. Should they follow the rules and stay put, or find an escape? Are the walls keeping them in, or are stronger forces at play?
sandblasted by
Angela and Odessa are on a sandy search for something that might not be real, but they are determined to make a way out of no way. When they stumble upon Adah—that’s right, THE Celebrity-turned-Wellness-Maven Adah—they decide to follow her lead, not knowing that the journey could very well be the cure.
Tambo & Bones by
Tambo and Bones are two characters trapped in a minstrel show. It’s mad hard to feel like a real person when you’re trapped in a minstrel show. Their escape plan: get out, get bank, get even. A rags-to-riches hip-hop journey, this comedy roasts America’s racist past, wrestles with America’s racist present, and explodes America’s post-racial future—where what’s at stake, for those deemed less than human, is the fate of humanity itself.
The Mountaintop by
A gripping reimagination of events the night before the assassination of the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On April 3, 1968, after delivering one of his most memorable speeches, an exhausted Dr. King retires to his room at the Lorraine Motel while a storm rages outside. When a mysterious stranger arrives with some surprising news, King is forced to confront his destiny and his legacy to his people.
Thoughts of a Colored Man by
Dawn breaks in Brooklyn, and seven black men rise to meet the day. One of them, a finance director, leaves his luxurious condo to jog around their rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, just as a grocery-store clerk is starting another soul-crushing shift. At the bus stop, two best friends debate the intricacies of modern dating, while a basketball coach at the youth center grapples with his unrealized potential. At the hospital, a teacher and his father-in-law welcome a new life. And at the barbershop, the whole group meets for cuts and conversation as sparks fly over questions of identity and community. Through the storytelling style of SLAM Narrative, THOUGHTS OF A COLORED MAN celebrates the hopes, ambitions, joys, and triumphs of black men in a world that often refuses to hear them.
Merry Wives by
Set in South Harlem, amidst a vibrant and eclectic community of West African immigrants, MERRY WIVES is a New York story about tricks of the heart. A raucous spinoff featuring the Bard’s most beloved comic characters, this hilarious farce tells the story of the trickster Falstaff and the wily wives who outwit him in a celebration of Black joy, laughter, and vitality.
Included in Broadway Book Club’s Black Voices Specialty Collection.
Chicken & Biscuits by
Can rivaling sisters Baneatta and Beverly bury their father without killing each other? This proves difficult when Beverly shows up to the chapel with her “blessings” on display. Meanwhile, Baneatta’s son brings his neurotic Jewish boyfriend along, knowing Baneatta disapproves, and Beverly’s nosy daughter keeps asking questions no one wants to answer. Baneatta’s pastor husband tries to mediate the family drama, but when a shocking family secret reveals itself at the pulpit, the two sisters are faced with a truth that could either heal or break them.
Sugar in Our Wounds by
On a plantation somewhere down south, a mystical tree reaches up toward heaven. Generations of slaves have been hanged on this tree. But James is going to be different, as long as he keeps his head down and practices his reading. Moreover, as the Civil War rages on, the possibility of freedom looms closer than ever. When a stranger arrives on the plantation, a striking romance emerges, inviting the couple and those around them into uncharted territory.
Red Rex by
The sixth play in Ike Holter’s Rightlynd saga. Red Rex is a scrappy theater company that is on the brink—will they have the hit that puts their name on the map, or the wake-up call that it’s time to throw in the towel? A prodigal son actor and amateur neighborhood talent join the stage to perform a play that may or may not be based on a true story. Internal drama threatens to complicate the production further, causing fireworks both on and offstage. What else could go wrong? Complex and thought-provoking, RED REX asks us: What are we willing to sacrifice to share stories that must be heard, and where do we draw the line?
Blues for an Alabama Sky by
It is the summer of 1930 in Harlem, New York. The creative euphoria of the Harlem Renaissance has given way to the harsher realities of the Great Depression. Young Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is feeding the hungry and preaching an activist gospel at Abyssinian Baptist Church. Black Nationalist visionary Marcus Garvey has been discredited and deported. Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is opening a new family planning clinic on 126th Street, and the doctors at Harlem Hospital are scrambling to care for a population whose most deadly disease is poverty. The play brings together a rich cast of characters who reflect the conflicting currents of the time through their overlapping personalities and politics. Set in the Harlem apartment of Guy, a popular costume designer, and his friend, Angel, a recently fired Cotton Club back-up singer, the cast also includes Sam, a hard-working, jazz-loving doctor at Harlem Hospital; Delia, an equally dedicated member of the staff at the Sanger clinic; and Leland, a recent transplant from Tuskegee, who sees in Angel a memory of lost love and a reminder of those “Alabama skies where the stars are so thick it’s bright as day.” Invoking the image of African-American expatriate extraordinaire, Josephine Baker as both muse and myth, Cleage’s characters struggle, as Guy says, “to look beyond 125th Street” for the fulfillment of their dreams.
Intimate Apparel by
In 1905 New York City, Esther, a Black seamstress, is in great demand for the intimate apparel she creates for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. Though leading a life that provides joy to so many, she remains lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Through a mutual acquaintance, she begins a correspondence with a lonesome Caribbean man named George and soon he persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. However, Esther’s heart is drawn to the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth, and his heart with her. When George arrives in the city, Esther is hit with the reality of the situation and she is forced to face a future that she is truly unprepared for.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by
In a new comedy from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Ruined, Lynn Nottage draws upon the screwball films of the 1930s to take a funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes in Hollywood. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a seventy-year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African-American maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold on to her career. When circumstances collide and both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the cameras leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy scholars will debate for years to come.
