44 Novels about American slavery

Absalom, Absalom! is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. Taking place before, during, and after the American Civil War, it is a story about three families of the American South, with a focus on the life of Thomas Sutpen.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other Twain novels and a friend of Tom Sawyer. It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The African is a 1967 novel by Harold Courlander.

Amos Fortune, Free Man is a biographical novel by Elizabeth Yates that won the Newbery Medal for excellence in American children's literature in 1951. It is about a young African prince who is captured and taken to America as a slave. He masters a trade, purchases his freedom and dies free in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in 1801.

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison. Set after the American Civil War, it tells the story of a family of former slaves whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. Beloved is inspired by a true life incident involving Margaret Garner, an escaped slave from Kentucky who fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856, but was captured in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When U.S. Marshals burst into the cabin where Garner and her husband had barricaded themselves, they found that she had killed her two-year-old daughter and was attempting to kill her other children to spare them from being returned to slavery.

Boy's Next Door [sic], also known as Shōnen Zanzō, is a one-volume manga by Kaori Yuki. The story, set in Los Angeles, follows the love affair of Adrian, a haunted teacher, and Lawrence, a young male prostitute.

Cane River is a 2001 family saga by Lalita Tademy. It was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.

The Chaneysville Incident is a 1981 novel by David Bradley. The novel won the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It concerns a black historian who investigates an incident involving the death of his father and a prior incident involving the death of some 12 slaves. John, the historian, struggles to solve the mystery of his father, Moses Washington, a moonshiner with a troubled past. Imagination, hunting, death, and racial tensions all make thematic appearances in the novel. Chaneysville is in Bedford County, Pennsylvania.

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown about Clotel and her sister, fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson. Brown, who escaped from slavery in 1834 at the age of 20, published the book in London. He was staying after a lecture tour to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Set in the early nineteenth century, it is considered the first novel published by an African American and is set in the United States. Three additional versions were published through 1867.

Cloudsplitter is a 1998 historical novel by Russell Banks relating the story of abolitionist John Brown.

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by American writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns the slave revolt in Virginia in 1831. It is based on The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, a first-hand account of Turner's confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas Ruffin Gray, in 1831.

Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp is the second popular novel from American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was first published in two volumes by Phillips, Sampson and Company in 1856. Although it enjoyed better initial sales than her previous, and more famous, novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was ultimately less popular. Dred was of a more documentary nature than Uncle Tom's Cabin and thus lacked a character like Uncle Tom to evoke strong emotion from readers.

Fire on the Mountain is a 1988 novel by the American author Terry Bisson. It is an alternate history describing the world as it would have been had John Brown succeeded in his raid on Harper's Ferry and touched off a slave rebellion in 1859, as he intended.

Flash for Freedom! is a 1971 novel by George MacDonald Fraser. It is the third of the Flashman novels.

Gone with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea". This historical novel features a coming-of-age story, with the title taken from the poem “Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae”, written by Ernest Dowson.

Hang a Thousand trees with Ribbons is a 1996 historical novel by Ann Rinaldi. The story, told in first-person narration, follows the life of Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American poet. The story recounts her capture by black slavers in Africa and the horrors of the Middle Passage as experienced by a woman of intelligence and artistic ability when society assumed Africans were not endowed with either. Ann Rinaldi's vivid portrayal of the first African American poet is set against the backdrop of the American War of Independence, so there is a double theme of search for liberty in the novel.

Jubilee (1966) is a historical novel written by Margaret Walker, which focuses on the story of a biracial slave during the American Civil War. It is set in Georgia and later in various parts of Alabama in the mid-19th century before, during, and after the Civil War.

Kindred is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. First published in 1979, it is still widely popular. It has been frequently chosen as a text for community-wide reading programs and book organizations, as well as being a common choice for high school and college courses.

The Known World is a 2003 historical novel by Edward P. Jones. Set in Virginia during the antebellum era, it examines the issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by both white and black Americans.

Mandingo is a novel by Kyle Onstott, published in 1957. The book is set in the 1830s in the antebellum South primarily around Falconhurst, a fictional plantation in Alabama owned by the planter Warren Maxwell. The narrative centers on Maxwell, his son Hammond, and the Mandingo slave Ganymede, or Mede. Mandingo is a tale of cruelty toward the black people of that time and place, detailing the overwhelmingly dehumanizing behavior meted out to the slaves, as well as vicious fights, poisoning, and violent death. The novel was made into a film of the same name in 1975.

March (2005) is a novel by Geraldine Brooks. It is a novel that retells Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists' absent father. Brooks has inserted the novel into the classic tale, revealing the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in 1862. The novel won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

A Mercy is Toni Morrison's ninth novel. It was published in 2008. A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery in early America. It is both the story of mothers and daughters and the story of a primitive America. It made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008" as chosen by the paper's editors. In Fall 2010 it was chosen for the One Book, One Chicago program.

The Minister's Wooing is a historical novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, first published in 1859. Set in 18th-century New England, the novel explores New England history, highlights the issue of slavery, and critiques the Calvinist theology in which Stowe was raised. Due to similarities in setting, comparisons are often drawn between this work and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). However, in contrast to Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, The Minister's Wooing is a "sentimental romance"; its central plot revolves around courtship and marriage. Moreover, Stowe's exploration of the regional history of New England deals primarily with the domestic sphere, the New England response to slavery, and the psychological impact of the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and disinterested benevolence.

Nightjohn is a book Gary Paulsen, first published in 1993. It is about slavery in the American South shortly before the time of the American Civil War. It was later made into a movie of the same name.

The Partisan Leader; A Tale of The Future is a political novel by the antebellum Virginia author and jurist Nathaniel Beverley Tucker. A two-volume work published in 1836 in New York City and in 1837 in Washington, D.C. under the pen-name "Edward William Sydney," the novel is set thirteen years into the future, in 1849, and imagines a world where the American states south of Virginia have seceded from the Union. The story traces the formation of a band of Virginia insurgents who seek to free their state from federal control and adjoin it to the independent Southern Confederacy.

A Picture of Freedom is a children's historical novel written by Patricia C. McKissack and published by Scholastic in 1997 as part of their Dear America series.

Property is a 2003 novel by Valerie Martin, and was the winner of the 2003 Orange Prize. In 2012, The Observer named Property as one of "The 10 best historical novels".

Queen: The Story of an American Family is a 1993 partly factual historical novel by Alex Haley and David Stevens.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, transported to North America; following his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent forty-six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including twenty-two weeks at number one. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979). It stimulated interest in genealogy and appreciation for African-American history.

Sacred Hunger is a historical novel by Barry Unsworth first published in 1992. It shared the Booker Prize that year with Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.

Sapphira and the Slave Girl is Willa Cather's last novel, published in 1940. It is the story of Sapphira Dodderidge Colbert, a bitter but privileged white woman, who becomes irrationally jealous of Nancy, a beautiful young slave. The book balances an atmospheric portrait of antebellum Virginia against an unblinking view of the lives of Sapphira's slaves.

Sarny: A Life Remembered is the sequel to Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen. It was published on September 8, 1997 by Dell Books.

The Sellout is a 2015 novel by Paul Beatty published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the UK by Oneworld Publications in 2016. The novel takes place in and around Los Angeles, California, and concerns a protagonist who grows artisanal marijuana and watermelons. Beatty has stated his motivation for writing the novel was that "[he] was broke".

The Store is a 1932 novel by Thomas Sigismund Stribling. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1933. It is the second book of the Vaiden trilogy, comprising The Forge, The Store, and Unfinished Cathedral. All three books in the trilogy have been kept in print since the mid-1980s by the University of Alabama Press.

Theory of War is a 1992 novel by American-British writer Joan Brady. It took her ten years to write but was rejected by her US agent. It was then published by UK publisher Andre Deutsch and was well received. It became the 1993 Whitbread Novel of the Year and Book of the Year in the UK, won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in the US.

True North is a 1996 historical novel for young adults by Kathryn Lasky, and published by Scholastic Corporation Set in 1850s America, it is a story about the Underground Railroad. Afrika, a slave girl from Virginia, and Lucy, an independent girl constricted by Boston society, take different paths in life, Lucy exploring her family's history, and Afrika desperately searching for freedom, narrowly escaping capture.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".

Underground Airlines is a 2016 novel by Ben Winters which is set in a contemporary alternate-history United States where the American Civil War never occurred because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated prior to his 1861 inauguration and a version of the Crittenden Compromise was adopted instead. As a result, slavery has remained legal in the "Hard Four" : Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and a unified Carolina. Its name evokes the Underground Railroad in relations to its setting. The novel attracted praise for exploring racism through the alternate-history mechanism.

The Underground Railroad, published in 2016, is the sixth novel by American author Colson Whitehead.

Underground to Canada is an historical novel for young readers by Barbara Smucker. It was first published in Canada in 1977 and published in the United States the following year as Runaway to Freedom: A Story of the Underground Railway. Based partially on a true story, the novel is set in the United States and Canada in the years leading up to the American Civil War and depicts the hard lives of slaves in the American South and the people who helped them escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad. The novel is studied in many Canadian schools.

Walk Through Darkness is a 2002 novel by American author David Anthony Durham.

The Water Dancer is the debut novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates, published on September 24, 2019, by One World, an imprint of Random House. It is a surrealist story set in the pre–Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction" which can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways.

Wolf by the Ears is a young adult novel by Ann Rinaldi, first published in 1991. It is about a young girl, Harriet Hemings, who is a slave belonging to Thomas Jefferson. She tries to decide if she will stay and be a slave or leave and take her freedom; the other issue for her to decide on is whether "passing" is an option. Meanwhile, there are constant rumors about Thomas Jefferson being her father.

The Yellow Chief: A Romance of the Rocky Mountains is a novel by Thomas Mayne Reid written in 1869, converging frontier fiction with anti-slavery messages. The Yellow Chief tells the story of a southern mulatto slave who runs away to become a Cheyenne Indian chief in the Rocky Mountains, seeking revenge on his cruel plantation owners as they emigrate to the West.