Celebrate Harlem Week with Books from NYPL's Harlem Community Collection
Updated 7/25/2023
An annual event, Harlem Week celebrates the best of this historic and influential New York neighborhood—art, culture, music, entertainment, and more. Taking place this year between August 9–20, there is a wealth of programs and performances to attend in person or virtually. In honor of the festivities, we wanted to spotlight NYPL's Harlem Community Collection—a curated selection of some of the most significant works written about, for, by, and in Harlem and its diverse communities.
Authors in the collection include Maya Angelou, Faith Ringgold, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Nikki Grimes, Walter Dean Myers, Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, and many, many more. The collection is located at the Countee Cullen and Harlem libraries (and will expand to the 125th Street Library when it reopens) to ensure easy access for the community. Copies of these titles are also part of the Library's main collection and can be requested and sent to any branch for pickup and many are available as e-books or e-audiobooks. Below is just a small sample of of what you can find in the Harlem Community Collection for kids, teens, and adults.
Kids
Grandma's Records
by Eric Velasquez
The author describes his boyhood summers spent at his grandmother's apartment in Spanish Harlem where she introduced him to the sounds and steps of the merengue and the conga and told him stories of Puerto Rico.
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library
by Carole Boston Wetherford; illustrated by Eric Velasquez
Luminous paintings and evocative poems by two of the literary world's top African-American scholars trace the efforts of Afro-Puerto Rican legal clerk Arturo Schomburg's efforts to curate a collection of African books, letters, music, and art.
Harlem Charade
by Natasha Tarpley
After Elvin's grandfather is attacked, Jin, Alexandra, and Elvin band together to find out who is responsible, a search that leads them into conflict with a politician with plans to turn Harlem into an amusement park.
Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood
by James Baldwin; illustrations by Yoran Caza
Baldwin's only children's book, Little Man, Little Man follows the day-to-day life of the four-year-old protagonist TJ and his friends in their 1970s Harlem neighborhood as they encounter the social realities of being black in America.
One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance
by Nikki Grimes; artwork by Cozbi Cabrera and others
In this collection of poetry, Grimes looks afresh at the poets of the Harlem Renaissance by combining their work with her own original poetry. Each poem is paired with one-of-a-kind art from an exciting African American illustrator.
Young Adult
145th Street: Short Stories
by Walter Dean Myers
On Harlem’s 145th Street, things happen that don’t happen anywhere else in the world. Get to know Big Joe, who’s throwing his own funeral while he’s here to enjoy it. Meet Kitty and Mack, teens with a love story more real than anything they’ve ever known. Follow Monkeyman, the quietest kid on the block and the last person you’d expect the Tigros gang to target. And don’t miss the block party of the year—the whole neighborhood will be there.
Black Panther & the Crew: We Are the Streets
by Ta-Nehisi Coates; illustrated by Butch Guice
Black Panther, Storm, Luke Cage, Misty Knight, and Manifold team up to confront a wave of street-level threats linked to the suspicious death of a Harlem activist, in a series debut that reveals surprising twists in the history of the Marvel Universe.
Harlem Hustle
by Janet McDonald
Eric "Hustle" Samson, a smart and street-wise seventeen-year-old dropout from Harlem, aspires to rap stardom, a dream he naively believes is about to come true.
X: A Novel
by Ilyasah Shabazz with Kekla Magoon
Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's a pack of lies—after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer. But Malcolm's efforts to leave the past behind lead him into increasingly dangerous territory. Deep down, he knows that the freedom he's found is only an illusion—and that he can't run forever.
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America
edited by Ibi Zoboi
A collection of short stories explore what it is like to be young and black, centering on the experiences of black teenagers and emphasizing that one person's experiences, reality, and personal identity are different than someone else.
Adult
The Tempest Tales
by Walter Mosley
Refusing to go to hell in spite of his technical disqualification from heaven, murdered African American everyman Tempest Landry is sent back to Harlem, where a guiding angel tries to convince him to accept judgment.
Jazz
by Toni Morrison
Set in Harlem during the 1920s, this novel chronicles a bittersweet triangle involving Joe Trace, a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, his mentally unstable wife Violet, and his eighteen-year-old girlfriend.
Behold the Dreamers
by Imbolo Mbue
A Cameroonian immigrant working-class couple living in Harlem and the upper-class American family for whom they work find their lives and marriages shaped by financial circumstances, infidelities, secrets, and the 2008 recession.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabele Wilkerson
Presents an epic history that covers the period from the end of World War I through the 1970s, chronicling the decades-long migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West through the stories of three individuals and their families.
The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem
by Patrick McCloskey
A deeply personal and compelling account of an eventful year at a Catholic high school in central Harlem where mostly disadvantaged (and often non-Catholic) African American males, their families, and staff prevail against society's expectations.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.