African American YA Fiction

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...

High school juniors and best friends Courtney and Jupe, and new sophomore Rae, explore their sexuality and their budding attractions for one another.

A collection of essays and original stories by some of today's most influential young adult authors that speaks directly to teens on how to find hope and comfort in today's turbulent society.

Growing up in Louisiana in the late 1960s, where segregation and prejudice still thrive, two high school football players, one white, one black, become friends, but some changes are too difficult to accept.

In the aftermath of Dr. King's assassination in 1968, Chicago fourteen-year-old Maxie longs to join the Black Panthers, whether or not her brother Raheem, ex-boyfriend Sam, or her friends like it, and is soon caught up in the violence of anti-war and civil rights demonstrations.

When the draft board calls on the eve of World War II, Roman leaves behind a career in minor-league baseball to join the army, and finds himself driving a tank in the North African campaign.

The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.

As rehearsals begin for the ballet version of Peter Pan, the teenaged members of an Ohio dance troupe lose their focus when one of their own goes missing.

Fifteen-year-old Drew "True" Robinson loves being the best point-guard prospect in high school basketball, but learns the consequences of fame through a former player, as well as through the man who expects to be his manager when True reaches the NBA.

Keysha's drama: Sent to live the wealthy father she has never known, street-smart sixteen-year-old Keysha Kendall, bitter about her troubled childhood, refuses to forget--or let anyone else forget--where she came from as she struggles to belong. If I were your boyfriend: Keysha, wrongly accused of drug dealing, and Wesley, arrested for stealing a car, connect when they return to school and face their legal and social problems.