Editors Book Recommendations – 40 Underappreciated Classics and Masterpieces

This article was written by Sorcha DeHeer

Whether you like the classics or not, consider giving these ones a try. I have compiled a shortlist of foundational texts that weren’t written by white men. Those exist, despite the education systems insistence that they don’t. I will obviously miss a lot of authors but this list is a good start for your summer reading. 

1. Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
2. The Last Man by Mary Shelley 
3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
4. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker 
6. Middlemarch by George Eliot (also known as Mary Ann Evans)
7. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank 
8. The Secret History by Donna Tart
9. White Teeth by Zadie Smith 
10. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11. America is in the Heat by Carlos Bulosan 
12. The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang 
13. East Goes West by Younghill Kang 
14. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
15. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglas 
16. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
17. Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth 
18. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
19. The Curse of Caste by Julia C. Collins
20. Wynema: A Child of the Forest by S. Alice Callahan
21. A Chinese Ishmael and Other Stories by Sui Sin Far
22. Hawai’i’s Story by Hawai’i’s Queen by Queen Lili’uokalani
23. The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois
24. I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki 
25. The Souls of the Indian by Charles Alexander Eastman
26. The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
27. A Dark Night’s Passing by Naoya Shiga
28. Chaka by Thomas Mofolo
29. The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
30. Quicksand by Nella Larsen
31. Home to Harlem by Claude McKay
32. My People the Sioux by Luther Standing Bear
33. Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang
34. Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
35. Where There’s Love There’s Hate by Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares
36. The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias
37. The Living is Easy by Dorothy West
38. Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone
39. The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
40. In the Country by Mia Alvar

Share this article: