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Slim folded his life into the pages of seven autobiographical novels. After several stints in jail he decided to give up the life and turned to writing. He briefly attended the Tuskegee Institute but dropped out to return to the streets of the South Side, where he remained, pimping until he was forty-two. Iceberg Slim, also known as Robert Beck, was born in Chicago in 1918 and was initiated into the life of the pimp at age eighteen. She fought that disease and had several bouts with cancer, and didn't succumb until June 2nd, 2010.

Just as gritty and as resilient as her characters, Bland was diagnosed with Gardner's disease in the 1970s and was told she had only a few years to live. And in doing so, she greatly broadened the appeal of the genre and inspired countless authors of color to follow in her footsteps. popular culture.īland was highly skilled at bringing in characters who had remained on the periphery of or completely missing from the crime fiction of her times. This is thanks largely to her groundbreaking protagonist, Marti MacAlister-a black female police detective working in a Midwestern American town. With MacAlister, Bland created a tough yet beloved heroine who defied the stereotypes of African American women in U.S.

In 1969, fleeing oppression, Himes moved to Moraira, Spain, where he died in 1984 from Parkinson's Disease.Īlthough Eleanor Taylor Bland was 48 when her first crime novel- Dead Time-was published in 1992, it's hard not to consider her a true pioneer of crime fiction. In 1958 he won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Two of his novels were made into feature films: Cotton Comes to Harlem directed by Ossie Davis in 1970 and A Rage in Harlem starring Gregory Hines and Danny Glover in 1991. In his best-selling novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Himes created a brutally frank portrait of racial politics, but he became famous for his acclaimed Harlem Detective series. Ĭhester Bomar Himes was the twentieth century’s most prolific black writer and masterfully captured the spirit of his times, confronting sex, racism, and black identity. For the authors who don’t have a formal website, I’ve provided a link either to their Amazon page or to their profile page on the African American Literature Book Club’s website. Wherever possible, I’ve provided links to the authors’ official websites so that readers may learn more about each writer and check out their books (and hopefully BUY some!). I’ll leave it to you to explore each and discover some new favorite authors/books-and revisit some old ones. Point is, e ach author listed is an outstanding writer (not just an outstanding black writer). While I have read and immensely enjoyed works by each of the featured authors, they are widely considered to be amongst the most influential and talented writers of their respective generation. Mind you, this is by no means an exhaustive list. So, without much further ado, I’m honored to share with you a list of 33 black authors of crime fiction everyone needs to read. Then I realized there was a way-a simple one, really-for me to show support for the #BlackLivesMatter movement via my blog while also keeping the blog focused on crime fiction … all without making the whole damn thing about me. So I nixed the letter, and did some more thinking.

However, about a thousand words into my letter, I realized two things: 1) it was a rambling mess and 2) I had somehow managed to take the critical events currently happening in and beyond the US … and make them about ME. (No, by “aspiring” I don’t mean I was a racist and then tried not to be rather that I’ve always considered myself to be an inclusive and open-minded humanist but have realized that, when it comes to race and institutional racism, I still have a lot to learn.) So, I started to write an open letter-to myself -calling myself out for past indiscretions during interactions with black (and other POC) friends and acquaintances. Thus I didn’t want to distract from the important conversations, essays and articles being led/written by individuals much more qualified than I to address the injustices and civil protests seen across America (and the globe) in recent weeks.īut then I thought maybe I could add to the conversation rather than distract from it by putting aside crime fiction this week and instead writing about my own experiences as an aspiring anti-racist. After all, this blog is dedicated to crime fiction and the writing life not to current events and social change. I wasn’t going to post anything this week.