In celebration, we’re providing two historical pieces written by African American authors W. E. B. Du Bois and William Wells Brown in the bookshop.
The books are free, provided by Project Gutenberg, and made available by Drollerie Press in Mobipocket, PDF, and Microsoft Reader. You can also download many other free classics in HTML or text format from Project Gutenberg.
For more great reading, don’t miss The Carl Brandon Society’s Black History Reading List, 
or the recommendations from the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge.
We’ll be adding more African American classic literature to our bookshop throughout the month.
How cool is this? Thanks so much for making these available, Deena! Looking forward to checking out more AA classic lit in the coming days from the bookshop.
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Deena Replied:
February 7th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
@Rae Lori, Thanks!
I’d always intended to get the W. E. B. Dubois out of the library but had never gotten around to it. Now I have no excuse.
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W.E.B DuBois was an amazingly versatile writer and scholar. He wrote a speculative fiction short story called The Comet in 1920. It is included in the anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. The Comet is also available as a stand-alone e-book. The premise is that in a vaguely futuristic yet oddly contemporary world, a passing comet casts a shadow of death over Manhattan. Only two survive: a black man whose world has been one of poverty and hard work, and a white woman who knows only leisure and privilege. If humanity is to have a future, the two must build a new world from the wreckage of the old.
DuBois spent his final years in Ghana, Africa where he is still deeply revered. The home where he once lived still houses his book collection, a bronze bust of him, academic regalia from places like Harvard and, finally, his outdoor tomb. In the building where his tomb is located, the guides take the time to point out, with pride, that the ceiling is constructed out of metal and glass to represent Anansi the spiders eight legs and his web. It is beautiful and very symbolic.
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