Tracking the Reception of Colson Whitehead and his Books

Since May 2001 with the release of Colson Whitehead's second novel John Henry Days, I've worked on a bibliography citing coverage of his work in newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals. 

In 2011 with the release of Zone One, I began producing public coverage roundups of Whitehead's books, continuing with The Noble Hustle (2014) The Underground Railroad (2016), The Nickel Boys (2019), Harlem Shuffle (2021), and Crook Manifesto (2023)

I worked with a designer to produce a visualization on some of the novels, Covering Colson Whitehead, 2016 - 2023.

Related:

• A Notebook on the Work of Colson Whitehead

Novels by Black Writers, 2025 - 2000

Here's a roundup of novels published since 2000. As always, it's a partial list. The list emerges from the work that I've done on the Novel Generator Machine.

2025

• Til Death by Busayo Matuluko

• The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston
• Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory
• When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris
• Zeal by Morgan Jerkins
• Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
• The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
• The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
• Saint Monkey by Jacinda Townsend
• Mother Country by Jacinda Townsend
• Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend
• The Love Lyric by Kristina Forest
• King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby
• Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson
• The Scammer by Tiffany D. Jackson

• Marvel: Black Panther: The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

2024 

• The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
• James by Percival Everett
• A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
• Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris
• Faebound by Saara El-Arifi
• Ours by Phillip B. Williams
• The Queen of Sugar Hill--A Novel of Hattie McDaniel by ReShonda Tate
• The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste 
• One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole

• Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield

• The Unicorn Woman by Gayl Jones

• American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas

• Out of Body by Nia Davenport

• 54 Miles by Leonard Pitts Jr.

• Out of Office by A.H. Cunningham

• The Queen of Sugar Hill: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel by ReShonda Tate

• This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan

• The Eternal Ones by Namina Forna

• Children of Anguish and Anarchy by Tomi Adeyemi

• One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon

2023 

• Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
• Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
• Every Man a King—A King Oliver Novel by Walter Mosley 

• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
• The Fraud by Zadie Smith
• Lone Women by Victor LaValle
• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

• The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis
• A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo
• Dangerous Love by Ben Okri
• All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
• The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
• Hide by Tracy Clark
• Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
• River Spirit by Leila Aboulela
• The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle by Tendai Huchu
• Black Candle Women by Diane Marie Brown
• An Autobiography of Skin by Lakiesha Carr
• The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
• The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley
• You Never Know by Connie Briscoe
• Maame by Jessica George
• House of Cotton by Monica Brashears
• The Art of Scandal by Regina Black
• Liquid Snakes by Stephen Kearse
• Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison
• Gone Like Yesterday by Janelle M. Williams
• Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
• Goodbye Earl by Leesa Cross-Smith
• The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump
• Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
• Night Wherever We Go: A novel by Tracey Rose Peyton
• No One Dies Yet by Kobby Ben Ben
• Last Seen in Lapaz by Kwei Quartey
• The Wildest Sun by Asha Lemmie
• Decent People by De'Shawn Charles Winslow
• Token by Beverly Kendall
• Time's Undoing by Cheryl A. Head
• Teeth, Claws, and Blood Red Heart by Fiona Zedde
• Lucky Gril by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu
• Splinter--A Diverse Sleep Hollow Retelling by Jasper Hyde

More Lasting Impacts of Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

By Deborah M. Mix 

I was thrilled when I learned I’d been accepted to the NEH Seminar on Black Poetry After Black Arts, and even more thrilled to discover I’d be learning from and alongside scholars and poets like Evie Shockley, Howard Rambsy II, Tyehimba Jess, Harryette Mullen, and Kevin Quashie in the summer of 2015. The conversations we shared were galvanizing for my pedagogy and scholarship. Kevin Quashie suggested I read Bettina Judd’s patient., and I have since written and published an article on Bettina Judd’s patient. in Revising the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era. 

Tyehimba Jess’s thrilling reading led me to teach his 2016 collection, Olio, in my classes at Ball State University. Evie Shockley’s brilliant close reading strategies have shaped the ways I help my students engage with a variety of contemporary poems. Howard Rambsy’s interest in persona poems led me to think about that complex and innovative field. Harryette Mullen showed me new ways to think about poetic genealogies and about what makes a "nature poem."

None of these experiences would’ve been possible without the tireless work of Maryemma Graham and the rest of her University of Kansas community with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who created such a rich and welcoming space for poetics and scholars from all over the country to read and talk and learn together.

Related: 

• Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections

Mapping HBCU Endowments: A Visualization by Cierra Larke

By Kenton Rambsy 

Cierra Larke’s HBCU Endowments dashboard presents a powerful spatial view of institutional inequality. By mapping the locations and endowment sizes of 146 HBCUs, including schools that have closed, the visualization shows where wealth is concentrated and where financial vulnerability continues. Larger circles signal bigger endowments, making it easy to scan the map and identify sharp gaps in funding.

The dashboard allows viewers to filter by operational status, enrollment size, and whether a school is public or private. These tools reveal how closures, chronic underfunding, and regional neglect shape the financial lives of HBCUs. By placing each school on the map, Cierra makes it easier to understand how geography and funding work together to structure institutional opportunity.

Howard University remains the only HBCU with an endowment over one billion dollars. Most others have far less. Cierra’s dashboard brings this reality into sharp focus by showing how many institutions serve thousands of students with only modest financial support.

This visualization showcases what data storytelling can do. By combining research, design, and social analysis, Cierra creates a tool that informs and challenges. Her work pushes viewers to reflect on how funding inequality shapes the past, present, and future of HBCUs.

Related:

• Data Storytelling, Endowment Inequality, and the IF Retreat at Howard

• How HBCUs Do More with Less: A Visualization by Emily Duru

Reading with First-Semester Collegiate Black Men

Participants in the program, September 2005 

This fall will marks my 21st year teaching an African American literary and cultural studies course for a program for first-semester collegiate Black men here at the university. We've had a good time.

We read Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, and many others. We cover autobiography excerpts, essays, short fiction, poetry, rap, comic books, comic strips, whiteboard animations, and podcast episodes. 

So much has changed and remained the same over the last two decades working with the program. Keep in mind that when I began, I was working with Millennials (1986 - 1996), and for the last 10 years, I've been working with Generation Z (1997 - 2012). That means, I've seen evolving interests and views of the world. 

Some of young men are from Springfield, some from East St. Louis and Belleville, some from St. Louis, and many from the Chicago area. They arrive with varied academic capabilities. The have diverse musical preferences and interests in movies and video games. We have a good time on a variety of projects. 

Related 

• A Notebook on Black Boys, Black Men & Creativity

• A Notebook on Collegiate Students

Blogging about poetry in June 2025

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• June 19: Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement: Reflections

• June 1: Blogging about poetry in May 2025

How HBCUs Do More with Less: A Visualization by Emily Duru

By Kenton Rambsy

Emily Duru, a PhD student in English at Howard University, used Tableau Public to create a pair of visualizations that make HBCU funding disparities impossible to ignore. Her dashboard compares the top HBCUs to a sample of elite public and private PWIs, and the results are staggering. The combined endowments of the top 10 PWIs are more than 100 times larger than those of the top HBCUs.

 
Her work shows how HBCUs like Prairie View A&M and Howard University operate under intense financial pressure while producing some of the best outcomes for Black graduates. Prairie View A&M’s endowment is 133 percent smaller than Texas A&M’s, even though both are part of the same university system. At the same time, Howard’s endowment accounts for 29 percent of all private HBCU endowments and is still minuscule when compared to Harvard or Yale.

 
Emily’s visualization also breaks down operating revenue. She shows that while PWIs benefit from large government allocations, HBCUs rely heavily on tuition and private gifts. Public HBCUs in particular are vulnerable. Despite educating over 70 percent of all HBCU students, they receive far less state support than their PWI counterparts.

 
This visualization tells a story that is both urgent and structural. Emily’s work reflects the broader mission of the Black Data Lab at Howard: to turn raw data into clear stories that reach beyond academic walls. In a moment when federal funding and affirmative action are under attack, this kind of work pushes us to ask not just what the numbers say, but why the inequality persists. Her dashboard proves that data storytelling is a powerful method for truth-telling.

Related:

• Data Storytelling, Endowment Inequality, and the IF Retreat at Howard

• Mapping HBCU Endowments: A Visualization by Cierra Larke

Data Storytelling, Endowment Inequality, and the IF Retreat at Howard

Kenton Rambsy, Dana Williams, Keyanah Nurse

By Kenton Rambsy 

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) launched the Intention Foundry (IF) to support inclusive change in higher education. Funded by the Mellon Foundation and originally designed by Dr. Jovonne Bickerstaff, IF brings together scholars, administrators, and academic society leaders to pursue practical responses to long-standing inequities in the academy. Now led by Dr. Keyanah Nurse, IF emphasizes community building, intentional design, and collaborative problem-solving. 

This summer, the IF retreat took place at Howard University from June 3 to June 5, 2025. The event marked the culmination of a semester-long virtual institute. Alongside my co-steering committee members, Marian Toledo Candelaria and Jennifer Gammage, I helped develop and facilitate a curriculum centered on data storytelling. As the data storytelling specialist in the Center for Applied Data Science and Analytics (CADSA) at Howard, I brought elements of our instructional model to the retreat. Our work showed what happens when social justice priorities align with technical training and critical thinking.

We introduced participants to the FLOAT Method—Formulate, Locate, Organize, Analyze, and Tell—and guided them in using Tableau Public to build data stories. To anchor the institute, we used a shared dataset on HBCU endowments. This decision allowed participants to work from a common reference point and explore structural inequality through data. We added comparative figures from select PWIs to underscore the vast wealth gap.

 
Howard’s endowment stands at just over one billion dollars, the highest among HBCUs. Yet even that amount falls far behind elite institutions like Harvard, which holds over fifty billion. Most HBCUs operate with endowments below fifty million. This activity helped participants see how data can illuminate underfunding, especially when presented in accessible and visual formats.

Two of my Black Data Lab interns at Howard supported the retreat as technical assistants. Cierra Larke, a recent graduate from our data science program, created a visualization that mapped endowments and enrollment numbers across all HBCUs. Emily Duru, a PhD student in English, designed a dashboard  comparing top HBCUs with public and private PWIs.

In my opening remarks, I referenced the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end affirmative action. Justice Clarence Thomas, citing an NSF study, argued that HBCUs already produce a disproportionate number of Black judges, lawyers, and scientists. He framed that success as evidence that HBCUs do not need further support. His statement misreads the issue. Outcomes achieved under resource constraints should not be used to justify disinvestment.

The IF retreat demonstrated how data storytelling can clarify urgent problems and prepare scholars to engage broader publics. Howard provided a fitting setting for this work. We used the institute to cultivate technical fluency, historical awareness, and collective insight. It was a clear example of what becomes possible when equity-focused pedagogy meets the tools of data analysis.

Related:

• How HBCUs Do More with Less: A Visualization by Emily Duru

• Mapping HBCU Endowments: A Visualization by Cierra Larke