The American Book Awards

For more information about the American Book Awards and their sponsoring organization, the Before Columbus Foundation, click here.

2018
The best we could do : an illustrated memoir by Thi Bui
God's will for monsters by Rachelle Cruz
The man-not : race, class, genre, and the dilemmas of black manhood by Tommy Curry
Heaven is all goodbyes by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Life of the land : articulations of a native writer by Dana Naone Hall
City of inmates : conquest, rebellion, and the rise of human caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965 by Kelly Lytle Hernández
The changeling : a novel by Victor Lavalle
Currents by Bojan Louis
Tell me how it ends : an essay in forty questions by Valeria Luiselli
Altermundos : Latin@ speculative literature, film, and popular culture by Cathryn Josefina Merla-Watson and B. V. Olguín
The dawn of Detroit : a chronicle of slavery and freedom in the City of the Straits by Tiya Miles
Nature poem by Tommy Pico
Patriarchy blues by Rena Priest
Shadowboxing : poems & impersonations by Joseph Rios
Beasts of burden : animal and disability liberation by Sunaura Taylor

2017
Adnan's story : the search for truth and justice after Serial by Rabia Chaudry
Invisible men : a contemporary slave narrative in the era of mass incarceration by Flores A. Forbes
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Passings by Holly Hughes
Him, me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
The book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden
Sounding thunder : the stories of Francis Pegahmagabow by Brian D. McInnes
Blood at the root : a racial cleansing in America by Patrick Phillips
Race and the totalitarian century: geopolitics in the black literary imagination by Vaughn Rasberry
Year of the rat by Marc Anthony Richardson
Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan
See you in the streets : art, action, and remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire by Ruth Sergel
Look : poems by Solmaz Sharif
Memory foam by Adam Soldofsky
The Mexican flyboy by Alfredo Véa
Seeing the light : four decades in Chinatown by Dean Wong

2016
Tributaries by Laura Da'
A curious land : stories from home by Susan Muaddi Darraj
We too sing America : South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants shape our multiracial future by Deepa Iyer
Loving Day : a novel by Mat Johnson
Counternarratives : stories and novellas by John Keene
F.B. eyes : how J. Edgar Hoover's ghostreaders framed African American literature by William J. Maxwell
Trace : memory, history, race, and the American landscape by Lauret Savoy
The American slave coast : a history of the slave-breeding industry by Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette
Return to Arroyo Grande by Jesús Salvador Treviño
Tomorrow's battlefield : US proxy wars and secret ops in Africa by Nick Turse
Manifestation wolverine : the collected poetry of Ray Young Bear by Ray Young Bear

2015
Rebel music : race, empire, and the new Muslim youth culture by Hisham Aidi
Her beckoning hands : poems by Arlene Biala
Forbidden City, USA : Chinese American nightclubs, 1936-1970 by Arthur Dong
An indigenous people's history of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The Black Man of Happiness by Peter J. Harris
A brief history of seven killings : a novel by Marlon James
Transformation of the African American intelligentsia, 1880–2012 by Martin Kilson
This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate by Naomi Klein
The Moor's account : a novel by Laila Lalami
Los Duros by Manuel Luis Martinez
from unincorporated territory [guma’] by Craig Santos Perez
The universal tone : bringing my story to light by Carlos Santana, with Ashley Kahn and Hal Miller
Southside Buddhist : essays by Ira Sukrungruang
The people's platform : taking back power and culture in the digital age by Astra Taylor
Lifetime Achievement: Anne Waldman

2014
Breach of trust : how Americans failed their soldiers and their country by Andrew Bacevich
Black against empire : the history and politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin
Vital signs by Juan Delgado (poetry) and Thomas McGovern (photography)
The five acts of Diego León : a novel by Alex Espinoza
Jim Crow wisdom : memory and identity in Black America since 1940 by Jonathan Scott Holloway
Hyperboreal by Joan Naviyuk Kane
See now then by Jamaica Kincaid
Boyishly by Tanya Olson
Home/Bass by Sterling D. Plumpp
Searching for Zion by Emily Raboteau
Eye of witness : a Jerome Rothenberg reader by Jerome Rothenberg with Heriberto Yepez
Kill anything that moves : the real American war in Vietnam by Nick Turse
Wash by Margaret Wrinkle
Water chasing water by Koon Woon

2013
Blood songs : poems by Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
The block captain's daughter by Demetria Martinez
The orchardist by Amanda Coplin
When my brother was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
The round house by Louise Erdrich
Black patriots and loyalists : fighting for emancipation in the war for independence by Alan Gilbert
Subversives : the FBI's war on student radicals, and Reagan's rise to power by Seth Rosenfeld
A simple revolution : the making of an activist poet by Judy Grahn
Corpse whale by D. G. Nanouk Okpik
Singing in magnetic hoofbeat : [essays, prose texts, interviews and a lecture, 1991-2007] by Will Alexander
Cherokee stories of the Turtle Island liars' club by Christopher B. Teuton
San Francisco Chinatown : a guide to its history and architecture by Philip P. Choy
Ring of bone; collected poems, 1950-1971 by Lew Welch
Crazy brave : a memoir by Joy Harjo
Lifetime Achievement Award: Ivan Argüelles, Greil Marcus, Floyd Salas

2012
Day of honey : a memoir of food, love, and war by Annia Ciezadlo
What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? by Arlene Kim
Whorled : poems by Ed Bok Lee
Super black : American pop culture and Black superheroes by Adilifu Nama
Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor by Rob Nixon
American masculine : stories by Shann Ray
Qaluyaarmiuni Nunamtenek Qanemciput : our Nelson Island stories, translated by Alice Rearden ; Ann Fienup-Riordan, editor
Who's afraid of post-blackness? what it means to be Black now by Touré
The submission by Amy Waldman
The translator's sister by Mary Winegarden
Ardency : a chronicle of the Amistad rebels by Kevin Young
Lifetime Achievement Award : Eugene B. Redmond

2011
John Oliver Killens : a life of Black literary activism by Keith Gilyard
Journey into America : the challenge of Islam by Akbar Ahmed
Suck on the marrow by Camille Dungy
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita
African American writers and classical tradition by William W. Cook & James Tatum
Shrouds of White Earth by Gerald Vizenor
Extra Indians by Eric Gansworth
The death of Stalin : selected early poems, 1978-1989 by Ivan Argüelles
The complete plays of Jean Racine : the fratricides by Geoffrey Alan Argent
You have given me a country by Neela Vaswani
Insides she swallowed by Sasha Pimentel Chacón
The Afro-Latin@ reader : history of culture in the United States by Miriam Jimenez Roman & Juan Flores
Bring down the little birds : on mothering, art, work, and everything else by Carmen Gimenez Smith

2010
Digging : the Afro-American soul of American classical music by Amiri Baraka
Flood song by Sherwin Bitsui
A new language, a new world: Italian immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945 by Nancy Carnevale
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
World ball notebook by Sesshu Foster
Live from Fresno y Los : stories by Stephen D. Gutierrez
The big machine : a novel by Victor Lavalle
This is what they say : a story cycle dictated in northern Alberta in 1928 by François Mandeville ; translated from the Chipewyan by Ron Scollon
Short girls : a novel by Bich Minh Nguyen
Black, brown & beige : Surrealist writings from Africa and the diaspora, edited by Franklin Rosemont and Robin D.G. Kelley
Poems for the millennium : the University of California book of modern & postmodern poetry : volume three: The University of California book of Romantic & Postromantic poetry, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson
Pacific raven : Hawai`i poems by Kathryn Waddell Takara
Crazy love : new poems by Pamela Uschuk
Lifetime Achievement: Quincy Troupe and Katha Politt

2009
Betrayal : how black intellectuals have abandoned the ideals of the civil rights era by Houston A. Baker, Jr.
Ask for a convertible : stories by Danit Brown
Please by Jericho Brown
The last supper of Chicano heroes : selected works of José Antonio Burciaga, edited by Mimi R. Gladstein and Daniel Chacón
Uncertain peril : genetic engineering and the future of seeds by Claire Hope Cummings
If I die in Juarez by Stella Pope Duarte
All of it singing : new and selected poems by Linda Gregg
Breaking poems by Suheir Hammad
The age of wonder : how the romantic generation discovered the beauty and terror of science by Richard Holmes
A power stronger than itself : The AACM and American experimental music by George E. Lewis
Ghosts of El Grullo by Patricia Santana
My vocabulary did this to me : the collected poetry of Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian
Lifetime Achievement Award: Miguel Algarin

2008
How does it feel to be a problem? : being young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi
Slavery by another name : the re-enslavement of Black people in America from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
Russians in Tlingit America : the battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804 by Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, and Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká
All that lies between us by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
The collected poetry of Nikki Giovanni, 1968-1998 by Nikki Giovanni
Prairie style by C. S. Giscombe
Where I must go : a novel by Angela Jackson
Each month I sing by L. Luis Lopez
Doing nothing : a history of loafers, loungers, slackers, and bums in America by Tom Lutz
Steer toward rock by Fae Myenne Ng
The ocean in the closet : a novel by Yuko Taniguchi
Don't deny my name : words and music and the black intellectual tradition by Lorenzo Thomas; Aldon Lynn Nielsen, editor
Incognegro : a memoir of exile and apartheid by Frank B. Wilderson III
Al’ America : travels through America’s Arab and Islamic roots by Jonathan Curiel
Lifetime Achievement Award:  J. J. Phillips, Author of Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale

2007
How the Irish invented slang : the secret language of the crossroads by Daniel Cassidy
Come Hell or high water : Hurricane Katrina and the color of disaster by Michael Eric Dyson
Butterfly boy : memories of a Chicano mariposa by Rigoberto Gonzalez
Across a hundred mountains by Reyna Grande
Blonde Indian : an Alaska Native memoir by Ernestine Hayes
The earth knows my name : food, culture, and sustainability in the gardens of ethnic Americans by Patricia Klindienst
Jimbo's inferno by Gary Panter
Beyond literary Chinatown by Jeffrey F. L. Partridge
Wisdom of the body by Judith Roche
The space between by Kali Vanbaale

2006
The testing of Luther Albright : a novel by MacKenzie Bezos
Shoot the buffalo by Matt Briggs
The white tortilla : reflections of a second-generation Mexican-American by David Diaz
The Columbia guide to contemporary African American fiction by Darryl Dickson-Carr
Feeling Italian : the art of ethnicity in America by Thomas J. Ferraro
Skin tax by Tim Z. Hernandez
Audiotopia : music, race, and America by Josh Kun
Nate by P. Lewis
Gumboot determination : the story of the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium by Peter Metcalfe
The toughest gang in town : police stories from old San Francisco by Kevin J. Mullen
A broken flute : the Native experience in books for children, edited by Doris Seale and Beverly Slapin
Somewhere else : poems by Matthew Shenoda
Scalding heart by Carlton T. Spiller

2005
The contemporary African American novel : its folk roots and modern literary branches by Bernard W. Bell
Rise up singing : Black women writers on motherhood by Cecelie Berry
Can't stop, won't stop : a history of the hip-hop generation by Jeff Chang
Redemption by Julie Chibbaro
Against all enemies : inside America's war on terror by Richard A. Clarke
The red cedar of Afognak : a driftwood journey by Alisha S. Drabek and Karen R. Adams
The horse in the kitchen : stories of a Mexican-American family by Ralph M. Flores
Swimming in the American : a memoir and selected writings by Hiroshi Kashiwagi
Crimes against nature : how George W. Bush and his corporate pals are plundering the country and hijacking our democracy by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Country of origin : a novel by Don Lee
Long movie of shadows by Lamont B. Steptoe
No lonesome road : selected prose and poems by Don West

2004
Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber
Enemy aliens : double standards and constitutional freedoms in the war on terrorism by David Cole
Shifting : the double lives of Black women in America by Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden, Ph.D.
Breaking away by Kristin Lattany
Multicultural American literature : comparative Black, Native, Latino/a, and Asian American fictions by A. Robert Lee
What I stole by Diane Sher Lutovich
All over creation by Ruth Ozeki
Prayer to spider woman [Rezo a la mujer araña] by Renato Rosaldo
Freedom is, freedom ain't : jazz and the making of the Sixties by Scott Saul
And all the saints by Michael Walsh

2003
Paradise Alley : a novel by Kevin Baker
Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling
Secrets : a memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg
Under the fifth sun : Latino literature from California, edited by Rick Heide
Akuzilleput Igaqullghet, our words put to paper sourcebook in St. Lawrence Island Yupik Heritage and History, Igor Krupnik, Willis Walunga, and Vera Metcalf, editors; compiled by Igor Krupnik and Lars Krutak
This war called love : nine stories by Alejandro Murguía
The full Rudy : the man, the myth, the mania by Jack Newfield
Italian stories by Joseph Papaleo
What is this thing called jazz? : African American musicians as artists, critics, and activists by Eric Porter
Douglass’ women by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Riding the bus with my sister : a true life journey by Rachel Simon
Raising ourselves : a Gwich'in coming of age story from the Yukon River by Velma Wallis
Editor Award: Max Rodriguez, QBR : The Black Book Review (www.qbr.com)

2002
The sound of dreams remembered : poems 1990-2000 by Al Young
Reading the funnies : essays on comic strips by Donald Phelps
Is there no other way? : the search for a nonviolent future by Michael N. Nagler
Lipstick and other stories by Alex Kuo
Shell Shaker by Lee Ann Howe
Interrogations at noon : poems by Dana Gioia
Homeless at Home by Gloria Frym
The living blood by Tananarive Due
Fire in Beulah by Rilla Askew
Body toxic : an environmental memoir by Susanne Antonetta
Colcha by Aaron A. Abeyta
Children's Literature:  Angels in the Vineyards by Jessel Miller

2001
Listening to our grandmothers' stories : the Bloomfield Academy for Chickasaw Females, 1852-1949 by Amanda J. Cobb
Scapegoat : the Jews, Israel, and women's liberation by Andrea Dworkin
When living was a labor camp by Diana García
Kissing the bread : new and selected poems, 1969-1999 by Sandra M. Gilbert
Blowback : the costs and consequences of American empire by Chalmers Johnson
Phoenix eyes and other stories by Russell Charles Leong
The island of lost luggage by Janet McAdams
Bruised hibiscus : a novel by Elizabeth Nunez
Killing time with strangers by W. S. Penn
Packinghouse daughter : a memoir by Cheri Register
Jimmy Corrigan : the smartest kid on Earth by Chris Ware
Seasons of mangoes and brainfire by Carolyne Wright

2000
From the belly of my beauty : poems by Esther G. Belin
Sing when the spirit says sing : selected & new poems 1960-1990 by Jon Eckels
Amok : essays from an Asian American perspective by Emil Guillermo
Barefoot heart : stories of a migrant child by Elva Treviño Hart
It's not nostalgia : poetry and prose by Michael Lally
All souls : a family story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald
The Iceworker sings and other poems by Andrés Montoya
Mothers who think : tales of real-life parenthood, edited by Kate Moses and Camille Peri
Ecology of a cracker childhood by Janisse Ray
Italian American : the racializing of an ethnic identity by David A. J. Richards
Spoken soul : the story of Black English by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford
Why she left us by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
The trickster shift : humor and irony in contemporary native art by Allan J. Ryan
Year in Nam : a Native American soldier's story by Leroy TeCube
Front row at the White House : my life and times by Helen Thomas
Exotica by David Toop
Heads by Harry (as part of trilogy with Wild meat and the bully burgers and Blu's Hanging) by Lois-Ann Yamanaka

1999
The farming of bones : a novel by Edwidge Danticat
Right here, right now by Trey Ellis
The floating borderlands : twenty-five years of U.S. Hispanic literature edited by Lauro Flores
What book!? :  Buddha poems from Beat to Hiphop by Gary Gach
Hip hop America by Nelson George
The last paradise by James D. Houston
Ghost dancing by Anna Linzer
Transforming the culture of schools : Yup'ik Eskimo examples by Jerry Lipka, with Gerald V. Mohatt and the Ciulistet Group
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
The Freshour cylinders by Speer Morgan
The men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
Salvation and other disasters : short stories by Josip Novakovich
First fish, first people : salmon tales of the North Pacific Rim edited by Judith Roche and Meg McHutchison
Sometimes the soul by Gioia Timpanelli
Survivor's medicine : short stories by E. Donald Two-Rivers
Nobody's son : notes from an American life by Luis Alberto Urrea
Just my soul responding : rhythm and blues, Black consciousness, and race relations by Brian Ward
Children' s Book Award: Home to Medicine Mountain, Chiori Santiago (writer) and Judith Lowry (illustrator)

1998
On native ground : memoirs and impressions by Jim Barnes
Bitter grounds by Sandra Benitez
Dog road woman by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Blues legacies and Black feminism : Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis
Underworld by Don DeLillo
The birth of bebop : a social and musical history by Scott DeVeaux
Comfort woman by Nora Okja Keller
The undertaking : life studies from the dismal trade by Thomas Lynch
All saints by Brenda Marie Osbey
Love like gumbo by Nancy Rawles
Safari west by John A. Williams

1997
Et Tu...Raza by Alurista
The post-rapture diner by Dorothy Barresi
Black intellectuals : race and responsibility in American life by William M. Banks
Gospel choirs : psalms of survival for an alien land called home by Derrick Bell
Maker of saints : a novel by Thulani Davis
Derby Dugan's depression funnies by Tom De Haven
Imagine the angels of bread : poems by Martin Espada
Dreams of the centaur : a novel by Monserrat Fontes
The new world border : prophecies, poems, and loqueras for the end of the century by Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Race traitor edited by Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey
Women of the Beat generation : the writers, artists, and muses at the heart of revolution by Brenda Knight
Among the white moon faces : an Asian-American memoir of the homelands by Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Contours of the heart : South Asians map North America by Sunaina Maira and Rajini Srikanth
Nightland : a novel by Louis Owens

1996
Reservation blues by Sherman Alexie
The physician of London : the second part of the seventeenth-century trilogy of Nicholas Cooke by Stephanie Cowell
Arranged marriage : stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Longing by Maria Espinosa
The tunnel by William Gass
The unbearable heart by Kimiko Hahn
Girl hurt by E. J. Miller Laino
Native speaker by Chang-rae Lee
Lies my teacher told me : everything your American history textbook got wrong by James W. Loewen
One by one from the inside out : essays and reviews on race and responsibility in America by Glenn C. Loury
A woman in amber : healing the trauma of war and exile by Agate Nesaule
Palestine : in the Gaza Strip by Joe Sacco
Sounding off! : music as subversion/resistance/revolution edited by Ron Sakolsky and Fred Wei-han Ho
Archipelago by Arthur Sze
Astoria : a novel by Robert Viscusi

1995
Life sentences : writers, artists, and AIDS edited and with an introduction by Thomas Avena
Brotherman : the odyssey of black men in America edited by Herb Boyd and Robert Allen
Face of an angel by Denise Chávez
Speak now against the day : the generation before the civil rights movement in the South by John Egerton
The light people : a novel by Gordon Henry, Jr.
The winged seed : a remembrance by Li-Young Lee
I am becoming the woman I've wanted by Sandra Haldeman Martz
Green fires : assault on Eden : a novel of the Ecuadorian rainforest by Marnie Mueller
Banished children of Eve by Peter Quinn
Rocking the babies by Linda Raymond
Spidertown: a novel by Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.
Black noise : rap music and black culture in contemporary America by Tricia Rose
Rebellion from the roots : Indian uprising in Chiapas by John Ross
Crossing Ocean Parkway : readings by an Italian American daughter by Marianna De Marco Torgovnick

1994
Aloud : voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe edited by Miguel Algarín and Bob Holman
Flood! a novel in pictures by Eric Drooker
The black Atlantic : modernity and double consciousness by Paul Gilroy
Daughters of feminists by Rose Glickman
Bloodlines : odyssey of a native daughter by Janet Campbell Hale
Legends from camp : poems by Lawson Inada
In search of Bernabé by Graciela Limón
Economic empowerment through the Church by Gregory J. Reed
Benedetta in Guysterland by Giose Rimanelli
A different mirror : a history of multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
Scenes from the movie Giant by Tino Villanueva
Wood-Hoopoe Willie by Virginia Kroll, illustrated by Katherine Roundtree
Volunteer slavery : my authentic Negro experience by Jill Nelson

1993
Snake poems : an Aztec invocation by Francisco X. Alarcón
The rascal king : the life and times of James Michael Curley by Jack Beatty
Paris connections : African-American artists in Paris by Asake Bomani and Belvie Rooks
Elevating the game : black men and basketball by Nelson George
The unquiet earth : a novel by Denise Giardina
Claiming breath by Diane Glancy
Beyond the culture wars : how teaching the conflicts can revitalize American education by Gerald Graff
We gave away a fortune : stories of people who have devoted themselves and their wealth to peace, justice and the environment by Christopher Mogil and Anne Slepian, with Peter Woodrow
Neets'aii Gwiindaii : living in the Chandalar country by Katherine Peter
The history of home by Leroy Quintana
The eye in the ceiling : selected poems by Eugene Redmond
Twice blessed by Ninotchka Rosca
Beyond eurocentrism and multiculturalism by Cornel West

1992
Jessie and Jesus by Raymond Andrews
Cousin Claire by Raymond Andrews
Cebu by Peter Bacho
Black thunder : an anthology of contemporary African-American drama edited by William B. Branch
Madam C. J. Walker : entrepreneur by A'Lelia Perry Bundles
Undocumented love by José Antonio Burciaga
Belonging to the universe : explorations on the frontiers of science and spirituality by Fritjof Capra and David Steindl-Rast with Thomas Capra
Hansberry's drama : commitment amid complexity by Steven Carter
In the realm of a dying emperor by Norma Field
The unknown internment : an oral history of the relocation of Italian Americans during World War II by Stephen Fox
Simians, cyborgs and women : the reinvention of nature by Donna J. Haraway
A Dena'ina legacy, K'tl'egh'i Sukdu : the collected writings of Peter Kalifornsky, edited by James Kari and Alan Boraas
The last fine time by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Calendar of dust by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Beyond deserving by Sandra Scofield
Maus: A Survivor's Tale. I: My Father Bleeds History; II: And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman
To the American Indian : reminiscences of a Yurok woman by Lucy Thompson (Che-ne-wah Weitch-ah-wah)
The journey : Japanese Americans, racism and renewal  Painting and text by Sheila Hamanaka ; book design by Steve Frederick
Voices of the self : a study of language by Keith Gilyard

1991
Homesick : new & selected stories by Lucia Berlin
Terra firma : poems by Thomas Centolella
Lakota woman by Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes
Haa tuwunaagu yis, for healing our spirit : Tlingit oratory, edited by Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer
Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn
In mad love and war by Joy Harjo
Yearning : race, gender and cultural politics by bell hooks
Looking for home : women writing about exile, edited by Deborah Keenan and Roseann Lloyd
Harvest song : collected essays and stories by Meridel Le Sueur
Heroism in the new Black poetry : introductions & interviews by D.H. Melhem
Overtime : punchin' out with the Mill Hunk Herald by The Mill Hunk Herald
The art and imagination of Langston Hughes by R. Baxter Miller
Southern front by Alejandro Murguia
Soldados : Chicanos in Vietnam, edited by Charley Trujillo
Through the arc of the rain forest : a novel by Karen Tei Tamashita
Philadelphia fire : a novel by John Edgar Wideman
Black robes, white justice by Bruce Wright

1990
Spider Woman's granddaughters : traditional tales and contemporary writing by Native American women edited and with an introduction by Paula Gunn Allen
Black Athena : the Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization (2 vols.) by Martin Bernal
Invocation L.A. : urban multicultural poetry by Michelle T. Clinton, Sesshu Foster, and Naomi Quinonez
Miles, the autobiography by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe
Hearts of sorrow : Vietnamese-American lives by James M. Freeman
Women on war : essential voices for the nuclear age edited by Daniela Gioseffi
Vivar a Hostos by Jose Emilio Gonzalez
Italian days by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Symbolic immortality : the Tlingit potlatch of the nineteenth century by Sergei Kan
People who led to my plays by Adrienne Kennedy
The forbidden stitch : an Asian American women's anthology, edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mayumi Tsutakawa, and Margarita Donnelly
Mulberry and Peach : two women of China by Hualing Nieh
Every goodbye ain't gone : family portraits and personal escapades by Itabari Njeri
The light at the end of the bog by John Norton
Romans and Blacks by Lloyd A. Thompson
The Harlem Fox : J. Raymond Jones and Tammany, 1920-1970 by John C. Walter
Hand into stone by Elizabeth Woody

1989
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
Chinaman Pacific and Frisco R.R. Co. : short stories by Frank Chin
Homemade love by J. California Cooper
Columbia literary history of the United States, edited by Emory Elliott
The exiles of Erin : 19th century Irish American fiction by Charles Fanning
Memory of fire by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Cedric Belfrage
The signifying monkey : a theory of Afro-American literary criticism by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The right thing to do by Josephine Gattuso Hendin
Repairing America by William Hohri
Wode Shuofa (My Way of Speaking) by Carolyn Lau (Carolyn Lei-lanilau)
A burst of light by Audre Lorde
Way by Leslie Scalapino
Stone's throw by Jennifer Stone
Floating the river in melancholy by Shuntaro Tanikawa, translated by William I. Eliot and Kazuo Kawamura (bilingual edition)
From the pyramids to the projects : poems of genocide and resistance by Askia Muhammed Toure
The ultraviolet sky by Alma Luz Villanueva

1988
Martín & Meditations on the South Valley by Jimmy Santiago Baca
The long shadow of Little Rock, a memoir by Daisy Bates
Russia and the Negro : blacks in Russian history and thought by Allison Blakely
The reckoning by David Halberstam
Songs of Gold Mountain by Marlon Horn
The boys of Bensonhurst : stories by Salvatore La Puma
Expounding the doubtful points by Wing Tek Lum
Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison
The collected poems of Charles Olson : excluding the Maximus poems by Charles Olson, edited by George Butterick
Thirsting for peace in a raging century : selected poems, 1961-1985 by Edward Sanders
Tight spaces by Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji & Egyirba High
Down and in : life in the underground by Ronald Sukenick
Griever, an American monkey king in China by Gerald Vizenor
The singing creek where the willows grow by Opal Whiteley, presented by Benjamin Hoff

1987
Sin : poems by Ai
Liberazione della Dona : feminism in Italy by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum
Confessions of Madame Psyche : memoirs and letters of Mei-li Murrow : a novel by Dorothy Bryant
The Mixquiahuala letters by Ana Castillo
Ready from within : Septima Clark and the civil rights movement, edited with an introduction by Cynthia Stokes Brown
Celebrating Bird : the triumph of Charlie Parker by Gary Giddins
Face games by Juan Felipe Herrera
The essential Etheridge Knight by Etheridge Knight
Practicing angels, a contemporary anthology of San Francisco Bay area poetry, edited by Michael Mayo
Portrait of a little boy in darkness by Daniel McGuire
Mama by Terry McMillan
American splendor : the life and times of Harvey Pekar : stories by Harvey Pekar
Selected poems, 1958-1984 by John Wieners
Fools crow by James Welch
Circumnavigations by Cyn Zarco

1986
Time's now by Miguel Algarin
The Dream book : an anthology of writings by Italian-American women, edited by Helen Barolini
A daughter of the nobility by Natasha Borovsky
Smiles on Washington Square : a love story of sorts by Raymond Federman
Seeing through the sun by Linda Hogan
My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe
I hear you knockin' by Jeff Hannusch (a.k.a. Almost Slim)
This bridge called my back : writings by radical women of color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (1st ed (1981) here; 2nd ed (1983) here)
Yokohama, California by Toshio Mori
The sun is not merciful : short stories by Anna Lee Walters
Irish musicians/American friends by Terence Winch

1985
The house on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Ground work : before the war by Robert Duncan
Love medicine : a novel by Louise Erdich (new and expanded version)
Justice at war by Peter Irons
Solo in the box car, third floor E by Angela Jackson
Say Ray by Ron Jones
Queen of the Ebony Isles by Colleen J. McElroy
Poets behind barbed wire, edited and translated by Jiro Nakano and Kay Nakano
Round Valley Songs by William Oandasan
AE by Maureen Owen
Homegirls & handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez
At seventy : a journal by May Sarton
Living up the street : narrative recollections by Gary Soto
Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's old Chinatown, photographs by Arnold Genthe ; selection & text by John Kuo Wei Tchen

1984
Confirmation, an anthology of African American women by Amiri Baraka and Amina Baraka
The heat bird by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Days without weather by Cecil Brown
Breaking silence : an anthology of contemporary Asian American poets by Joseph Bruchac
A Puerto Rican in New York and other sketches by Jesus Colon
O Albany by William Kennedy
The Mama poems by Maurice Kenny
Naked in Deccan : a novel by Vankatesh Kulkarni
Praisesong for the widow by Paule Marshall
Pie-biter, illustrated by Ruthanne Lum McCunn and You-shan Tang, translated by Ellen Lai-shan Yeung
Echoes inside the labyrinth by Thomas McGrath
Citizen 13660 by Miné Okubo
The captive soul of the Messiah : new tales about Reb Nachman by Howard Schwartz
Axe handles : poems by Gary Snyder

1983
Not by the sword by Nash Candelaria
Black women novelists : the development of a tradition, 1892-1976 by Barbara Christian
Queen of Wands by Judy Grahn
Lost highway by Peter Guralnick
Petfood & tropical apparitions by Jessica Hagedorn
Californians by James D. Houston
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
Chinese folk poetry by Cecilia Liang
An Duanaire = An Irish anthology : 1600-1900, poems of the dispossessed, presented by Seán O Tuama ; with translations into English verse by Thomas Kinsella.
The legend of food mountain, adapted by Harriet Rohmer ; illustrated by Graciela Carrillo
!Click song by John A. Williams
Thirty an' seen a lot by Evangelina Vigil-Piñón

1982
The book of Jamaica by Russell Banks
Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes
The chickencoop Chinaman ; and, The year of the dragon : two plays by Frank Chin
Enclave by Tato Laviera
Collected poems by E.L. Mayo
Songs for the Harvester of Dreams by Duane Niatum
This Passover or next I will never be in Jerusalem by Hilton Obenzinger
Sangre by Leroy Quintana
Pre-faces & other writings by Jerome Rothenberg
The Shino suite : opus 2 by Ronald Tanaka
Marked by fire by Joyce Carol Thomas
Bodies & Soul by Al Young
Island : poetry and history of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, edited by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung

1981
Turn again to me & other poems by Helen Adams
On call by Miguel Algarín
The shameless hussy by alta
The salt eaters by Toni Cade Bambara
Back then tomorrow by Peter Blue Cloud
The choice by Rose Drachler
The liberties by Susan Howe
In time by Robert Kelly
Songs for Jadina : poems by Alan Lau
Traveling light by Lionel Mitchell
Felita by Nicholas Mohr
Scent of apples : a collection of stories by Bienvenido N. Santos

1980
Tortuga by Rudolfo Anaya
Random possession by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mouth on paper by Jayne Cortez
Hello, La Jolla by Ed Dorn
All I asking for is my body by Milton Murayama
Ceremony by Leslie Silko
Snake-Back Solos by Quincy Troupe
Future preconditional by Douglas Woolf