Toni Morrison Reading Order

108 books (1987–2022)

Start with Good Woman(By: Lucille Clifton), the first of 108 books in the American Poets Continuum series.

8 books (1987–2021)

Start with Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, the first of 8 books in the Anthologies series.

#	Title
1	Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir 1987Buy 🇺🇸
2	Go the Way Your Blood Beats 1996Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Good Parts 2000Buy 🇺🇸
4	Black Satin 2004Buy 🇺🇸
5	Women of Color Pray 2012Buy 🇺🇸
6	Her Own Accord 2016Buy 🇺🇸
7	Writers: Their Lives and Works 2018Buy 🇺🇸
8	On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library 2021Buy 🇺🇸

3 books (1999–2005)

Start with The Big Box and read in order.

#	Title
1	The Big Box 1999Buy 🇺🇸
2	The Book of Mean People 2002Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Mirror Or The Glass? 2005Buy 🇺🇸

17 books (1992–2026)

Start with Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power, the first of 17 books in the Non-Fiction series.

#	Title
1	Race-Ing Justice, En-Gendering Power 1992Buy 🇺🇸
2	Conversations with Toni Morrison 1994Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993 1994Buy 🇺🇸
4	The Dancing Mind 1996Buy 🇺🇸
5	Birth of a Nation'hood 1997Buy 🇺🇸
6	Memoirs 1999Buy 🇺🇸
7	Remember 2004Buy 🇺🇸
8	What Moves at the Margin 2008Buy 🇺🇸
9	Burn This Book 2009Buy 🇺🇸
10	To Die for the People 2009Buy 🇺🇸
11	Please, Louise 2013Buy 🇺🇸
12	Goodness and the Literary Imagination 2019Buy 🇺🇸
13	Mouth Full of Blood: Essays, Speeches, Meditations 2019Buy 🇺🇸
14	The Measure of Our Lives 2019Buy 🇺🇸
15	The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations 2019Buy 🇺🇸
16	The Writer Before the Page: From The Source of Self-Regard 2019Buy 🇺🇸
17	Language as Liberation 2026Buy 🇺🇸

3 books (2009–2010)

Start with Peeny Butter Fudge and read in order.

#	Title
1	Peeny Butter Fudge 2009Buy 🇺🇸
2	Little Cloud and Lady Wind 2010Buy 🇺🇸
3	The Tortoise or the Hare 2010Buy 🇺🇸

1 book (2012–2012)

#	Title
1	Desdemona 2012Buy 🇺🇸

2 books (1983–2017)

Start with Recitatif and read in order.

#	Title
1	Recitatif 1983Buy 🇺🇸
2	Race 2017Buy 🇺🇸

11 books (1970–2014)

Start with The Bluest Eye, the first of 11 books in the Standalone Novels series.

#	Title
1	The Bluest Eye 1970Buy 🇺🇸
2	Sula 1973Buy 🇺🇸
3	Song of Solomon 1977Buy 🇺🇸
4	Tar Baby 1981Buy 🇺🇸
5	Beloved 1987Buy 🇺🇸
6	Jazz 1992Buy 🇺🇸
7	Paradise 1997Buy 🇺🇸
8	Love 2003Buy 🇺🇸
9	A Mercy 2008Buy 🇺🇸
10	Home 2011Buy 🇺🇸
11	God Help the Child 2014Buy 🇺🇸

9 books (1941–2016)

Start with Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition(By: Siegfried Giedion), the first of 9 books in the The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series.

#	Title
1	Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition(By: Siegfried Giedion) 1941Buy 🇺🇸
2	i: Six Nonlectures(By: E.E. Cummings) 1953Buy 🇺🇸
3	Sincerity and Authenticity(By: Lionel Trilling) 1972Buy 🇺🇸
4	The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance(By: Northrop Frye) 1973Buy 🇺🇸
5	Six Walks in the Fictional Woods(By: Umberto Eco) 1994Buy 🇺🇸
6	The Romantic Generation(By: Charles Rosen) 1995Buy 🇺🇸
7	Lessons of the Masters(By: George Steiner) 2003Buy 🇺🇸
8	Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye(By: Linda Nochlin) 2006Buy 🇺🇸
9	The Origin of Others 2016Buy 🇺🇸

41 books (2005–2023)

Start with Learning To Live Finally(By: Jacques Derrida), the first of 41 books in the The Last Interview series.

#	Title
1	Learning To Live Finally(By: Jacques Derrida) 2005Buy 🇺🇸
2	Roberto Bolaño(By: Roberto Bolaño) 2009Buy 🇺🇸
3	Kurt Vonnegut(By: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) 2011Buy 🇺🇸
4	Jorge Luis Borges(By: Jorge Luis Borges) 2012Buy 🇺🇸
5	Hannah Arendt(By: Hannah Arendt) 2013Buy 🇺🇸
6	David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words(By: David Foster Wallace) 2014Buy 🇺🇸
7	James Baldwin(By: James Baldwin,Quincy Troupe) 2014Buy 🇺🇸
8	Ray Bradbury(By: Ray Bradbury,Sam Weller) 2014Buy 🇺🇸
9	Ernest Hemingway(By: Ernest Hemingway) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
10	Gabriel García Márquez(By: Gabriel García Márquez) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
11	Lou Reed(By: Lou Reed) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
12	Nora Ephron(By: Nora Ephron) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
13	Philip K. Dick(By: Philip K. Dick) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
14	David Bowie(By: David Bowie) 2016Buy 🇺🇸
15	J. D. Salinger(By: J.D. Salinger) 2016Buy 🇺🇸
16	Jane Jacobs(By: Jane Jacobs) 2016Buy 🇺🇸
17	Oliver Sacks(By: Oliver Sacks) 2016Buy 🇺🇸
18	Christopher Hitchens(By: Christopher Hitchens) 2017Buy 🇺🇸
19	Martin Luther King, Jr.(By: Martin Luther King Jr.) 2017Buy 🇺🇸
20	Hunter S. Thompson(By: Hunter S. Thompson) 2018Buy 🇺🇸
21	Julia Child(By: Julia Child) 2018Buy 🇺🇸
22	Kathy Acker(By: Kathy Acker) 2018Buy 🇺🇸
23	Anthony Bourdain(By: Melville House,Helen Rosner) 2019Buy 🇺🇸
24	Billie Holiday(By: Billie Holiday) 2019Buy 🇺🇸
25	Graham Greene(By: Graham Greene) 2019Buy 🇺🇸
26	Prince(By: Prince) 2019Buy 🇺🇸
27	Ursula K. Le Guin(By: Ursula K. Le Guin) 2019Buy 🇺🇸
28	Frida Kahlo(By: Frida Kahlo) 2020Buy 🇺🇸
29	Marilyn Monroe(By: Melville House,Sady Doyle) 2020Buy 🇺🇸
30	Ruth Bader Ginsburg(By: Melville House) 2020Buy 🇺🇸
31	Toni Morrison 2020Buy 🇺🇸
32	Fred Rogers(By: Fred Rogers) 2021Buy 🇺🇸
33	John Lewis(By: Melville House) 2021Buy 🇺🇸
34	Johnny Cash(By: Johnny Cash) 2021Buy 🇺🇸
35	Shirley Chisholm(By: Shirley Chisholm) 2021Buy 🇺🇸
36	The Last Interview(By: Fred Rogers) 2021Buy 🇺🇸
37	Diego Maradona(By: Melville House) 2022Buy 🇺🇸
38	Janet Malcolm(By: Melville House) 2022Buy 🇺🇸
39	Kurt Cobain(By: Melville House) 2022Buy 🇺🇸
40	Bell Hooks(By: bell hooks) 2023Buy 🇺🇸
41	Octavia E. Butler(By: Melville House) 2023Buy 🇺🇸

18 books (1986–2017)

Start with The American Newness(By: Irving Howe), the first of 18 books in the The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures series.

#	Title
1	The American Newness(By: Irving Howe) 1986Buy 🇺🇸
2	Highbrow/Lowbrow(By: Lawrence W. Levine) 1988Buy 🇺🇸
3	Revolutions(By: David Brion Davis) 1990Buy 🇺🇸
4	Playing in the Dark 1992Buy 🇺🇸
5	The Southern Tradition(By: Eugene D. Genovese) 1994Buy 🇺🇸
6	The Dissent of the Governed(By: Stephen L. Carter) 1998Buy 🇺🇸
7	Writing Was Everything(By: Alfred Kazin) 1998Buy 🇺🇸
8	Achieving Our Country(By: Richard M. Rorty) 1999Buy 🇺🇸
9	The Real American Dream(By: Andrew Delbanco) 1999Buy 🇺🇸
10	To Be the Poet(By: Maxine Hong Kingston) 2002Buy 🇺🇸
11	Reporting the Universe(By: E.L. Doctorow) 2003Buy 🇺🇸
12	Architecture as Signs and Systems(By: Robert Venturi) 2004Buy 🇺🇸
13	Circles and Lines(By: John Putnam Demos) 2004Buy 🇺🇸
14	Reshaping the Work-Family Debate(By: Joan C. Williams) 2010Buy 🇺🇸
15	Tiger Writing(By: Gish Jen) 2013Buy 🇺🇸
16	Tiger Writing(By: Gish Jen) 2013Buy 🇺🇸
17	Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations(By: Greil Marcus) 2015Buy 🇺🇸
18	Just a Journalist(By: Linda Greenhouse) 2017Buy 🇺🇸

4 books (2003–2004)

Start with Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper?, the first of 4 books in the Who's Got Game? series.

#	Title
1	Who's Got Game? The Ant or the Grasshopper? 2003Buy 🇺🇸
2	Who's Got Game? The Lion or the Mouse? 2003Buy 🇺🇸
3	Who's Got Game? Three Fables 2003Buy 🇺🇸
4	Who's Got Game? Poppy or the Snake? 2004Buy 🇺🇸