My main reading goal for 2012 is to be more diverse in my reading choices. Since February is Black History month in the US, I wanted to share some novels published by African Americans during 2011, that I would like to read. The list itself is diverse - with literary fiction, non-fiction, young adult literature, romance and horror.

10 Books Published in 2011 by African American Novelists {on My Reading List}

Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward. Winner of the 2011 National Book Awards.
A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fourteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.

Zone One, Colson Whitehead.
In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Silver Sparrow, Tayari Jones.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families--the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters.

Nameless, Kyle Chais Okay, I cheated a little as this is published in Jan 2012.
In the in between are the Nameless; names are for masters and they have none. They live in the Nameless realm; between being saved and being destroyed. They are Fallen.

Darker Than Night, Brandon Massey.
A collection of twelve previously published suspense and horror short stories.

Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor.
Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing - she is a "free agent," with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?

You Are Free, Danzy Senz.
Now collected for the first time in one volume, these four novels take readers on a wondrous odyssey from a mythic, primordial past to a fantastic far future. In ancient Africa, a female demigod of nurture and fertility mates with a powerful, destructive male entity. Together they birth a race of madmen, visionaries, and psychics who cling to civilization's margins and back alleys for millennia, coming together in a telepathic Pattern just as Earth is consumed by a cosmic invasion. Now these new beings-no longer merely human-will battle to rule the transfigured world.

Scandalicious, Allison Hobbs. Because there should be at least a little romance in everyone's life.
Solay is the proud owner of Scandalicious, a trendy cupcake boutique that's raking in the dough. Practically married to her business, Solay does not have time for romance or its complications. What she needs is a friend with benefits ... Lincoln has been a faithful husband for 7 years. His world collapses when he discovers that his trophy wife has been cheating. Though she pleads for forgiveness, he simply can't. Will his desire for vengeance overpower his ability to forgive? ... Melanee is a quiet assistant baker by day and part of a secret sex society at night ... What happens when you combine sweet treats, explosive sex, and dirty little secrets is absolutely Scandalicious!

Black Boy, White School, Brian F. Walker.
When fourteen-year-old Anthony Ant Jones from the ghetto of East Cleveland, Ohio, gets a scholarship to a prep school in Maine, he finds that he must change his image and adapt to a world that never fully accepts him, but when he goes home he discovers that he no longer truly belongs there either.

Before There Was Mozart: The Story of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George, by Lesa Cline-Ransome, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)
This inspiring story tells how Joseph, the only child of a black slave and her white master, becomes "the most accomplished man in Europe." After traveling from his native West Indies to study music in Paris, young Joseph is taunted about his skin color. Despite his classmates' cruel words, he continues to devote himself to his violin, eventually becoming conductor of a whole orchestra. Joseph begins composing his own operas, which everyone acknowledges to be magnifique.

Have you read any of these books - or have any that I should add to my list?
- inspired by The Broke and Bookish Top 10 Tuesday.