58 books like Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks

By Donald Bogle,

Here are 58 books that Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks fans have personally recommended if you like Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film

Mark Harris Author Of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar

From my list on Black film history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m Black, and I’m a horror movie fan, two things that, per the well-worn trope that “the Black guy dies first,” don’t seem to go together. However, I’ve been able to use the treatment that Black characters have received in horror to explore the ways in which Black people have been marginalized in Hollywood, placed into specific roles in which they served as expendable, ancillary characters rather than stars. While things have improved dramatically in recent years, that makes it all the more important to not forget how much Black progress there has been in film, because those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark's book list on Black film history

Mark Harris Why did Mark love this book?

While the Bogle and Cripps books were written during the 1970s Blaxploitation era, this one emerged during the next great Black film movement, the “urban cinema” era of the 1990s, triggered by movies like Do the Right Thing and Boyz n the Hood.

Particularly influential for my book is the chapter “Slaves, Monsters, and Others,” which touches upon the racialized metaphors and allegories in horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

Even if you don’t agree with its assertions, the book provides fascinating food for thought.

By Ed Guerrero,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Framing Blackness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to Spike Lee's Malcolm X, Ed Guerrero argues, the commercial film industry reflects white domination of American society. Written with the energy and conviction generated by the new black film wave, Framing Blackness traces an ongoing epic-African Americans protesting screen images of blacks as criminals, servants, comics, athletes, and sidekicks.

These images persist despite blacks' irrepressible demands for emancipated images and a role in the industry. Although starkly racist portrayals of blacks in early films have gradually been replaced by more appealing characterizations, the legacy of the plantation genre lives on in…


Book cover of Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942

Mark Harris Author Of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar

From my list on Black film history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m Black, and I’m a horror movie fan, two things that, per the well-worn trope that “the Black guy dies first,” don’t seem to go together. However, I’ve been able to use the treatment that Black characters have received in horror to explore the ways in which Black people have been marginalized in Hollywood, placed into specific roles in which they served as expendable, ancillary characters rather than stars. While things have improved dramatically in recent years, that makes it all the more important to not forget how much Black progress there has been in film, because those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark's book list on Black film history

Mark Harris Why did Mark love this book?

Another pioneering work, this 1977 book was written during the late “Blaxploitation” film movement, but rather than focus on that era, it looks back at the first half of the 20th century, during the foundation of Hollywood as a filmmaking industry, to detail the harrowing trials and tribulations that Black performers had to endure.

With a scholarly yet accessible approach, this book drums home the fact that cinema—and American society as a whole—is not that far removed from slavery, as evidenced by Black portrayals in popular films like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Birth of a Nation. Like Bogle, Cripps is a legend in the field of Black film studies.

By Thomas Cripps,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Slow Fade to Black as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set against the backdrop of the black struggle in society, Slow Fade to Black is the definitive history of African-American accomplishment in film-both before and behind the camera-from the earliest movies through World War II. As he records the changing attitudes toward African-Americans both in Hollywood and the nation at large, Cripps explores the growth of discrimination as filmmakers became more and more intrigued with myths of the Old South: the
"lost cause" aspect of the Civil War, the stately mansions and gracious ladies of the antebellum South, the "happy" slaves singing in the fields. Cripps shows how these characterizations…


Book cover of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World

Mark Harris Author Of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar

From my list on Black film history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m Black, and I’m a horror movie fan, two things that, per the well-worn trope that “the Black guy dies first,” don’t seem to go together. However, I’ve been able to use the treatment that Black characters have received in horror to explore the ways in which Black people have been marginalized in Hollywood, placed into specific roles in which they served as expendable, ancillary characters rather than stars. While things have improved dramatically in recent years, that makes it all the more important to not forget how much Black progress there has been in film, because those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark's book list on Black film history

Mark Harris Why did Mark love this book?

This is a sweeping epic of a book and should be required reading for any student of film history.

Told in a manner that is at once intimate and authoritative, it reads like both a textbook and a biography, detailing the lives of a series of historical figures as a means of relating the history of the Black image in film.

In doing so, Haygood contextualizes the cinematic developments of the past by placing them alongside the social and political developments of the time, showing that you can never truly separate fact from fiction. 

By Wil Haygood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Colorization as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE • ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland

This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism…


Book cover of Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898-1971

Mark Harris Author Of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar

From my list on Black film history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m Black, and I’m a horror movie fan, two things that, per the well-worn trope that “the Black guy dies first,” don’t seem to go together. However, I’ve been able to use the treatment that Black characters have received in horror to explore the ways in which Black people have been marginalized in Hollywood, placed into specific roles in which they served as expendable, ancillary characters rather than stars. While things have improved dramatically in recent years, that makes it all the more important to not forget how much Black progress there has been in film, because those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mark's book list on Black film history

Mark Harris Why did Mark love this book?

This is a large, gorgeous work that comes off as part textbook and part coffee table book.

It carries an air of officiality, serving as the official companion piece to the exhibition of the same name displayed at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. Not a page goes by without a dazzling image or an intriguing story from the history of Black representation in Hollywood. It features a wide range of content, from essays to case studies to glamor portraits, movie poster galleries, filmographies, chronologies, and interviews.

If you can’t make it to LA to view the dazzling exhibit in person, this is as close as you can get.

By Doris Berger (editor), Rhea L Combs (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Regeneration as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The overlooked yet vibrant history of Black participation in American film, from the beginning of cinema through the civil rights movement

From the dawn of the medium onward, Black filmmakers have helped define American cinema. Black performers, producers and directors―Bert Williams, Oscar Micheaux, Herb Jeffries, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee and William Greaves, to name just a few―had a vast and resounding impact. Black film artists not only developed an enduring independent tradition but also transformed mainstream Hollywood, fueled and reflected sociopolitical movements, captured Black experience in all its robust complexity, and influenced generations to come. As harrowing as…


Book cover of America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Author Of Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Americans

From my list on the impact of movies outside the theater.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of pop culture, so I know personally that talking about race can be so incredibly awkward at times – but it does not always have to be! Often, many restrict themselves from fully participating in these necessary dialogues only because of a profound fear of “saying the wrong thing.” As individuals responsible for preparing a new generation of thinkers prepared to innovate improved solutions for the society we share, inevitably, the topic of race must not only be broached, but broached productively. I write to provide tools to help make such difficult conversations less difficult.

Frederick's book list on the impact of movies outside the theater

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Why did Frederick love this book?

I recommend this book because it is one of the few works that systematically analyzes different facets of individual identity by illustrating how movie makers consciously and strategically prioritize the images they showcase onscreen.

Nothing we see is by coincidence nor accident and the authors remind me of the audience’s responsibility in remaining as active participants, constantly questioning rather than blindly accepting the images we see onscreen.

By Harry M. Benshoff, Sean Griffin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked America on Film as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies, 2nd Edition is a lively introduction to issues of diversity as represented within the American cinema. Provides a comprehensive overview of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors that contribute to cinematic representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality Includes over 100 illustrations, glossary of key terms, questions for discussion, and lists for further reading/viewing Includes new case studies of a number of films, including Crash, Brokeback Mountain, and Quinceanera


Book cover of Performing Whiteness: Postmodern Re/Constructions in the Cinema

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Author Of Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Americans

From my list on the impact of movies outside the theater.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of pop culture, so I know personally that talking about race can be so incredibly awkward at times – but it does not always have to be! Often, many restrict themselves from fully participating in these necessary dialogues only because of a profound fear of “saying the wrong thing.” As individuals responsible for preparing a new generation of thinkers prepared to innovate improved solutions for the society we share, inevitably, the topic of race must not only be broached, but broached productively. I write to provide tools to help make such difficult conversations less difficult.

Frederick's book list on the impact of movies outside the theater

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Why did Frederick love this book?

This book is both valuable and important primarily because whenever most conversations get started about race relations, magically white people as a group are “left out” as attention is turned to black, indigenous, Latino, or other people of color.

This book prompts readers to reconcile with whiteness as a larger category of analysis to deepen our understanding of complex race relations.

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Performing Whiteness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Explores how whiteness is culturally constructed in American films.

Performing Whiteness crosses the boundaries of film study to explore images of the white body in relation to recent theoretical perspectives on whiteness.

Drawing on such diverse critical methodologies as postcolonial studies, feminist film criticism, anthropology, and phenomenology, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster examines a wide variety of films from early cinema to the present day in order to explore the ways in which American cinema imposes whiteness as a cultural norm, even as it exposes its inherent instability.

In discussions that range from The Philadelphia Story to Attack…


Book cover of Feminist Film Studies

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Author Of Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Americans

From my list on the impact of movies outside the theater.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of pop culture, so I know personally that talking about race can be so incredibly awkward at times – but it does not always have to be! Often, many restrict themselves from fully participating in these necessary dialogues only because of a profound fear of “saying the wrong thing.” As individuals responsible for preparing a new generation of thinkers prepared to innovate improved solutions for the society we share, inevitably, the topic of race must not only be broached, but broached productively. I write to provide tools to help make such difficult conversations less difficult.

Frederick's book list on the impact of movies outside the theater

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Why did Frederick love this book?

I recommend this book to anyone who has ever seen a female character onscreen (does that make all of us?!).

As a cisgender male, I grew up with a pretty myopic point of view and was conditioned to look to (white) males onscreen for key pieces of information or heroism.

This book helped me appreciate why my perspective was slanted and shaped this way – Karen Hollinger’s work has sensitized me to the idea that there is always more than one perspective to be mindful of when watching a movie.

By Karen Hollinger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Feminist Film Studies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism.

Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women's representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include:

a brief history of the development of feminist film theory

the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator

women in genre films and literary adaptations

the female biopic

feminism and avant-garde and documentary film

women as auteurs

lesbian representation

women in Third Cinema.

Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section,…


Book cover of The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Author Of Black Oscars: From Mammy to Minny, What the Academy Awards Tell Us about African Americans

From my list on the impact of movies outside the theater.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of pop culture, so I know personally that talking about race can be so incredibly awkward at times – but it does not always have to be! Often, many restrict themselves from fully participating in these necessary dialogues only because of a profound fear of “saying the wrong thing.” As individuals responsible for preparing a new generation of thinkers prepared to innovate improved solutions for the society we share, inevitably, the topic of race must not only be broached, but broached productively. I write to provide tools to help make such difficult conversations less difficult.

Frederick's book list on the impact of movies outside the theater

Frederick W. Gooding Jr. Why did Frederick love this book?

This book is excellent in providing quantitative data to demonstrate how well-meaning people often make negative racial associations based upon media content – this book really helps readers question to what degree we are influenced by or are impervious to media images.

While they do not focus on movies exclusively, they do thoroughly explain subtle racial patterns within mainstream media. 

By Robert M. Entman, Andrew Rojecki,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Black Image in the White Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Living in a segregated society, white Americans learn about African Americans not through personal relationships but through the images the media show them. "The Black Image in the White Mind" offers the most comprehensive look at the intricate racial patterns in the mass media and how they shape the ambivalent attitudes of Whites towards Blacks. Using the media, and especially television, as barometers of race relations, Robert M. Entman and Andrew Rojecki explore but then go beyond the treatment of African Americans on network and local news to incisively uncover the messages sent about race by the entertainment industry -…


Book cover of Flicker

Nathan Abrams Author Of Kubrick: An Odyssey

From my list on fiction and nonfiction books about movie directors.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was old (or young) enough to have only seen two Kubrick films in the cinema: Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. I began teaching film studies and Hollywood in 1998, and I have been teaching and researching Kubrick intensively since 2007, visiting his archive in London on numerous occasions. At one point, I held the record for the researcher who had spent the most hours in the Archive. I also met Christiane and Jan and spoke to many others who knew and worked with Kubrick. Having been familiar with Robert Kolker’s work, it became clear that collaborating with an international authority on film was a necessity as well as a pleasure.

Nathan's book list on fiction and nonfiction books about movie directors

Nathan Abrams Why did Nathan love this book?

This is one of the few novels I’ve read twice for pleasure (rather than work). It’s a noirish novel that delves into the esoteric along the lines of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (which Kubrick allegedly considered adapting at one point but which I was unable to read twice!).

The book follows a film scholar who uncovers an incredible conspiracy around a fictional B-movie director called Max Castle, and the imperceptible images he placed in the gap between each of the twenty-four frames played every second in a movie: the so-called flicker of the title. Its author, Roszak, is better known for having coined the term "the counter-culture."

By Theodore Roszak,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Flicker as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the golden age of art movies and underground cinema to X-rated porn, splatter films, and midnight movies, this breathtaking thriller is a tour de force of cinematic fact and fantasy, full of metaphysical mysteries that will haunt the dreams of every moviegoer. Jonathan Gates could not have anticipated that his student studies would lead him to uncover the secret history of the movies—a tale of intrigue, deception, and death that stretches back to the 14th century. But he succumbs to what will be a lifelong obsession with the mysterious Max Castle, a nearly forgotten genius of the silent screen…


Book cover of Oil!

Leif Wenar Author Of Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World

From my list on why oil is a curse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a Stanford professor who became fascinated with oil and everything it does to for us and to us. For years I traveled the world talking to the people who know petroleum: executives in the big oil companies, politicians and activists, militants and victims, spies and tribal chiefs. Blood Oil explains what I learned and how we can make our oil-cursed world better for all of us. 

Leif's book list on why oil is a curse

Leif Wenar Why did Leif love this book?

You may have seen There Will Be Blood, which won Daniel Day Lewis an Academy Award.

Sinclair’s novel (which inspired the film) satirizes the petroleum-fueled tycoons and preachers of Southern California a century ago. For an extra treat, follow this novel with Darren Dochuk’s Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, which weaves together the stories of American oil, American religion, and the great schism within today’s Republican Party.

By Upton Sinclair,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Oil! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.


Book cover of Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film
Book cover of Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942
Book cover of Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World

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