Melba Pattillo Beals's 6 favorite books

Melba Pattillo Beals was one of nine African-American high school students to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Under protection of the 101st Airborne Division of the Army, dispatched by President Eisenhower, she and eight other African-American youths integrated the previously all-white Central High School. She has written two new books about the experience, I Will Not Fear and March Forward, Girl.

One of Beals's six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Reading Toni Morrison made me question whether I was really a writer. Her characters are so well drawn that a reader has no doubt about their identities and motives, and she uses them to create deep drama. Morrison's story about an ex-slave haunted by the ghost of the child she murdered is not for the fainthearted and requires deep concentration. But it compels you to stick with it until the end.

Read about another entry on the list.

Beloved also appears on Sarah Porter's list of five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue