Cleage's Bourbon at the Border (1997) explores many of the same themes as Flyin' West, including racism, determination, and suffering. The story is about a black voter registration drive in the South in 1964. In the wake of the violence and killing that results, the two main characters struggle to make sense of it and long to run away to start a new life.

Zora Neale Hurston's classic Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) is about an African-Ameri-can woman who was tried and acquitted for the murder of the last of her three husbands. This novel is known for its use of dialect and its themes of identity, female bonding, and gender relations in the black community.

Written by Lawrence Bacon Lee and edited by Stuart Bruchey, Kansas and the Homestead Act, 1862-1905 (1979) offers students an in-depth look at the Homestead Act and...