2. Power Linda Hogan The novel opens on the night of an ominous storm. Omishto witnesses her Aunt Ama kill a panther - an animal considered to be a sacred ancestor of the Taiga people. That single act will have profound consequences for Omishto. Suddenly, she is torn between her loyalties to her Westernized mother, who wants her to reject the ways of the tribe, and to Ama and her traditional people, for whom the killing of the panther takes on grave importance. But Omishto's quest in this timeless, lyrical novel goes far deeper. As she tries to understand the mystery that lies behind Ama's actions, she must reckon with her own spiritual connection to her people, to nature, and to the world itself.

3. Causaia Danzy Senna Senna's first novel explores life in the middle of America's racial chasm through the eyes of a biracial girl who must struggle for acceptance from blacks and whites alike. Senna combines a powerful coming-of-age tale with a young girl's search for identity and family amid a sea of racial stereotypes and cultural ideas of beauty.

4. Born Confused Tanuja Desai Hidier Seventeen-year-old Dimple, whose family is from India, discovers that she is not Indian enough for the Indians and not American enough for the Americans, as she sees her hypnotically beautiful, manipulative best friend taking possession of both her heritage and the boy she likes.

5. In My Place Charlayne Hunter-Gault Hunter-Gault's extraordinary autobiography is at once an account of her role in the Civil Rights movement--at 19 she became the first black woman to desegregate the University of Georgia--and the story of the childhood in the American South of the 1940s and '50s that prepared her for it.

6. Almost a Woman Esmeralda Santiago "Not only for readers who share [Santiago's] experiences but for North Americans who seek to understand what it means to be the other."—The Boston Globe

7. Colors of the Mountain Da Chen "Da Chen has written a remarkable coming-of-age memoir filled with humiliation, revenge, vindication, and, ultimately, pride. Born with the wretched political birthmark of being a landlord's son, he has looked back at his life without cynicism or self-pity. Colors of the Mountain is a book of great dignity."—Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain

8. Kitchen Goddess Amy Tan With the same narrative skills and evocative powers that made her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, a national bestseller, Tan now tells the story of Winnie Louie, an aging Chinese woman unfolding a life's worth of secrets to her suspicious, Americanized daughter.

9. More literature from diverse writers: Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Micheal Dorris Chicano by Richard Vasquez To Destroy You is No Loss by Joan Criddle America Street (an anthology of short stories edited by Anne Mazer)

10. Books used in Advanced Placement Literature Test (in order of times used): Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison The Color Purple by Alice Walker Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison Native Son by Richard Wright The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich Sula by Toni Morrison