Fiction

• 2010: Into the Interior. Novel. University of Minnesota Press
• 2009: Everything is Now: New and Collected Stories. Short stories. University Of Minnesota Press
• 2004: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant. Novel, City Lights Publishers
• 1998: The Store of a Million Items (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company). Short stories
• 1993: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant (New York: Dutton). Novel
• 1990: Bodies of Water (New York: Dutton). Short stories
• 1987: No Telephone to Heaven (New York: Dutton). Novel (sequel to Abeng)
• 1985: Abeng (New York: Penguin). Novel

Prose poetry

• 1985: The Land of Look Behind and Claiming (Firebrand Books).
• 1980: Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (Persephone Press).

Editor

• 1982: Lillian Smith, The Winner Names the Age: A Collection of Writings (New York: Norton).

Other

• 2008: If I Could Write This in Fire. Non-fiction collection. University of Minnesota Press
• 1982: "If I Could Write This in Fire I Would Write This in Fire", in Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press).
• 1994: "History as Fiction, Fiction as History", Ploughshares, Fall 1994; 20(2-3): 196-202.
• 1990: "Object into Subject: Some Thoughts on the Work of Black Women's Artists," in Gloria Anzaldúa, ed., Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute), pp. 271–290.