I am a voracious reader - always have been, always will be - and my first instinct when I find myself on uncertain ground is to try to read my way onto more solid footing. I have a maelstrom of thoughts on everything that has transpired in the last few months, but that’s for another time. I’m posting a list of reading resources I’ve seen shared across the internet in the last week of books to help me educate myself, develop a new vocabulary, and immerse myself in a culture, experience and fight that is not intrinsically mine. Hopefully this helps someone - hopefully this helps me.
“The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin
“Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black” by Bell Hooks
“Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good” by Adrienne Maree Brown
“The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorbindness” by Michelle Alexander
“Citizen: An American Lyric” by Claudia Rankine
“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America” by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
“Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde
“Stamped From the Beginning” by Ibram X. Kendi
“How to Be an Anti-Racist” also by Ibram X. Kendi
“Minor Feelings” by Cathy Park Hong
“America’s Original Sin” by Jim Wallis
“Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge
“Good Talk” by Mira Jacob
“Blindspot” by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
“Me and White Supremacy” by Layla F. Saad
“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo
“How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being Young and Arab in America” by Moustafa Bayoumi
“The Fire This Time” by Jesmyn Ward
“White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo
“I’m Still Here” by Austin Channing Brown
“When They Call You a Terrorist: a Black Lives Matter Memoir” by Patrisse Cullors and Asha Bandele
“An African American and Latinx History of the United States” by Paul Ortiz
“An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” by Xanne Dunbar-Ortiz
“Mindful of Race” by Ruth King
“Just Mercy” by Bryn Stevenson
“Tears We Cannot Stop” by Michael Eric Dyson
“Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?” by Mumia Abu-Jawal
“The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein
“The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson
“Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” by Beverly Daniel Tatum
“This Book is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell
“The Great Unlearn” by Rachel Cargle
“Rabbit” by Patricia Williams and Jeannine Amber
“Wow, No Thank You.” by Samantha Irby
“Heavy” by Kiese Laymon
“Real Life” by Brandon Taylor
“Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid
“The Yellow House” by Sarah M. Broom
“Grand Union” by Zadie Smith. Actually, everything by Zadie Smith.
“Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi
“Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh